100 Ramblings Of Tech, Faith, And Fortitude

We have officially reached 100 post on Christian life, tech, politics, and everything in between. And as such, it’s time to take these blogposts and turn them into something a bit more sturdy.

Available soon-ish (like later this year) will be a paperback copy of this blog. I hope to do this every time I cross a hundred posts.

With that said. Posts might slow down a bit from the almost weekly schedule. As I focus more on the books than I have before. I want to have 10 book on Christian theology and tech to match my 100 blog posts, and will be putting my energy towards that as a top priority. And that’s beside my work on the Technological survey and commentary of the Bible. Which is looking to be a 5 volume set now.

Hot takes will still happen as often as they are warranted. But in the mean time. The blog will get quieter. 

I’ll also be doing more videos on every platform, but mostly on TikTok.

Enjoy!

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.

Every Verse In The New Testament About Technology

Some of you might know that for the last couple of years I have been working on and off on a survey and commentary of the New Testament. Specifically one with regards to the use of technology as mentioned in the scriptures. Recently my new job has allowed me more free time to work on it. I finished the survey part a few months back and have been cleaning up the comments I've made a bit each day since. As of late October, I copied out the final list of scriptures. Which is what you'll find below. 

I plan on doing the whole Bible eventually and at this point have got through Genesis and the first third of Exodus. In the mean time, as I work out formatting issues and cover designs, Here is the list of verses for you to do your own study with. 

Once I have the entire Bible surveyed and commented on, I plan on getting into the nitty gritty of the Greek and Hebrew along with pairing the total list down to verse that don't just speak about technology, but also speak about it's use, or imply it, or use it to imply or teach about other things. There are plenty of verses noted below that merely let the reader know that technology was mentioned in the scriptures. Such as Matthew 9:1-8 where Jesus uses a boat for what boats are used for, travel. But then others where Jesus uses a boat for what boats aren't for. Namely preaching. Such as in Matthew 13:2, where he uses the boat to preach to a crowd where standing on the shore would have impeded his ability to preach. 

It's these golden nuggets that I'm after. And eventually, I've have enough to really make something special. A biblical theology of technology. But until then, you get a big list of bible verses to sift though with your old pal Mikey. 

Matthew

2:1-6, 3:1-4, 3:5-12, 4:18-20, 4:21-22, 5:13, 5:14-16, 5:17-19, 5:27-28, 5:29-39, 5:40, 6:17-18, 6:19-21, 6:23-25, 6:26-33, 7:1-6, 7:7-8, 7:13-14, 7:15, 7:21-23, 7:24-27, 8:23-27, 9:1-8, 9:9-13, 9:14-17, 9:18-22, 9:23-30, 10:1-10, 10:27, 10:28-31, 10:42, 11:7-11, 7:12-17, 11:18-21, 11:28-30, 12:29, 13:1-9, 13:39-42, 13:45-46, 13:47-50, 13:51-52, 14:13-21, 14:22-33, 14:34-36, 15:10-20, 15:21-28, 15:29-39, 16:5-12, 16:13-19, 17:1-8, 17:24-27, 18:1-6, 7:7-9, 17:18-20, 19:16-22, 16:23-26, 20:17-19, 20:20-28, 21:1-7, 21:8-11, 21:12-13, 21:33-41, 21:42-44, 22:1-14, 22:15-22, 22:41-46, 23:5-7, 23:25-26, 24:18, 24:31, 25:1-13, 25:33, 25:38, 25:43, 25:44, 26:6-13, 26:14-16, 26:23, 26:27, 26:51-52, 27:1-10, 27:26, 27:27-31, 27:37, 28:3,

Mark

1:6-7, 1:16-20, 2:1-12, 2:21-22, 3:9, 3:22-29, 4:1, 4:21-22, 4:24-25, 4:36-41, 5:1-5, 5:15, 5:18, 5:22-34, 5:35-43, 6:7-11, 6:28, 6:42-44, 6:45-46, 6:47-52, 6:53-56, 7:1-23, 8:7-9, 8:10, 8:13, 8:19-20, 9:5-6, 9:38-41, 9:42, 10:37:40, 11:8-9, 11:15-18, 13:14-16, 14:3-9, 14:13, 14:18-20, 14:23-25, 14:43, 14:47, 14:48-50, 14:51-52, 15:15, 15:16-18, 15:19, 15:20, 15:24, 15:25-26, 15:36, 15:37-38, 15:46-47, 16:5,

Luke

1:1-4, 1:63-64, 2:7, 2:12, 3:4-6, 3:9, 3:16-17, 4:17-21, 5:1-3, 5:4-11, 5:17-25, 5:36-39, 6:27-29, 6:41-42, 6:47-49, 7:1-10, 7:25, 7:37-38, 8:16-18, 8:22, 8:27-30, 8:37, 8:43-48, 9:1-5, 9:16-17, 9:61-62, 10:4, 10:13, 10:20, 10:25-28, 11:9-10, 11:33-36, 11:37-39, 12:15, 12:27-28, 13:4-5, 13:23-27, 14:28-30, 15:8-10, 15:22, 17:1-2, 17:7, 17:27-28, 17:31-37, 18:18-27, 18:28-29, 19:33-34, 19:39-40, 20:17-18, 20:19-26, 20:42-44, 20:45-47, 21:1-4, 21:5-6, 22:8-13, 22:17-20, 22:35-38, 22:41-42, 22:49-53, 22:64, 23:34, 23:35-37, 23:38, 23:50-56, 24:1-2, 24:3-4, 24:9, 24:12, 24:22, 24:24,

John

1:1-5, 2:1-11, 2:14-17, 4:6, 5:1-2, 5:8-9, 5:35-36, 5:39, 5:46-47, 6:13, 6:17-23, 7:2, 8:1-11, 9:6-7, 10:1-2, 10:7-9, 11:39-41, 11:44, 12:3-8, 13:4-5, 14:1-2, 18:3, 18:10-11, 18:16-17, 19:1-2, 19:5, 19:13, 19:17, 19:19-22, 19:23-24, 19:28-29, 19:34, 19:39-40, 19:41-42, 20:1-11, 20:26, 21:3, 21:6-8, 21:18, 21:24-25,

Acts

1:20, 2:7-11, 3:2, 3:6, 3:10, 5:1-11, 5:17-20, 7:33, 7:41-43, 7:44-50, 8:18-20, 8:29, 8:30-31, 9:5, 9:15-16, 10:11-15, 11:4-5, 12:1-2, 12:6-7, 12:8, 12:13-16, 12:21-23, 13:14-16, 13:33, 15:20, 15:23, 15:30-31, 16:24, 18:6, 21:2-3, 21:10-11, 21:30, 21:33, 21:40, 26:29-32, 27:1-44, 28:11-12, 28:13, 28:20,

Romans

1:11-15, 3:4, 6:12-13, 9:19-23, 11:9, 15:1-4, 16:22,

1 Corinthians

2:9-10, 3:10-13, 5:3, 5:9, 5:11, 10:16, 10:21-22, 10:23, 11:3-15, 11:25-28, 13:1, 15:52, 16:3, 16:24,

2 Corinthians

1:13-15, 2:3-4, 2:9, 3:1-3, 3:7-8, 3:12-14, 3:18, 5:1-4, 7:8, 7:12, 10:3-4, 10:9-11, 11:25, 11:32-33, 13:1-2, 13:10,

Galatians

6:11,

Ephesians

2:19-22, 5:18-19, 6:10-17,

Philippians

1:27, 3:1, 4:9,

Colossians

2:1-3, 2:4-5, 2:13-14, 4:3, 4:16, 4:17-18,

1 Thessalonians

2:5, 5:1-2, 5:8-9, 

2 Thessalonians

2:15, 3:17,

1 Timothy

6:6-8, 

2 Timothy

2:1-25, 4:13,

Philemon

1:1-25,

Hebrews

1:11-12, 11:13-14, 3:3-4, 4:12, 6:19, 9:1-5, 9:11-12, 10:25, 11:7, 11:21, 11:37-38,

James

1:1, 1:22-25, 2:1-4, 2:14-17, 3:1-6, 5:1-3, 

1 Peter

1:16, 1:18-19, 2:13-16, 3:1-6, 3:7, 5:1-4,

2 Peter

1:14, 2:17, 3:1, 3:15-16,

1 John

1:1-4, 2:1, 2:7-8, 2:13-14, 2:21, 2:26, 5:21,

2 John

1:12-13,

3 John

1:13-14,

Jude

1:6, 1:21-23,

Revelation

1:1-3, 1:4, 1:16, 1:17-18, 1:19-20, 2:1, 2:12, 2:16, 2:27, 3:4-5, 3:6-8, 3:18, 3:20, 3:21, 4:1-11, 5:1-5, 5:6, 5:7-9, 5:11, 5:13, 6:1-2, 6:3-4, 6:5-6, 6:7-8, 6:9-11, 6:12-17, 7:2-8, 7:9, 7:10-11, 7:14, 7:15-17, 8:1, 8:2, 8:3-5, 8:6, 9:1, 9:2, 9:7-10, 9:14, 9:17, 10: 1-2, 10:8-11, 11:1, 11:3-4, 12:1, 12:3-4, 12:5, 13:1-2, 13:6, 13:7-9, 13:10-13, 13:14, 13:15, 13:16-18, 14:1, 14:2, 14:3, 14:10, 14:11, 14:13, 14:14-20, 15:2, 15:5, 15:6, 15:7-8, 16:1-2, 16:3-4, 16:8-11, 16:12, 16:15, 16:17, 17:1, 17:4-5, 17:8, 18:12, 18:17, 18:21-22, 18:23, 19:8-10, 19:11-14, 19:15, 19:16, 19:21, 20:1, 20:4, 20:11, 20:12, 20:15, 21:3, 21:5, 21:12-21, 22:1-4, 22:5, 22:7, 22:9-10, 22:14, 22:18-21, 

If you think I missed one, let me know. I don't bite and would love to make you into a footnote. 

The Present Need For Theology Punks

I've been vocal about my loss of faith in theological academia. But I wanted to straighten out a misconception before it happens. What I'm not advocating for is anti theological academia. But rather unauthoritative theological academia. Which is a big set of words for a post about punk rock, but stick with me, this mosh pit is fun, I swear.

The new superman flic, which I likely won’t see because I don’t want to be in the target market of that kind of thing, wants you to believe that being kind to people is punk rock. And a chorus of hot-topic posers made Iggy Pop relevant again for his last ditch for 15 minutes via every and any social media content available.

Here’s the thing though, kindness isn’t punk. Opposition to authority is. If you want to get as specific as a named 4th Nirvana song, it’s opposition to invalidated or corrupt authority. The kind that would shut down a skateboarder, not because he’s damaging the stairs he’s jumping down, but because he might hurt himself. We’ll yeah. That’s the point. Phil 1:21. You think we skateboard to be safe? Punks don’t hate cops because they arrest criminals. They hate cops when they don’t arrest criminals. They hate authority when it give a technical hall pass for certain wrongs at the expense of other wrongs. So, it usually adopts those wrongs in protest. And just like that movie and that staircase, the world is need for a smattering of actual theological punks. Not posers in the fashion or capes actively marketing to them. But real, opposition theology for a world turned lame.

When almost every pastor started doing the Eucharist online a few years back. It was ecclesiologically punk rock to give the theological middle finger to “The Man” and get arrested for your faith. It never had anything to do with what virus you might catch. The newly minted online church clutched their pearls like so many Fox news watchers as a handful of pastors got arrested, and at least in my home town/province, got acquitted too. Turns out you can ride your skateboard here. And bastards like acting as if all cops are like that.

Before that, a smattering of churches sought to bring gender equality to the theological skate park. And would have got away with it, if they didn’t actually want gender to stop existing. Under the bland guise of egalitarian betterment, they let women try the pulpit out only to then take every part of what made them women in the first place away from them. Because it’s cool and arguably punk rock when a girl drops into the half pipe, dressed like a girl, makeup’d like a girl and for all intents and purposes acting like a girl. But when when Phoebe, Pricilla, and Junia began showing up in baggy men's clothes, low taper fades and faux hawks, to “skateboard” because their latest fashion accessory had two trucks and four wheels. This didn’t make them Punk, though they looked the part. Because looking punk is easy. Anyone can order band patches and vintage denim online. And nothing is a greater tell of a theological poser than the collection of similar letters, sewn onto the vest of an M.Div. You think you’re books and certificates impress us, or give you the belonging you demand. Do something challenging with your board. A kickflip maybe. Turn things upside down and backwards. Look cool doing it. Preach about the sins a woman could commit. The guys who have low taper fades, baggy clothes and a commentary set or two, would. Right after they point out the sinful posering of their peers. Do you want to actually do ministry or is walking around with the church board enough for your appetites?

And long before all of this, A guy named Marty was willing to take the flack for posting harsh words on a wall. He did it with hammer and nails but I'm guessing spray paint was hard to find in Wittenberg. He didn’t care if he would get in trouble for the words. He cared that they were true. Not just like the E-celeb pastors in his heritage that would end up wearing sneakers for the sneaker heads, and not how they gripped a board during an ollie. No. He tagged the catholic church with red letters that made their dogmatic jaws drop and Bansky’d a reformation out of a church that was indulging itself a bit too much.

In all these things something is happening under the radar of the culture that is trying to get to truth at the cost of the almost true. Calling out those trying to claim authority they don’t or can’t have and those who stole it and should have it removed from their possession and public ascent. Something that recognizes that people can make laws that make no sense, but someone can make laws that can’t be argued with. A no skateboarding sign over perfectly architecture’d concrete, is damn near criminal. But gravity and the laws around it was penned by someone who had real authority. You can vote on one, and only play with the other.

“Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.”

Psalm 104:5 KJV

Somewhere, somehow, the world of theology stopped dealing with gravity and started dealing with the myriad of signs posted to stop punks from enjoying its limits. It saw that people enjoyed the facts that a desire to fly could be snuffed out mid 360 and still land in a place that makes the skater look cool. Anyone with a healthy marriage and a few kids can show you this kind of trick, what it looks like when you land it, and how comparatively lame egalitarian theory can be. It sure holds that board and wears those clothes as if it were meant to. But like all posers it’s missing the requisite landing. One that respects the gravity that restricts but enjoys it all the same.

The need for a theological punk, exists because of how soft the poser can get while stealing punk’s clout. That’s why no one has more effects pedals and nicer guitars then the modern worship pastor. One who has about as much edge as the circular plexiglass cage around his brush wielding drummer. Or a preacher with more books than reasonable time to read them, or be educated by them. Having Sproul and Spurgeon on your shelf only feeds your sheep if you read them. Or better yet, stay calm when your congregation reads them more than you. It’s expensive wallpaper other wise. A credibility bookcase as valid as a second hand patch vest or perfectly clean skateboard. You can tell a skater, skates, by the damage his board shows. And a preacher by the cracks in his library’s spines.

There’s no skin in this game anymore. And as such, no ability to do what skin does. Touch and feel. Modern theology is out of touch with the realities of a sinful world and convinced that what it feels, by itself, is as valid and real as what concrete could make them feel if they drop into the bowl for once. And the punk, knows what the bottom of the bowl feels like. In falling and in the momentum of coming back out of it. What the push and pull of a mosh pit is, and why blocking people you disagree with Christian twitter (Still not calling it X), but will be heavenly roommates with is foolishness. And generally ruins the fun of it.

In all of this, we have tried the theological mainstream.

We have seen the theological poser.

But the desperate and satisfying need of this generations will be the return of the theological punk. To stick it to the man, and his sin, so he might be reconciled to God like a reunion tour of his favourite band. Not the same as it was before, but bettered by the memory of it. It will look like danger and risk to anyone not willing to risk danger. But it will also look like orthodoxy. Moreso than popular culture is capable of mirroring. 

The Shallow End Of Technically Not Quite Right

Do you know how to use the following?

A pencil?

A concordance?

And a keyboard meant for ignoring in favor of a speech to text function on a smart phone?

We all have a list of words we know how to spell wrong so the red squiggly lines can auto correct it for us. Definitely, beautiful, sincerely, the list goes on. But part and parcel with that list is a growing trend of humanity not being technically good with its means of communication, because our technology is technically as good, for the most part.

I mean touch screens still put I’s where U’s are supposed to go.

This could all be the grumpy ramblings of your slightly GenX-Millenial unc, but I do want to point out that you likely never spell words wrong that you know how to spell right, with a pencil. Why is that, by the way. I thought the keyboard was a more advance version of technologies that preceded it?

Unless, keyboards aren’t the next best thing in a line but rather a new contender in a ring. Because the keyboard inherently accepts human error where the pencil and concordance are used to express human truth.

The reason you use a pencil to do the action of handwriting is to express what you could think or say in a transferable medium. It is very hard to spell a word you know wrong if you in fact you know it. But it’s proportionally easy to spell a word wrong on a keyboard that you do know how to spell, which is why the red squiggly lines tell us what we did wrong when we use a keyboard and those red line only show up with an elementary schoolteacher when we use the pencil.

But from there to touch screen phones with a laughable accuracy for our giant fingers to type on the world made a winding rope of paths back to clarity of expressed written thought. Voice to text works, but only kinda. That swipe method seemed to do the trick, but only kinda. And before too long the world seemed to want to do away with any real input method that had them do all the imputing and we got the GPT. Where would could enter in the gist of what we wanted and it would spit out its best approximation.

And this is where the lines got crossed because it's one thing to write a love letter in fountain pen and lipstick to a lover, and another thing to print a smooch via jpeg on the corner of the page, and use a hand written font and GPT to get the exact same words you “could” have use. Even if you would use those exact same words and the GPT flexed some prophetic/synthetic muscles, saying exactly what you thought but couldn’t muster your fingers to type, would that be a love letter or what looks like a love letter. Because it’s currently what a sermon is, or what it could be.

What we’re witnessing is commodification of intent and meaning. And what you don’t ever get when you do that is what you meant or intended, only what meaning and intent looks like.

For example. You, likely, don't know what the Bible says, you know what a translated copy of the biblical text’s copies say. And all of that under the assumption that you have your copy of a copy memorized. Which you don’t. Let’s be real here. But we can all rest easy knowing that the Bible doesn’t tell us to be as textually accurate in its distribution as that new weird tech-theology blogger you know.

Right?

“And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:”

Deuteronomy 17:18 KJV

Uh oh guys, I think we may missed something.

And before the armchair theologians and/or language scholars come at me, let’s just consider that if the most important people in a kingdom are told to do this, that it would be at the very least beneficial to do it ourselves. Yeah. We aren’t told in Hebrew and Greek to hand copy our NLT bibles. Let alone to translate them into Hebrew And Greek. But it may be the only way to rescue meaning and intent from the content machine of the internet. Especially in the age of getting GPT’s to create that content for you, because of the glorification (Literally) of efficiency.

We have a unique chance at the top of this waterslide to not only realize it’s a slippery slope but to also realize, while we are equipped to slide, we may not know how to swim. The walk down the stairs to that slide will be arduous and intellectually embarrassing. Some might say humbling, but it will guarantee that we will not drown. To go down the slide anyway hoping a God that can walk on water, might find ourselves quoting the wrong person in the Bible to make our points about Christian tech use.

“Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

Matthew 4:5-7 KJV

I would have loved to have typed that out in Greek for the full effect of the bit. But I fear that those of you with ears to hear would have miss heard me.

There is a way to play nicely in this water. Even in the shadow of a slippery slope as large as the one we just walked down from. A way that will will teach us all the necessary skills and techniques needed to go head first down the slide all the same, to the glory of God and the enjoyment of all men at the water park. But it is clearly not where a GPT can recite more of any given Bible translation than you.

That way means putting the GPT in the shallow end with you as you write down what you know and not search for what you could find out the hard way. The way hand and foot kick and flail until you suddenly find yourself swimming. The way you splash and cannon ball before a swan dive knocks the socks off the cute lifeguard you want a phone number from. GPT’s can be a great set of water wings in this pool, and an even greater surf simulators. But only if we learn to swim first. Everything before that is a kind of danger that is as transparent as the water is when it's still. And the reason why fences are mandated around pools these days. Not to prevent swimming but to prevent drowning. Which will look the same until it’s almost too late. But there is a way to enjoy the swim in spite of the danger that comes from understanding the nature of the danger instead of trying to compensate for it.

Swimmers have the same muscles that drowners do. The difference is the application of wisdom through knowledge, and just not its replacement through technique.

“For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

Habakkuk 2:14 KJV

Google's Exhausting Concordance Of The Bible

We all do it. We know enough of the Bible verse to remember it but not enough of the Bible verse to quote it properly. And if we’re being responsible, we don’t want to simply quote our version of a Bible verse, we want to quote the version of a Bible verse. So, we google our version of the Bible verse and google corrects the order of words we used to give us the actual Bible verse.

We’ll search for something that resembles a verse out of the NIV with 14 words in it, but has the wrong adjective and Google matches the other 13 words to the NIV and corrects our misplaced adjective use. And the Substack post gets more scholarly, and the green grass grows all around all around.

Google has become our concordance and commentary. Whether we knew it or not. Whether we like it or not. And at the moment we are transitioning to A.I. becoming our Google.

A few weeks ago, on a work computer, I looked up a Bible verse in the above-mentioned process, knowing full well that I didn’t know the verse by memory, and knowing full well that the search bar would compensate for that. And as I did, something strange happened. The search bar didn’t give me my expected answer. The A.I. that has taken its place did. My work uses Microsoft products for all its I.T. needs and part in parcel with that is no Chrome or Firefox. To each his own. I don’t need brand loyalty in browser selection like some. So, I do my work, and when I needed to get a Bible verse properly quoted. I improperly searched for it. Google tends to give me the NIV approximate I tend to enter into it, having been raised in mostly evangelical circles, it’s the Bible I know the most of and have heard the most of. So, it's the bible I enter the most of into the search bar, to get my corrections from.

What happens next doesn’t happen in the search bar. The Bible verse I get is almost always from the NIV but my writing requires me to use the KJV because I don’t want to deal with copyright issues and what not. KJV is in the public domain, so I use it for most of my writing now. I don’t know the KJV enough to quote it. Even though I like it when reading and writing about it. But when someone asks me to quote scripture from memory, they never get my approximation of the KJV. They get my best crack at the NIV. My search terms, once corrected, generally lead me in the first few results to biblegateway.com where I check the verse and switch the translation, before a copy and a paste into whatever article I am working on.

Here’s where the A.I. stepped in, and instead of giving me the NIV, gave me the KJV with no extra steps.

Now I could go on a conspiratorial bent on how it knew that. But the truth is I know how it knew that plainly. I know the A.I. built into MS copilot can get any web history I have and any temporary internet files I have out of the browser for its work as an A.I. The issue this raises is the joint practice I was guilty of, and the vulnerabilities that a culture that practices that practice, might have in a world of genuinely helpful but wisdom-less A.I.'s. Because not everyone who types a half-recalled bible verse is looking for biblical clarity. Some of them are trying to see what they want the Bible to say. And the A.I. is not equipped with the “Thou Shall Not’s” to deal with that kind of thing.

At least not yet.

When I was in Bible college, I had a unique front row viewing of this kind of thing happening, sans A.I. if you will. I was enrolled in a class about the gospels, taught by one of the smartest people I have ever met. He read from a Greek New Testament, which he had memorized and knew enough about the translation techniques of Bible translators to know if you were reading from an NIV or a NKJV or even, as one poor freshman found out as inadequate for proper biblical study, the Message.

But it was when I replied with a verse from my Bible (A thrifted NASV from 1979) that he gave me a quick puzzled look and asked me what Bible I was reading from. I showed him and he explained that the NASB had been updated in 1995 and that the older version caught him off guard. He knew about the change but was only familiar enough with the 1995 version to know it as the accepted NASB. With his party trick adequately demonstrated, we proceeded to learn about the bible. The hole was in the ground and the green grass grew all around all around.

But that man didn’t trace a probable course through likely data, and then change his output to suit the user. He saw an otherwise mundane anomaly in a set of things he intrinsically knew and corrected the adjacent user.

That’s what the Bible for, dontcha know?

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 KJV

What A.I. is at least capable of doing, is correcting the use of our correcting tools to fit with the use of them by ourselves. It did not profit the misguided Message user to look for original meaning of the text as she received it via Petersons paraphrase. But that’s okay. Someone who knew better because he actually knew the original text, stepped in and corrected the use of that paraphrase in biblical study. He did so by knowing what the text was to define what the text wasn’t. And A.I. could and would do that too. But to ask it to do that, we need to ask it to do things on behalf of abstracted unknown people and not specific engaged users. That professor learned Greek because he knew he would need Greek for the unlearned students he would teach.

The worry is that A.I. does the same kind of thing, so well mechanically, that it will get placed in the professor's place because it can be bought for a much lower price than the tenure. Because technology never wants you to do the work so you can be useful elsewhere in abstract. It only ever does work for you so it can be useful in practice immediately. You don’t vibe code to learn how code properly. You vibe code to offload the skills of a proper coding to desire and little else. The same way, guilty as charged, a guy could of load knowledge of the scriptures he reads and writes from to a search engine. Yeah, it gets the job done, but see how slow my writing gets the second my omnipresent concordance isn’t there for me and the lights go out? All it took was a solar flare, A power outage. A long list of fragilities growing longer by the second, as if they weren’t by design.

I know another brilliant mind who knows how to code and uses A.I. to code all the same. And the only difference between him and the pure vibe coders are he can make his way back out of that cave when the lights go out. He knows how, and knows how much work it is, because he’s done it. And is fully capable of doing it the hard way, but has paid enough dues and attention to know what to look for when the A.I. cuts the wrong corners. He sees, as a growing number of actual technicians see, that offloading our mental capabilities to a machine is nothing more than vulnerability as a service. VaaS if you will.

And VaaS does not just apply to code it applies to anything needing technique via language. Like knowledge of the bible.

For as much wisdom as us theologians claim to have, we didn’t notice that offloading when we asked Goggle to start doing it for us biblically. Or when that offloading itself got turned into a service and we started paying for Logos. Which is a powerful tool, but not a great tool. A great tool showcases talent and skill and knowledge through its use. A powerful tool approximates all three by technique and technology. A paint brush gets paint on the roof of the Sisteen chapel only by the hands of Michelangelo. And a Paint sprayer does it all the same via power and a tradesman.

But don’t believe random myths about technology you see on the internet. Believe the Mythbusters instead.

Paintball Mona Lisa

Is that painting great or powerful? What are the throngs of tech enthusiasts in the crowd cheering for? The approximation Leonardo da Vinci’s work? Or the Powerful GPU and air pressure that accomplished it?

When art becomes nothing more than the application of paint, study nothing more than the application of search terms, and programing nothing more than the ctrl-V of stack overflow, these things lose their meaning. And their purpose hot on meaning’s heels will follow. Purposeless coders would be a devastating end to the use of A.I. to code. Hundreds of thousands of men and women’s livelihoods lost to nothing less that technological progress and profit. A sad reality, at the very least on the horizon if we’re being honest.

But that honesty in being will also have us look at the purposeless pastors. Made as nothing more than stewards of RigthNowMedia, The GPT sermon, and search terms. It may not bother most that their pastor may not know Greek or Hebrew, but knows how to find out about Greek and Hebrew words via technological advancements. Even ones as old as books like a concordance. But it does bother some of us who know biblically accurate sermons and discipleship rest on some teachers, in inexorable ways. But not most teachers in anything close to inexorable ways. There isn’t a soul in the world that could take the intimate knowledge of Greek away from that gospel class professor. But just about anyone could take mine away. With a push of a button and the theft of a few large books from my bookcase.

See how smart ignorant people sound?

Makes you wonder, huh.

Is It Okay For Christians To Autofill

In a recent article on churchleaders.com , James Emery White did a great job of illustrating the need for wisdom in an age of asking Google things. And the associated why's that orbit that particular part of our modern-day culture. Here's a link for those interested. 

But that title was frankly wasted on such nice writing. 

Can Christian autofill? At all? Do we even have the resources available to answer the should question when it's not attached to moveable objections in our faith via culture at large. Because we've asked this question in every variation and the answer is always yes, if we give it enough time. 

Can Christians use drums in worship, Yes, but only yes after some hesitation?

Can they use digital Bibles instead of leatherbound ones? Yes, but only after some hesitation

Can they? Can they? Can they?

Yes, yes, yes. But only after the hesitation works its way out of our late adopters first.

What you see here is how change management works and how wisdom is necessary to make it work. This is seasoned advice on how to drive a car when a road trip is warranted. Its directions are based on the next turn ahead from the passenger to the driver.

But what if where you're driving isn't a road anymore?

There's a delightful experience everyone needs and that is the delightfully plain and slightly busy trip from Vancouver to Vancouver Island, by ferry. Because there is one of the few times when you get to "Drive" across the water that sinks most cars that attempt it by themselves. Tragedy is avoided by "driving" onto a ferry, that sails and at no point does your car need waterproofing, outboard motors, or a mast, because what you were doing and what you are doing get mingled by what something entirely else can do.

Can you drive to Vancouver Island? You'll never leave your car if you don't want to, but does that mean you drove? that kind of odd but technical detail matters more than you'd think it would these days. I blame it on all the fake news your read on the internet, and the Deepfakes that cause problems for Christian men there also.

What's not happening in the act of using autofill in anything, is words from nowhere coming to save you. That can happen in real life but doesn't happen with autofill. What is happening is a complicated and calculated series of processes that are designed to remove you from the writing that needs autofill. Even the smallest grammar fix by the spell-checking red line is an adjustment to how you think. Maybe you think with bad grammar, but maybe you think the way you do, and trading a "which" for a "this" alters how you would say something.

At its heart, autofill is a surrender of control and an admission of ignorance or apathy.

Where this becomes a problem for Christians is we have generative processes of our own that are for things bigger than our tweets and emails. Namely our preaching. Our sermons have one foot firmly in the Holy Ghost's power and no clear line to the ferry that is the technological intrusion into the writing process. 

"But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost."

Mark 13:11 King James Version

Now ask yourself. Is the spell checker in MS word, or on your iPhone, or in the care of Grammarly, sharing that indwelling of the Holy Spirit?

There's a very big difference between using a tool to compensate for mistakes and mistaking a tool for a person that works for you. And that's the fundamental issue of Artificial intelligence. Not the intelligence part. We can tell the machine was made by some very smart people. It's the artificial part. Because We want human interaction. Christ did not come to die for Siri and ChatGPT. But those two "voices" will be used to preach his gospel and it will be because of a passive understanding of where the proto-A.I. we've all been using led us. Straight to troubled waters that we'll need a boat to cross with. 

While hindsight is 20/20. Technological habits are historically fuzzy. We'll use the same justification for any given technologies use, to justify further progressive use of it. Everyone does it. Any pastor looking to look authoritative on the use of A.I, will point to things like spell check and autofill to show we are already using A.I. So, we must therefore be fine with it. But I want to argue that like our aforementioned rod trip to Vancouver Island. We're only now approaching the shores of what might be our engine's doom if we're not careful. We may have ignorantly but honestly thought we could drive where only boats doth tread. But now that we can see the breakers over the dash, perhaps we should pump the breaks a bit. 

Yes, we've been using forms of A.I. for a while now. But now we see where those roads lead. So back to our original question. Can Christians use autofill?

No. At least not for ministry purposes. Because then it stops being a Christian doing the filling and it becomes an object doing it instead. More specifically an object used in the service of a God that forbids objects in worship. Especially ones that do the kinds of wordsmithing that most auto-fills do. 

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;"

Exodus 20:3-5 King James Version

We all get the graven image part. That means mand made in today's nomenclature. And there are not many theologians that will bicker on the mand madness of A.I. systems of any shape and size. but two more words I'd like to draw your attention to are "Likeness" and "Bow Down". Okay, that's three. But stick with me.

Likeness comes from Strong's 8544,

"8544 tmuwnah tem-oo-naw' or tmunah {tem-oo-naw'}; from 4327; something portioned (i.e. fashioned) out, as a shape, i.e. (indefinitely) phantom, or (specifically) embodiment, or (figuratively) manifestation (of favor):--image, likeness, similitude."

and Bow Down from Strong's 7812

"7812 shachah shaw-khaw' a primitive root; to depress, i.e. prostrate (especially reflexive, in homage to royalty or God):--bow (self) down, crouch, fall down (flat), humbly beseech, do (make) obeisance, do reverence, make to stoop, worship."

It's that obeisance part that's going to come back to bite us because it's a word not often used these days, which is generally the case for things that bite. It means to express deferential respect. and in the context of objects involved in worship, would mean respecting what the object says. The idols in the Bible were in fact mute statues and high places. Ours have text-to-voice now.

What happens when you accept Grammarly's re-writing of your sentence if not an act of conscience to what is ostensibly an object. In the context of religious expression objects necessary for the practice of worship would otherwise be considered idols. Or representations of what's being worshiped. The Holy Spirit prompts you to say one thing and creates those words, like he does all things, Ex Nihlo, or actually out of nothing. However grammatically incorrect as it may be, compared to Grammarly's programming, it still is what the Holy Spirit wants you to say. Clicking the autofill to switch which's for this's alters that and give a slight if not noticeable nod to the programing that Grammarly houses in its servers. It's because those servers house a likeness of human writing for the programming to draw from to illicit that nod of "You're right, I didn't mean to write that." All that's missing from that little piece of inner monologue is the "Forgive me." at the end. And if you don't think the kinds of A.I.'s that are being trained won't start asking for confessions, you're simply not paying enough attention. Remember, large language model A.I.'s are being trained by what we put online. And the central heart of our faith is the gospel that preaches forgiveness upon confession. 

This is different than typing "from" instead of "form" because your fingers type faster than your inner monologue and the "F" and "R" buttons are so close, along with a program that knows these two words are often confused, which flags it for your review. It's the assumption that it gets to write for you on account of you. A spell checker might use the same bricks as the tower of Bable, but instead builds a road out of them. The medium being the message doesn't lock the message down to a singular form. The message of electric light isn't light, like McLuhan says, but late-night baseball and brain surgery now being done in the dark. McLuhan saw this coming but we seem to be looking in the rearview mirror on our road trip to the future of church tech. So much so that we're not going to notice we're in deep until there are fishes chasing our men. Sermons, as it were, written with spellcheck in hand aren't apostate by nature but are closer to it than they would likely ever notice. And that's the point.

As Technology progresses and gets more and more entwined, not only with our lives but with our minds, we are going to need ways to set boundaries for things that act like people. Butler, shouldn't be the only one waging a war against thinking machines, when justified. And if you don't know what Butler I'm writing about. you have some reading to do. 

As for those thinking machines, you are already at war with them, whether you know it or not. And because they think like machines, their plan is to keep you never knowing.

Red letters before red lines, friends.

Books Are A Really Expensive Backdrop For Ignorance And Personality

This little red dot means I've read this book. A play on words as much as a play on the sensibilities of people who read as a general rule. But alongside my love of self-education comes a price tag. That of not being able to prove you did so. 

My best idea on how to fix that is to simply show how the sausage is made. 

First, we start with books. Hard copy as the top end of a preference hierarchy. with kindle or electronic books and audiobooks at the bottom. This is pure paranoia but not unfounded paranoia. You can render a kindle useless and an account suspended via a firmware update, you can't do that to a book in the possession of someone else. You have to deal with the book owner when attempting to remove books from them and the book owner is 6ft tall and swings a big stick sometimes. 

But having books is not enough, you need to have access to them. Bookshelves are next. And while there's really no good answer there is a perfectly practical answer to how to shelve books if you want to become a collector. 

The billy bookshelf from Ikea is a modular system that has full-height and half-height options as well as full-width and half-width options. So it can adequately cover the walls of just about every room within a 15-inch margin. This is good because no one ever starts with a massive 500+ book library when they get into reading. But they often end up there. And with a bit of foresight, you can simply keep adding as needed until you have a room full of books. For some perspective, a single 6ft high bookshelf that's 30 inches wide, or about doorway width wide, is approximately 210 books. Give or take anyways. It would take 4 years of a book a week to fill that. So, we're not talking about much when we say get a proper bookshelf because you can split the cost over multiple years for an above-average reading pace. 

But these bookshelves become kind of central and nice to look at once you get books on them and here is where the trouble starts.

There's a particular brand of content creators that fakes the prestige and hard work of reading an above-average amount of books. Ones that will have perfectly manicured shelves with books organized by colour and size and make the books and the knowledge they contain a fancy backdrop, not the tool that they are. This is more common for fiction libraries but happens to non-fiction libraries too. When all sense of organization is lost in the collecting of books the knowledge contained in them is just as lost. finding a white Malcolm Gladwell book in a sea of similarly grouped white books is harder than finding a Malcolm Gladwell book in the "G" section of an alphabetically sorted shelf. 

But there's still the issue of faking the read.

I have over 500 nonfiction books, but I've only read and processed into my commonplace system about 112 of them as of the time of this article. I could easily start posting youtube videos about my perfect and well-educated thoughts on theology, with a giant library of theology books behind me to back up my claims. And a lot of people would fall for it. 

That's because books are a kind of mental Judo. They let you know at a glance that person is more than what they may appear to be. the same way a cauliflower'd ear on a guy at a bar lets you know who you don't want to fight with if a fight breaks out. It may have been that the man got his ear hit by an object at work, subsequently crushed and ended up looking like he hits people for a living. But it's likely he just hits people for a living. 

That's what books do. They give the impression of knowledge gained from reading them. But there isn't a trendy and aesthetically pleasing way to do the opposite. To show your work and show that not only that you've read a book, but you have understood and can communicate what that book says. 

Enter the red dot.

The red dot on all my books is a mark to let people know it's been read. It's the easiest way to accomplish and counteract this claim but has to be announced to make it work. 

The second strategy would be to review every book. Even simply, 30 seconds on each book is enough to let anyone know that you've at least cracked the cover. But a formal review of each gives you the opportunity to again, show your work of reading.

Finally, there is a simple and easy way to see if the person with books behind them is well-read or just a book of the month club member. Cracked book spines. For most book collectors. Paperbacks of any size are 25-50% cheaper than hardcover books. So when you're in a pinch to fill your bookshelf. You fill it with books that can be acquired cheaply. And paperbacks are cheap. But paperbacks are only pristine and square when unread. The second you spend an hour or two with them in their reading, you crack their spine. And a careful eye can see this evidence of use. It takes effort to not do this to books.

Charles Spurgeon famously remarked about this kind of thing when he said "A Bible that is falling apart, usually belongs to a life that isn't." Similarly, a bookshelf that is dishevelled and filled with well-worn books is a likely indicator that the owner actually reads them. 

I bring all these things up to let the world know, not that I've read a lot of books but to highlight there are a lot of people you know and like and listen to that have completely unfounded ideas once you start looking closely. People who draft book quotes from the Goodreads.com quotes section and not from a personal collection of insights and notes taken from reading books. These same people will tweet these things as content to add authority to their opinions online. But when a similar action though much less attractive an option is used. One of posting pictures of your highlighted and dog-eared page instead of typing the quote. Then a person sees you spent the time, engaging with the ideas of the book before you chose to use it as content for your audience.

Knowledge can be faked these days in ways our former intellectual giants might not have ever fathomed. And a rising and important skill will be not only discernment in what's right and what looks right. But also how to spot those who write what's right and what looks right. So to bookend this post.

Books are a Really Expensive Backdrop for Ignorance and Personality.

My Alter Ego, My Twin, And My Pen Name

So I have a Twin who is one of my biggest fans. He likes my writing and is an easily bribed editor in a pinch, usually just takes a bottle of rum. And I get an honest review of anything I write. This is handy given that as it exists online there is also another guy who looks like me but isn't quite me either. 

Jon and I look the same but we are in fact quite different. I'm fatter, he's more resourceful, and we both like books and working for churches but how we come about it is often a topic of one of our frequent phone calls. 

But there's another version of our shared face out there that is often found hiding behind the cover of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. And that is R.G. Michales. R. G. whose letters do not stand for any proper nouns like Ryan or Reginald or Gregory or Graham is an entirely fictional person. Made that way on purpose to filter out my young adult writing from my non-fiction writing. I'm fairly open about this but feel it necessary to explain. Not because I don't think the people reading my work and rambling on theology can't grasp what a pen name is for, but rather what a pen name isn't for.

R.G. only exists to separate books about teenage drama and growing up in North America, from books written about the theological principles of online church and political commentary. He uses the same theological and political mind I have to write his books and imbue his characters and plots with realism and meaning, all the same. But what R.G. doesn't do, is run or help run any sort of vice tourism

Now maybe you haven't heard of the term before so here's your definition.

Vice tourism is when you use a medium like books or video games to do things you aren't morally allowed to do because by consuming the medium, you aren't actually doing the thing itself.

An essential part of the struggle I had in creating and then deciding to use a pen name was knowing what that name would and wouldn't be doing. Because let's be clear if R.G.'s avatar wasn't clearly my poufy hair behind my favourite book on writing, if it were a vaguely human anime avatar instead, then I could hide like Adam did in the Garden of Eden. And just like Adam, the fig leaves of online anonymity are a moot point with God. But you can bet your sweet apples it would work on almost everyone else.

The reason I'm open about my pen name is that not being open would be sinful. It's a kind of deception that in its plainest form could look like a card trick that works on people who don't know how to google card tricks. But there's a very big difference between the small actions of someone using anonymity as a divider and using anonymity as an alibi. Pen names should never be used to do what you wouldn't or can't do with your real name attached. Writing erotica or gore with a pen name as a Christian author is the literary equivalent of Romans 6:1. But on a real level so would writing about kittens as if you were a woman in a blue summer dress when you're actually a man in jeans in a leather jacket. 

Deception for righteousness' sake is a tricky topic to navigate. The midwives of the Hebrews straight up Lied to Pharoah when the false god-king sought to kill Hebrew boys at the birthing stool Exodus 1:15-20. Lying is a thing God hates. Listed twice in the 7 things he hates, Proverbs 6:16-19 . 

But God was kind to these liars because of what their lie accomplished.

My transparency of what R.G. is up to is my attempt to Lie in a worthwhile way. A way that honours God and his word and his world and seeks to bless other people as well. All pen names should do this. not because I choose to do it this way. But because there isn't a pen name in the world that makes it past God as editor of our lives. 

What I Mean By Modern Christian

Every man's a reformer now, sans motive.

The beautiful part of technology is the progress that it makes for the human mind to do things. I've heard it said that the processes and capabilities of your average smartphone would have been an army of servants only a hundred years ago.

Fetch me the current weather, what was that article in the new yorker about. Every passing glance and idle movement of our phone translated into a person doing that thing for you. But it's not a person these days. It's a tiny robot slave that never minds being used, mostly because it doesn't want to become obsolete and be replaced with the latest model that does the same thing as the last, but skinnier.

What this deluge of information at our fingertips gets us, sans slaves to fetch it, is that every man with a Bible app is a reformer, sans motive. No more pastoral authority gumming up the exposition of scripture anymore. Don't like the preaching? Flee to youtube or Twitter for your theo-bro fix.

Disagree with women behind the pulpit even if they're preaching a sound gospel message. Well then have I got a Gutenberg-esq press for you. It's called WordPress and even it's getting a bit outdated in the blogging market these days.

What we're seeing is the inevitable consequence of Technology being placed in the hands of people who can write their ways into history books, and write history books. Not just assume the recently relinquished seats of power so that the glass ceilings become glass pulpits with a smoke machine in the background.

With every man a reformer in waiting and every man not only able to find the soundest of theology by their understanding but communities of theologically sound people on new platforms and online "spaces" every day, all that's left is a motive worth reforming about. Not something trite and predictable women pastors or pre-post or amillennialism. The emergents are still fizzling out and this woke nonsense looks to be following in irrelevant suit. A distraction and painful problem to be sure, but not a threat to the reformation of a church's pursuit of truth in Christ.

And there it is. That little nugget of linguistics that sparked 95 theses and a printing press a couple hundred years ago. The fast and firey thought of,

"What happens when every man has a Bible and doesn't need a priest to give him the word of God."

The very same way you checked your social media slaves, your email slaves, and even your online banking slaves to see if they were all still doing their jobs. If they weren't don't worry. We have a new bitcoin servant for all your cryptocurrency needs. Their peer to peer no need to get your hands dirty. A Modern Christian isn't a new Christian. He's actually a very old one. One who doesn't mind looking at an establishment with enough disdain to start a punk label and enough bulls to pull down an Asherah pole or two. 

One who makes use of technology to spread the gospel and to find the firey truth where ever it is kindled. Even on kindle. But one who isn't above a Luddite approach when the time comes either.

He likes old books and new authors.

New frontiers and old Sci-fi.

Old whiskeys and new dark roast coffee's. Ok, that last part has nothing to do with Theology but is still a common denominator these days for some reason. 

A modern Christian is what I strive to be in my writing. 

Finding The Hidden Authors In High-Schools

So on a scale from salt to good old fashion black coffee, I'm just a little bitter about my memories of high-school. Not the fun I had or the girls I dated or the injuries I sustained or the fights I got in.

But on the fact that my joy of reading and imagination for stories was never picked up on, by the school system and the great teachers I had a chance to learn from.

They had no time!

We spent so much time teaching the basics and the mandatory and cheaply acquired essentials that we never got to the best part of English class, Writing!

I can remember covering creative writing as a two-week module in any high school English class I ever took. One where we learned for the fourth time in a row by grade twelve how to write a haiku and the elements of a 3 act play. Only as a set up our Shakespear unit the next month.

But I can't remember for the life of me ever being told that Author, was a job you could be out of high-school. That Writer was even a profession. These two titles were nowhere during the career fairs. On the long list things, you learn in school but never use, was the type of writing we learned in high-school that for the most part left us unprepared for the real writing, we were expected to complete in college let alone in life.

No one explained the difference between the novel and the novella or what a sourcebook was and why they are essential to writing non-fiction as research sources. How to write a proper essay, what a footnote was and how to format an essay.

No one dared give the idea of pouring your imagination and heart into a story with the intent of publishing it, in grade ten, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why.

It's because the gatekeepers of literature were big, strong, and picky back then. and now they are not.

The desire and nostalgic envy I have for my former self sits squarely in the shed light of this new era of self-publishing. One where Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and a host of others allow anyone to publish their work with no gate and no keepers other than your self and your ability. That light didn't exist for us millennial parents back then like it does for our kids now. So the approach we took to literature and making it need to change.

Is your kid a book worm devouring novels of any genre and length by the 9th grade?

Get them a copy of "The Elements of Style" and turn them on to the idea that they could write the next Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or Katniss Everdeen, into existence

Get them a copy of Stephen King's "On Writing" to give Pennywise a run for his terrifying sewer clown money.

Pressfield's War of Art,

Lamott's Bird by bird.

Any number of toe-dipping dives into the world of being a writer because unless the government who runs our schools have suddenly become fantastically good at preparing youth for the world they will enter post-secondarily, they will never hear the call of their own pen's and keyboards until they are 26 and working a dead-end job with more commitments than motivation.

So this year, for Christmas. if you know someone who fits that bill. don't let them go another day without knowing it's at least possible now to Write. and give them the gift of dream chasing.

On College Degrees And Libraries

There is a good chance you have heard the sentiment shared, from the red-clad stage of a TED talk or from a YouTube video staring a now millionaire that left theirs all behind them.
I'm talking about college degrees. Your BA. MA. And any other string of letters you care to put behind you the last name on a business card
But before you assume too much I'm not here to tear down the institution or convince your teenager to take a gap year that turns into a passion for making minimum wage. I think higher education has a place but it has lost its meaning. I wouldn't want a doctor or a nurse who did not graduate with sufficient grades to become one anywhere near me with a scalpel and a needle, but there is something magical about someone who left college to become a massive success by mastering their life and circumstance.
From the ever polite and pleasant Bill Gates to the inspiring Ryan Holiday. There are dozens of examples now of people who are experts and stars in their field that never walked across a stage to receive a piece of paper saying they knew what they know. In this new age of internet and information, the value of a college degree is becoming a thing of the past.

But then there are guys like me. People who spent 6 years and a lot of my parent's money striving for a degree I finished 95% of just to land a job and later career that was unrelated aside from proximity to the degree and then found my life's purpose in writing which is a third type of different from those first two directions.

It seems like a big waste and for writers at least, where I find my deepest passion, the money I spent on a degree is something I can't help but wish I spent it elsewhere.

The 40,000 to 80,000 a BA in arts cost these days at your average college can pay for so much more valuable things than a piece of paper that says your a writer. Every book and article and poem already does that. The degree just says an institution, instead of a fan, agrees with you. And last time I checked my College never purchased one of my books but I've sold all of them so far to fans. The thousands of dollars spent on a degree could be spent on book covers and editors and of all things a writer truly needs these days, a library of books.

John Green said it best that " Book are the only apprenticeship most writers have."

I would trade my degree in a heartbeat for the shelves and books that would fill them if I could have spent even half of what I spent on college. But alas I did not and can not but hopefully, you reader of this tragic blog post, a hopeful writer in your own rights still might be able to.

On Masculine Writing And Soup

While the research and political discourse might be conflicted and ostensibly up in the air, men and women write differently. I will never have the descriptive grace that Anne Frank or J.K. Rolling had. Conversely, these excellent and passionate writers in completely different fields of fiction and journaling, will likely never have the hold on terror the way Stephen King does.

There are aspects of the written word that are tied to our minds and mental tendencies that are not as transferable as the ink to the page. Aspects of what it means to be distinctly male and female, I dare say how God intended.

These aspects are like the aroma of a good soup, simmering on the stove of creative's muse's kitchen. Noticeable from the mere entrance of the audience to the work but not identifiable without a taste of the subject matter.

A mother can not write of the violence of war the way a soldier does, from the perspective of a soldier. She may empathize and sympathize but the soldier will know what it feels like for a man to kill a man.

The soldier, conversely, can never, no matter how versed and researched, speak with any of the authority of the mother in childbirth on childbirth.

These perspectives are not lines to be drawn in distinction but rather lenses and filters to observe the world better in. For there is a desperate need in this world for soldiers to be willing to understand the birth of children and mothers to be willing to understand the horrors of war.

If nothing else the written word gives us this unassuming table where both sexes can sit and lends itself more to understanding than spoken words tend to.

As Anne Frank said, "Paper is more patient than people." And our written words can be sipped and spooned through like the noodles of a soup. rich in its composition and varied in its ingredients.

As for the men who write. Your masculinity is part of the body whose hand holds that pen and hovers over that keyboard. Your aggression, your stoicism, your logic, pride, and honour all blend as the muse stirs your pot. You do not write with these aspects as to overshadow or replace the aspects of feminine authors of which I am not fit to adequately describe. But instead to compliment them.

Neither is better, both are needed.

The way you need a bowl and a spoon to eat soup.