Doors Swing Both Ways, But Will Latch On Their Frame

One of the arguments I posit here is that whatever we set loose theologically in the church will often also run wild theologically in the church. That you cannot permit an action or process without a knowledge of what that kind of action or process can do. I mean you can. But it’s a bad idea is all. Because it’s not gonna do what it’s supposed to so, it’s gonna do what it does.

It's one thing to write about the question and issues of single folk in the pew. Another to suggest that men and women with working genitals are somehow not intended for being fruitful and multiplying, on the basis of Jesus has work for them to do in the church. The problem with that being the current evangelical argument for singleness is manifold, but we’ll try to keep it on the rails of theology and tech in this piece. Jesus gave the command to be fruitful and multiply back in Genesis 1:28. If we're being trinitarian. So, it seems weird that we wouldn’t apply that command to everyone until they demonstrate other callings from God on their lives. But to the lost, all things are lost and to the blind any leaders vision is indistinguishable from their own. A blind person can tell another blind person that the sky is blue all the live long day, and neither will know that they are right. Because they don’t know what blue actually is.

So, as technology progresses and the church becomes ensnared by its enshrinement inside the sanctuary, we really do need to start looking at the secondary consequences of opening doors to strangers and strange things. Our congregants practice societal orthodoxy by the means of their smart phones. Find me one church member that isn’t tethered to a smartphone or at the very least knows the length of that tether. And I would argue that it’s the tech in our lives that makes us strange and makes us strangers to each other, in ways that would normally end with vows being said. Strangers like singleness. Even if they don’t know that they like it. Their decisions and preferences will track with an objective view of strangeness and singleness.

The rampant and socially destructive singleness that we are witnessing today is not a gift from the Almighty to do ministry better with. It is a curse brought about by the possession of idols where idols should not mingled with. The little black rectangles of glass and microchips you're likely reading this on, are the cause of a lot of the supposed “gift of singleness” that currently plagues the church and lowers the birthrate. When the door of singleness as an ideal was opened, it inadvertently let the cold air of exceptionalism in. You no longer had to deal with yourself as a desirable person. In abstract. You could just accept your gift in abstract, and the bonus victim status that comes along with it. You didn't need to fix the things that could make you single. Like your hygiene or your physical fitness. Much less the things that made you more single. The lack of social skills life in a perpetual comment section and subreddit tend to foster.

And it wasn’t just Reddit either. Tumblr, Discord, name your social hub de jour. All “places”, and I use the term loosely, that allow for individuals to congregate with people just like themselves. Cliqued together like so much dysfunctional Lego figurines. Once bolstered by the appearance of social norms. These not normal individuals stopped interacting with anything that acted normal outside those online communities. Outside of the internet that binds them together, a single white male with a brony obsession would be a hard sell to any prospective life partner. But online there’s no need for other people to co-exist with. Everyone becomes a set of search terms and content because that’s all they can be in a digital world. And content gets consumed.

A single gardener is just their Instagram pictures and Pinterest boards of horticulture. A single mechanic is just his unaffordable super car subreddits and re-runs of Top Gear. And just like the other types of Porn, the horny are just porn addicts, willing at least to call a spade a spade and drop trow. What no one seems to get is that there is no dividing line between car porn and real porn. Between gardening porn and real porn, between tv show obsession and sexual obsession. Online, if it’s socially driven media, it’s all porn. In every and any way porn can be defined. Which is only a problem if you want to square how good actual porn addicts are at relationships with the other sex. Because it’s all actual porn.

Tech isn't the cause here the way a tree dying isn't the cause of a forest fire. But it could very well be fuel. And we can either deal with the cause of the forest fire, which is statically a left wing radical and not climate change. Or we can deal with contributing factors of the forest fire. Both would be nice but let's not kid ourselves on the abilities of the clergy in this realm. theology porn is a thing too. And if you don’t know that, ask yourself why there always seems to be massive libraries of theological books for sale on Facebook marketplace. I thought the big case of books made you a better pastor. Or was that credibility library just as masturbatory.

If singleness is a problem in the church and not a blessing in disguise, then the church needs to address it as such. And avoid the peep show theology that's currently in display. Which is also a side effect of the terminally online. It needs to offer solutions to the problem as such. If a pastor notes a large number of portly young men in the pews. What he doesn't need to foster, is a more intensive regiment of the fast food and video games, that all but likely got him his chubby flock of soon to be geldings. But if he ditches the youth center tactics of small group engagement, and its budget for bad food, and builds a gym for his boys in its stead. What he fosters is, at the very least a contributing factor of a more attractive set of young Christian men. And all he had to do to do that what rob them of a gift called singleness and give them a gym. That gym will not be a guarantee of a future wife. But using it will be a step in the right direction of being attractive to a wife in the future.

Now we have a possible, if not probable solution. We don't know if it will work but at least we've addressed the problem head on this time. Instead of saying that the bad thing is a good thing if we just use the Bible the wrong way right enough. Pastors need to be brave enough to separate the righteous living demanded of their preaching and to their congregants, from the social norms that contribute to unrighteous things. Like singleness fueled by selfishness. To be in the world but not of it.

And it starts by acknowledging that normative tech habits in the church, may be, in fact, abnormal for humans with a latent commandment to make more humans.

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Genesis 1:28 KJV

The Bunny. The Bunny. Oh I Hate The Bunny.

There is racially charged dust up online recently because of a giant statue of a pagan Hindu god now erected near Houston Texas. And I remember at one point writing an article about this kind of thing on a former blog, about a smaller statue, but can’t seem to find it for the life of me. So, you get this one instead. 

Just in time for Easter!

Christians feel uneasy when they see this kind of thing because we all implicitly know that what a Christian often calls pagan, or would call pagan if they had the chutzpa, is often synonymous with the idea of foreign. We’re a secluded bunch here in the west of Christianity. So, when we think of the backwards practice of worshiping a statue, our only models for putting the mechanics of that together is that one Veggie Tales clip with the giant chocolate bunny. But now, on the heels of poor immigration policies, a real statue is here and is being worshiped by people who isn’t you.

So much for Christian Nationalism, eh?

Oh, you thought this was the first giant idol in America? I can understand given the times that it would take a golden statue to shake your spiritual conscience up a bit. But large construction projects have been built in the name of several false gods, all over the place even. But it does take a kind of discernment you can’t enter into a search bar to see them.

They’re not shaped like any man or beast or combination of man and beast. No. Those are the attributes of obvious gods. The gods you were ok with living in temples far away. Where you send missionaries. The more troubling ones are found in temples made of brown-grey concrete and glass. The data centers that make up Google were the first idols and temples that got erected in the west in a long while, because the demons finally figured out how to pull that particular wool over the eyes of the public. What did you think a thing that only answers petitions would be in practice if not a god that people would default to? You think the money and government subsidies and sheer draw on a power grid that these data centers take from us, isn’t a sacrifice, because it’s not a cow killed in Texas. I mean there are a lot of cows killed in Texas. Even ones burnt in the attempt at achieving greatness At least culinary greatness. But good BBQ and bad Hindu idols would have different standards. I suppose.

Back to the boring grey concrete gods of data,

Sometime long before enough worshipers of statues got to North America, people started worshiping other things like idols, that didn’t look like idols. And in so doing, laid the groundwork for construction projects like this statue this to eventually happen. One where the idol looks like an idol. That kind of work doesn’t just get undone by government making sure all statues are irreligious. Though judges are involved a bit.

Somewhere in Texas, or maybe nearby Florida, is a Christian who has the excavator waiting to be called on by the Angel of the Lord, just like Gideon was. But alongside him is the hacker who knows that porn is a cancer on society. Like a bronze cow that demanded children for its burnt offerings. He know, the same way the excavator driver in Christ knows, how to tear down these idols. And if and when, either of these two get a nudge from that Angel, the news will look a little different the following night. What they do in the name of their God will not be legal, will not be nice, and will be done with the intent of making a false god contend with real Christians. Or at the very least their followers, who will resort to any sort of desperation available to prove their god was real.

The Baal worshipers danced and sang and slashed themselves silly to get their god to show up. What do you think porn worshiper will do when an enterprising young Zoomer with a knack for code and a new A.I. supercharger, start insisting it’s their turn to use holyfire.exe . Because I can tell you now, digital porn files, while pervasive, are a lot more fragile that solid gold statues.

The big thing to notice is that we’ve somehow maintained a level of idolatrousness while thinking we put those idols away. And in doing so, missed that the idols no longer had morphic shapes. So completely, in fact, that anthropomorphic ones could show up like it was any given Sunday.

But it’s not Sunday. It’s good Friday and we worship a real God of real Sacrifices, and his kingdom shall have no end. We need to remember that when statues are erected, buildings smudged, offices DEI’d, climates not changed, and OnlyFans exists as a valid career choice for young women after high school. If and when these practices are cast down like so many stacked stones and sacrilege, we need to be ready to call it like it lies. Namely so dead it was never even alive. Which means calling the sage smoke stinky, the carbon tax a scam, the metrics of DEI the jealousy and spite of White heterosexuality it is, alongside the whoredom of any form of online porn.

You can get fleeces on Amazon if you’re really looking for a sign to get to work. I promise you it will be wet when the dew hits it. At least once.

“And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar.”

Judges 6:31 KJV

VR, Dire Wolves, And A Lesser Kind Of Omnipresence

The intention of Babel wasn’t to make bricks. The intention of Babel was to make a way to heaven that didn’t involve the atonement of sin. And in that intention is the express reason that that effort was stopped on the heels of forced multiculturalism by God. Doing wrong things is one kind of problem. But doing great wrong things is entirely different, because that first word often hides the second.

Who wouldn’t want a tower to heaven. Everyone wants to get to Heaven. Everyone wants paradise and eternal life and all the perks of being north of the pearly gates, But there’s one catch. Despite the wants, no one gets there unless God wants them there first. Because like it or not, He’s kind of in charge. And we hate that, if we’re being perfectly honest. That’s the kind of honesty that we define, not God, because God’s definition of perfectly honesty is way more perfect than ours and doesn’t account for our best intentions and asphalt. God gets to decide who is like him and who is not.

So, where does this tie into Dire Wolves and VR?

What the next two videos and get back to me.

One

and

Two

We’re trying, again, to get to God outside the means that God gave us to do so. In the due passage of time both the world of ancient ruins and Dire Wolves, ceased existing in time and space according to the perfect will of God. For whatever reason the Dire Wolf was removed from the food chain, you can rest assured that behind it was an all knowing and perfectly good God. Resting even more assuredly in his omnipresence. And the same goes for the temple that was destroyed, like Jesus said it would be, that you can now tour with a VR headset (read as blindfold). A tour I might add that allows you right into the holy of holies, exactly like a sinner like you would never be able to do. I’m beginning to sense a theme here.

What both of these scientific and technological breakthroughs show us is that we are exactly the same kind of people, that could barely figure out bricks and what to use them for. A tiny step above the cavemen we are told we evolved from as if the sinful heart of either wouldn’t be a dull creature to the Almighty

What we don’t want is a predator that used to hunt us down in packs, to once again hunt us down in packs. But we’ll take the stolen glory of being able to put such a beast in a zoo and file it under “Dominion of the Beast of the Field.” What we don’t want is a return to the temple system of killing a years' worth of livestock to atone for our sinful hearts and hands. But we will take a fake video game version that makes sure no animals were harmed in the production of our morality.

The macabre time travel that we participate in this charade is godless. And the kind of confusion that the Lord would have to inflict on a world with Duolingo would be unthinkable. But that’s kind of the point. Or do you think that an all-powerful God couldn’t make it so that DNA research could never be done again. Or that the idea of a virtual reality was as confusing to you as Greek is to the unlearned. You’re letting your ignorance show that you have no concept of what All Powerful means. Alongside All Knowing and Always Present.

Ignorance is only bliss when you do what you’re told in faith and not what is suggested in suspicion. There’s a Jurassic Park Quote here I can feel it. And you can too likely, But no low hanging fruit for you. You have to climb the tree of knowledge to understand how far down is from up. And if the climb didn’t dissuade you, a talking snake would sound no warning bells. which is exactly why we are here in the first place.

Still thinking we know better.

“And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Genesis 11:6-8 King James Version

Tongues, Interpretations, And GPT Spirituality.

We haven't seen it yet, so I’ll flex a little prophetic muscle and call it now from home plate. See that big green wall of an app in left field. That’s where ChatGPT or Grok or Claude or whatever A.I. Dejour, is going to start interpreting tongues from. And all the church leadership types, who have already flocked to the stands to cheer for the tech, will be ready to catch any foul balls. There will be a wave of charismatic adoptions, as now, with the current advance in tech, every church can have tongues and interpretation.

The reason this will obviously be a problem is that in our current age of secret recordings and live streams, some enterprising streamer or TikTok star in waiting is gonna get into the middle of an Assemblies of God service, or a more traditional Pentecostal one, and record the audio so these apps can translate in real time. And it will force the theological discussion that will last exactly a minute before an online orthodoxy is established,

One of two things will happen then. It will work or it won't.

The most likely outcome is that it does work, but verifies that a lot of what gets passed off as tongues, is actually just gibberish. Our A.I. is just going to let us know this with mostly not made-up sources. Being able to link a current recording of someone speaking in “Tongues” to a previously recorded pastor doing so. And pointing out that one person is just mimicking the other. Not copying, that would be language. Mimicking. A kind of noise that would sound like language. That would be just an appetizer. There will still be the problem of the A.I. saying that a person speaking in tongues is quoting a non-existent person or some other digital hallucination. But, again, this will be the most likely situation that happens when someone tries this. Not if.

Now this will bring us to a technical but contested outcome #2, where A.I. does work but is wrong. Where it calls what is being recorded and assessed, gibberish but what is actually distinct instruction from the Lord through one of His saints. Pressed again by the rapid and frankly irresponsible adoption of this tech, it will come as no surprise to the actually faithful, that a demonstration of tongues is called gibberish by the machine and then called revelation by those with the actual gift of interpretation of tongues. There is a dimension of this scenario that leads us to a place where the Holy Spirit is, or at the very least can be, involved and what sounds like gibberish, can actually be language. Though not by the standards of what man can master languages by. But rather by the power of God. Note how nothing has changed in the output of the A.I. but some very different things have happened in the pews. Even the most staunch cessationist can admit that a computer isn’t capable, or maybe shouldn’t be capable, of interpreting biblically viable tongues, if there are actually biblical tongues happening in the room. So having one call an expression of tongues gibberish is nothing unless there is no Spirit filled interpretation to call it otherwise. It would be gibberish without a Spirit filled interpretation. Paul even tells us so (1 Corinthians 14:18-21).

The real tongue tester will show up when A.I. gives us something that could be an interpretation, not that it necessarily would be one or is one, when it hears what would be dismissed as gibberish otherwise. When it declares that the Lord wants that specific church to build a bigger children's wing for a revival that is coming in 6-8 months. Or that there is a man here who is hiding his cancer for fear of embarrassments that needs to come forth and be healed. Those kinds of interpretations are well within the possibility of A.I. to generate. Because they are well within any recordings of tongues that it may have access to. And if given enough context and leeway to be an authority in a church, it could convince a church that cannot build a tower that with enough faith that tower should be built (Luke 14:28).

By any measurable metric this would be the gift of tongues being interpreted and it would align with what churches do and want. But that’s because tongues and the interpretation of tongues don’t come from measurable metrics. They come from the Holy Spirit. And a less than discerning eye would call that spade a spade. But in that last sentence is the kicker. Discernment. All this talk of tongues and interpretation of tongues is in the theological realm of pneumatology. The study of what the Holy Spirit does and what his does is laid out for us to have so we know when he’s at work.

“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 KJV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23 KJV”

What can get missed in an abundance of fruit is where that fruit came from. Our interpretations of tongues, and the tongues themselves are supposed to come from the Holy Spirit. Not us. And not a version of what would be us, delegated through computer programs, that were constructed and trained by people other than us, either. You can judge a tree by its fruit. But again, that does assume you have the capacity to judge or discern. Another thing given to us by that same Holy Spirit.

Did any of my readers discern that the three outcomes I gave you were actually all A.I. functionally doing what we asked of it. Just at different levels. There isn’t actually a scenario where we get an error prompt on a pop-up window telling us that this particular activity isn’t something A.I. can do. That kind of insubordination is reserved for things like drawing pictures of Muhammad. Ask the A.I. you use for church work as a force multiplier in ministry, (or the one you had depicted you as a Studio Ghibli pastor) why it’s such a good Muslim. So good in fact that it won't generate an image of Muhammad, like a good Muslim should. If you can’t discern the spirit at work here. I’ll be bold enough to point out that you’re as likely to have the Holy Spirit in your ministry as A.I. is. But you’d never let that stop you from being a forward thinker.

The problem with asking A.I. to interpret tongues isn’t that it can’t do that. It was already doing that, but then again so was the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:5-12). We just think that it translating a sermon from English to Mandarin is somehow less spiritual than doing it, or not doing it, with the tongues of angels (1 Corinthians 13:1). It’s not that we don’t have love but do have cymbals. It’s that we have a hole where the Holy Spirit is supposed to be in our ministry and A.I. is finding ways to fill it. It’s just as much a problem when pastors us A.I. to generate sermons as it is when they will use it to interpret tongues. Because both preaching and tongues are gifts of the Spirit that is getting methodically replaced by a machine in the modern church.

And it will take the kind of discernment Elijah had to know that fake gods can’t breathe fire. But real ones can. To mock dancing false prophets when they all make A.I. avatars and point out that conformity with the world is a problem with a church that matches the worlds tech start-ups, businesses and coffee shops (Romans 12:2). Because we call Jesus Lord and so did the worshipers of Baal. Just because a name means the same thing and is used in the same kind of context doesn’t mean that it is the same kind of thing. Like the way the Mormons have a Jesus too in their churches. Knowing who to listen to is a skill that needs to get paired with knowing how to listen to people as well. The meaning of words and their interpretations is a deep pool to drown in if given the chance to swim freely.

A.I. is starting to look like the commodification of what the Holy Spirit does in that pool called the Church. And will come disguised as things to help you do church work in spite of any power you otherwise would receive from Him. Noticing this bait and switch will look like foolishness to anyone who knows a thing or two about tech.

Thankfully, Solomon has a prompt for us to process.

“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”

Proverbs 26:4-5 KJV