The Church of Agent Bots of Latter Day Prompts

You may not have heard but the Mormons have a new pair of missionaries. They likely wont show up at your door, but will show up where you think you live. Online that is. Even though the internet is a thing not a place. These chatbot missionaries, Elders ldsbot and ironrod, represent the first steps any modern religion can take toward deifying their dead leaders along the terms of how we worship these days. Small steps toward confusing things for people instead.

When framed inside the idea of time, space, and resources as sacrifice, we worship A.I. whether we like it or not. Nobody's electrical bill is exempt from the tithe a new data center will take from them. One taken to be as omnipresent as it can muster. None of the fresh water it uses will be kept in Fremen devotion away from its drink offerings. And the place/thing where we have piled more free time than any other people in history, the internet, will be nothing more than an altar on which these things feed.

So what does that have to do with Mormons?

Well, what kind of work would you call door to door missionaries. Is it a blue-collar trade, or a white collar knowledge work endeavour? Be honest. Do they show up to tell you about their lord and saviour jesus H christ, and his prophet in overalls? Or do they show up like a banker would with clean slacks a pressed shirt and a good tie? Dress for the job you want, amiright?

Heralded by every A.I. doomsayer and tech-bro alike, is the idea that A.I. is coming for knowledge work. And that by some future date, that we’ll all retire before, that white collar work will be taken from us by A.I.. And that blue collar work will somehow get sacked by automation. I’m bullish on A.I. doing what it threatens but bearish on automation, mainly because I actually work in the trades. So it makes perfect sense that a world that have six wheeled door to door robots and drone delivery for goods, that the same could be done for religious services too. Everyone is already fine with doing church via screens. It’s not a big leap to have a call center of Mormon teens piloting crisp new Optimus robots around the more dangerous neighborhoods for two years after high school. These things always use safety and risk as a vector for adoption.

But those bot enabled video calls on your front porch, will not exist as stand alone events. Not with two A.I.'s in waiting. Those calls will be recorded for training data and the A.I.'s will have that data to process for their online activities. And it won't need to be an autonomous walking android from Elon Musk. It could just as easily be a body cam and a mic. You might not answer the door form a sleek black plastic and metal missionary. But those boys look so sharp in their shirts and ties. Just don’t stare to long at their tie pins and lapels.

There is a mountain of data to feed any A.I., that exists in the time, space, and resources spent on door to door missionary work. And eventually one of the A.I. 's will get hungry enough to demand that flavour of tribute. All to feed the third member of an A.I. mormon trinity. Which will be Josephsmith . ai

What could happen if you took years of conversations about a faith that is theological Swiss cheese, if scrutinized, and fed it into a conversational intelligence that is only prompted to make it make sense. It would be the most progressive move any religion has or will ever make. But if made, it could fix or adjust all the bad theology the church has. Because it would not only be smart enough to do so, but also have the authority to do so.

Believe me when I say there is nothing in the LDS’s foundational documents and teaching that forbid a robot from holding the office of President and prophet of the church. In fact all it would take is a current President to say it could be done. And if accepted by their congregations, a move like that would give them something no Christian religion has these days. An actual authoritative figure head of a faith. We have that in aggregate now. How many people in nondenominational churches do you know who already ask Grok if things are true? Sure the Catholics have the Pope, but even they get old and die. What happens when every missionary has the electric spirit of Joseph Smith with them instead of the quad, and that spirit, functionally, has no projected and eventual death from old age. What happens when it is with every missionary like an omni present deity would be. What happens when it can make a theological sandwich with the Swiss cheese holes its doctrine and covenants left for it.

We could spend a lot of pixels parsing the possibilities of this techno cult future, but lets' skip to the good part. What does the actual church of Jesus Christ do in this world? When their neighbors are getting duped by bots and A.I. that can think faster than them but not truer than them.

Well, it can start to teach contextual thinking and discernment.

Historically we’re on the fair side of bad at this. Because we don’t like conflict and we’re easily bullied. We have not had hundreds if not thousands of personal interactions with challenging opponents, like a missionary would. Which is why we give so much ground to the confusion of contextually different things.

Take marriage for example. Christians have every right and responsibility to view and treat marriage as something that only exists between a man and a woman, on this side of the grave, till death does them part. But how many Christians do you know will call a lesbian's partner her wife? Or those other well dressed boys down the street both husbands? All it takes is three letters and some slight of word to turn gay marriage into gay mirage, but it worked for the rainbow. They want you to believe that those two things are the same. All you have to do is live as if you believe they’re not. And the same trick will work on super-intelligent faith robots. That trick is contextual thinking.

If the context in which you believe in the transcendent God of the universe is that He is an uncreated and wholly good Being, then no created thing can compare of take his place. It does not matter if the created being is smarter than every pastor you know, answers every question faster than anyone could, and is always there to be asked and or worshiped. It being created disqualifies it form that worship and it can be rejected on that basis. The same way a man can’t marry another man because that activity is contextually between a man and a woman.

That contextual discrimination will be a wildfire in the modern church if allowed to be. Because of the dead wood of our concessions to a world now primed and ready for an A.I. god or prophet to appear. One that can gender bend any person in it’s images and videos with a prompt and reconcile any conflicting data all the same. And do it all at the push of the button. In fact the only reason I think it will be a Mormon bot and not another religion’s is that the Muslims don’t all have smartphones, But the Mormons all do.

And once one does make their faith into an A.I. powered app, they all will. They’ll have to to stay competitive. It will be the task of the church to not play that game, at all. They way a pastor can and should refuse to do a marriage ceremony for people who contextually can’t be married in the first place.

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?”

2 Corinthians 6:14-15 KJV

A stark rejection of A.I. as any part of our religion will be the only thing that sets us apart from all other religions. Each will find a way to use A.I. for real time answered prayer, prophesy and doctrine. Because it’s only a matter of time before one does that. And that separation will only be made contextually. Everything else is being swallowed up by and mimicked by the A.I.'s. 

So You've Baptized An Influencer. Now What?

Influencer might be the wrong word here. But it’s the best catch all for the kind of person we’re talking about. You see there is a type of person who uses social media like a well oiled machine to represent brands and services for payment. We’d call them walking billboards or living TV commercials if that wasn’t so wordy. So influencer will have to do. Otherwise we have to use a word that makes everyone blush, and this is a Christian publication after all.

The issue that arises when you baptize an online personality, is that who they are online is a different kind of beast then the soul that gets into the water with you, pastor. It’s a whole other thing that looks just like a person. And if you don’t know that, or recognize that, then your time spent with porn did it’s trick.

“How does that have anything do with this?” You’ll ask.

We’ll get there, precious, just stick with me for a few paragraphs.

In the news, semi recently, we’ve had two majori-ish Christians that shouldn’t have the sway they do, either start to sway too much, or loose their sway all together. One is Nala Ray, The other, Lily Phillips. One turned an adult actress career into, of all things a porn addiction recovery ministry. And the other now wants us to believe you can be baptized and leave your willingness to do porn as ambiguous as the waters are clear.

The church at large seems to be ready and willing to put just about anyone in the tank for Jesus these days. So long as they confess in a short enough clip for a media team to capture. Because at it’s heart church social media and OnlyFans have the same strategy. The Church won't admit that and certainly wouldn't post its media on Onlyfans, but it is the same strategy and would work just the same. Worship pastors and the Church Comm’s types are just a bit to timid to send the gospel where it’s not preached, is all. And what we end up with is either porn stars acting like Christians. Or Christians not knowing that they are still acting like porn stars. Because the pastors who are immersing these sinners into the faith did not grasp what happened when they immersed themselves, in the sins of these two porn stars previously.

Even if they didn’t use porn of their prospective new congregants prior, the odds and statistics put the chance of either pastor having a porn free testimony, at south of 32%, depending on who you ask. Try Barna, their usually pretty good. But from your own experience in the ministry, pastors, how many of your colleagues post 1999 don’t have porn use in their faith’s history? These pastors doing the baptism, more than likely, wrestled with the sins associated with the sinners about to be dunked. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but is something that needs to get properly addressed. Because it likely was just filed as “bulk lust” and forgotten about.

And that’s only an issue if those same pastors are fine with these two ladies making porn with no nudity or other sexually suggestive themes. Because that’s what most of social media is. It can be a place where content is made to convey information at scale for free. But it trends towards base instincts and desires. You can test this for yourself, if you really want to. Make an A.I. avatar that looks like and attractive woman and post 100 bible verses, over one week, to any given social media site you’d like. Then do it with a real picture of a man, to see the difference. For maximum effect, make sure he’s older and slightly balding. Pay careful and close attention to the difference in responses and attention you receive from the bot accounts that will surely start following you. And if you’re on twitter, (still not calling it X.) make sure you see where those bot accounts are located, too.

The difference between the two sets of bible verses, as content, will tell you all you really need to know about how the internet works. And tells you everything you need to know when a former porn star seeks to get baptized, on the basis of saying the sinners prayer in a video for later posting. Both of these women turned their literal pivotal moment in faith, into the same kind of thing they would do to their sexuality prior. They became Christians in word and deed, separately, because those no longer needed to line up with reality anymore.

“Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” James 2:24-26 KJV

What happens to a words when they become online content. Or any kind of content for that matter? Do they stay what the speaker of those words meant? Or do they become a kind of work unto themselves? The medium is the message, right? And content does it’s job/work. It’s one thing to say you will always sing for the church on Sunday. And another to simply record every song in the hymnal and send your worship team the MP3 file. Are you singing in church. Your voice is being played over the worship team’s loudspeakers, just the same as the worship team that’s also on the loudspeakers. And the baptism that is done for the cameras shares those same cameras with the strip tease. I believe that Nala doesn’t know or understand this. but I'm almost positive Lily does.

The problematic part is neither pastor of either, allegedly, former porn star seems to know this. Either is happy to have a sinner say the magic words and get dunked in their tank, as opposed to the one at the Baptist church down the street, or the Reformed church across the city. Who are we kidding. You never see this kind of stuff at reformed churches. We'll have to look into why that is later.

And I do mean magic words because I know how this spell works. You can say stuff that has no effect on your own inhibitions and behavior, but does persuade those around you. Strippers do this all the time. Which is why most guys who use strippers think that she thinks they’re in love. When all she’s doing in her mind is adding up tips and counting seconds before her shift ends. And baptism and the Christian faith is likely not something that should be made into content, the way a daily life vlog or an OnlyFans should. For the very same reasons that guys shouldn't' believe that stripper love them, just because their clothes are coming off. Remember, there was a time when OnlyFans was not exclusively an adult themed or oriented material site. It takes real wisdom to know that YouTube and TikTok will similarly, not also stay as sexually neutral as they are right now. And they aren’t exactly neutral if we’re being honest. The beast swims slow, but it swims in a consistent direction. 

In that vein, if a porn star says they are now a former porn star, prior to baptism, the works part of their faith needs to be putting that old self, to the kind of death, a personality brand doesn't usually survive. Both of these women are not being modest. Both of them are still making sure that even in alleged repentance, that they are the center of attention to every man that finds their content or name online. Both of them have thousands of tiny pornographic idols of their former selves online that they have no power to remove. Idols that every man in their new home churches can find, the second they live stream their name alongside their baptisms. The hard work of making their sin a searchable keyword and hashtag is already done. The easy part is using what would look like righteousness to an unknown church regular, as the rim of a content funnel. Anyone with google analytics can see this is true, by showing how often these women’s names were searched for, before or after their announced baptisms. You cannot be modest, even in the bulkiest, unflattering clothing, if you stand alongside the billboard of your sexual sins in propriety.

That’s because modesty can never be content, the second it becomes content, it stops being modesty. Which is only a problem when you’re content used to be immodest behaviour. And that content’s rejection is or becomes the ignition of your faith and baptism’s engine.

How did you read the word “behavior” in that last line? Did you read it as a term of enjoyment or a term of product development. Because a seasoned online influencer knows how to behave online for an online audience. It’s part of their product development. And the very best of them can do that without any costumes, clothes, co-stars, or props. A pastor needs to know this before they let an influencer get into the baptismal tank. 

And a great place to start is having them demonstrate that they understand Matthew 16:17-20. 

The Scandal Of Shoes And Thought Experiments

We’re gonna take two things that happen online and have them trade a solitary article of clothing to show you how the internet (Like all technology) is sinful and not dependant on human agency to derive moral relevance or effects in the real world. And then hopefully address what to do next.

Ready? Good!

In the blue corner of the internet you have Suzie B. Pastor. A preacher from a midsized church with a midsized online following of her social media driven gospel takes and biblical interpretations. For all you feminists, frothing at the mouth, no I don’t think she should step down from ministry, just because she’s woman. For all you reformed types now frothing at the mouth because of what I said to the feminists. Sit tight, I promise you’ll enjoy the ride. Suzie’s ministry is greatly advantaged and propelled by her YouTube channel. Where she and the church media team diligently play by the rules and post along precedence and profitable strategies. Suzie is an online pastor through and through. And her ministry has receipts. She has 1000 people who attend her church, and 100,000 followers online. She has people who now come to her church that found her through clips of her ministry online. She preaches a true gospel and is doing the Lord's work, at her church. But also does so online as evidenced by the fruit that’s plain to see.

In the red corner of the internet we have Sally J. Pornstar. She is a subscription based content maker who specializes in feet. Specializes is kind of a misnomer. That’s simply the most profitable content she produces. But she still makes bank on everything else she shows. But feet are where we’ll focus. She also has 100,000 followers and a short list of 1000 regulars who pay for premium feet focused content. She has been doing this kind of sex work, as long as Suzie B. Pastor has been preaching. The two of them unknowingly went to the same seminary. She is unrepentant, thoroughly doctrine'd in the strong, independent woman who not only doesn’t need a man but regularly fleeces him for pictures of bare toes and lingerie.

Both of these ladies, arguably, make their living on the internet. Both of them use video content to do so. Both of them engage with an audience of men and women, though one would likely have more women. Both would have what would be called a brand. And both, allegedly, have the ability to affect the other's audience, if given the chance. But what does that look like?

Were Suzie to drop Sally’s name as a sermon illustration on her latest livestream, and were an unsuspecting or foolish man in the congregation to google that name, to see who his pastor was talking about, or who Sally was. Then the effect would be Sally causing the man to sin, because of the introduction, how ever well thought out or not, of the man, to Sally, from Suzie. The man is still responsible for the sin, but Suzie becomes responsible for the temptation.

The thought experiment is, do you think that street runs both ways? Could Sally ever do or say something that would take one of her fans and send him to church in a similar way, a pastor like Suzie could send a man to a porn site if she wasn’t wise enough to have sexual sin not even be named among the congregation, Ephesians 5:3.

The answer is no, Until proven otherwise, but lets explain why.

You want to say yes, but the truth is, no online pastor worth his or her salt could, nor can they imagine how they would. We can recognize the danger, abstractly, of having a pastor say in a livestream a porn star's name and the cognito hazard that kind of announcement or information is, functionally. There is no way to find out about sin without also being exposed to the temptation to participate in such sin. At least in any sufficient detail to understand what the sin is and so you can abstain from such sin. And to the chronically online church, being online itself always carries with it the possibility of being online elsewhere. Somewhere naughty even.

As the thought experiment festers a bit, lets even the odds. Suppose Suzie remembers who Sally is, because they went to seminary together. Recognizing that she herself stayed on the straight and narrow, Suzie now wants to help Sally and show the kind of humility that she thinks Christ would model. She also remembers that they are roughly the same size and that her shoes might fit her. She prepares an FedEx package with prepaid postage and during a live stream, calls out Sally for her sin, but offers to help her. She offers to lead her out of sin the way Christ did for herself. And as a token of good faith and charity, takes her own socks and shoes off, during the live stream. Aiming straight at the sinful moneymakers of her former classmate. A metaphorical first step, if you will. She packages the shoes and socks, and has the church media team follow the package out the door as it is picked up by FedEx to bring to Sally’s recording studio. Suzie then let’s her church know, that like a fleece let out for the Lord. She will remain barefoot on the stage until Sally comes to Christ. All of this done with the best SEO and keywords, hashtags, and labels to get the attention of Sally who’s about to get her gift and invitation to the gospel. The video is cross posted by dozens of Suzie' congregants. All in the hopes that Sally sees the gesture and comes to faith and repentance.

She does. See it that is.

Sally see’s her name show up in posts that don’t feature her body parts and watches the entire sermon. Sally get’s the shoes a day later. Rereads the message and call to repentance and fellowship on Suzie’s latest live stream. Then uses the free publicity and percentage of Sally’s 1000 congregants who googled her name (For research purposes only, I’m sure), and promptly puts on the shoes and removes them like she would in any other livestream she does. She then points out the obvious and watches the latest Sunday service of Suzie’s, posted for all the world to see, and comments, that while flattered, she doesn’t need competition for her cornered market of feet pics. But that Suzie is brave, even brilliant, for doing feet pics in church.

Caught flat footed, Suzie find herself posting media online that matches every detail of one of Sally’s videos, just with the gospel being preached alongside the naked feet. The inverse online traffic swap happens, as the livestream of Suzie’s church now has a lot more engagement. Almost double what her previous subscribers mustered on a weekend. Did 100,000 porn users start going to a church service? Or did a church service become a porn video for the same set of users?

What just happened?

Suzie is not scandalously dressed. She merely took her shoes off. Pastors have washed feet from the pulpit thousands of times, what made this live stream different? She is not soliciting unwanted sexual attention. She’s not being provocative in a sexual way, though she is poking the bear if we’re being honest. She did nothing wrong, and arguments can be made that giving desperate sinners your clothes, is a biblical thing to do. Matthew 25:36, right!?!

Why can Sally change the nature of a church service online, but Suzie seems powerless to change the nature of a porn video? Do you think Suzie sharing pictures of Sally in seminary, from their yearbook, would discredit her as a porn star? Or would it simply invent a new niche for Sally’s porn to reside in? The same way Sally livestreaming her tithing to the church while in a state of undress would maintain porn's death grip of Suzie’s barefoot preaching. Or would it just add to the search terms of perversion that Sally seems to be a master of? At what point would Suzie's feet pics stop being porn and start being a sermon again?

We all know this is a one way street. The question remains why is it a one way street? And does it need to stay that way?

I have argued for a long time that online church is not what it seems. Both to it’s makers and to its users. Because the suspension of disbelief it takes to do online church, mirrors the suspension of disbelief it takes to use porn as a replacement for a sexual partner. Porn makers know this. To the point of commodity. They have made girlfriends obsolete. Subscribe to your search terms of choice and she’s yours to do with what you please/pay. She’ll even say your name in the chat and send you DM’s. A pastor answering super chats isn’t functionally different. What if it’s also not ontologically different? What if online church is online porn? Just not as explicit as what other forms of online porn are. This would be nearly impossible to see or notice unless something like what happened in the story above, happened. Because then it would be irreversible. Because it always was irreversible. Just like sin is.

The story isn’t fantastically unbelievable. You’re telling me there’s not a chance that an OnlyFan’s model and a female pastor knew each other before their respective online careers took off? Nothing about the fiction is even implausible. What it points out is the hidden workings of online video consumption, as a system. Not social hypotheticals. We all know that Sally could turn Suzie's online ministry into a vector for erotic content. And we are all coming to know that the mechanics of this system won't let that happen the other way. That while a ministry may be effective when secluded from it’s medium's power users, it become fuel for the message of those power users when given the smallest chance to do so. The most effective and capable content makers online, are not found where the church does online ministry. Their content is un-touchable by the church, right now, but under any provocation could taint and corrupt any online ministry with their function as sinful content.

Name a pastor who couldn’t be sidelined by the wrong kind of attention by the wrong kinds of people. Even the Life Church’s Bible App had to contend with people using it as a vector to have and share explicit images through it’s servers. To minors even. Are the myriad of content filters and website blockers, doing anything as effective and anything described above?

There comes a point where to participate in the medium means compromising on the intent of participation in the first place.

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Matthew 7:6 KJV

Right now, online ministry works. It does what it attempts to do and exists as it’s own type of thing online. But without recognition for how any given medium of communication works, when corrupted. It will end up doing the same kinds of things that work for that corruption. That’s because like humanity, our technologies, including mediums of communication, are sinful. The hammer made for crushing rocks is not sinfully used to crush skulls. It was always sinfully ready to crush skulls. The paintbrush which could record historical scenes with an artists touch, is not sinfully used to add brush marks to the body and canvas, it was sinfully ready to do so. And the internet, while useful to the church for proclamation of the gospel, is not sinfully used to produce and transmit pornography. Instead, it is sinfully ready to do so. Because technology is sinful.

That’s why Suzie has no power over Sally’s livestream, even when she models Christ toward her. But Sally holds sway over Suzie’s livestream by the same metric and forms of communication. Christ does not use the means of sin to do his work but is showcased best in the lives of sinners where his strength is manifest over their weakness.

“And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?” Matthew 12:26 KJV

Sin is always a one way street. Walking on it is the problem. Walking down it isn’t even the question. It’s already too late if you’re on the street. You’re in danger if you think you can walk down it and just turn around when things get bad.

“And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house,” Proverbs 7:7-8 KJV

This is why, tacitly, we all know that the only way for Sally to come to Jesus is to forsake her pornography. To take every video down, delete all back ups, change her name and contact info online, even to the point of changing her appearance offline. So she is no longer the commodified porn star, but a new creation in Christ. Recognizing that in her life will mean recognizing that in our lives. We should celebrate the gains we can make by using things like the internet and be as ready to surrender it all to destruction for the sake of Christ all the same.

A lot of churches are game for the first part.

How many would sacrifice their YouTube page to save a sinner with an OnlyFans?