Dinx The Puppet And Other Shrouds

Can authoritative teachers be anonymous and can you exercise a spiritual gift through a medium?

This is uniquely important these days because of all the people claiming to be biblical scholars or pastors or doing any kind of ministry online, the best one, hands down, as in I highly recommend this account to almost everyone/anyone…

Is a puppet.

Dinx the puppet to be exact.

A well crafted, VBS style Muppet puppet who does a better job teaching about the Bible and answering questions about the Bible, than just abut everything else. He does it without a beard to prove he’s reformed and without a former onlyfans account to prove he's non denominational. But if we’re being real honest. He’s not doing it, is he?

Most of my problems with online ministry stem from the actual mechanics and physics of what the internet is. I have a problem with online church, not because you couldn’t get exactly what you feel, see and interreact with at a mega church. But precisely because you can get that. The fourth wall is nothing more than a curtain of wires. And the camera does more than add pounds to the church’s presence online. So when someone does such a great job of teaching, I naturally pay attention. And when they do it through a disarming media like puppeteering. I pay closer attention.

Make no mistake. Dinx is not only a good Bible teacher. He (Or rather the He Beneath the bottom of your screen) is a talented puppeteer. Everything from his characters voice, to his actions, to his ability to convey empathy and approachableness through a puppet, with no emotive controls, is impressive. He is a master of technique. Which is what all technologies are in one way or another. The worship pastor who knows certain songs inspire the dopamine rush, that can be mistaken for the Holy Spirit, if played correctly, and in a dimly lit colourfully stage room, does the same kind of thing.

Where I'm conflicted and explorative is if what Dinx does, or rather his worker does, through the puppet and character, authoritative. Dinx expertly never crosses this line. Not that I can tell. As a puppet. He can ask or respond to how another creator is likely wrong, or that they should not be posting what they are. But something that doesn't happen, but also can’t happen, is a call to repentance from the same place he gets his voice.

Dinx couldn’t ever call you repent of sins you commit online. Even if he made a video about them. What is Dinx going to do about you once you respond. If you continue in sin, you simply give him more content opportunities. But if you do repent, how does that baptism eventually work? What the puppet illustrates is the tragic failing of all online ministries. From Mike Winger, to the Lord's Giant to Nala Ray and everything in between. The lack of unity a body of Christ needs to do the work Christ has for it. Separated by the camera and screen for the sake of no one but the individual consuming the content.

Dinx’s exegesis and hermeneutic are always on point. Does that mean his obvious gift of teaching is bearing fruit, though? Because he can not, by several different metrics, be united to the body of Christ. The first of which being that no object, however animated can be a believer. Which is where those gifts are to bear that fruit. I know people are using the media he produces to grow in their faith. But I have a hard time putting that together with what it would look like for the puppet to end up in heaven? We will surely meet the hand that makes that puppet talk. And the voice we hear off camera. But the puppet along with all other bits of the world will be consumed in a fire and laid waste, for a new heaven and new earth to take it’s place.

The permanence of the internet seems insurmountable at times. One nude photo of you ends up online and the embarrassment lasts forever, it seems. But it is a farse. Nothing on this world lasts forever. And every mountain of content we make, for good or ill, will end up gone in the end.

I think it’s vitally important to recognize this kind of thing. Because as robotics and A.I get better it will no longer be a hand of a likely timid but effective believer up the puppets back side. It will no longer be great teaching with honest intent coming through it either. These techniques, that work to convince you that the felt and stiches are the person beneath the puppet, will work when there is no longer a person beneath that puppet. And also when there is no longer gospel coming out of that puppets mouth.

The proxy-ing of faith and the gifting of the Holy Spirit is a long term dangerous game to play. I hope it works out for Dinx. I know he’s being used powerfully. And can’t help but wonder what it would look like for him to be used fully. But if this becomes something that can’t grow further. Where is it going. What fruit is there to be born out of a puppet that can’t baptize a person. Can’t marry a pair of someone's. Can’t cast out a divisive brother in church discipline.

Or maybe what’s worse. What happens when a puppet can do these things?

Teaching, apart from the raw presentation of information, is something that happens in the church, through the believer, and from the Holy Spirit in unison. And right now, we have, arguably, the best presentation of the information our faith has online, happening through a puppet. That’s awesome. But that is also not teaching. And maybe it’s not claiming to be such. Is it being viewed as such though? Right now I don’t think so. But the second it is. We essentially cede the idea that the Holy Spirit can bare fruit with an object. And more importantly that we can have objects do what our persons are meant to do. 

We would call that idolatry if we had the courage to pick a theological fight with a cute puppet with a quarter million followers on TikTok.

Keep up the good work, Dinx.

Posers, Punk Vests, And PuritanGPT's

Saw a post about some Vibe coder, trying to make a Puritan GPT you can talk to. Because deep down we all know that you want to have been able to talk to the puritans. And that not so deep down we think that if the witches they burned were real, that we’d rather they have not burned them at the stake, because, well, who doesn't like magic and talking to dead people?

For those who simply must know, askpuritans.com

Like all forms of this, using a medium of technology to speak with the dead, even representationally, is wrong, Lev 19:31 . You can not speak with dead people. You’re not supposed to either, even if you could, You can read their books. But even they knew pre-mortem, that authorship does not convey immortality. That’s what the deadguyGPT promises. A Spurgeon who never dies of rheumatism and gout. A Chesterton who can’t die of heart failure. Or an Edwards who doesn’t die from a small pox inoculation. And now Puritans who are still alive and well in the data center.

What troubled me the most about this was not the well intention necromancy, though. It was the dim witted obliviousness of the concept of a puritan GPT. Of all the great peoples of the faith, this person picked to macabre into their chatbot, The puritans would be vehemently apposed to this kind of thing.

Which got me thinking about my punk vest.

I listen to mostly punk music. And along with that comes the tradition and practice of maintaining a patch vest. I don’t call it a battle vest. Because there is no battles at these shows anymore. And there are some unspoken and cliche rules about them. One being that you should only wear patches from bands you’ve seen live. Another that wearing patches of bands you actually listen to is fine, I guess. The function of the vest is to display patches of bands that make music, and also make patches. But the purpose of the vest is to display who you could go on a road trip with, while listening to only their CD’s

But a cursory look online about patch vests brings you to a host of posers trying to put anything but the bands that make up punk rock on their vests. Pronoun flags, abortion slogans. Pick your woke left premise du jour, and you’ll find it. Because for them the look and feel of the thing is more important than the meaning and purpose of it. They want to look spikey and tattered because it’s a look. Not because the vest got tattered that way from a mosh pit at a show during music you enjoyed with other punks.

That's what these vibe coding dimwits are doing. They are posing as biblical theologians by ripping the aesthetic of some of our best theologians to feed their A.I.'s, the same way a genderqueer flag and pin end up next to a set of pyramid studs and band patch. What do you think the puritans would do to a person that tried to give them a box that could powerfully let them speak to it, as if it were any or all the early church fathers. Or the reformers, or the apostles themselves. This pastoral slippery slope follows the apostolic daisy chain until you get to Jesus himself. Don’t kid yourself.

And while data centers use a lot of water, I imagine they build a fire large enough to do the job. With a brief stop at two bible verses before hand. Exo 22:18 and 1 Kings 18:33-35

Books are not food for the A.I.'s algorithm, they are food for your soul. If you want to know what a dead Christian thought, and that dead Christian wrote, then you need to have the ability to think and read, instead of just prompt.

And no amount of white washing your digital deeds and desires will turn your methods for witchcraft and necromancy into Christian orthodoxy.

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. 

There Is No Need For An A.I. Policy In Your Church

Among the pro church tech crowd there is a recognition that the pro stance, really does need a policy to give them the requisite field dimensions for their ball game. Like most band wagons, the (A.I. use in church) one got hopped on quickly. And only now that it is headed down the hill at a speed you could interpret as fast, are the requirements and restrictions for it’s use, recognized.

Far be it for me to say “it’s too late” as a worshiper of the God of all time and space, I do not believe in such things.

But, for the sake of agreement and/or argument. You do not need an A.I. policy at your church to play this game. Some good old fashion discernment can ferret out bad actors and good intentions at the helm of any given paving machine. Or any other machines for that matter. And I understand that this will look more like talent than training and that this concept offends the poorly co-ordinated and ungifted. Participation trophy theology is just as lame as it sounds. Trust me.

I propose a single qualifier that if treated honestly can sort out most of if not all of the acceptable use and safety concerns that churches may have with the use of A.I. At any level of the discussion. It functions a lot like picking your team for recess football. As in you want people who can actually play the game not just want to play the game. If that is you want to win the game. It does require that everyone have someone to report to. And presumes you’re being at least quasi biblical about who and how that reporting to works. But as long as there is oversight as far as we can all see, it goes as follows…

“Could there be a fruit of the Spirit or a gift of the Spirit that would be mechanized by your intended use of A.I.?”

If the answer is yes.

Then the answer is no.

This may seem like folly to anyone who’s willing to call the Spirit's empowerment and ownership of the church folly. And if you have those types in charge of your church’s tech department, my condolences to your intramural football team. But if the lay person is spiritually accountable to the church leaders, and they to the pastors, and the pastors to the elders, and the elders to each other and or the assembly who elects them. Then no one can merely use A.I. without first petitioning upward to who oversees their intended work.

What this does is place the use of the machine in the hierarchy of the Saviour. Who appointed leaders of lay peoples for this exact kind of thing.

“And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Acts 6:1-7 KJV

What the apostles understood in Christ, is that their work needed protecting from other busy work. Which wasn’t a bad thing but it wasn’t also an apostle thing. The very same way pastors and elders and children's ministry directors all have their role and challenges in ministry. By modeling the transfer of work to the Deacons, the apostles showed us the way to handle work loads and responsibility alongside and apart form one another.

A.I., and those who use it faithfully, seek to be the ubiquitous help to any and all who come to it. Which is fine when it helps people instead of replacing people. Because what the apostles didn’t ask for was more apostles. Did they? No. They knew something was distinct about their role in the early church and that their work of ministry of the word was more important than removing an apostle to merely wait on a table.

I get this all the time as a tradesman. The amount of times I've been paid electrician wages to assemble Ikea furniture for office worker types, who would lost behind the Allen key, is laughable. And the same thing can happen spiritually if given the chance. Your pastor should not be deciding paint colours of the church reno. His job is the preaching of God’s word and the discipline of God’s people, and paint colours do not factor into that. But they do need to be picked the same way food is distributed to widows. Fairly and responsibly. So you do want someone to do that.

What you don’t want is A.I. to do what should be a person doing it. or for A.I. to do it so the wrong person also doesn’t have to do it. A.I. shouldn’t be deciding what the paint colour is, because the pastor was going to, but ran out of time. What you want is a painter or designer in the church to do is, not only so the pastor won't, but so the painter or designer will.

“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;” Ephesians 4:4 KJV

“For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:” Ephesians 4:12 KJV

When we use A.I. as the servant it can be, it can replace work meant for us to do. The church would not have been blessed by an A.I. that could lessen the studying and devotion to the word the Apostles were called to. Simply because it would have freed them up to do relational ministry while serving the needy in the soup kitchen. It sounds great that all the hard Greek to English syntax and context are swept up into the machine so the pastor can have coffee with new members more often. Until you find out that knowing and learning that syntax and context are things he is called to do at the expense of such actions involving coffee.

And that substitution of A.I. for people is engrained into what A.I. is. This isn’t artificial labor we’re talking about here. (Which will be it’s own blogpost along the same lines BTW’s) It’s artificial intelligence. There are things done by the church that are meant to be done by people in the churches, not just what their bodies could do physically or the cumulative data of their bookshelves. Wisdom springs forth from a relationship with the Holy Spirit of God to be shared across the pew. So that those in the pew might also find wisdom and relationship with the same Spirit. The same goes for humility, generosity, prayers, even knowledge. Every fruit and every gift of the same Spirit of God.

You don’t want the church having A.I. do it’s finances, not because machine precision isn’t valuable for a non-profit, but because biblical faithfulness and stewardship are things a robot can’t demonstrate, but are things Christians are called to demonstrate, as acts of worship. The Church does it’s business, through and for souls. And what this single qualifying question does is square the fact that you cannot separate your soul from your mind. But A.I. has managed to give you a mind without a soul as the work around.

Every encroachment of that mind’s ability to do work, will be an encroachment on the souls meant to do that work for the church in the first place. So A.I. needs to be set to work where intelligence does not trespass the Spirit in His work by its work. And unfortunately for those on the bandwagon, the list of tasks that A.I. can do in church is small. Especially when it has to contend with the Spirit’s intention for how we do things.

Maybe you can ask A.I. how it shouldn’t be used in church. I'm sure it will give you an answer.

Be sure to ask it after, what discernment means and where it comes from biblically. The difference between those two prompts is where your ecclesiology of tech is.

4 Categories Against The Technologically Sneaky

You likely will not hear or read Christians talk to you about the dangers of machines, or the hazards of devices. We have a favoured word to use for our discussions and doctrines of technology. And that word is tool. The internet is a tool. So is A.I. And so is a hammer. And the simple little mind trick played by these Jedi theologians is that you can call something magic which is really just Midichlorian’s and plot armor.

Why does everyone reduce technology down to just tools? Why is it necessary to think of something as vast and as complicated as the world wide web, as a hand held rock on a stick?

Sinfulness, that’s why.

Our default nature and response to dealing with sin is to reduce what happened by our hands in scope and effectiveness. It was not that Adam blatantly ate what he must have taught Eve not to also eat, given when Eve enters the Narrative, but that she gave him fruit and he merely ate it. It was not that Aaron fashioned a golden cow and then lied to say that it came of it’s own will out of the molten gold he lit the fire for. But that he merely made the idol.

Sin has a way of prompting us to reduce our agency to the absurd. Because at its heart, sin is always an absurd thing to do. Especially when you know who God is and what God wants for you.

So, with that in mind, the next time you have some pro A.I. in church type tell you that A.I. is just a tool, Remind him that there are more ways to think about tech, than just absurd abstractions.

Here’s four to start.

Tools:

A tool is something completely under the control of the human using it. It requires use based skill to use effectively for its maximum use. It can not operate on it’s own, and is entirely dependant on human agency for its effects on reality.

Mechanisms:

Are tools that require an additional force or tool to do what the initial tool would do, but in a more effective way in unison. They can not operate on their own but are not operated solely by human agency as the secondary force or tool also affects their effect on reality.

Devices:

Are mechanisms that are set in motion by management forces and mechanism that further add to the operational agency of the device. The human, the management measures, and the mechanism all play into the devices means of effecting reality, in that order both ways. adjustments to any level of that order of operation effects the effects and communicates to the human using the device.

Machines:

A machine is a human made replacement of a humans capacity to do work. It entirely removes the human from the process of the machines effects on reality after the human sets it in motion. It requires no human agency past construction and initializing its functional purpose and does not communicate to the human unless also tasked to do so alongside its functional purpose. Effects on its effects on reality can also be made to be internally managed by the same machine internally. Machines are at their most fundamental level of purpose, replacements for humans at the bidding of humans.

Note how these four things are not the same.

Note how these get more complicated as they progress.

Note how you have never been asked to view a hammer with more complexity than its handle.

Note how you have been being told machines are as simple as tools for a while now.

Note how you’ve never asked why?

Word Of Mouth And Other Shades Of Evangelism

The concern is, that if the world begins to consume A.I. generated content, that churches can’t generate their own content on the kind of scale that without A.I. Sora’s pulpit will be much more powerful than the Church of TikTok it reformed from. Because Sora’s pulpit will not have influencers that have to film and edit and upload. Those things cost time and money. Money the church would have to gather to spend. And right now the A.I. pulpit can print the money is uses and we can only tithe it. All that production is done in aggregate. The very second a video is requested, or algorithm’d, all of it is done for us and consummation is all that is left. And I mean that word as dirty as you read it. Because just as Jesus said that lust was where adultery started. So too is the idea of content as mission field that seeds idolatry in your heart.

And it would be ignorant to say this isn’t something the church should be considering, but there is a better way to play a game you’re gonna lose because it’s in the rules that your team loses. AND THAT WAY IS TO NOT PLAY THAT GAME!

In the Movie ‘Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist” we’re introduced to what might be the coolest band that never existed. The entire movie is about songs we never hear. One of it’s main characters are a group of faces we never see. There are hints to them all throughout the movie. But we never get to them. That’s because them not being mainstream and available to anyone is the whole damn point. The movie is a bit of a romp, but the message leaks out the medium like light in a basket. Everyone wants to hear “Where’s Fluffy” The fictional indy rock band of your electric sheep's dreams.

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;”

1 Peter 2:9 KJV

That word “holy” is an important one because holy things are never common. They are never the mean or median of culture. Holy things are different. So to a holy person, place, or thing, means being different. Drastically so. Where’s Fluffy was a holy band. Not in action or deed, but in separation from that which perverts action and deed in the music industry. In their case, advertisement. They had no billboards, no posters, no suits to taint their sound. Just sound and comradery and the powerful means of reputation. They bet on doing what no one else was doing and being the only band in the music scene that didn’t rely on agents, advertisers, and much of the music industry. And in doing so, could leave little more than hints and rumors as to their next show and pack its seats. No radio commercials, though they did end up there in mention. No social media strategy to speak of at all. In their absence of the music worlds deeds was a presence inside the world of music. They were never trying to be winsome, they were trying to be good. They wanted to be the band that everyone has never heard of because everyone was too busy searching for them. One whose CD’s can’t be bought at stores but have to be bought at their shows. I know they’re fictional, but I've never seen a better example of being in a world and not of it. Or an better description of what cool is. And I was a youth pastor for a while there.

For entirely too long, the wages of winsome third way evangelism has made sure we’re as set apart as split peas in so much soup. And now as the world ramps up it’s neon gods of data and algorithm, the church has a unique chance to be different. We are doing the same song and dance that secularism is doing and insisting that our results are as valid as theirs. But we could be doing what would make us set apart. We could be doing what’s actually cool but instead are gonna do what all the cool kids are doing.

What happens when you have to be at a church to hear anointed preaching? When all the preaching you could search for online becomes invalidated by the kind you can’t. When you have to be at a church to hear amazing worship songs? Or have to attend that church to learn them, because K-Love doesn't have any version to play or have Steven Furtick rework for Elevation.

What happens when you have to do more than rest in the modern trend of “we get to” that has captured the minds and skill sets of the everyman? You hear that phrase among the weakest of actual witnesses. “we get to.” We get to go to church. We get to worship freely, Get to read our bibles. Get to exercise agency.

Will all due respect, the optional flavour of that sentiment has always made my face scowl a bit. You get to worship the all mighty creator of the universe, and the work His very own son did for you on a cross for your salvation. But only if you want. You should be happy you have such options. Rejoice in the agency you’ve pulled from the ether. What happened to every knee bowing (Phil 2:10). Nothing, that’s what. And we can rest in that omnipotence just as as much as the sentiment behind the “we get to” crowd. But unlike them, we might just discover something better than everything else.

For years the comparison between the sermon and the TED talk has been cliche to talk about, however valid. But what if the sermon couldn’t be a TED talk, on account of it never been recorded for online distribution. What if Worship music couldn’t be an industry. What if your bible was something so special it was printed in house and you didn’t have to search Amazon for the perfect customizable printing of it to start your faithful reading of it.

And what if they world can have it’s A.I. generated content in spades, at the cost of losing the church playing that game. What does it look like when the church is apart of that world, and not in it. Ask yourself what any part of a media saturated world looks like when the church sets itself apart from it.

What happens when every single Christian stops using porn? The same thing that would happen if every single Christian stopped using A.I. . The industry would notice the demographic shift and simple but effective marketing techniques would be used to convince that market that what it was abstaining from was good for it. You would be told that so long as the porn is ethically sourced, or made by the couple themselves, it’s kosher, The same way you’ll be told that as long as the A.I. is christian it’s fine. And that as long as we use this A.I. for ministry it is redeemed as much as the smut.

The reason I can draw the conclusions and comparisons I do is because the marketing doesn’t work on everyone. It never does. Some people don’t fall for hype and end up at shows with bands you’ll never hear on Sora, K-love, or any variation there of. They don’t think porn is sexy, because it’s obscene, and hold similar opinions about Music and  A.I. for similar reasons. Correlation is important when it comes to discerning what is holy and what is not. Because if something acts like the bad thing and pursues its markets like the bad thing. It may in fact be bad. Regardless of how popular it is. Which means it is not and can not be holy. Seven A.I. clones of a K-pop band will never make K-pop good music. And at this particular moment in time the church has an opportunity to repent of chasing the next big thing, and return to worship of the best thing. To set itself apart from the culture it can do nothing but war with.

And the easiest way it can do this is to be the kind of thing that can be found in the world but never of it. Nothing would convince a world so enamoured by technology of a transcendent God above it, than a departure from technology as if it were sinful in the first place. But that does require an acknowledgement that all of our technology, as a work of our hands, is never as righteous as we want it to be.

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

Isaiah 64:6 KJV

Dad Tax, And The Ghost

It can feel like speaking to a brick wall, which I've been assured by the internet is better for the average man than letting a woman know about my feelings, but here I am, all the same. Blogging into the void.

How many times can a guy let the church on Twitter (Still not calling it X) or Substack, or YouTube, or even Bluesky, (I know right?), that this A.I. stuff shouldn’t be used the way they are using it. It’s like they aren’t listening! But then it comes to me. How would they listen to spiritual things with robot ears.

One of the quiet issues that shows up when you even consider the issue of A.I. replacing in the church what the Holy Ghost does for the church is that upon His replacement, He might be absent from the assembly from that point on. If the latest A.I. tech is used to translate the worship service into 6 different languages, for engagement and stewardship, of course, then He might take His gift of tongues and their interpretation and find another church.

This is only, really a problem for the charismatics in the crowd. But discernment as outsourced to Grok and ChatGPT can find every denominational hamstring there is. You think You’re gonna be the exception to the rule because you’re using the robot the right way alongside your smoke machine and projectors? If the theologian strays too close to the wrong kind of fire and ends up thinking he can disciple the A.I. alongside the flock he’s responsible for, The Holy Spirit might stop giving him things to teach. Though I am certain the theologian in question’s content will still get generated like clockwork.

“And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God.”

1 Chronicles 13:9-10 KJV

“And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.”

Leviticus 10:1-2 KJV

What these two sections of God’s book tell us is that if you do things the right kind of wrong, you don’t get a second chance on this side of eternity. Worship matters. And the kinds of things we let into our sanctuaries to be called worship will matter also.

You see you don’t get a chance to bring your gift to the altar if you put your hand on the ark before it gets there. And way too many pastors have their hands on the A.I. cart to notice that their headed to exactly this kind of situation. They will shove A.I. into anything they can to get an intellectual edge on “Doing church right” and in doing so, burn what chance they had at stopping before the point of no return. The evangelical mind doesn’t want to square the idea of a God hardening the hearts of a rebellious or disobedient people. Because that might mean they could be that kind of people. A kind that does things wrong.

Remember that the same Pharoah that had his heart hardened had wise men just as capable as Moses in the beginning of all his trouble. And instead of listening to the peers of snake sticks and bloodied water, he waited until there were no more firstborns before letting Gods people go. His magicians did the same things God’s messenger was doing through the power of God. And how did that end up for them? Did they rightly distinguish between the snakes and the sticks or did their hearts harden like their master’s until they were too entrenched in beliefs about their techniques and technologies (Read as secret arts in the NIV). You want to balk at the nomenclature there but exactly how A.I.'s work is as magic would be to the layman for most of you.

If you don’t notice that your technology has replaced what the Holy Spirit did. You may not get the checkpoint and save spot your video game theology has so reliably assured you that you will. You may find your self hardened and wicked as you preach Jesus' name off the back of pagan works. Rebranded as tech savvy and modern by the craftiest of all salesmen of sticks there ever was. And the gifts and fruits which would have been found in you in abundance, discernment, teaching, wisdom, and every form of tongues Google could translate for you, will be missing. And in their stead, snakes that can only serve as food for greater miracles and evidence of works worthy of destruction and curse.

There is a reason the Bible talks about people having ears to hear and the converse. People who have ears to hear but can’t / don’t. If you convince yourself that God’s will is in the black box of A.I., and this is just what modern Christianity looks like. That using tech is a non negotiable, maybe it won’t be negotiated for.

Maybe there are sins that don’t get mediated for.

“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Matthew 12:31-32 KVJ

You might wonder what speaking against the Holy Spirit would look like in a context of livestreamed, online, techno-savvy church. But if you didn’t notice it when the dopamine reaction from soft music in a dark room, was all but farmed for engagement and tithe’s, you will not notice it when your air pods start interpreting tongues in His place.

“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:”

Exodus 34:14 KJV

Green Light Districts And The Law And Prophets Of The Internet

Earlier in the week OpenAI let the congregation know that it’s going to put all the force of it’s due diligence behind the concept of age gating appropriate content from its products. So that children aren’t exposed to or affected by things above their grasps as minors.

Oh, and a green light to “erotic content” just in time for Christmas.

Now some of use saw this coming when the first image generators showed up after the Chatbots. And we noticed because we have danced with similar online demons before. We have a testimony in Christ that involved former devotion to the internets deities. And have spent entirely too much time dealing with the implications of Rule34 of the internet than most of our tech savvy online pastor brethren.

Now, so you don’t go searching for what Rule34 is, I’ll quote it for you.

“If it exists on the internet, there is porn of it on the internet.”

You would think given the trite and abrasive nature of the rule that it must be a farce born of the weird and toxic realms of 4chan or reddit. And you would be right save for the farce bit. This is not a joke. It’s one of the most true things you will encounter on the internet. And it would behoove me to remind you, the internet is where A.I. get’s it’s life blood from. It’s users.

A.I. is not being pitched to Amish famers and African tribesman in Kenya. It’s being pitched to people online. They access it online and they will treat it like an online thing that follows the rules of the internet.  And while it's online it’s only a problem for people who need screens to survive and who do things on those screens. We aren’t actually creating sexual deviancy, we’re creating images and videos of sexual deviancy. Which is a different kind of thing. And only people who have been saved from the sins of online porn will be able to see that.

Because Rule34 used to only exist online. And now it has a narrow but very real way to begin it’s existence in real time and space. No longer tied to the communal communication of the web, it will have agents and operators in the real world. And the same kinds of people making the A.I.'s that are tacitly pornographic, are the people making those agents and robots.

The Optimus robot and Ani, the Grok anime waifu of Twitter (still not calling it X), come from the same place and person. Twitter used to only be a place where 140 characters could be printed in digital ink for all the world to see. Now it’s the discernment and sexual downfall of swaths of men, who didn’t see the trap baiting their appetites, when Elon changed the name to X. And for this moment in time the robots we see are vaguely humanoid and monochrome. Sleek but not sexy. Nobody what’s to have sex with them and they are not being made, sent, or programed to have sex back. They don’t even have those parts. Not that that would stop anyone. But what they do have is an unbreakable connection to the internet that has to be there for them to be functional. And if you don’t know How the internet works. You will not be able to predict what embodiments of the internet will do in the real world.

There is a reason sex sells. It is among our most basic instincts and drives as humans. But it is also the first commandment we were ever given. Something even sin did not take away from us when our first parents fell from grace.

“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

When you look at every piece of tech like a quasi neutral tool that requires human input to be good or evil. You can find yourself in places where you have no category for dealing with the evil found in those places. If sex can sell just about everything, then you should be highly suspicious of anything not trying to use sex to sell it. There are moral and ethical ways to own a muscle car that a car dealership would use tits as advertisements for. But the robots that took away the non sexual aspects of driving, by giving you autopilot, are now aiming for the home. What does a man have when he holds the wheel and the gear shifter, over the car whose movements are entirely under his control.

The word you’re looking for is “dominion” and it is exercised over beasts of the field, horses, and 5 speed Mustangs all the same.

What does the Tesla model Y driver exercise when the autopilot does the same thing? The word you’re looking for here will just make you blush a bit, I imagine. Because it’s the same kind of word that would be needed to let the same kind of robotic oversight into the home.

A robot to do the dishes, fold the laundry and mind the children has a very specific gender it replaces. And so does the robot that stands watchful over the house a night, changes the oil in the model Y, and file the taxes. When you put the humans together that used to do those things without competition, what do you get? Well, usually babies. What will you get when the robots who replaced those gendered roles get together? Likely, a wife happy with her programable robot husband and a husband happy with his customizable robot wife.

There is no need to have robots in the home unless you needed a way to stop babies from entering the same homes. That’s where this is headed. As sure as pictures of any given movie star could be faked into porn via OpenAI’s Sora once the guardrails come off. The only reason you want less children in the home, is because what children are, every single one, every time they are born is one more soul that worships God.

These robots amount to exactly what porn is. Sex with no children on a long enough timeline. Because every role we task them with that would have been a mother’s or father’s will replace a mother and father in due time. Mothers and fathers aren’t just supposed to have sex. They’re commanded to do such. Being fruitful is a distinctly human thing because we can’t copulate with these things that will bear our image. And the purpose of any system is what it does. So when these things start doing all the other things that mothers and fathers do, as if that was an optional part in having sex as commanded, then what exactly is being replaced if not purpose.

Christians do not get to have sex with each other without behavioural righteousness that models their relationships with God. The wife respects and obeys the husband like she would Christ and the husband loves and serves his wife like Christ would the church (Ephesians 5:25-29). But the robot will begin serving the husband like the wife doesn't and vice versa, only because it was allowed into the home as it it were an appliance. It has no obligations to act Christlike or Christian to the human it severs like a spouse. The oversized hockey puck that vacuums the home, devotedly, does not do so to make sure the husband and wife have more time to be fruitful. It does so to turn a profit on the opportunity to model the church’s right and righteous relationship with Christ. And so does, and will, every humanoid robot headed you way.

Perhaps that is why all these androids all look the same. Sleek black, white, and silver bodies. Human proportions and moments perfected ad nauseum.

In order for camouflage to work, everything has to blend in. You would never want something as bright as a red light to stick out. You might get the wrong impression of what goes on inside.

The A.I. Wrappers Of Servant Leadership And Egalitarianism

You often hear the terms ChatGPT wrapper when new apps are pitched into the void of online discourse. That as long as we can conceal what this thing is at its core, we can get people to treat it differently than a wolf in sheep's clothing. Hoodies are comfy so the wolf wearing the hoodie must be comfy. We can comfy max this wolf so it’s as comfy as the comfiest sheep in a hoodie. What would functionally be the difference between them then? Between the sherpa clad wolf and the organic wool vested sheep.

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. 

Mic Check, Mark 2:1,2

You only ever get asked how far to go with your reforms by people with no category for what reformation looks like. Or maybe more famously put, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~Upton Sinclair. There are a lot of people in the church whose salary depends on technology being a neutral thing that can be adopted ad nauseum. And we’re gonna poke that particular bear a bit, by addressing the most common rebuttal to the concept of technological reform in the church. Use of the microphone.

This idea that you can be blind to concepts isn’t new but it is something a massively interactive and entertained populace, is all but handicapped in noticing. Does the blind person know he’s blind save for the sighted describing colour to him? All the worlds texture and sound to them, with the odd smell. “I know it’s true because it feels true.” Comes the reply of the soon to be stumbling. The elephant's leg must be a tree because it feels just like the tree that I’ve felt. Never mind where all my bananas keep going.

What does this have to do with tech in the church?

Well, what kind of microphone would you suggest for Jesus to use? You church tech types insist upon it’s ubiquity at any given chance or opposition. When a middle aged theology nerd hounds your adoption of A.I. for ministry on his unpopular blog, the humble microphone is the refuge of the worship pastor and tech bro alike. “We can’t not adopt new tech because if we don’t then we cant keep our mic’s. Where does technological restriction end, then? Are we going to stop using microphones in worship too?” And other such techno-puritanism abounds.

Well, lets play this out a bit, then. If you can’t tell me where it ends, where did the technological advancements start? You can likely Google the first use of a microphone for a church service, and likely figure out when we started using screens and projectors and moving lights and smoke machines. But what you’re about to do instead of googling is asking a GPT to do the same thing but with a bit more hallucinations and questionable amounts of reddit posts as the research data. That’s because unlike the reasonableness of assessing a microphone's use. We blindly use what ever, “tools” are given to us by the world, for ministry as often as possible. We don’t care how sordid the development of the tech is or was, only that we can use it for ministry as we define ministry. Name a technology that we wouldn’t use. How broken and evil of a past or present use of any given tech would be needed to convince you not to use that next big thing for ministry?

You think we have online video recordings from our studios (read church sanctuaries) because the gospel and evangelism demanded it? Are you sure it wasn’t the multibillion dollar industry that wants you to constantly delete your browser history? Or the other side of that coin that wants to voyeuristically know everywhere you go online, so they can market to you? Did the church figure out the social part of its media before the influencers did? Or are we trying our best to wash these tombs as white as possible in case God shows up again. Heaven knows if Jesus had a Twitter account (still not calling it X) He would have been…more…effective?

More effective that perfect Jesus?

Mic check, Mark 2:1,2. Is this thing on?

And again he entered into Capernaum, after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house. And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.

How could Jesus of all of the people who know everything chose a venue that would exclude people from a proper seat to view his preaching? Why didn’t he hold a second service? Man, could you imagine if he could have done multi site. Or a podcast. What we really need, like the democrats, is to get him on Rogan. Then we’ll have some traction with our online engagement. Let’s upscale that last clip so it looks sharper for Tiktok.

I could keep going…But you get the idea…I hope.

The problem with blind and optimistic tech adoption is that it often prevents a person from hearing the basis for which tech is supposed to be used for God’s will and work. When it can give you a metric to show its effectiveness, its function is often shrouded in the features of the tech itself. While we may want it to be different. The function of a microphone is to make a person louder than they could ever be without one. The same way social media makes them more famous than they ever would be. And the reason you don’t want a pastor using A.I. to juice his sermons is because like the gift of preaching, evangelism shouldn’t be offloaded to the virality of online media. When it was intended and commanded to be something a voice that can be martyred does. Not what a post that can be nerfed could do.

How many pastors would never have sway if they had to rest on gifts they do not have? Gifts found in aggregate between technologically enhanced research, technical writing helps, and a techno-optimistic views of what social media is and can do. Spurgeon might have used a mic but got as famous as any given mega church pastor without the ability to “go viral” online. That’s because he was famous, not viral, and those are different things. But now any guy with a desire to be listened to and the means to speak gets a pulpit to use as if he was meant to preach. The mic wasn’t just handed to them. It was built into modern life. Everyone has a smartphone, because everyone is expected to have a smart phone. Which is never used as a phone by the stats. It’s used for quite literally everything else. Even silently texting you in church to let you know your children aren’t discipling as well as they should in kids church. It’s a pulpit and stadium seat to any and every crowd both ways.

Do you want a blonde, redhead, something louder, something younger. Or just to be able to do what you can’t without the tech that you can no longer imagine without. Because that's where this stuff comes from. Not optimistic neutrality but sinful man incarnate. 

“And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

Mark 11:15-17 KJV

How else were the religious leaders of the day supposed to make sure the way they did worship, worked. If you can’t buy an approved sacrifice how else would you ever sacrifice properly? They really needed an app for that. Or at the very least a registration landing page, so that people could reserve their doves before attending. Tithely will get a percentage, sure, but it’s in the service of the tithe, so we’re square, right? The last thing you want is new comers to the temple not knowing what to do with their wallets and where to go to do it. Heaven forbid they wander into the holy of holies, literally. There was a clear need for a technical process and even a technological solution to the logistic problems of the time. Hence why a market formed around the need. Money is a technology too, ya know. The entire nation of Israel had to atone for their sins and make sacrifices. But this Jesus guy seems to think that he knows better when it comes to worshiping God, How would he make a sacrifice?

“And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.”

Luke 23:33-34 KJV

“And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land.”

Mark 4:1 KJV

Jesus flipped tables that were the embodiment of technological infiltration of worshiped owed to him. Money doesn't grow on trees, after all. So, when we ask where the reform starts and stops we have to look at things like this. Jesus also used a boat to facilitate a sermon, the same way, I know, he would use a mic if he had one. But where we miss the mark is that he would also have flipped mic stands where they would be used wrongly. He would overturn drumkits and sounds boards and wholesale hack social media accounts into pieces to the glory of the Father. Sprinkling the digital blood of them on us as a mark of our atonements.exe

And all of us would be crying out to him saying “Lord, Lord” wondering if we were actually doing his will and not doing something willful in his name. (Matthew 7:21-23) Jesus might have had a social media presence, but he definitely would be straightening out a few social media influencers. Particularly the ones who aren’t doing their ministries as apart of a local church and it’s governance. And internet famous pastors to boot. He would have live streamed it and a bunch of us with aspirations of online and technologically enabled glory would be reconsidering the podcast and post alike.

Technological reformation in the church, starts the same way the theological reformation did. By the conviction that things might not be right and the devotion to Christ and His word to figure out what went wrong. Not what works or can be made to look godly. Much of what we are doing came as readily and without warrant as the fig leaves that covered our first sinful consequences. There’s a reason you can’t imagine doing ministry without any given piece of tech, especially the new ones. It’s the same reason Adam and Eve clothed themselves with no reasons to do so but fear and shame. But alongside that reason is another who not only authorized the concept of clothing as a technology, but tied it to the very first sacrifice for sins in the Bible.

“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”

Gen 3:21 KJV

Animal skins don’t grow on money trees either, so how ever animals had to die to cloth the newly naked humans, they died at the hands of God for the expense of sins against Him. And in doing so God tied his technology of clothes to his worship, unlike the fig leaf clothes which merely tied their makers to the sin they so obviously committed.

If we want to truly reform tech use in the church, then everything we use for the glory of God needs to be as tied to the nakedness of our sin and the perfection of God’s worship in the same way. How on earth could you use or make a microphone that would be as permanently tied to God’s worship as the clothes he made out of animals for the sins of humanity were? Or is it the same microphones they loft above another form of nakedness that is nothing more than sin commodified? How would you choose a spotless and unblemished social media to lay on an altar? How would you bind software like a son, waiting for God to provide a ram in a thicket?

Or has ubiquity beguiled you so well, Preacher, that you cannot imagine a world where you need not a microphone, a pulpit, a stage, software, program, or even the latest sneakers on Instagram, to do the work of your God? Are you doing the work He laid you in the world to do? Or are you using your technology to hide from Him so you can do the work when He’s not around. As if he wouldn’t come, in the cool of your days, to ask “Who told you you needed a website, Pro Presenter, and a matching set of screens for copyrighted songs? Have you partaken in something you shouldn't have?” That you were in such as state that it warranted a covering of technology to facilitate living in a world with your sin’s consequences?

Or maybe, just maybe, you’re meant not to use a boat to fish with, or even float with, but to reach as many people as would gather on the sea shore. Instead of as many people as you could gather on a sea shore. That kind of obedience would mean trusting the the conviction of the Holy Spirit for a filling of pews and views on any content you could muster. The same way Jesus did nothing more than speak what His Father told him to speak, as the houses, nets, and cups overflew.

“For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.”

John 12:49-50 KJV

The Factory Farming Of Big Eva Christians

An anonymous friend sent me a text out of the blue and honour requires that they remain that way. Anonymous that is. In that text was a link to a MIT tech review article, by Alex Ashely, on the use of data collection and surveillance in the church. Specifically by the flourishing para-church organization Gloo.com . Since he isn’t in a place to say what needs to be said. He called on some mercenary theology from The Layman’s Terms. To which I was happy to jump into the fray.

The article is good. It’s behind a paywall, though, where you are more than welcome to tithe to read. It’s a good piece so go support the author here.

On to the red meat.

What Alex hits, like a kid trying to find out if their hornets in a seemingly quiet nest, is a multi-million dollar organization that is trying its best to mix discipleship with data. And it’s doing so in the stated end to be a faith ecosystem that helps churches. The question this raises is along the lines of means and their justifiable ends. Gloo seems to be trying to find a way forward for any and every church to be more effective and capable at doing things that churches do. It’s trying to do a mighty work in the name of Jesus. Or at the very least in the name of who ever the star of the He Get’s Us campaign was. But more on that later.

Alex goes on to detail the means of which Gloo and other like minded companies have begun to use on the church and it’s congregations to facilitate a deeper knowledge of the people of those congregations. Everything from biometric scans and facial recognition systems to targeted ads and on site secure digital profiles of the people the fill the pews. That twinge of cringe that you felt just now, or hopefully felt right now, is a good thing. It is a lesser form of discernment but for the second time in this article; a seed if you will, there will be more on that later.

However you feel or think about big data and the modern world of digital surveillance and data collection, one thing can’t be argued with. That data exists. If your church is filled with a myriad of people the details of that myriad are just as prevalent as their attendance and can’t exactly be separated from the people in abstract. You will a certain number of marrieds’. A certain number of singles. A smattering of blacks and whites. A dash of broken and a hint of bent. Data of these detail is a precursor to knowledge because it needs to exist prior to noticing it exists or doing anything about it. Which it why it puffs up those who seek it.

“Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.”

1 Corinthians 8:1 KJV

That may seem like an odd Bible verse to relate to the intent and execution of church based data harvesting. But stick with me, we’re headed somewhere good, I promise. Only one person has complete data on anything that exists without the things themselves existing. But again, more on that later.

When we look at what data collection is, at it’s heart, we find a desire for control. Most endeavours boil down to control when you keep them on the stove long enough. And that’s not a bad thing, inherently. Knowing how muscles work and what they need to grow is not a bad thing. Because being in control of your body is a good thing (1 Corinthians 9:27). Until, that is, the mechanisms for making the muscles grow are driven to an extreme to the detriment of other parts of the body. A jacked bodybuilder may have started lifting weights and regulating his diet, in the hopes of becoming more attractive, through being in control of his body. But if the steroids he’s taking turn his skin to a cratering acne field, is he really more attractive? Is he really in control?

The same would go for crops. I have a love for the green beans my wife grows in our garden. And know that a regular regiment of water and sun, alongside yearly composted soil changes, gets those beans to the table. But if taken to the same extremes where, toward the end of a good bean harvest, my potatoes and cucumbers were neglected, or even kept from growing to avoid using resources that could be used for beans, then all I'm left with is beans. No garden and no meal. As full of protein as beans could ever be. Even the body builder would find that an exclusive diet of them, stinks.

Big data in the church presents the same kind of opportunities to the leadership of it as the love of beans and bigger muscles do to the body builder. The church will always want to fulfill it mission to know Christ and to make Christ known, and in that endeavor it will want sharp tools for the work of sharp tools, and knowledge of the things they need to know to do that work. But when we begin to seek knowledge as the crop instead of or at the expense of the souls that knowledge is about, what we end up doing is more akin to pesticides and steroids than we’re likely ready to admit. Because as good as we get at farming or working out, are we truly ever masters of our body and our world?

“Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Luke 12:27 KJV

What the pursuit and collection of big church data exposes, is a functional ignorance to what the church is and how it can and has operated in history. It seeks to give the managers of those churches tools for work that may in fact not be work for the church to do at all. By the means of those tools at all. The same way a factory farm of nothing but beans, misses the point of what a garden does for humans, even what an ecosystem is when not focused on any singular part of it. When placed in submission to actual perfect knowledge, of any given plant that grows, the gardener works hard and sees fruit for his labors. But knows that fruit doesn't come from the beans but from the person who knows, perfectly, how every plant works and in addition to that knowledge, blesses him with a good harvest. And what’s more, That person does not need the means of that gardener's acquired knowledge of gardening to do so. That person is God and he can make beans from nothing. Which is a problem for people who want to do things as the means of any kind of validation. Because an obsession with progress and process is only ever humbled by divine power to do more with infinitely less.

A pastor may want to preach so good he sparks a revival, but he will never be the spark of the revival, will he? The Holy Spirit will be. We want to believe that the world we live in is under our control. When it’s really just under our dominion. A subtle distinction but an important one. The real control rests in the hands of someone who doesn’t need data to align with our strategy or means, even though it can at times. He simply does things, and they are done. And that person did not leave the church in a place to use data collection as the means for church growth and health. As a means for validation. He actually did quite the opposite.

“But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:”

Ephesians 4:7-12 KJV

Wanting to be a good preacher, who speaks to the needs of his congregation is a noble desire. And tabulating those needs by scouring the internet histories of that congregation is not the same thing as knowing those needs. No are you ministering to the needs of hungry widows by tracking the relationship status of your female congregants. A good pastor knows that a man who suddenly drops out of small groups but his wife still attends, means something is up. And that’s not because he matched the historical data of his group attendance to the psychosocial data of counseling trends in his area. Or found a way to find out how many parishioners were on Tinder. It’s because he would be convicted that one of his sheep needed something. That conviction comes from the same person making beans and muscles from scratch, and is the basis for how the church actually grows. Not just how it can show itself to be growing. A monoculture of beans as far as the eye can see is not good and is know to be so by people who know God created all things to be good but also created all things together. He did not separate his creations of humans and beans. Even fruits of knowledge of good and evil from each other, but put them into relationship and proximity according to his perfect will.

That’s how the church is supposed to be run. On which and who it’s supposed to be run. A relationship of people in a relationship with God. Like fuel for the tractor and pre workout for the gym bro, it’s how it’s supposed to be effective. Though the Holy Spirit. Not through means adjacent to Him. because things adjacent to the faith are a very dangerous thing when not duly considered alongside their implications.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Matthew 7:15-23 KJV

It’s here that we get the first hints that evil fruit persists in the mix at Gloo. Because comparison is the thief of Joy for a reason and the glee of Gloo’s data collection has very few comparisons. But Alex captures one perfectly. Salesforce. Salesforce is as mercenary with its data harvesting as I am with my theological hot takes, and in that they almost perfectly set the tone for Gloo to mirror as Alex so aptly pointed out. No one likes how persistent and invasive the data Salesforce draws for it’s services is. But no one can argue that if taste and morals are optional how valuable the data drawn by those means is to those who would use it. It’s hard to look at forbidden fruit lightly after you’re told it’s the key to godliness. Or at least god likeness. If the end result is sales then who cares how you found your customers. In a sense an evangelistic endeavor by those same motivations would be seen as noble. By all means save some, just like Paul right.

Well, not really. And here’s why.

It’s one thing to recognize a thing as associated with what is essentially the by-product of evil. No one being honest with their faith and walk with Christ wants there to be meat sacrificed to idols, but no one being honest with reality would say meat tastes bad simply because it was sacrificed to idols. The issue arises when a weak brother enters the picture and the average Christian in the mega church pew isn’t exactly strong. If we’re being honest.

“But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.”

1 Corinthians 8:9

Those weaker brothers are having their weaknesses tabulated so the church can best feed them according to dietary needs of the mean. Not the individual. This isn’t big data allowing a pastor to know exactly how to speak to a specific person in their congregation about a specific sin. Or trouble that the Lord has instruction about. This is big data letting the pastor know that a sermon on homosexuality would land poorly on a 36% pro Obergefell congregation with another 45% neutral on the issue. The math doesn’t add up here so have the Values based A.I. rework some Osteen and update the weekly newsletter accordingly. This is big data being the ethereal inclination of what to do and when to do it, instead of conviction and discernment. Because as I’ve said numerous times before in other blog posts. Tech is the replacement of the Holy Spirit when given the leeway to act like it. That’s where conviction and discernment come from alongside the gifts and positions that make up the church body.

“And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:”

John 16:8 KJV

“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:”

1 Corinthians 12:10 KJV

What big data, like A.I. and every other tech before after and around it, seeks to do, is replace God. Whether they know it or not. The warning given to us by Christ was not a gotcha moment for actual Christians who managed to exercise demons and perform miracles but didn’t say his name right. It was a vivid image of people so convinced they were doing the Lord's work that they forgot to involve the Lord. Namely his Spirit. And when he was absent, tarried not into prayer to seek his will, but meandered into tech which gave them relevant search results and analytics.

We’ve seen this kind of thing happen before. And while there are subtle differences, the framework is still there. When the people of God were stuck and in need of direction and insight of what to do next. Of where to go. They had the opportunity to embody the spiritual gifts of patience and discernment but opted for results and entertainment. Things you generally get on demand if have them means to pay for it.

It was Aaron, their priest, who made a golden calf and said it was what Yahweh did. A leader who knew that an invisible God granted power, influence, and success. A leader who knew that they had left a land of idols and false gods to worship freely in the desert. On their way to the promised land. And in all his bending's to peer pressure and idolatry, at least his idol couldn’t speak.

Well, Big data does, and so does A.I. And Gloo does both, apparently.

And a church that want’s to stay faithful needs to be wise enough to know when things that aren’t God stand in for God in their work for him. Where gold meant to make them rich at the expense of their captors is being used to impoverish their souls like they were still captive. Israel left Egypt with all the means to build the same golden altars they would eventually build for their God. And chose instead to build a false god in the name of their desire for power and progress. No technological progress or process is better than dependence on the Holy Spirit in ministry. Is better than obedience to God’s will and timing. So any progress and process should be as shackled to the work of Christ on the cross and the slaves we are claim to be in his name. Not just labeled as such. Because a pastor who cannot discern what to preach without data that verifies themes or an A.I. to wordsmith on his behalf, is not struggling and in need of tools, but disqualified from the ministry he still presides over.

“A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;”

Timothy 3:2 KJV

Wisdom in ministry is knowing the difference between vigilance and espionage. Between good behaviour and the kind that sneaks around behind people to find out where they go. It is knowing that there is a difference between a man with 10000 books in a hardwood paneled library he’s never read, and a man who knows his Bible so well he need not read it daily like he still does. Between a man who can preach a only because the Ghost has him by the throat and a pastor who knows what will pass as a sermon these days, and what’s just a TED Talk.

There are alternatives to the power of big data in the church. But what they look like is deep data on, in, and around the work of the Holy Spirit. PulpitAI comes to mind. One of the few companies that want to do this song and dance backwards. When a pastor uses those kind of tools as the soil of his mustard seeds, and not the pesticide of his bean crop, Then and only then is he in a place to do his most effective work. Because they are no longer trying to grow the crop. Their trying to harvest as much as they can from it.

A thousand sermons based of the raw data of a church's demographics, mean nothing if the sermons were nothing more than word associations with the details of our lives. But a single sermon, preached from the scriptures, at the beckoned call of the Holy Spirit of the preacher, about a need he can’t humanly verify with data, but needs he has received via a word of knowledge from a Saviour, that knows every struggle His humans ever had, that sermon can do real numbers in the church. That kind of sermon can be drawn from and multiplied after, with any and every technology and process you could imagine. Because it does not draw it’s power from earthly means. It’s not going to get outdated by how many pixels your video of it can be upscaled into. It’s not going to have keywords only relevant to millennials and zoomers.

You know this to be the truth, because you’ve likely heard a testimony like this and have seen the actual power of God to change a life’s direction, and make a believer out of someone who was not. Was it the daily devotional newsletters in their inbox that secured that soul? Was it the perfectly researched social programs of their nearest mega church? Was it the sermon that had the right amount of jokes, stories, paraphrased scripture from the Message and clips from the Chosen. Or was it the power of a soul submitting to Christ and a God saying “This one’s mine!” With all the authority and reach of a hand that could split the sea. Big data and tech like it, might be able to claim to do what God has already done, but it can’t provide any more value than what a willing sinner would give to get in bed with other sinners. Real power leads people to greater ends. It does not follow people around to speak pointedly about their whereabouts. It calls a people out of their captivity and provides a way to be faithful in that leaving. It does not find what can be useful in their bondage as a means to generate content for their consumption.

Big data, and A.I. like it, will never be more than a golden cow claiming to be as relevant and real as a pillar of fire, large enough to lead a nation. An idol ready and waiting to be ground down for good medicine and discipline on route to a better way of worship.

“And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.”

Exodus 32:20 KJV