#70 Navigating the Future: The Christian Response to Artificial Intelligence
The discourse with our esteemed guest, Pastor Jeremy Leong of Maranatha Grace Church in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, critically examines the profound implications of artificial intelligence (AI) within the contemporary Christian context. We delve into the pressing query of how Christians ought to respond to the rapidly evolving landscape of technology and its potential ethical dilemmas. Are we to embrace this innovation, dismiss it outright, or contemplate its possible redemption? Pastor Leong elucidates the necessity of discernment as we navigate these complex issues, underscoring the importance of a biblically grounded perspective in an age where technology increasingly shapes our lives. Together, we reflect on the profound responsibility of the church to engage thoughtfully with these advancements while remaining anchored in the enduring truths of Scripture.
Takeaways:
- In an era of rapidly advancing technology, we must critically examine how it impacts our lives and faith.
- Christians are called to navigate the complexities of artificial intelligence with a biblical perspective and discernment.
- The use of AI in our lives should not replace our reliance on God and the importance of waiting on Him during challenging times.
- As pastors, we must not outsource the responsibility of shepherding our congregations to technology, but instead engage deeply with the Word and with our communities.
Transcript
Are we getting closer and closer to finding ourselves living in Star wars, the Terminator or the Matrix world with technology seemingly moving faster than a New York minute?
Speaker A:How should Christians biblically respond to artificial intelligence?
Speaker A:Should we receive it, reject it, or perhaps, is there a way to redeem it?
Speaker A:Join us as we take this time to stop and think about it.
Speaker B:Hello?
Speaker A:Hello?
Speaker A:Anybody home?
Speaker A:I don't think.
Speaker A:McFly.
Speaker A:Think.
Speaker A:I'm thinking.
Speaker B:I'm thinking.
Speaker A:What were you thinking?
Speaker A:I'm trying to think.
Speaker A:But nothing happens.
Speaker A:Didn't say anything.
Speaker A:Now just think about it.
Speaker A:You're listening to Stuck and Think About It, a podcast for the Christian Thinker.
Speaker A:In a day when sound biblical preaching has been replaced by man centered entertainment and the church has become increasingly anti intellectual, this podcast will encourage believers to think biblically and theologically.
Speaker A:So please join me as we get ready to stop and think about it.
Speaker A:Greetings, friends and foes, saints and sinners.
Speaker A:Welcome to episode 69 of the Stop and Think about it podcast.
Speaker A:I am your host, Phil Sessa, AKA the Bronx Expositor, and I have with me a first time guest, Pastor Jeremiah Long.
Speaker A:Am I saying that right, Leong?
Speaker B:Yeah, okay.
Speaker A:I've never heard that last name.
Speaker A:Where, where is that from?
Speaker B:It is Chinese.
Speaker A:Chinese.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, very good.
Speaker A:So, so are you.
Speaker A:You're part Chinese and part something else or.
Speaker B:Yeah, yes, I'm half Chinese.
Speaker B:My dad was born and raised in Hong Kong.
Speaker B:Well, born in Burma.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And then raised in Hong Kong before coming over here and.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, 18 years old.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Okay, so you're Chinese and.
Speaker A:Or that's it.
Speaker B:About as wide as you could get.
Speaker A:All right, gotcha.
Speaker A:All right, well, very good.
Speaker A:Well, greetings and welcome to being on our podcast.
Speaker A:Stop and Think about It for the first time.
Speaker A:Introduce yourself and your ministry to our listeners.
Speaker A:Tell us about your church, anything that you would have us know about your ministry.
Speaker B:Yeah, so I'm a born and ra.
Speaker B:I'm a New England guy, born and raised in Maine.
Speaker B:Actually most of my family.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah, most of my family is from the Boston area, so kind of Boston suburbs.
Speaker B:So I'm a hardcore Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, Celtics fan.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I'm enjoying this year, especially when.
Speaker B:When expectations for the Celtics have never been lower and expectations for the Knicks have never been higher and yet we finished above them.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:So yeah, so then I went to school, studied business in New York and then I moved down to dc, took a job where I was working to move into full time ministry sooner rather than later.
Speaker B:But I ended up I had about a 10 year career in tech where I worked for Amazon for five of those years and then I worked for another startup company for the other four or so and then was finally able to.
Speaker B:I made the switch over.
Speaker B:I was a lay elder for a lot of that time and then I switched over to.
Speaker B:I kind of had two careers going at the same time, but had been anticipating moving into full time ministry sooner rather than later.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:Anyway, so during my time down in dc, I went with one of the lay elders at my local church down there in Capitol Hill and then planted a church just outside of D.C. on the Maryland side in Bethesda or just north of Bethesda.
Speaker B:And then after doing that for a number of years, started talking with a few more churches.
Speaker B:Now my family is still up here in the Northeast.
Speaker B:My wife's family is actually in Queens.
Speaker B:So we're now much closer to all of our family for the most part.
Speaker B:So I now pastor Maranatha Grace Church in New Jersey.
Speaker B:So in Bergen County, New Jersey, we are just like, we're right on the Fort Lee, Englewood Cliffs border.
Speaker B:So if you cross the George Washington Bridge leaving Manhattan, it's going to kind of dump you exactly where we are.
Speaker B:So I've been there for over two years now and it's been wonderful.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It really has and I'm very thankful.
Speaker B:So that's a, I guess in a. Yeah, Amen.
Speaker A:And what's, what's the, the nature of your ministry?
Speaker A:You're an expository preacher.
Speaker A:It's, it's, you have several pastors.
Speaker A:It's just you.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So I'm, yeah, so I'm the lead pastor.
Speaker B:We have two other pastors, we have a pastoral assistant who kind of runs our youth and also does a lot of like adult education, things like that.
Speaker B:We, right now we're getting about 250 to 3 on a Sunday.
Speaker B:We're very diverse church.
Speaker B:We're probably about, I don't know exactly, but maybe 30% Korean, 30% Chinese, 20% Latino and then whatever the leftover is, everything else.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, 20% left.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:And yeah, expositional preaching through and through.
Speaker B:I was actually very much.
Speaker B:What kind of set me on the trajectory towards ministry was I studied in England for a year in my undergrad when I was finishing out, and I ended up at a church there called Saint Helens Bishops Gate.
Speaker B:And so if you know anyone like Dick Lucas, William Taylor, if you've heard of the Simeon Trust.
Speaker A:Simeon Trust, yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it's all coming out of kind of like the Ministry of St. Helens Proclamation Trust, Cornhill training course, which is all about expositional teaching, expository preaching.
Speaker B:And so I came out of that.
Speaker B:But one of my big weaknesses was that the guy who was discipling me there, who is an Anglican, which I am not, he saw one of the fundamental weaknesses in me as being my understanding of the importance of the local church and the Christian life.
Speaker B:And so he was like, hey, when I had gotten my offer from Amazon and Amazon was asking me, where are we gonna.
Speaker B:Where do you want us to send you?
Speaker B:They gave me a bunch of options.
Speaker B:And he was like, we gotta get you to D.C. because we need you to end up at Capitol Hill to understand the church.
Speaker B:And so that's.
Speaker B:That's what happened.
Speaker B:And yeah.
Speaker A:So an Anglican guy sent you to a Baptist church.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:All right, that works.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I really love the simian trust stuff.
Speaker A:I kind of have my own version of what I do.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Like that at our church, PowerPoint, teaching on hermeneutics.
Speaker A:And then break out in the small groups.
Speaker A:Do the thing you just learned.
Speaker A:Share back time with each group.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I love that model.
Speaker B:So, yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Praise God.
Speaker A:Praise God.
Speaker A:Well, before we jump in to all of the tens and tens of listeners who tune into our podcast, we're hosting our third annual contending conference at Grace Baptist Church, Saturday, May 2, and the new York City Invasion, which is an evangelism outreach with like minded biblical churches who will join hands and share the gospel together.
Speaker A:And if you are interested in that, I will tell you more about that at the end of our episode.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:All right, so we're diving into this issue of artificial intelligence.
Speaker A:What is it?
Speaker A:What is it?
Speaker A:Artificial intelligence?
Speaker A:And what is this technology at its root?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker B:You'll get a bunch of different answers from different people.
Speaker B:Some people will equate artificial intelligence with Steven Spielberg films.
Speaker B:Some people will equate it with conversational interfaces, which is the common way today.
Speaker B:Chatbots, like chat, GPT Club, things like that.
Speaker B:Or you could go to.
Speaker B:There's a bunch of different ways you could go.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But it's basically.
Speaker B:It's the natural result of the Internet in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:It's kind of the Internet real realized.
Speaker B:It's basically where massive amounts of information on the Internet got married to massive computing power while also having decades and decades of research.
Speaker B:And so those kind of three things have Come together almost like a Marvel movie to create.
Speaker B:Now, this thing that we call artificial.
Speaker A:Intellect, this is a new Avenger.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker B:The Ultron.
Speaker B:The Ultron.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, the Ultron.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Basically it's a way of taking massive amounts of data and predicting right responses that will then serve the purpose of the end user.
Speaker B:And so it's just taking massive amounts of data and identifying patterns and making predictive.
Speaker B:Yeah, just making predictions based on those patterns.
Speaker A:Sure, sure, yeah.
Speaker A:So how did this start and get rolled out that people became aware of it and started jumping on it?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Like I said, it's been going on like this didn't just come out of nowhere.
Speaker B:It has been.
Speaker B:It has very much been.
Speaker B:There's been decades of decades, decades and decades of research on it.
Speaker B:And what really start in.
Speaker B:And it's kind of.
Speaker B:You will have interacted with it.
Speaker B:Most people have interacted it in one form or fashion or another, even like a long time, like even several years ago.
Speaker B:But you might not have recognized it as artificial intelligence because it hadn't quite broken into the mainstream yet.
Speaker B:And I would say the big event that really brought it out into the light in the mainstream is probably ChatGPT.
Speaker B: the early adopters were like: Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But I feel like it's real, kind of like almost like Facebook.
Speaker B: ping on board in like the mid: Speaker B:And so I feel like that's where we're at right now with AI is.
Speaker B: you had the early adopters in: Speaker A:Gotcha.
Speaker A: the Internet came out in like: Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:Is that right?
Speaker B:I don't, I don't even.
Speaker B:Your guess is.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was around way before it actually went mainstream.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that, that's, that's the, the date that I'm recalling.
Speaker A:I can't remember the source of that date.
Speaker A:Yeah, but.
Speaker A: ed rolling around in like the: Speaker A:AI.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, I would even say earlier.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I, I Might even say a little bit before that.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's, it's bit like I said, it's like the natural evolution, the natural result of the Internet and this much information that is available.
Speaker B:And so from the very beginning of the Internet, like information was, was starting to be stored outside of pieces of paper and, and notebooks.
Speaker B:So yeah.
Speaker A:Now what led you to check it out?
Speaker A:Like what was your initial experience when you were first were like, hey, yeah, here it is, or did you stumble upon it?
Speaker A:Did you search for it?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean even in my corporate tech work, there's a lot of talk, a lot of chatter, a lot of phenomena around like the idea of automation and machine learning.
Speaker B: ech work in, I left Amazon in: Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And I worked in kind of learning and development, talent management, operations, operations leadership training, things like that.
Speaker B:And so there was a lot around, okay, how do we actually automate the learning practices?
Speaker B:So one of the challenges we faced at Amazon was we were scaling so fast that UPS and FedEx started rejecting packages because they were just like, hey, this is just too much, we can't take any more.
Speaker B:And so Amazon either had to lower their price or raise their prices or sell less things or create their own shipping company.
Speaker B:And so they created their own shipping company, obviously, which is what you see now is the blue vans and the Amazon launches, things like that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so part of having to start that was we had to scale so fast.
Speaker B:And in having to scale so fast, we had to hire and train people to learn how to run and manage an operation.
Speaker B:And they had to learn that very fast as well.
Speaker B:And so just a lot of conversations around, okay, how do we get this from a time of hire to a time of proficiency as fast as we possibly can?
Speaker B:And a lot of that had to do with, with automated routines around their training, their training, tracking process.
Speaker B:So that was kind of the beginning stages of it.
Speaker B:But, but you know, even there we were still creating, creating workbooks and a lot of manual labor and things like that.
Speaker B:But that was really where I started having a lot of conversations around automation and machine learning.
Speaker B:Amazon started doing robotics called Kiva at the time.
Speaker B:And then right about the time I was leaving my last job, the startup, that was when these conversational interfaces started to become more popularized and basically are like, I feel like right as I used to care a lot about people's writing and writing well, and I used to be really hard on my team when their sentences were just like, not that of a professional, but looked like it was coming out of like middle school.
Speaker B:And I remember at the time ChatGPT wasn't, it was right on the precipice, but it hadn't quite taken over because they were not yet plugging their emails in and write ups and white papers into the chatbots yet to just copy paste and send it out.
Speaker B:So it was basically right as I left and then I'm in ministry and then I was starting to hear about it in circles in ministry around end of 23, beginning of 24, as I was making that transition.
Speaker B:And so my first stop, I want to say was chat GPT.
Speaker B:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So a little tongue in cheek.
Speaker A:So UPS and FedEx combined their complaints, they became fed up and you had to get your own.
Speaker A:You've heard that before, I'm sure.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And see, you had to get your own shipping thing.
Speaker A:Are you training these people in, in all of these things, as with the manual writing and all of that from, from your background?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And were you, were you in personal connection with Jeff Bezos and everything?
Speaker B:I was not.
Speaker B:I wasn't, I wasn't significant enough yet.
Speaker A:Okay, all right.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So, so no, but yeah, it was really like when a company like Amazon, everything is around scale and speed and you just got to like, like there is delay.
Speaker B:Delays are unacceptable.
Speaker B:I mean, you know that as a consumer, everyone knows that as a shopper, like, like you pay for two day prime or even one day and your thing comes three, four or five days late.
Speaker B:Like, like delays are just unacceptable.
Speaker B:And so everything was about speed, speed, speed.
Speaker B:And I, obviously one of its best qualities is to provide that kind of speed and efficiency.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah, right, right.
Speaker A:And that, that kind of goes along with the human nature.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Our fallen nature.
Speaker A:I want it and I want it now.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:And so they want to feed into, I guess you can sort of.
Speaker A:Would you say that's part of our sin nature?
Speaker A:I want it and I want it now.
Speaker A:I don't want to wait for it.
Speaker A:And, and so we're going to deliver that, you know, I mean, so slide over, Burger King.
Speaker A:Have it your way now.
Speaker A:It's have it your way and, and have it, you know, almost on your time.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I, Carl Truman wrote a wonderful book on, it's called the The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
Speaker B:And it basically is a polemic on, or just it gives a lot of really good historical information on this wave of what we'd call expressive individualism, where human beings, you know, we've always sought to make gods unto ourselves.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:But there is a case to be made that we live in a day and age right now where it actually is particularly unique because one of the natural results of technology is it allows us to customize our life in our world in a way that makes us feel like we have much more power and much more autonomy and much more control than we actually have.
Speaker B:So in previous generations, where we were submitted to nature, where we were submitted to timelines, we were submitted to business hours, we were submitted to agricultural practices based on the seasons and things like, like, yeah, nowadays we, technology has allowed us to actually advance past those things and cut corners and create shortcuts and all those things.
Speaker B:So we like, like last summer it was really hot and we, we got a minivan a few years ago where the vents were, were now in a place where my 3 year old son was getting really hot in the car and the AC just wasn't hitting him.
Speaker B:So I was like, oh yeah, what do I do to solve this problem?
Speaker B:I go to Amazon, I figured, and I just get a little mini fan that I was able to anchor in the backseat of the car that was able to just go right.
Speaker B:And my son's good.
Speaker B:Like, it's like in an instant it's at my door the next day.
Speaker B:Instead of realizing that, oh, I'm not actually not a God in control of customizing my life to every possible way that I possibly can.
Speaker B:I think what's happened is there's a lot of good uses of technology, but I think technology has also deceived us into thinking we are, we are actually a little bit more powerful and significant than just creatures.
Speaker B:So yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So does, does it work on like, is the right term algorithm or is it a language?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean there's so artificial intelligence isn't just, it's not like one technology.
Speaker B:There are different, there are different models, there are different.
Speaker B:Like, like when people refer to algorithms, they're usually just talking about those predictive patterns I'm talking about.
Speaker B:So, so if you're using social media, you start seeing things that you're like, wait a second, how did they know that I was looking for a new grill or things like that?
Speaker B:It's predictive technologies.
Speaker B:It's all like, I mean, there's so many different directions, but everything has data attached to it.
Speaker B:Every behavior has data attached to it.
Speaker B:And so you in one sense, when it comes to these mass marketing Advertising, social media agencies, you are just a subset of different data points that create you, almost like your DNA.
Speaker B:And what AI helps with is it basically will take mass amounts of information of you and all of your data points.
Speaker B:If you're a Mets fan, but you buy tickets to go to the games here, but you like to grill on Fridays and all this, it's basically just compiling all of that to then make predictions on who Phil is and what Phil is looking for and how we can, we can sell to Phil and, and, and, or help shape Phil's thinking, stuff like that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Would you say that, that the different chat GBT you have, Gemini, are those.
Speaker A:They're not called search engines.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:They're no different.
Speaker A:What's the term that you would use?
Speaker A:Languages or.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, I would call them conversational interfaces.
Speaker A:Conversation interfaces, yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, so.
Speaker B:So it very much is like a ch.
Speaker B:Honestly, I get a little bit bashful and embarrassed when I talk about how advanced things like ChatGPT and Gemini and cloud things are, because in one sense it is pretty impressive, but in another sense it really is, it's just chatbots.
Speaker B: eir friends back in the early: Speaker B:And that was revolutionary.
Speaker B:I think it's the same thing with these conversational interfaces is this really is just the beginning.
Speaker B:And the way AI works specifically is by it just takes in mass information and it grows and it develops and it evolves and so on and so forth.
Speaker B:And so it actually is, not only are we at just the beginning, but it's already advanced in such a short amount of time and that advancing that evolution, that window is only going to get smaller and smaller and smaller until it gets better and better and better.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, so these conversational interfaces are the dominant form of how people are interacting with this thing.
Speaker B:Oh.
Speaker B:But even in a year's time, things are going to look very different and going to be that much more developed than even the things that we're hearing about now.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So we live in a world where many image bearers of God are confused as to what another image bearer is.
Speaker A:So we had the holocaust.
Speaker A:They thought, you know, these people are less than people.
Speaker A:We had slavery, we have abortion.
Speaker A:You know, if you could dehumanize, we have human trafficking, a continuation of slavery.
Speaker A:So it's a.
Speaker A:This is a tool made by image bearers.
Speaker A:But it almost seems like people are treating the tool as an image bearer.
Speaker A:Why why are people doing that?
Speaker B:Yeah, Why are people doing that?
Speaker B:I think on the surface, because it is it.
Speaker B:Because it is advancing so fast and it is so much more advanced from what we are used to.
Speaker B:Even in recent years, there's this sophistication to the way that it communicates that in many ways actually does a better job than human beings, for example, in sentence structure or in helping me problem solve this XYZ problem or whatever it might be.
Speaker B:And so I think human beings, I mean, there's so many doctrinal directions we could go, but I think, you know, even fear of man, for example, human beings want to be seen as smart.
Speaker B:They want.
Speaker B:We can just take this one example.
Speaker B:Human beings want to be seen and perceived as smart.
Speaker B:We want to communicate well and we want people to think highly of us and things like that.
Speaker B:And so we begin to actually think that these interfaces do a better job than any than I could do or than any human being could do.
Speaker B:And so we just naturally will run to these things that can produce things better than we as image bearers can do.
Speaker B:And, or even one of the most common use cases of it right now is for counseling and therapy.
Speaker B:And so if you go to one of your friends or your neighbors and you share with them a problem that you're having.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You know, that friend, that neighbor might be able to give you advice or wisdom based on their experience and things like that.
Speaker B:But you got to remember, these interfaces, their responsibility, their measure of success, is that they give you the answer that you're looking for, that you're two thumbs up on.
Speaker B:And so it's able to communicate in a way that can even problem solve human problems or behavior that makes the recipient of that communication feel that much more comforted than they do with other human beings.
Speaker B:And so before you know it, we start to confuse it, to think that there's actually like a.
Speaker B:There's more to it than just an index of information and predictive patterns.
Speaker A:Yeah, it almost sounds a little bit like when we had.
Speaker A:What was it?
Speaker A:It was a King Ahab and Malik.
Speaker A:Was it Malika and Amica.
Speaker A:And King Ahab said, I. I hate you because you never tell me what I want to hear.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And the prophets of BAAL told them everything he wanted to hear.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:So, okay, okay, so now what's the relationship between AI and morality and, and like surrounding, you know, God's law being the standard?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think the first thing is that AI has no morality.
Speaker B:It is like it is just a collection of information.
Speaker B:And with AI, the standard is the end user.
Speaker B:And so you can at the end user, I mean you and me, whoever's using it, might there be some guardrails that through legislation they have to put up or things like that?
Speaker B:Potentially, eventually.
Speaker B:But even that legislation you might be able to say in one form or another might, may or may not be grounded in reflections of God's law and what it means to be created in the image of God.
Speaker B:Even things like that, living in a western nation that was built on a lot of those foundations.
Speaker B:But where as an overarching idea where human beings are that standard of morality, well then the morality of an AI or a chatbot is going to just be to.
Speaker B:Communicate in a way that will gain the approval of the user and that makes the system it's just another data point for the system to say I did a good.
Speaker B:That was right.
Speaker B:And so it feeds in to the programming to then for so and so whoever is using it, like it's just another data point that recognizes, oh, there's a pattern there, oh maybe that I'm going to start communicating in this way to the next person that asked me.
Speaker B:And obviously that's a whole other index of information.
Speaker B:But yeah, yeah, so, so, so the, the big difference is the standard of morality in scripture and in rea.
Speaker B:In.
Speaker B:In the standard of morality in scripture and in reality is God.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:The standard of morality in artificial intelligence is in one sense it's programmers, it's corporations, but in another sense is us as the user.
Speaker B:So, so yeah.
Speaker A:So I have a question.
Speaker A:So I heard about a Florida mother suing a tech company over an AI chat box.
Speaker A:A chatbot that's.
Speaker A:That said that that pushed her son to commit suicide.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't know if you're familiar with that.
Speaker B:I'm not, not the specific.
Speaker B:I've heard about it.
Speaker B:I've not actually, I've not looked at.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so like, I mean, let's say that it was Gemini.
Speaker A:I mean who's.
Speaker A:Is there any responsibility from, you know, concerning the programmers that this kid went and offed himself as an image bearer of God and yet this thing was programmed by other image bearers of God.
Speaker A:And again, I don't, you know, there's all this interfacing going on, but I, I don't know to what respect.
Speaker A:You know, anybody who created Gemini, let's say, is responsible in any way for giving that.
Speaker A:You mentioned before council.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I think I read somewhere recently where 20 of current gen Z or Gen Alpha in boys and girls are using these things for, for counseling on a daily basis.
Speaker B:And that 20, that's a few months old.
Speaker B:So that 20 is probably more 30% at least now.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think again, one of the, one of the unique things about artificial intelligence is its speed.
Speaker B:It's, it's a, it's a snowballing effect.
Speaker B:So in the same way, you know, I feel like, I feel like Congress and our government is always usually behind on.
Speaker B:So even like they're just now getting to like, how are we going to regulate cryptocurrency?
Speaker B:And Right, like, like so, so, so.
Speaker B:And then there's obviously so much lobbying involved that, that like, and these are Mega Corp.
Speaker B:There is, there are, there's trillions of dollars at stake in this industry of artificial intelligence and technology.
Speaker B:So there's not going to be a resolution anytime soon when it comes to clear accountability.
Speaker B: ink about social media in the: Speaker B:There's not much clarity on who's actually responsible there either.
Speaker B:And that's a good 10, 15 years old now.
Speaker B:And so I think it very much does kind of feel like the wild west right now.
Speaker B:And as AI evolves faster and faster and there's no kind of, it's all kind of every man for himself and figuring out how we want to use it, like this is why it's so important for the church to just think so carefully about.
Speaker B:And in the same way the Internet kind of caught the church by storm in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:And in the same way social media kind of caught the church by storm in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:My fear is artificial intelligence has a, a strong potential to do the same thing.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I, well, sort of like when you mentioned the government, I kind of feel like a lot of times, unfortunately, the church is playing catch up too.
Speaker A:Like stuff happens.
Speaker A:You know, we saw this stuff with COVID and then church, you know, then some people in the church, like, wait a minute, we don't have to shut the church down.
Speaker A:The government doesn't have jurisdiction over the church.
Speaker A:And then I, I listened to some of your, your, your message that you did to the pastors.
Speaker A:And, and this was unique.
Speaker A:And I said, wow.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think he's got.
Speaker A:All your points were great, but this one particularly caught me that it seems like this is almost like a catechism.
Speaker A:I, I think you, you mentioned that.
Speaker A:And for those of you that don't know what a catechism is.
Speaker A:It's like learning theology through a Q A format.
Speaker A:When we use Keisha's catechism, a Reformed Baptist catechism, so it asks, what are the three offices of Christ our Redeemer?
Speaker A:And then there would be the answer, you know, that he is prophet, priest and king.
Speaker A:And so it seems like they're using this as a catechism.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, I. Yeah, there are so many who, like, AI is very confident.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So catechism, creeds, whatever.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like confession.
Speaker B:They're very confident of it for good reason, you know, But AI is likewise very confident in how it says things and communicates things.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I mean, who is ever going to take something at face value when it's like, I think it could be this, but you be the best judge, you know, so it.
Speaker B:It is naturally going to communicate very confidently.
Speaker B:And the problem with that is when it communicates very confidently, you just have many folks who are just taking everything it says as gospel, whether that is.
Speaker B:Whether that is, you know, modern politics, whether that is psychotherapy, methodologies or techniques, or whether that's even theological resources or.
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker B:Or commentary on biblical storylines and things like that.
Speaker B:It says things in such a way where people.
Speaker B:People might ask a question to AI that they ideally should be asking their pastors or their disciplers or their family or their small group.
Speaker B:Like, people who.
Speaker B:Who not just only care about them, but they're made in the image of God and they have the Holy Spirit in them.
Speaker B:They're going to these.
Speaker B:These chatbots, and these chatbots will just.
Speaker B:Will feed them information very confidently in this kind of, if you want to call it like a catechizing structure.
Speaker B:And then people will take it at face value and just like.
Speaker B:Like, I can't tell you how many folks I feel like, have deconstructed as a direct result of their interactions with these things.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So I.
Speaker A:So I'm a pastor at Grace Baptist Church.
Speaker A:I believe you met.
Speaker A:You may have met Pastor Peter at the pastor's gathering.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So we passed to the church together with another brother.
Speaker A:And I'm.
Speaker A:So I guess you say I'm bivocational.
Speaker A:So I work in New York City public school system.
Speaker A:So I'm in education.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So how do you think that this is affecting educators?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And it doesn't have to be narrowed down to, you know, public, public school educators, but just in general, because Christian schools, private schools.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, A lot of ways.
Speaker B:One of the, I think, unique opportunities I feel like the church has as a Whole is.
Speaker B:And even just every Christian has.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker B:In the age of artificial intelligence, it's becoming increasingly difficult to actually decipher what is real and what is not.
Speaker B:And I think in any realm, but I mean, like education, for example, like, what is real and what is generated, what is.
Speaker B:Did my.
Speaker B:Did Bobby, my student, actually write this coming from his own critical thinking, from his own training, from his own experiences, or did he just type some really lazy prompt with a bunch of typos into this system and into this software and tell it, can you give me something that will answer this question?
Speaker B:And then it just feeds out exactly what he needs to copy paste into whatever his assignment is?
Speaker B:And the challenge is one, like I said, this thing's moving so fast that I think a lot of teachers don't recognize it.
Speaker B:And then two, these kids don't actually learn because they're not internalizing and they're not actually.
Speaker B:They might be passing, but passing is not the same as learning.
Speaker B:And in the.
Speaker B:And in the church, in the same way, I'd say information is not the same as.
Speaker B:As.
Speaker B:As wisdom and.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I think as educators, like.
Speaker B:Like you're just constantly having to decipher between what's real and what's fake and what's.
Speaker B:What's true and what's false.
Speaker B:And, you know, AI, at least right now, you can tell once you work with it, once you spend time with it, you can tell its own patterns in how it writes in a way where.
Speaker B:In the same way, if I read an author of a series of a novel that over and over, and I can kind of tell how they write AI in one sense like that.
Speaker B:Like, there is fingerprints in its authorship that you can tell.
Speaker B:It uses a lot of antithesis.
Speaker B:Its punctuation is very predictable.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of ways you can tell, but if you've not spent time in and around it, you're just gonna.
Speaker B:You're just gonna take it in.
Speaker B:In as.
Speaker B:As real when it's actually fake.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, because I. I mean, I know some educators, they can just.
Speaker A:It could write the lesson plan for them.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:Putting it together yourself.
Speaker A:It'll write.
Speaker A:Write the lesson plan for you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:And I think you said something key here as well, when you're thinking about academic rigor.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:So, like, if somebody was working out, they have to physically do something to gain muscle.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:They can't just watch other people work out or just read a plan about working out.
Speaker A:They have to do something.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so do you think this is helping our students become smarter or stunting their, their intellectual growth?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:100.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:In this talk that I give, I usually will break it down into like, like four different, four different categories.
Speaker B:And one of the first one I usually like lead out in is in this talk I'm talking about the one I gave to the pastors.
Speaker B:The first one I do is just like three caught three to five cautions for every human being.
Speaker B:And I try to boil, I have five, but I try to boil it down to three.
Speaker B:The first one is just like diminished critical thinking and creativity skills.
Speaker B:Like with any muscle in the body, when you stop using something, you're going to weaken and lose that thing.
Speaker B:It's the same way with the brain.
Speaker B:So if you are not regularly thinking critically in intaking information and problem solving complexities and what it would like and being creative to find solutions and things like that and you almost feel like the regular AIs are, or AI, AI AI user will, will almost feel themselves regular.
Speaker B:Like they get hit with something and it's just like you take it and it's like plug it in to the system and it becomes like, it becomes this almost like automatic pathway.
Speaker B:And that's how the brain works.
Speaker B:That's what the brain does instead of like traditionally in past generations is like you take something in and you have to then internalize it and, and you work through it and then you're actually able to produce something.
Speaker B:Now it's like you take in and you hand it off.
Speaker B:It's like a quarterback that, that never actually, he just takes the ball and hands it off.
Speaker B:Takes the ball, hands it off like every single time.
Speaker A:Good illustration.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So, so critical thinking and creativity skills significantly diminished.
Speaker B:Problem solving skills are like like a way of the pat.
Speaker B:Like, like I just feel like I keep, keep meeting folks who are frequent AI users now.
Speaker B:If you were to actually disconnect them from the Internet and take their phone away and you were to give them things like okay, how would you work through this?
Speaker B:It's like there's like this, like this, this paralysis.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because we become, we naturally become over reliant on things that we're used to doing the work for us.
Speaker B:And so it's another sports example would be for you if like you have, you have a star point guard and a star power forward and the power forward is so dominant that the point guard is just so used to, just to give it to the power forward and he's just going to keep, he's Just going to dominate the games for us.
Speaker B:We're going to keep on winning.
Speaker B:And then he sprains an ankle.
Speaker B:Well, now the point guard's got to all of a sudden get resourceful and figure things out for himself.
Speaker B:And if he doesn't have that, that thing that he's become over reliant on, well, now he just is like, I don't know what to do with this anymore.
Speaker B:And I think for folks that just will naturally think that, like, oh, I'm into that, this thing is always going to be available to me.
Speaker B:Even if that is the case, you're diminishing your brain power and you're, you're diminishing your own, your own problem solving, critical thinking skills more and more and more willingly, which is a, like a, it's just a terrifying, terrifying thing to do so willingly.
Speaker A:You know, it just, just, just handing things off actually made me think of another sports illustration, a movie called Kicking and Screaming.
Speaker A:I don't know if you saw it, Ferrell.
Speaker B:A long time ago, they got it.
Speaker A:They got the whole team together and they said, what's our plan?
Speaker A:And they said, pass it to the Italians.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Italian kids and knew how to play, but yeah, I mean, there's no thinking.
Speaker A:So as an educator, I tell my students.
Speaker A:So I predominantly teach physical education, martial arts, self defense.
Speaker A:But every now and again they give me a health class.
Speaker A:And I tell them, many people tell you what to think.
Speaker A:I'm going to teach you how to think the difference between, you know, many people.
Speaker A:You have a lot of indoctrination.
Speaker A:I want to give you education.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I try to show them the differences from, you know, how.
Speaker A:All right, so you say you don't like this.
Speaker A:Why you say you don't like this politician.
Speaker A:Well, why?
Speaker A:What are the policies?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:See if they could back anything up.
Speaker A:And a lot of times they might say that they don't like something and, and they cannot give any rationale as to why they don't like things.
Speaker A:So I, when.
Speaker A:What was it?
Speaker A:I think when the World Series was going on, I said, you know, who do you think is going to win?
Speaker A:You know, why do you think that?
Speaker A:And then, and then when the elections were going on.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Who do you think you're going to win?
Speaker A:You know, who would you vote for?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, and many of them did not have a reason why they liked one candidate over the other.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:They couldn't get any policies or anything like that.
Speaker A:So, I mean, I think it's greatly affecting, like you said, critical thinking.
Speaker A:Skills and we need more of that, not less of that.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's.
Speaker B:That's exactly right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I feel.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:Go ahead.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:How do you think that, that, that the enemy plays into some of this?
Speaker B:Oh, man.
Speaker B:So many ways.
Speaker A:That's a, That's a huge thing.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Speaker B:I mean, I feel like even going back to Covid.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Covid had a way, especially when everything shut down, of basically reducing, especially the upcoming generations.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That reducing their capacity for adversity, for complex problem solving, for enduring hardship, things like that.
Speaker B:I feel like it just shrunk the capacity.
Speaker B:And then I think what AI is doing right on the back of.
Speaker B:Of that is shrinking that capacity even more by basically just giving an automated crutch for all of life's challenges instead of actually rising up to learn new skills and exercise wisdom and be a human being and take control and leadership and do all these things like exercise dominion as human beings are, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker B:And so in terms of the enemy at work, I think it.
Speaker B:I think it really is this erosion at the key doctrine and reality of the imago dei, the human beings made in the image of God.
Speaker B:And it's like this constant sanding down of what it means to truly be human and what it means to exercise judgment and exercise wisdom in the fear of God and to see fellow image bearers as image bearers because you yourself are an image bearer.
Speaker B:It just is like at the very core of human identity.
Speaker B:I, I do think when you start to confuse indexed information as pattern recognition and outputs as being somehow even close to comparable to a human being who has been created and designed in God's image.
Speaker B:Oh, man, that is like a win, win, win for the enemy.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So like, I'm thinking back, like in the garden, there was information given to Adam and Eve.
Speaker A:This is my.
Speaker A:This is the word of God.
Speaker A:And then, you know, new information come came along and then all of a sudden there was.
Speaker A:Did God really say.
Speaker A:And God didn't really say that.
Speaker A:And Eve, Eve added to God's word, don't touch it.
Speaker A:She subtracted from God's word and she twisted God's word.
Speaker A:And so once you get another source other than God's word and you don't know how to use God's word to filter what you're getting.
Speaker A:I mean, that, that thing could really be used in.
Speaker A:To deceive you.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And I'm trying to think of the.
Speaker A:I, I had, I had Another thought.
Speaker A:But yeah, yeah, yeah, for a quick second.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And even.
Speaker B:I know, I know one of the things a lot of, of, of, of even folks, you know, that I've, even in my own church will, will ask questions about and things like that.
Speaker B:It's like, well, what if I give a prompt that is like, give me an information that is consistent with like this theologian or this, this denominational, you know, confession or with this like, like things like that and that they think that that's putting up like guardrails as to the answer that they, they get back being like automatically reliable sometimes it's pretty impressive.
Speaker B:You know, Piper did this thing at the TGC where he, he.
Speaker B:I forget exactly.
Speaker B:Like he had them.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker B:So like sometimes it's like, like it can absolutely do this thing.
Speaker B:So I can't even like discount that.
Speaker B:But again, you've got to like, when you divorce mere information from being made in the image of God, having wisdom that comes as a result of the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom, when you divorce it from having the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Speaker B:These are keystone, foundational aspects of what it means to be not just a creature, but even a new creation through the gospel.
Speaker B:And so to just equate all of those things I just mentioned with what you can get through just an exchange of prompts in the Internet, even relationally, like, God has ordained that people have pastors over them, and God has ordained that people be in community with other believers.
Speaker B:And God has ordained on and on and on.
Speaker B:We could go, you know, and like, like, I feel like one phenomenon over the last 15 years or so has been, you know, in, in centuries past, it was just everyone had their pastor, and then the more secularized the world got, okay, well, now everyone still needs to be pastored, but they're being pastored by their therapist.
Speaker B:And then from that now, oh, well, maybe I don't want to actually go to my therapist's office.
Speaker B:Maybe I don't want to like log on and do all that.
Speaker B:Like, I'm just going to use this new form of technology now as my therapist, AKA pastor.
Speaker B:And it just is like we're replacing those things that God has given us for our good to actually just become really twisted mirrors of our own sinfulness.
Speaker A:So you just prompted my thought that I had before.
Speaker A:So I'm, I'm thinking of like a lot.
Speaker A:We watched all these sci fi movies, Star Wars, Star Trek and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:And it seems like what we see in the movie eventually comes out in reality.
Speaker A:So, you know, people were in Star wars, you know, they're, they're talking on, on through video, and then that comes out.
Speaker A:There was something of a, like a cell phone looking kind of a thing, and then that comes out.
Speaker A:It seems that a lot of the stuff, you know, that, that this whole thing with AI was sort of in the sci fi movies as well.
Speaker A:And it seems that all of this stuff is put out through Hollywood and what have you so that we would more readily accept those things as normative in our lives without question, because we've already been conditioned, maybe desensitized to an extent.
Speaker A:Can you speak to that for a minute?
Speaker B:Well, yeah, I just, you know, the Bible talks time and time again about not that we.
Speaker B:Not just that we are wicked and that we are evil, but it talks about how we are inventors of evil.
Speaker B:And we keep coming up with new ways to do evil and to sin against God and to sin against one another.
Speaker B:And so whether that's originating in Hollywood, whether that's originating in our own hearts, whether that's originating in horrible ideologies that are taught in our school systems, we are very much like, in one sense, there is nothing new under the sun.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:But in another sense, we are inventors of evil.
Speaker B:Like, you give us, you give us a new technology, you give us a new tool, you give us a new, like we're gonna.
Speaker B:Oh, we're gonna find a way to pervert that and corrupt it and, and use it against the living God and against fellow image bearers and against our own souls.
Speaker B:Because the human heart is still the human heart that needs to be redeemed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:And until that happens, we're just gonna keep doing.
Speaker B:We're just gonna keep on doing it or until the Lord Jesus returns again, we're just gonna keep on doing it, and we're just gonna keep on doing it until sin is, is choked out and killed for good.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I, I heard an illustration a long time ago if, if somebody was like building a railroad and they were a thief and they were, you know, sticking some of the spikes in their, you know, in, in their code or their pocket, and they would.
Speaker A:Stealing some of the, you know, the spikes to nail down the tracks.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:That person became more intelligent.
Speaker A:They'd steal the whole track.
Speaker B:Yeah, so.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Well, and I'm thinking of this, this thing in this verse in James 3 with the tongue, right?
Speaker A:The tongue can be used to praise God.
Speaker A:It can Also be used to curse men.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So is there, is there perhaps any redemptive quality with AI Because I mean, it could write this, you mentioned John Piper referencing.
Speaker A:It could write the prayer in the minds in, in the style of Charles Spurgeon, let's say, or whoever is your choice theologian.
Speaker A:Yeah, it could write the sermon for you.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:So, and, and, and you, you sort of referenced the difference between like just more information and then when you talk to the Holy Spirit, I'll say that's illumination.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Because I mean, even when I study commentaries and you know this, there are times when no matter how many commentaries you study, the Holy Spirit will lead you to other cross references and, and, and other things that you did not learn per se from a commentary that are biblically sound.
Speaker A:And it is right on track.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:But if, you know, so I mean, we don't, we don't even only rely on commentaries when we study.
Speaker A:We, we have to really rely on the illumination of God's word.
Speaker A:Sort of like for our listeners.
Speaker A:That sort of looks like you, you, you walk into a room and there's furniture all over the place and you're tripping all of the furniture and then use a flashlight.
Speaker A:It doesn't create the furniture, it just shows you where it is.
Speaker A:And the Holy Spirit illuminates his Word to show us the truth of God's Word as we read it and memorize it, meditate upon it.
Speaker A:So now what's the problem then with preachers just using it to, to do their work for them?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker B:And I feel like it's one of those things I, it's part of why I'm so concerned about it is I think pastors and preachers are uniquely tempted to give themselves over to this, especially when one, they're already pressed for time, like they're already stressed out.
Speaker B:There's also easy ways to justify, like, oh, well, if I have the, if I have this, do this for me, I'm going to be able to meet with so and so more.
Speaker B:I'm going to have an extra hour to study this or I'm going to be able to like, whatever.
Speaker B:So it's easy to just mistake the pastor for being a communicator whose job is just to, just to get you information from the text.
Speaker B:But the problem is the pastor is so much more than just communicating educator.
Speaker B:The pastor is, is shepherding through the ministry of God's word by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker B:I forget what the brother's name is from desiring God, but he gave an excellent Talk.
Speaker B:It's on YouTube.
Speaker B:I think it's called authentic, something like authentic preaching in the age of AI.
Speaker B:And he, he referenced, I think, Ezekiel 3 at one point, and he talked about how God's command was for him to eat the scroll and ingest the scroll deep within him, so that as he said, my mouth is like honey as he goes and proclaims the word of the Lord, it's not just something that hit him and rebounded off, or it's not just something he takes and then just has it regurgitated through anyone else.
Speaker B:Now he doesn't just take it and say to his buddy and say, hey, take this and read this in the, to read this to the people.
Speaker B:No, he's actually ingesting the Word of God in a way that empowers him to then be able to communicate it to God's people.
Speaker B:In the same way, if the pastor is just a communicator who says nice things in a nice way that sound kind of catchy based on pattern recognition, I don't know how much good you're actually going to do for your people.
Speaker B:Whereas if the pastor is one who has given himself over to not just communicating the Word of God, but ingesting the word of God, wrestling with the word of God, analyzing the Word of God and then communicating that through the power of the Holy Spirit as he himself has been impacted and is applying the Word of God to his own life and his own marriage and his own home life and his own interactions with people and things like that?
Speaker B:And that's the other thing.
Speaker B:I think a lot of times pastors will think, think even like, okay, well, maybe I'm not doing like, exegesis with AI, but I use it for, like, illustrations and things like that to help people understand.
Speaker B:But, well, don't, like, don't you think that, that, that people need to hear about your life experience that God has given you and that he, like, like an illustration is not just designed to make something easier to understand that comes, you know, comes from, from a, a generative corner of the Internet, but actually you as their pastor, you're spe based on the study and the formation and the experience that God has given you in your own life?
Speaker B:And so for the pastor, I think they're uniquely tempted, but I think the pastor is uniquely responsible to resist that temptation because especially as the age becomes more and more artificial, our culture at large and our people and our churches are going to need pastors that aren't just regurgitators of stolen information, but actually they're going to need pastors who will pastor and shepherd them by the power of the Holy Spirit as they ingest God's word and as they communicate God's word from their hearts rather than a software.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:And when you.
Speaker A:Or the, the, the.
Speaker A:When you use the term ingesting the word of God, I was thinking of Jonah, who was himself ingested.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then when, and then when he prays, you know, you see just the word of God spewing from him as he weaves all these psalms together.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And then I think, because I, I preached through Jonah, I think one of the commentaries I read said something akin to Jonah was Jonah prepared the sermon in, in this closet of prayer.
Speaker A:He had to, he had to experience the mercy first.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Before he went out and, and, and preach so that others would experience mercy.
Speaker A:And then he still was upset.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:And as you were talking before about the enemy.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I was thinking about First John 2, 15, 17, where it talks about Satan's sort of three categories of tactics.
Speaker A:The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, which leads to the pride of life.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And AI can easily, you know, use wrongly, can easily fall under those categories.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because that's right.
Speaker A:You can, you can, you can definitely appease the lust of your eyes, the lust of your flesh.
Speaker A:I got the answer right away that I.
Speaker A:That I wanted in a New York minute.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And it could definitely lead us in.
Speaker A:In our pride.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, that's right.
Speaker B:And I'm glad you mentioned the New York minute thing, too, because I think one of the things that God from COVID to cover in Scripture is teaching his people is how to wait on him.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker B:And I think that's something that the sinful heart is really bad at doing.
Speaker B:And so I think what AI offers is the kind of shortcut to life's challenges and problems and complexities and inconveniences from the smallest of things.
Speaker B:Like I don't know how to talk to, you know, my teenager who just got mad at me about this issue.
Speaker B:Help me to the biggest of things, like why should I believe in the gospel?
Speaker B:Or like, like whatever it might be, and, or how do I.
Speaker B:How do I minister to my, you know, my, my father who's on his deathbed still rejecting the Lord and things like that.
Speaker B:And, and because we are very bad.
Speaker B:We are very bad at waiting.
Speaker B:There's kind of Two ways we can go as Christians.
Speaker B:We can either wait upon the Lord.
Speaker B:He who waits upon the Lord, it is good for him to wait upon the Lord and bear his reproach in his youth.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like from beginning Genesis to Revelation, it's like, wait upon the Lord, wait upon the Lord, wait upon the Lord.
Speaker B:And what AI offers is almost like this.
Speaker B:This sneaky, harmless shortcut straight through that allows us to.
Speaker B:To all we could maybe say, yeah, I'm waiting upon the Lord, I'm waiting upon the Lord.
Speaker B:But actually, in the daily.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker B:The daily wars and the daily battles of all these things, man, there is something right there at our fingerprints that can just give us whatever answer we want.
Speaker B:Want in an instant.
Speaker B:And I think it directly works against the Christian's ability and willingness to find refuge in God as they wait for him.
Speaker A:I'm thinking of the word pragmatism.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When the cart was going to.
Speaker A:When Uza was transporting the ark and it was on a new cart and it was about the tip, he just reached out and touched it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Pragmatically.
Speaker A:And perhaps if something were going to fall in our home, perhaps we'd reach out and touch it.
Speaker A:But that was one thing you couldn't touch.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:So I think it was.
Speaker A:Maybe it's R.C.
Speaker A:Sproul, the holiness of God.
Speaker A:He said Uza thought that his heart was cleaner than the filthy dust.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:It was going to fall into.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so.
Speaker B:Or even Saul.
Speaker B:Even Saul not refusing to wait for Samuel.
Speaker B:And he's just going to do it himself and.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Offer sacrifices.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:To the witch of Endorphins.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, when he wasn't hearing from God, he.
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, that.
Speaker A:That was like his AI, Right.
Speaker A:He goes to the witch of Endor, so to speak.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Refusing to wait on God.
Speaker A:That's a great point.
Speaker A:That's a great, great point.
Speaker A:And if you're.
Speaker A:If you're listening to this, you know, make sure that you're not someone who just runs quickly, you know, to take AI Like.
Speaker A:Like an aspirin.
Speaker A:Oh, I got a headache.
Speaker B:Let me just.
Speaker A:Bang.
Speaker A:Let me just swallow this.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I'm good to go.
Speaker A:Go.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because we have to.
Speaker A:We have to wait on God.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And just like Jacob, he wrestled with it.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:He wrestled with God, if you will, because that God sanctifies us as waiting upon him.
Speaker A:Some.
Speaker A:Some may trust in horses and chariots.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Let me just throw this in.
Speaker A:This is not in scripture or AI, they trust in that and right in instead of, you know, but we will trust in the name of the Lord.
Speaker A:And so when we trust in him, we have to wait upon him, because God doesn't always just, you know, rained on mana when we snap our fingers.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And some.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And he Then he gave them.
Speaker A:When they.
Speaker A:When they wanted something, he gave him quail.
Speaker A:And that ended up not being what they ended up wanting.
Speaker A:And just look how long it took for the Messiah to come.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:They were waiting.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They were waiting for a long time.
Speaker A:Look how long it took them to come out of Egypt.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And so as we.
Speaker A:As we wait upon the Lord and as we live our Christian life with Him, He.
Speaker A:He has the pulse, if you will, sort of like a.
Speaker A:A potter.
Speaker A:He has his foot on the pedal of how fast our life spins.
Speaker A:And so.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And his hands are.
Speaker A:Are molding and shaping us as.
Speaker A:As that pot, as.
Speaker A:As that piece of pottery.
Speaker A:And sometimes we just want to avoid that process.
Speaker A:But I mean, if you cannot become physically stronger and healthy by just watching someone else diet and exercise, how can we become spiritually healthy by.
Speaker A:By not waiting upon God and not being in the word, not laboring in prayer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:I mean, there is a way that God sanctifies us, and a lot of times it's struggle and time and waiting.
Speaker A:And if you try to circumnavigate that process.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Then how are you becoming more like Jesus?
Speaker A:Jesus waited.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:He didn't calm the storm in an instant.
Speaker A:He waited and waited and waited.
Speaker A:And then in his time.
Speaker A:So, I mean, you're going through Ecclesiastes, right?
Speaker A:Chapter three.
Speaker A:There's a time for everything.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:And for us with AI, the time is now.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:You know, so.
Speaker A:And I think it.
Speaker A:It gives us sort of a microwave mentality.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:I think refusing to wait has a particular way of working directly against our sanctification.
Speaker B:There is a power in waiting that disciplines you to recognize that you are not God and you are not in control, and you cannot just make things happen on your timing.
Speaker B:And when we refuse to wait in life and we start looking for any and every other alternative to remove that thorn of waiting from our lives, well, we actually start to either believe we are in control or we will stop at nothing to gain control because we refuse to submit ourselves to God's will and God's timing.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And just like technology can be helpful if used rightly, just like, you know, I could write something edifying to you, and I could write something scathing, you know, against you.
Speaker A:Using the same instrument or scalpel can be used to hurt or to heal.
Speaker A:As we, as, as.
Speaker A:As we think about using this, I, I think it seems there's more and more conditioning going on.
Speaker A:And again, well, we're not innocent bystanders where, you know, like, when Covet happened, everybody started, well, you know, we're gonna have online church.
Speaker A:And then some people just kept that.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:So, I mean, I have people that, you know, and I said, well, how are you going to do online Baptist?
Speaker A:How about, like, how about online communion?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Online hospital visits?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And all of that.
Speaker A:And so it is limited in, In.
Speaker A:In what it could do.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so, you know, I mean, if you're going to the bedside of.
Speaker A:Of a dying person, I mean, I mean, you could look up what to say, but I mean, it's something when you're there with the family, you're praying with them, you're ministering to them.
Speaker B:Them.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Woe to the.
Speaker B:Woe to the pastor who shows up at the bedside with.
Speaker B:With a.
Speaker B:With a JI.
Speaker B:Script.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Even as Ecclesiastes.
Speaker B:Ecclesiastes has a big message that death has something to teach you.
Speaker B:And yeah.
Speaker B:So, you know, I even think of Babel.
Speaker B:What were the people doing?
Speaker B:They were making a name for themselves.
Speaker B:They were.
Speaker A:They were.
Speaker B:Say they were.
Speaker B:They were trying to.
Speaker B:To.
Speaker B:To reach a level of God in one sense.
Speaker B:And I think with AI you get all this talk about super intelligence.
Speaker B:You get all this talk about it's far surpassing human abilities to a reason, as though we're creating, in one sense, almost this digital God ourselves.
Speaker B:And I think every time human beings.
Speaker A:Good catch.
Speaker B:Try to do these things, it.
Speaker B:It goes terribly.
Speaker B:And God.
Speaker B:God.
Speaker B:God judges humanity for it.
Speaker B:And, you know, that's not to say that AI is evil in every form imaginable, just like the Internet is.
Speaker B:Is not evil in.
Speaker B:In every form imaginable.
Speaker B:There is much danger with it.
Speaker B:But I think.
Speaker B:I think even like, like one key rule, I think I heard Kevin DeYoung say one time is like, use it to retrieve, but do not use it to create.
Speaker B:And so, like, like, if you're going to use it as like a search engine or a glorified dictionary or like, things like that, like, great, by all means.
Speaker B:But it's like when you then begin to turn to it to do things for you that you either need to be able to do, or you should be able to do, or God calls you to do.
Speaker B:Like, like you've now passed over the line.
Speaker B:That's actually not just unethical, but potentially sinful as well.
Speaker B:And that's the danger of generative AI is that line is so paper thin for so many.
Speaker B:And it's so easy for, for folks to just.
Speaker B:It get.
Speaker B:It gets so blurred that, that there is no line anymore.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Now, like, like if you were working on a sermon and I've done this and I just.
Speaker A:I kind of felt like I was sounding redundant and I'll just highlight it and say, you know, can you help me simplify this?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So it's still my, it's still my work.
Speaker A:It's still.
Speaker A:And then, and then I, I'll read what they have, the different ones and then I'll paste it below and then I'll still sort of create my own version.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that's key because I don't, I don't.
Speaker A:I don't want, you know, this thing to write my sermon for me like it.
Speaker A:Because then it's.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:It's not going to sound like me, it's not going to be me, and it's not going to be relying on the spirit of God.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And using it like a tool instead of a crutch.
Speaker A:Does that illustration work?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I think the challenge is because we're so sinful and because we underestimate our ability to sin, we will inevitably turn a tool into a crutch.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, not to build laws around the laws, but we've just got to be very conscious of where we cross the line from mere help to.
Speaker B:We're now sinning against ourselves and other people's by.
Speaker B:By.
Speaker B:By outsourcing God's work to something that was never meant to be outsourced to.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Now, do you think some people are thinking like AI is going to usher in the end times or anything?
Speaker B:Oh, I'm sure people are thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I, I mean, I, I think every generation has it.
Speaker B:Its.
Speaker B:Has its form of, of what we're talking.
Speaker B:It's going to take different forms.
Speaker B:It's going to look differently in different generations.
Speaker B:I think they're, they're for sure.
Speaker B:But I think.
Speaker B:Do I think that AI is.
Speaker B:Is this kind of like uniquely decoded 666 mark of the Beast?
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:No, I don't either.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:But, but I think every generation is going to have these things that are, are a particularly like, like heinous and direct affront to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:But even like, like, obviously, AI, it's much, it's much trickier when it comes to the moral components of it.
Speaker B:Whereas, you know, decades ago with someone like Hitler, it's like, oh, okay, there's like a clearly moral comp.
Speaker B:We don't have to like.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:So I do think it's uniquely.
Speaker B:What's the word I'm looking for, Sneaky perhaps, that I think Christians need to exercise wisdom and discernment on.
Speaker B:And that's the key.
Speaker B:I think like the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Speaker B:Not a large amount of data sets in facts are the beginning of wisdom.
Speaker B:And so I think the way that we grow in wisdom, even in how to use these tools, is through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and becoming more and more like, like Christ and in our fear of the living God.
Speaker B:And that will lead us and he will lead us as we consider.
Speaker B:Okay, how do we actually best employ this thing instead of just writing prompts, you know?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So this thing should make a good servant, not a master.
Speaker A:Because everyone will serve, Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, everyone will serve a master, so to speak.
Speaker A:And some people are treating this like a master instead of a servant.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Or it's the servant.
Speaker B:It's the.
Speaker B:It starts as a servant, it becomes one's master.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:The servant that stabs you in the back and takes over and becomes your master.
Speaker A:Yeah, right, right.
Speaker A:So, you know, first John 2:15, again, don't love the things of the world.
Speaker A:Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is of the world.
Speaker A:The world is passing away.
Speaker A:AI is going to pass away.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's.
Speaker A:It's technology.
Speaker A:It's going to be removed, you know, one day just, just as the soul will be removed from the body.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:To either be glorified or damned.
Speaker A:But the one who does the will of God will abide forever.
Speaker A:And so our, our focus must be on having a biblical worldview on these things.
Speaker A:So if you have a pastor and you have a biblical question, I mean, use your, use your church community.
Speaker A:Use your, your brothers and sisters in Christ have conversations with.
Speaker A:Because you can easily just detach.
Speaker A:We have so many people that isolate themselves from the local church detach.
Speaker A:And then every.
Speaker A:Because church is not just listening.
Speaker A:If church is listening, is listening to sermons, then you can go on YouTube all day long and listen to some great preachers, and I'm sure you and I listen.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But it's so much more than that.
Speaker A:There's the one anothering.
Speaker A:There's the connection that we have with one another, and AI cannot give that to us.
Speaker A:There's so much it cannot give us us that only the gospel can give us, if you will.
Speaker A:And the gospel gives us the most important things.
Speaker A:Yeah, it gives.
Speaker A:It gives us.
Speaker A:When I preach on the streets and when I pass out tracks, I tell people, you should read this because it's the most important message that you'll ever hear in your entire life.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because it's a track with the gospel.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:And you know, AI is.
Speaker A:Is not the most important thing you'll ever hear in your entire life.
Speaker A:It is Christ, the person and work of Christ.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So is.
Speaker A:Is there any way or means that somebody would use this for evangelism?
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker B:Well, I think one of the good things that you can do of it is even.
Speaker B:It's very.
Speaker B:In evangelism, it's very beneficial to understand the kind of people that you are talking to and some of even their worldviews in a way.
Speaker B:So, like, even, like I'm thinking of like, Paul in Athens, right?
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He's there and he's.
Speaker B:He's observing.
Speaker B:He's observing that their context as he begins to then preach the great sermon that he preached there on the unknown God.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:He springboards off of his.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So it can be.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker B:But the key is like.
Speaker B:Like, you don't want to send Christians who are already weak in faith and weak in doctrine to AI to then be like, looking up, like, what do.
Speaker B:What do Buddhists think about this thing?
Speaker B:Or what do.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like, like, you know, you don't want to play with fire in that way in the sense of.
Speaker B:It's not.
Speaker B:The problem is not that these other worldviews, like, can challenge the.
Speaker B:The one and only thing that's actually true and real.
Speaker B:It's just that again, if we recognize how.
Speaker B:How unbelieving we all are, we're just quick to latch on to other things that, like, whatever.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:So for example, if you're someone who's sound in faith and sound in doctrine, and you're.
Speaker B:You're in your church community and you have pastors who are looking over you, and you.
Speaker B:You just happen to work in a.
Speaker B:In a context where there's a lot of Muslims, you know, AI can help you understand some of how Muslims would understand, I don't know, aspects of the Bible or, or where they're, where they get hung up when it comes to the Trinity or, or some helpful ways to, to even understand the history of the Muslim religion.
Speaker B:So you can ask some questions about that and see if they even know why they believe the things that they believe and, and whatnot.
Speaker B:So it can in that, in that sense be, be helpful to give you information that you otherwise like, like the key is you can open up a million encyclopedias and read a bunch of books and do all these things to come to that information.
Speaker B:And if AI can be helpful in, in accelerating that process for you to understand why is your, your Muslim co worker, why does he get so stuck on the idea of the Trinity?
Speaker B:And how can you be able to speak in to that based on some misconceptions that he's either he either has or he's been told things like that.
Speaker B:So it totally can be helpful in evangelism different ways.
Speaker B:You just got to do it.
Speaker B:You've got to be anchored and you've got to do it in community and not in isolation.
Speaker A:Yeah yeah.
Speaker A:And so like on that point would AI perhaps clean up something with, with Islam?
Speaker A:Because I, I've listened to like David Wood, I don't know if you've heard him before.
Speaker A:He debates Muslims all the time.
Speaker A:God Logic is another guy who debates Muslims on, on his YouTube channel.
Speaker A:And these guys are excellent man.
Speaker A:They really, really know their stuff.
Speaker A:So I've, I've watched tons of many, many hours of them debating and just knowing what, what are some great resources to to use.
Speaker A:Does AI ever clean up something like for instance, and so Muhammad betrothed a 6 year old and consummated 9 years old.
Speaker A:Would AI perhaps clean that up?
Speaker A:So it doesn't sound so like it is, it doesn't sound the reality of him, you know, having sexual relations with a nine year old child named Aisha.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Would it clean that up perhaps?
Speaker A:And, and you're not getting the raw raw, the hard hitting thing that you could really lovingly, wisely challenge a Muslim with.
Speaker B:Because it is pattern recognition.
Speaker B:It it like it's just pulling from the Internet.
Speaker B:So you just got to think how many Muslims are going to be online naturally defending these aspects of their faith or religion that are.
Speaker B:They either would find a way to talk around or they would defend or they would disagree with it.
Speaker B:They like like things like that.
Speaker B:And so all AI is doing is it's just Casting it's not very broadly widely, and then basically pulling it all in to then create a synthesized argument as to why that point that you are making is actually like, not that bad or, or it's not what, like exactly how you're portraying or things like that.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it is, it is basically going to, it's just going to pull a lot of stuff from the Internet.
Speaker B:But the other, the other thing is.
Speaker B:What was I going to say?
Speaker B:Oh, each, each software has developers that have their own worldviews and have their own guardrails of what they think belongs in and what's acceptable and what's not acceptable and things like that.
Speaker B:And that is naturally built in to the software's programming.
Speaker B:So whatever the issue is, you can be confident that there's going to be certain red lines that the software is going to be unwilling to cross and is actually programmed to not cross.
Speaker B:And that is also, regardless of what we're talking.
Speaker B:That is another.
Speaker B:Like, we think that AI is just this innocent, like, wizard of.
Speaker B:Of that knows all things.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:When in reality, no, it has the fingerprints of fallen human beings behind it just like anything else, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Well said.
Speaker A:Well, amen.
Speaker A:Is there any other thing that you would just want to add in that we didn't.
Speaker A:That I didn't ask you about?
Speaker A:Yeah, because I know you've, you've, you've done a talk on this, you gave a message on this, teaching on this, and while we have you, I didn't know if there was anything additional that, that you feel was, you know, very important just for people to know.
Speaker A:Maybe some application points.
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:Yeah, a few things.
Speaker B:I think the first thing is hiding from this or acting like it doesn't exist is not an option.
Speaker B: e, you think of like, October: Speaker B:We kind of.
Speaker B:We heard about this thing going on in this other corner of the world that was crazy.
Speaker B:And then all of a sudden it's in Italy and we're like, okay, yeah, it's not going to happen to us.
Speaker B: es in January and February of: Speaker B:And then all of a sudden like, bam, it's at our doorstep.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So that is, I think where we are at with artificial intelligence is that it's not a matter of like, oh, I'm just I don't use that and I don't even know how to use a smartphone and stuff like that.
Speaker B:It's like, like that's just not an option.
Speaker B:And maybe it is for you or maybe it is for somebody, but it's not like the mass majority, the vast majority of your congregation and of the culture that you operate in, your children regularly changing and using these things.
Speaker B:So as Christians, I just think there's a really unique evangelism opportunity.
Speaker B:There's a really unique witnessing an evangelism opportunity here when it comes to this.
Speaker B:So like Christians know what it is, they've thought through it, they know the moral challenges and they're basically also the other, the other part where it's a, it's a key evangelistic opportunity is what AI is doing is, it is one.
Speaker B:Obviously it's leading to a lot of layoffs.
Speaker B:It's leading to a lot of identity being placed in one's own efficiency and ability to produce.
Speaker B:And so what's happening in a lot of, especially in this area in New York City, there's a lot of folks who's right now, their identity is directly tied to how productive and how effective they can be and how far ahead of their co worker they can be when it comes to learning and leveraging and using this technology.
Speaker B:And so there's a unique evangelistic opportunity there to actually be able to speak into and say, hey, you know, like yeah, do a good job, work hard, everything.
Speaker B:But you know that your identity is not ultimately wrapped up in your ability to produce, in your ability to stay ahead of the curve.
Speaker B:Your identity is not ultimately wrapped up in how efficient you can be and how much value you can prove to your employer or to those around you.
Speaker B:Like your identity is in the living God who created you exactly as you are to be in perfect fellowship with him, you know, So I think that there's a key.
Speaker B:It cannot the like.
Speaker B:It's also the church has a unique opportunity to be a, like a refuge for people as, as those questions of what's real and what's fake.
Speaker B:What, what, what does it mean to be human and what does it be to be artificial?
Speaker B:Like where can I go to be with other human beings where I am confident that I am not just being evaluated on my production and they're not just giving me regurgitated versions of copy paste thinking and they're like actually human beings who are made in the image of God, who have the Holy Spirit and who relate to me as another human being.
Speaker B:I think is another really good opportunity for churches.
Speaker B:And then I would just say for pastors, again, like, like, like this world is going to need real pastors and who are real humans who are doing the real work of ministry with the real word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit and not just more copy paste thinkers who do the same thing as their co workers, as their, at their finance or tech or, or operations jobs, whatever it might be.
Speaker B:And so I do think it's a very like, like the, the, the snowball effect of AI evolving and accelerating in one sense spells many dangers for the church, but also at the same time, even more so spells great opportunities for the church in being able to minister to our culture at large.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, that's, that, that, that's outstanding.
Speaker A:So we need to have a biblical worldview of this.
Speaker A:We're in churches where there are pastors and brothers and sisters in Christ.
Speaker A:We need not to isolate, but we need to connect and, and stay in fellowship.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:We need to watch the pitfalls.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Of making, giving us a mushy mind instead of continuing to have a renewed mind, which is one that critically thinks and critically thinks according to God's word as the filter.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And we need, we need to make sure it's not just doing our work for us.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, and you, and then you mentioned we're not just running to this instead of actually waiting upon the Lord to just in, in the process of that being sanctified by him to become like Christ.
Speaker A:I mean, Jesus Christ spent how many hours in prayer?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And if anybody could have just snapped their fingers, so to speak, and had something in an instant, it would have been him.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:You know, he could have stopped the crucifixion just as, Just like he stopped the storm, if you will.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:But, but he didn't let them whip him and beat him.
Speaker A:He didn't stop the process.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so in becoming more like Christ, we don't want to do anything that stops the process.
Speaker A:We want to, we want to, we want to go through it.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker B:Imagine there's, there's two people.
Speaker B:There's one person who gets hit with a harsh reaction.
Speaker B:They get laid off from their job at work, for example.
Speaker B:What's the first thing they do?
Speaker B:They're in their car, devastated.
Speaker B:They whip out their phone, they start typing in, looking for job opportunities.
Speaker B:They start working on this and they're asking AI of all these, like, what are my options and how do I How can I correct this?
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker B:Or even.
Speaker B:Yeah, like, on and on and on.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like, it's that impulse of, like, where do I go when things get challenging or complex?
Speaker B:Or I don't know where to.
Speaker B:I don't know what to do versus the person who gets laid off and ends up in his car and is devastated and lists his eyes to heaven and pours his heart out to God.
Speaker B:Like, those are two very different people.
Speaker A:We're back in the garden because Adam ran from God instead of running to God.
Speaker A:Like you said, it's easy to run away from God and to run to this artificial thing rather than to run to the reality of our Lord and our God.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, and look.
Speaker A:And look to him and look to people who love him.
Speaker A:Godly men and women who love him for spiritual direction.
Speaker A:And as a pastor, we.
Speaker A:You and I, we are shepherding the lives of people.
Speaker A:And we're not doing it through.
Speaker A:Through chatbots.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:We're doing it because we love them.
Speaker A:AI cannot love people.
Speaker B:People.
Speaker A:It's incapable of doing so.
Speaker A:We care about them.
Speaker A:We're in their lives.
Speaker A:We know their families.
Speaker A:We minister to them.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And we do it because God has given us these sheep, and we.
Speaker A:We are sheep as well to.
Speaker A:To shepherd for such a time as this.
Speaker A:And if we're running to quick solutions instead of walking with people through the highs and lows of their life.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're trying to circumvent the situation, and that's not shepherding.
Speaker B: Hebrews: Speaker B:You're going to give an account for those who are under your care, and I will give an account for those who are under my care.
Speaker B:And if the account that I give is.
Speaker B:I just typed into a piece of software, the same thing that they could have typed into their software.
Speaker B:And I didn't actually shepherd them from a wisdom that flows from the fear of God and from the power of his word that I have ingested and am now ministering to people through.
Speaker B:Oh, that.
Speaker B:Like, I don't want to give that account.
Speaker B:You know that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Word.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Word.
Speaker A:Hey, it's not a shepherd.
Speaker A:Hey, it's not a shepherd.
Speaker A:Well, amen.
Speaker A:Well, thank you, Jeremiah, for joining us.
Speaker A:And you pronounce it Luang.
Speaker B:Leon.
Speaker A:Leong.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:I'm gonna eventually get it down.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Leon, for joining us on the Stop and Think about it podcast, tell us the name of your church again.
Speaker B:Maranatha Grace Church.
Speaker A:And it's in what part of New Jersey?
Speaker B:It is right on the eastern.
Speaker B:Eastern end of Englewood.
Speaker B:So it's it's, it's in, it's right on the border of Fort Lee and Englewood Cliffs.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And your church website, maranathagrace.org.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And so you can go there to access your sermons.
Speaker A:Are they going to sermon audio or both locations?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Go there.
Speaker B:You can access sermons there.
Speaker B:We're finishing a series on Ecclesiastes.
Speaker B:You can get it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts too.
Speaker A:So are you on sermon audio as well?
Speaker B:I don't even know.
Speaker A:Okay, don't ask.
Speaker A:AI.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:That's exactly right.
Speaker A:I have to type it into sermon audio.
Speaker B:Yeah, maybe we are.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, well that, that's, that's another great resource a lot of people use to access sermons.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:So yeah, you can put video and audio on there.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:And actually we're, we're actually using, I guess it's an AI tool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:To translate our sermons into like 50 languages.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker B:That's an excellent tool.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it's called, it's called wordly as opposed to being worldly.
Speaker A:Wordly.
Speaker A:So if I'm preaching and someone comes in and they only know Korean.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:They just click this QR code, they look up and they can listen to it and read it as I'm preaching in real time.
Speaker A:So that would be, that would be a, a great use of, of using AI.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:That's exactly right.
Speaker A:So that's how you make it a.
Speaker A:A servant and not a master.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so in closing, I just want to draw our listeners to two ministry events just a few weeks away.
Speaker A:We're going to have our third annual contending conference Saturday, May 2nd with guest speakers, Pastor Jim Harrison of Red Mills Baptist Church, Pastor Anthony Ovinio of Hope Reform Baptist Church and also known as the Reform Rookie and yours truly will speak on the topics at that conference of spiritual gifts, God and government and gender roles, specifically in the church and in the home, along with a Q and A session.
Speaker A:And you can go to this website, gb1cls.co CC3 and then in the summer we're going to go out on Saturday, June 27 and have the New York City invasion where biblically like minded churches will invade an area of New York City with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through open air preaching, street witnessing and prayer and being in, in joint fellowship together as we do that.
Speaker A:And the website there is gb1.cls co for forward slash NYCI and you could check that out as well.
Speaker A:On my website soulfishingministries.org until the nets are filled.
Speaker A:Thank you for taking this time to stop and think about it.
Speaker A:If you would like to contact us, please email us@stopandthinkcrewmail.com.
Speaker A:You could also visit our website at www.
Speaker A:This podcast is listener supported by generous people like you.
Speaker A:You can give a tax deductible donation at our affiliate ministry@www.soulfishingministries.org and click on our donate link to give securely through PayPal.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening to Stop and Think about It.
