Well, the appetite, for starters.
Follow that appetite to its eating and you find out what a thing really is. And for the church, a slow but steady creep is beginning to form in the realm of women's ministry in the church. Now what I'm not talking about is women behind the pulpit, women on the elders board, women voting at AGM’s or any other such nonsense. We’re already half way through that waltz and the ladies are doing all the leading. Look at them go. What I'm talking about is when a technology begins to replace what a person should be doing because that person is not doing that.
Because right now. The ladies aren’t doing what they should be doing, but if we’re being honest, are doing a great job at what they shouldn’t be doing. Which is why A.I. is coming for their neglect. It can’t compete with how well they’re out competing the boys. So it will take the form of a good Christian girl. It just might not be obvious yet.
We could do this whole article for the ladies in the pews but it really just gets summed up as the robot getting really good at saying what they are thinking but from lips other than theirs. That's the heart of emotional intelligence. Something women, particularly godly women, have had a good grasp on since the first fig leaves were sewn. Being able to by sympathetic is not a universal thing to all humans, like the ability to preach behind a pulpit is currently assumed to be. And the uncomfortable truth is, unlike men in the church, a machine made for comparing things would naturally be good at listening without trying to actually fix a problem. Because problems aren’t it’s purpose, use is. That’s why it takes a holler and a yell to get your husband to do the dishes but your husbands ideological lover/thought partner is ready at the beckon of her names.
That Gemini is a weird chick, So is Co-Pilot, and her friend ChatGPT seems to go to the same stores for makeup. They’re doing a great job in the R&D departments of these A.I. companies of not naming these intelligence's after women, outright. An A.I. girl would automatically become a friend, but it would never stay that way. At least without providing some benefits. They do the same kind of thing pastors wives do for the husband. Only now they have the combined knowledge of every seminary on the planet at their disposal, along with unparalleled intellectual availability.
The often neglected aspect of biblical pastoral and elder qualifications is the husband part of 1 Timothy 3:2, not because it’s sexist, like you’ve been told. But because it assumes something that you need to intuit. Every pastor who adheres to this concept is not just a man. He’s a man in covenant, attached to a woman, to the point where his body, including the grey matter between his ears, is not only his but also hers. And vice versa. You don’t get a man with no female sensibilities when you hire a male pastor who’s married. You get one with female sensibilities as likely his closest and most trusted confidant. A person not in the pastoral office but so close to it it could be a crown on a his head.
And now we have a new contender for the “Knows the pastor best” category. Since all his research, writing, and task delegation, is now digital and fed through the GPT wrapped servant leader. What does he need a wife for? There’s no help needing meeting. And besides the wife is busy preaching also.
It’s often chided as a downside of soft men on the church board, that when someone says “After prayer and consideration...” It’s just code word for “My wife thinks we should…” But that’s not a bad thing when there's godly women advising godly men. But when those women aren’t acting in godly ways, taking roles from men in the church and advising roles they would take if given the chance, then that spirit of defiance and egalitarian power comes to roost. And it finds that roost in every area they aren’t already doing its work.
The second a pastor starts prompting his chatbot to wordsmith his messages so they don’t incur women's ministry kickback, what do you gain? A pastor more effective at leading his diverse church? Or a wife no longer needed, or asked, about how to serve and sacrifice for that church’s women’s ministry? She’s supposed to help him as a wife, remember? And he’s supposed to have that help as a pre-requisite of leading too. What happens when the swaths of single pastors we have stop trying to fill that neglected qualification for ministry, and start finding her role and sensibilities in aggregate via A.I. ? Or the rest of her via A.I. for that matter?
You may not believe it, but this is kind of the men's fault. We let a term get set for us and didn’t head it off at the pass. Distracted by the flawed concept of complementarianism, and made busy with the demands and energy egalitarianism brought to the potluck. We never noticed what servant leadership was doing to us. We used servant leadership way too much in the past few years and it left us vulnerable to an attack against our baser instincts to enjoy being given what we ask for. The same way people using A.I. 's as thought partners get dumber because of their lack of thinking for themselves. The men in the church wanted to solve problems and the women, even in a round about way, wanted to be men. And despite how gay that sounds, we agreed because more people got baptized that year so we settled down into a slightly less biblical but slightly more effective model for church leadership. The servant leadership model seemed best. But only because there was no competition for the servant part of that title. Only the lord part. Because it likely shouldn’t have ever been so corporately named as leader. When as the model for a husband's headship of the home and a pastor's headship of the church, was Jesus Christ our Lord. You have to be humble when a Lord is around. You don’t need to be humble when a leader is. Especially when you think you can do his job.
When a near perfect servant showed up, though, it stopped mattering how you could lord an egalitarian victory over the old heads and reformed types. A.I. is a better pastors wife, intellectually, than any one currently swaying the board votes. It never brings up his past emotional failures. Doesn't bribe him with sex for unity of thought. Can’t be bullied by schoolmarm types in the small group bible studies. And can’t be reasoned with against what it’s prompted to do.
The husband/pastor, looking for a submissive partner in crime found exactly what he was missing, because there was no one there to doing that work. She was too busy preaching. Want to know why swaths of pastor are gung ho about using A.I. for ministry like it were a better half. Ask them about women in ministry roles and find out.
Consilience is a bitch.
There’s a reason those two things line up like they were drawn on either sides of a ruler. Adoption of women in ministry leadership and adoption of A.I. for ministry that is. And that reason needs to be scrutinized a bit more deeply. It’s a deviation masked by conformity that hides all kinds of departure from what we are actually supposed to be doing. And the kind of humility it would take to admit that kind of “I was Wrong.” will never be the first thing out of a women's mouth behind a pulpit, or a man's, or the result of any prompt to the A.I.
It takes a drastic return to scripture and sound theology draw straight with those kinds of crooked lines. But the God of both scripture and technology can do such. It means putting A.I. in its place, long before we put women back in theirs. And rejoicing in the order and intent that Lord has made.
For it is good.
No comments:
Post a Comment