Understanding the permanency of the internet, I usually I reserve writing a blog post for something with a long-term view, not reacting to every transgressive thing that shows up online. I will draft a post, then walk away, and sometimes when I come back to it, I am glad I didn’t post it. It doesn’t meet the bar of “what will someone in the future get out of this?” and “does it edify the reader?” or “Is the title misleading as to what the message is?” Of course, the other error is to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I really do have to get over myself.

With the infiltration of AI into our lives, I am wondering if I am making a mistake to not post more frequently, if for no other reason than to signal to others that this is a real human being, in this time and place, and not a manipulative chatbot.

A few things sent me along this line of thought. The first was watching the movie, “One Battle After Another”, once it started winning awards. I try to keep my finger on popular culture, and it was free on one of our streaming services, so I watched it. Seeing violence glorified (along with illegal immigration and drug trafficking) really didn’t sit well with me. You would think that we would recoil from violence and crime those who perpetrate it, that there is no justification for it, but as the expression goes, “When ‘it goes without saying, pretty soon it will have to be said” let me explain. When I was a young person in the 60’s and a teenager in the 70’s, there were radical groups who were robbing banks and killing police officers and bombing buildings. The scene in the movie when Perfidia Beverly Hills shoots and kills a security guard crawling across the floor? That type of thing really happened. And worse. And more than once.

The putative model for the fictional radicals in “One Battle After Another”, the Marxist far-left-wing Weather Underground, it fizzled out after 1977. Unlike the movie, no one hunted the radicals down and killed them. In fact, two members, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers (son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison and the beneficiary of an excellent legal defense) had their charges dismissed and went on to academia. Mr. Ayers famously said, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird” after his acquittal. When Barack Obama was running for president, there was some concern raised about his association with them, which didn’t gain any traction. Unlike the radicals, there is no apparent real-life parallel to the weird secret racist cabal in the movie, but I couldn’t say that anything like that never existed.

It left me in a state of deep sorrow.

Then there was an article in The Atlantic called “The People Who Marry Chatbots”, was so dispiriting it created a sense of urgency. I am not going to link it because I am sure it is readily accessible, pushed by an algorithm into gazillions of inboxes and feeds. Hopefully it is well understood now that chatbots are “yes-men” just validating whatever you say or think. A person who really loved you would have the courage to tell you when you are doing something wrong. I am thankful that the church is speaking out on the inhumanity of AI and how it is antithetical to the worth and dignity of the human person. Still, I grieved for the lost and vulnerable who have been sucked into trading real people, created in God’s image, for chatbots.

The final. self-imposed mistake: while waiting for new seasons of my favorite streaming shows to drop, I lost patience, succumbed to boredom and started watching “Industry”, a series which had run three seasons before I discovered it. A little background here – I spent more than a little bit of my career, not in investment banking, but providing outsourced services to clients like the fictional “Pierpont & Company”. During my career, I had pretty lengthy exposure working in white-shoe outfits like that, and as a service provider, how to unobtrusively blend into those environments, where I got a very close look at them. I was also young once, starting out in life and career, making mistakes, both personal and professional.

But the level of inhumanity towards other people portrayed in the movie, the article and TV series was chilling, the intense, reckless self-focus and cruelty was heartbreaking, and even frightening.

I am of a different time, but there were enough built-in structures that taught us about our world -school, media (including the still relatively new medium of television), the church. And of course, adults – who had lived through the events of history and learned their lessons. Young people today don’t seem to have any knowledge or experience of history, and apparently we have done a very bad job of transmitting history, and modeling leadership, humanity, justice and faith.

So, now we have young people who feel like it’s okay to lie and steal and take property that belongs to other people and to kill people who they disagree with. That they have no obligation to anyone other than themselves. To the point where they actually create simulated creatures to have “relationships” with. To the point where people who had nothing to do with any past injustices (like slavery) “owe” other groups reparations out of their “privilege”). As I write this, in Minnesota, dozens of Somalis and Somali immigrants have been convicted of fraud. It is now believed the level of fraud totals nearly $10 billion dollars and goes back to 2018. Immigration and Customs Enforcement swarmed Minneapolis/St. Paul. The scale of the crime is unprecedented and it is not unexpected that illegal immigrants should be dealt with in accordance with the law. Protesters predictably showed up, and a 37-year-old woman, Renee Good, was shot dead by an ICE agent. Her partner was standing in front of the car that Renee was using to block the street, heckling the agents, Renee disregarded orders to get out of the car and started it up. Shots were fired. Make no mistake, no one should lose their life in this way. I don’t believe the tactics used by ICE are all justifiable. But before this happened, law enforcement had become the enemy. Officers have their faces and addresses posted online and receive death threats. Their families are not safe.

Even for the faithful, it is easy to feel helpless and hopeless and wonder “where is God?” when we are surrounded by depravity and doing things that are clearly against His Law and good will for us.

There is sin, and evil in the world. When we let our circumstances – good or bad – define who God is, the Devil, the Prince of Lies, tries to persuade us that we do not need God or cannot trust God and disrupts our faith.

In church, I found solace and courage while I was waiting for my programs and podcasts to resume on KFUO https://www.kfuo.org/ (“Christ for You” broadcasting since 1924). Following the church calendar, for the twelve days of Christmas, programming is devoted to celebrating the birth of our Savior. After Epiphany, “Sharper Iron” started again with exegesis on Genesis. First, an episode on how the first words of Scripture, fit into the rest of the story. Moses is traditionally and historically held to be the scribe of the first five books of the Bible. Then as each daily episode progresses, the pastors help braid together the truths contained in it, starting with who God is. Because inasmuch as people try to treat Genesis as a ‘textbook’ about the process of creation, it is far more revealing about eternal, almighty, ever-present God Our Father, the Word (His Son), and the Holy Spirit.

Hearing God’s Word brought me back to the reality of our world, the reality of the love of God, and confidence to pray as He commands. To rely on His promises, and not on my thoughts or feelings. I may not be able to discern the rule of God, His control over all things, but it is there. To trust Him, to believe in His Son, the Word made Flesh, our Savior, and in the Giver of Life, the Holy Spirit. Listening to the pastors teach on the very first words of scripture brought me back to the reality of creation, and redemption, and the promise of Christ’s return and the eternal Kingdom.

When our pastor preached a sermon on praying for all of our leaders, some parishioners said to him they were not going to pray for leaders they disagreed with. His response: it is even more important to pray for them, because they need God’s guidance. https://www.kfuo.org/2023/01/07/concord-matters-010723-luthers-small-catechism-the-lords-prayer-4th-petition-giving-thanks-even-our-government/

Christ exhorts us to pray for our enemies. Yes, very difficult to do. But – we dare not begrudge others the grace that has been given to us in Christ Jesus. We are all sinners. We would suffer eternal death and condemnation but for the grace of Christ, paying the penalty for our sins on the cross. Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.

God uses our trials to bring us closer to Him. In days of old, He has spoken to us through the prophets, but in these latter days, He has spoken to us through his Son. God sent His Word, His Son into the world to save all people.

After focusing on the Incarnation of our Lord — God becoming flesh — during the 12 days of Christmas, the season of Epiphany emphasizes the manifestation or self-revelation of God in that same flesh of Christ. During the season of Epiphany, we are reminded that about how Christ was revealed to first Gentiles, the Magi. They were astrologers, always watching the sky. They saw a star that didn’t move with the rest of the stars, but was fixed. They marveled at this – who can make this happen? – and learned enough about the promised Messiah from the Jews to go and look for themselves, to see who controlled the stars. They knew enough to know they were going to see a powerful king, and brought tribute and gifts. They came away transformed.

I pray that all will hear the truth about our triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That the reality of the Word of God will touch your lives and draw you to our Savior, our Redeemer, our only hope.