I believe we are at a critical turning point in history. When the record of this time is written it will be told that these years, this time—our time—produced changes in culture and life more momentous than anything we’ve seen in the history of mankind. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots stand to change everything in our lives: How we work, how we study and learn, how we prepare food and eat, how we communicate, how we travel and move about, how we access and interact with the fine arts, how we do research, how we shop and how we buy, how our money is used, how we access medical care, use our lawyers and accountants,… and hundreds of other things that we do—even how we worship and how we identify what is holy, how we identify our picture of God.

Since the Stone Age gave way to the Bronze Age, which gave way to the Iron Age, the culture of Man has been ever changing. From the taming of fire to the stick figures drawn on a cave wall by our ancestors using pigments extracted from colored plants, the culture of Man has been impacted by technology and is ever changing. 

Throughout history, disruptive technologies have transformed the way we live, work, and communicate. Among the most significant were the printing press of the 1440s invented by Johannes Gutenberg, which revolutionized the way information and ideas were disseminated and enabled the widespread distribution of books and other printed material. 

The steam engine of the 1760s powered the Industrial Revolution, enabling the mass production of goods and the growth of transportation networks. Electricity, although not invented by Thomas Edison, was popularized by him and was made practical in the late 1800s. Its widespread adoption transformed everything from lighting and communication to manufacturing and transportation. 

The telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell in the late 1800s made communication faster and more accessible than ever before, paving the way for modern telecommunications and the Internet, which had its very earliest beginnings in the 1960s but became mature in the 1980s and again revolutionized the way that we communicate, access information, and conduct business. 

These technologies led to the rise of what we now call the digital age, with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets transforming the way we interact with technology and leading to new forms of communication, entertainment, and commerce beginning on the early 2,000s. 

Today, AI has the potential to transform a wide range of industries from healthcare and transportation to finance and education by automating tasks and providing insights that were previously impossible. 

Each of these disruptive technologies has fundamentally transformed the way we live and is poised to make major transformations in the future. 

Last Sunday, the TV show 60 Minutes (which few people watch anymore because television has given way to streaming) aired a special on AI. Seasoned presenter,Scott Pelley said this was the first time in his reporting career that he was left speechless by what he saw. 

AI, he showed, is playing an increasingly important role in developing, for example, three-dimensional structures of proteins—highly complex molecules that play critical roles in biological processes. There are approximately 200 million known proteins in nature and determining their structure is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process that typically involves x ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. 

However, these methods are not always feasible and take a long time, it’s estimated that a postdoctoral student could take up to five years to find the 3D structure of a single protein. For 200 million proteins, that’s a billion years of activity. But these challenges are being overcome by AI algorithms that can predict protein structures based on their amino acid sequences. 

The algorithms use machine learning to analyze large data sets of known protein structures, learning patterns and relationships between the amino acid sequences and 3D structures. This is then used to predict unknown structures with a high degree of accuracy. The bottom line is that these protein structure predictions significantly help researchers to develop new drugs and therapies that target specific proteins involved in certain diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and hundreds of others, and could lead to a better understanding of the fundamental processes underlying life itself. 

We are indeed living in a pivotal time in history where such disruptive technology is rapidly transforming the way we work, live, and interact with one another. From artificial intelligence and robotics to biotechnology and nanotechnology, emerging technologies are changing the very fabric of society—and this includes the impact on religion, spirituality, and our view of God, our perception of the Divine. 

Machines are becoming more sophisticated. While some of them may be seen simply as a tool of humans, others may soon be seen as a manifestation of Divine force. This could lead to debates about the role of technology in religion and whether AI will ever replace human spiritual experiences. As more people turn to technology for guidance, inspiration, and community, there’s a risk that our spiritual lives could become increasingly disconnected from the physical world. 

At the same time, emerging technologies such as virtual reality and brain computer interfaces open up new possibilities for exploring the depth of our inner selves and our connection with the Divine. While technology has the potential to enhance religious practice and connect us in new ways, it also raises important ethical and moral questions that will need to be addressed. As we navigate this rapidly changing landscape it is essential that we consider the implications of technology on our spiritual lives and seek to better find the balance between innovation and tradition. 

What effect AI has on religion is a complex and multifaceted topic with differing opinions and perspectives. AI can raise ethical and moral questions that don’t have answers, that religious leaders and theologians may need to wrestle with. As AI becomes even more advanced, it may lead to questions about the nature of consciousness and whether machines can have a soul. 

As religious communities adopt technology, AI could be integrated into religious practices in new and innovative ways. For example, AI could run prayer meetings and automate prayer times, suggest relevant religious texts, or provide personalized guidance to individuals seeking spiritual guidance. Who would not want a robotic pastor whose sermons can be truncated if desired, and robotic prayer, and even robotic counseling? 

AI could impact the way people interact with each other in religious communities. For example, virtual religious services may become more prevalent and people could connect with one another in new ways. However, some may argue that AI could weaken traditional face-to-face religious communities. 

Finally, AI could impact people’s perception of the Divine. As I mentioned earlier, some may view AI as a tool created by humans, while others may see it as a manifestation of Divine force, as something that God is behind. This could lead to debates about the role of technology and religion, and whether AI could ever replace the human spiritual experience. 

Overall, the impact of AI on religion will depend on many factors, including technological advances. What cultural attitudes in long-established religious traditions are being threatened? With every change in culture we see change in religion because religion is man-made and changes in culture automatically change religion. 

We so wish to believe that our religion is not man-made, that our religion is God’s own religion. God must be a Seventh Day Adventist, an ardent Sabbath keeper who doesn’t eat pork, doesn’t dance, and doesn’t smoke. And thank God, God reads the King James Version of the Bible. 

To Jehovah’s Witnesses, God must be a Jehovah’s Witness. To Catholics, God must be a Catholic. To Muslims, God must pray five times a day. And even though Jesus was Jewish God is not. I hate to disappoint everyone but God is not a Seventh Day Adventist. God is not a Jehovah’s Witness. God is not a Catholic or a Muslim or a Jew. God is the God of all mankind. And they that worship him, Jesus said in John 4, must worship him “in spirit and in truth.” 

Last week, Michael asked why this subject matters. What difference does it make? It was a good and penetrating question. In a New York Times article entitled “Lots of Americans Are Losing Their Religion. Have You?” Jessica Grose shows, I believe, how faith and religion are in the crosshairs of culture and emphasizes the unsteady relationship between religion, culture, and God. 

Grose is a journalist who offers her perspective on the American family, culture, politics and the way we live—she is a person deeply interested in culture and religion. Her first article focuses on the relationship between culture, religion, and a view of God. She writes: 

 In their forthcoming book, “Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society,” the sociologists Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman and Ryan Cragun describe a change in the built environment of St. Louis that is “emblematic” of the ebb of organized religious observance in America. What was once a Gothic-style beauty of a Catholic church built in the 19th century by German immigrants had been turned into a skateboard park.  

 “In the United States,” the authors tell us, “somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close down every year, either to be repurposed as apartments, laundries, laser-tag arenas, or skate parks, or to simply be demolished.” (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my apartment was once the rectory of a church, also built in the 1800s and transformed, a couple of decades ago, into condos for yuppies who want dramatic windows and a hint of ecclesiastical flavor.)  

 It’s not just the frequency of churchgoing or temple membership that’s declining in our country: Last month, The Wall Street Journal and NORC at the University of Chicago surveyed around 1,000 American adults about the importance of different values to Americans, including the importance of religion. In 2023, only 39 percent of respondents said religion was very important to them, compared to 62 percent who said that in 1998.  

 When you look at the full results, the picture becomes a bit more complicated. Sixty percent of respondents said that religion was either somewhat or very important to them, and only 19 percent said religion was not important to them at all. The United States is still a more religiously observant country than our peer nations in Western Europe — according to Pew Research in 2018, for example, we are more likely to believe in God or some kind of higher power and more likely to pray daily.

 But it would be incorrect to say that nones don’t retain any trappings of religious observance, like belief in a higher power or performing certain rituals. It doesn’t even mean they never attend church. As Zuckerman, one of the authors of “Beyond Doubt” and a professor at Pitzer College, explained to me over the phone, when social scientists talk about religion, they do it in terms of “the three B’s: belief, behavior and belonging.” If someone asks you about your religion and you say you don’t have any, Zuckerman said, “that tells me nothing about your beliefs, and that tells me nothing about your behavior. It just tells me how you identify.”

She goes on to write:

 None of us have set foot in a temple or church in years. My mother and I both said we would identify as Jewish. My father — who has two Jewish parents and was bar mitzvahed — said he’d identify as “nothing” and instead likes to joke about erecting a statue of Athena in his yard. My husband, who was baptized Episcopalian but didn’t always go to church regularly growing up, said he would identify as Christian. My 10-year-old said she didn’t know what she would say. These responses, especially my dad’s and my husband’s, were surprising to me.  

 Since I started reporting this story, I’ve been asking members of my unobservant family what they’d say if a pollster asked them what their religious affiliations are. (Aware of the caveat that both sociologists I talked to noted: Responses are often shaped by how the question is asked.) 

 My goal: to inject some nuance and specificity into this discussion, since I feel like it can be and sometimes is dominated by partisans who want to argue that the decline in religiosity is either uniformly good or bad for society. My own feeling is one of profound ambivalence. I have no interest in going back to temple and little trust or appetite for organized religion. But I feel passionately about being Jewish, and a little heartsick about not knowing quite how to pass along my ritual and history to my children. I do wonder about what may be lost by not having a community connected by belief, but I’m not quite sure what that is, or if replacing it is possible, or even desirable.. 

 Because this topic is so much more complicated than “Americans used to be religious and now we’re not,” I’m making this the first newsletter in a series where I’ll explore the contours of our current relationship with religion, and try to unpack how we got here and what’s changed over the past several decades.  

The story of the woman at the well in John 4 is a window into what God thinks about man-made religion, and about the effects of culture on religion Jesus is with the woman at a well. They have a long discourse about drawing water, then the woman says to him:

 “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and yet you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.” Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, that a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:19-24)

 The story teaches us that religion is man-made, with human traditions and customs that may not necessarily reflect the true nature of God’s religion. In speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well Jesus broke all sorts of cultural and religious norms: Jews and Samaritans did not associate with one another, neither did women talk to men. 

The woman asked Jesus whether the correct place for worship was Mount Gerizim (where the Samaritans worshipped) or Jerusalem (where the Jews worshipped). Jesus responded that the time was coming when true worshipers would worship the Father “in spirit and in truth,” not in a specific location or according to a particular set of man-made rules. This indicates the true religion is not bound by physical or cultural constraints, but is instead a matter of the heart and sincere connection with God. 

Jesus was pointing out the true nature of God’s religion: One that is not limited to specific rituals, practices or physical locations, but instead is rooted in a deeply spiritual connection with God and a sincere desire to live in accordance with his truth. This is in contrast to the man-made aspects of religion that can often be based on cultural and historical traditions, rather than a true understanding of God’s nature and his desire for us. 

In addition, the story of the Samaritan woman provides insights into the relationship between religion and culture. At that time there was a sharp cultural and religious divide between Jews and Samaritans based on historical and cultural differences that had developed over centuries and led to deep-seated animosity between the two groups. In the story, Jesus challenges this cultural and religious divide by speaking with a Samaritan woman. He disregards Jewish cultural norms and breaks all cultural barriers in showing that love and respect can transcend cultural and religious differences. 

Furthermore, when the woman asked Jesus about the correct place of worship, he responds that true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth, not in a specific location or according to a particular set of cultural or religious rules and rituals. This suggests that religion should not be bound by cultural norms and practices but should be grounded in a deep spiritual connection with God. 

In essence, John 4 teaches us that while culture and religion are often intertwined, they are not synonymous. Culture may be influenced by the way we practice our religion but it should not be the determining factor. True religion should be based on a sincere connection with God and a desire to live in accordance with his truth regardless of culture or religious differences. 

How does the story of the Samaritan woman challenge our assumptions about the relationship between culture and religion? In our own religious communities are there areas or practices that could be improved upon or changed? Jesus says true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth, not in a specific location or according to a specific set of rules. What does it mean to worship God in spirit and in truth? 

How do you understand the concept of spirit and truth in the context of religion and culture? And how does this differ from manmade rules or traditions? In what way? Do cultural practices or traditions within religion help to define and strengthen our faith? Are there aspects of our culture that may distract from our ability to connect with God? Is technology a help or a hindrance in this regard? 

How can we recognize the man-made aspects of religion in our lives? Should they all be avoided or is there benefit in positive value in them? What steps can we take to cultivate a deeper spiritual connection with God? How can we work to break down cultural barriers within our own religious community? And what role does empathy and understanding play in building bridges between different cultural and religious groups? Or even differences within our own faith community? And in what way? 

Can we balance the cultural and spiritual aspects of religion? Is it possible that we can remain rooted in our cultural traditions while still cultivating a sincere connection with God? Can the changes of culture and religion be controlled, or are we at the mercy of technology and change? 

What are your thoughts about the role of culture and our religious experience and our view of God?

Donald: I would suggest that we attempt to separate the conversation about whether America is more religious today from the conversation about technology, because we are measuring whether we are religious or not by the same ruler we used to use when we were younger. If that ruler doesn’t change, then yes, there’s no question about it: We’re less religious. 

We go from spiritual, religious, and “is our view of God changing?” God is different than our view of religion and maybe our view of spirituality. So I would suggest we try to hold back. There’s no question that society is changing radically and certainly AI has a significant role to play in that. But I think that before November, when ChatGPT was introduced on a broad scale, we could have had a conversation about religion changing in America. 

The role of religion changed radically in Europe a long time ago. Very few people attend church, if that’s your ruler. Someone sees beauty in an old, rustic church based on their ruler, whereas you and I might see its architecture as not very functional. That’s the ruler. So if people aren’t attending that church, we would say we’re less religious, the people that were there no longer feel the need that religion in their life. Well, maybe it’s just because the form of their spirituality is changing. 

As long as we use that same ruler, acquired perhaps decades ago, then yes, we’re going to say things are not what they used to be, not as good as they used to be. It is difficult to adapt to a different measuring stick. I read about shepherds and herding and God is my shepherd and green pastures—things I’ve never really seen. It just seems to me we need to be careful, that because it doesn’t look the same it isn’t the same.

C-J: For me, it boils down to religion has always been a way to control a group of people in a given society in a time in history. It coalesces community, it defines the rules of the road. It adds ritual and expectations of time and place. It seals you into the covenant of that community’s rites of passage. But we’re at a place now where there is not tangible in this digital world of community and expression. So now we have to go back to what Jesus spoke about at the well. 

We don’t know if that literally took place, but the message is very clear: They that worship the Father do so in spirit and in truth. And for me that’s overlaid by the intervention of the Holy Spirit, being my intercessor. I identify as a Christian, because that is my root and I think it has great value in terms of morality. However, if I looked at the history of the Christian faith, I would be embarrassed at the atrocities. In the name of this Christian God, how many thousands of people were butchered, innocents killed, misogyny running rife? The list is long. 

However, when I see how God has guided me in spirit, in my walk with God, all those things drop off. All the things that come with humanity, the things that make me in some ways less moral than I would see in nature. Mostly, in nature, you only kill for survival. Humans kill for pleasure, or something went crazy in their head—they were squashing anger and just exploded. 

On the other hand, I think that people who come into the world in a culture that is based on a belief system and allow that tradition and all the things that go with it, with or without a text, it informs them when they need to get counsel about their relationships in terms of hierarchy, keeping the tribe healthy. Children help their parents, there is a respect, the strong make provision through hunting and farming to support the community. The message is propagated to sustain that belief system. 

But today, we have not given the last two generations a foundation of discernment. We haven’t given them anything except for “This is truth in this moment,” where you can do whatever you want: Your truth is your truth. You don’t have to be a member of this sliver of society. You can join others who think like you, even if it’s bizarre to me, even if it’s harmful to the collective, whether it’s political, spiritual, relationships. Personal, intimate relationships are now defined in such a category. 

I would hesitate to bring new human life into this world because where would you begin to tell a young person what discernment means, and when they’re looking at something: “What is that?” If it’s profoundly different than my little family, how am I going to teach my child that other person’s truth and my truth with discernment and look at both of them and which one is more beneficial, not just to yourself, but to this collective community, which might be halfway around the world. 

So, for me, it’s not about the shiny jiggling keys. It is about the wolf in the camp. And the wolf in the camp is not having a foundation that will sustain (this is a very large word and it means different things to other people) the soul of humanity. Today is Earth Day. And yet I look around and I listen to NPR about all the ways that humanity is destroying the earth. No other creature on the planet has done harm to this planet—its home, Mother Earth, as much as humanity out of its greed. 

I was listening to a commentary that until humans are willing to surrender the things they want for what their need is… take no more than what you need, be mindful of generations, seven out—that’s about 200 years. Until we are no longer living in the moment. “Well, it felt good at the time.” Until we understand we need, that foundation that is so critical in all belief systems to preserve the species and to create an environment that is healthier, less challenging and difficult to live in, and that we have these increments of positive evolution instead of this constant war. Learning that you have to have grace and diplomacy. 

The foundation in most belief systems is to create peace, to respect others, to contribute, to be beneficial, and to live a life of service. That’s pretty basic. You look at the Ten Commandments, that’s pretty much it. But what we have today is this bombardment of information, the shiny keys. Do I need to know everything that comes across my phone or everything I hear on the radio or something that I’m interested on the TV? I have to have discernment. 

And that’s taught by the time we’re five years old, we have a pretty good sense of right and wrong, we have a pretty good sense of what will do harm and what will not. “Don’t touch that stove. Don’t go over there.” Learning how to read, learning language, that discernment. Certainly by the time of seven, we say in education all the time: Look at that child of seven years and you’re going to see that child as an adult.

David: Culture does shape things and because technology changes culture it’s going to affect how children are shaped. I admire Adventist culture, in part because of the way it raises children: It cares about their education, it spends time with them, and so on, while the rest of the world by and large abandons kids to their iPads by age seven, and that’s where they’re getting their culture. 

I agree about the trappings of religion and culture and worship. Jesus himself pointed out that prayer, perhaps the most basic form of worship, should be done in a closet. In other words, shut out your culture—shut it right out—when you worship. If you want to have a relationship with God, develop it in the closet, not in the cathedral or any other man-made object.

Joyce; I’m not crazy about AI. I think what you get oftentimes is just an opinion, somebody’s opinion. You don’t really know the person. You get online and are bombarded with opinions. For example, my neighbors are Muslim. They are such wonderful people but I only know that because they’re my neighbors—we visit, we share food. They’re ending Ramadan, they’re going to have their family over to celebrate. They have my heart. I really don’t care what their traditions are only because I have met them and I love them. 

That makes me interested in how they conduct their lives. The young man’s wife is still in Pakistan with their new baby that’s only four months old. They’ll be coming here within the next six months. They’re going to live next door. Another son will be coming from Pakistan. So the whole family is going to buy a home together. I think that’s beautiful. These people know how to work together, they know how to compromise. I learn a lot from them. 

But if we didn’t share food and we didn’t share experiences, I don’t know that I would love what they do so much. I might think they’re a little nutty for all wanting to live together. But you know what: I understand their closeness. I so respect what they’re doing. If technology can enhance that, then beautiful. But if it tries to take the place, or we allow it (which we have, in a lot of cases) to take the place of human interaction, we’re in trouble.,

Michael: I would like to summarize what I think Dr. Weaver is trying to say: That religion is in peril. And I agree. 

When you ask people who say they are spiritual but not religious what they mean, they start describing psychology rather than spirituality. It’s very hard to define what is spiritual. I think religion can define it better than psychology, but the problem is that religion gets entangled so much with culture that it loses its essence, its spirituality. So I guess the question is: How do you focus more on the spiritual aspect of religion? I don’t think AI would be a danger to that.

Don: That’s what Jesus said at the well, wasn’t it?—emphasizing spirituality over man-made religion. Well said.

Jay: Really well said. As religion becomes more wrapped, more embedded in the culture, it loses the aspects of its spirituality. That’s really interesting. Our own cultures are getting broader and broader and broader and broader over not much time. We’re exposed to way more than we were ever exposed to before. We travel to places we’ve never been able to travel to before. We’re able to speak with people we were never able to speak with before. And so the culture gets broader and broader and broader and broader. 

We are plugging religious systems that are hundreds of years old into these ever expanding cultures. Have those religious systems which, in their infancy, may have been much more about spirituality, now become more about culture? As a born Seventh Day Adventist, I’m happy to say that the cultural part of Adventism works for me really well. It feels good, it works well, it helps my life move along just fine. 

Has being a Seventh Day Adventist become more about maintaining the cultural experience than the spiritual experience? We find it hard to define “spiritual experience.” I agree with Michael that we tend to describe it in terms of psychology. How do I maintain the spiritual foundation of a religious system hundreds of years old in this ever expanding culture we find ourselves in? Is it even possible?

Donald: I bumped into an old acquaintance I had not seen for two or three years, who was very connected to the organized church in my community. She knew I know lots of people who no longer attend church, but are spiritual, and she was looking to me for an answer. Her sense of whether these people are spiritual was based upon whether they attended church—that’s her ruler. 

We need to be careful with that ruler. There’s something wonderful about attending church with people you care about. If Joyce had just learned about Muslims from the media, her feelings would probably be quite different than they are for the Muslims with whom she shares a yard fence. There is something wonderful about going to church together and sharing your spiritual journey together, but Jason is spot on: When religion goes beyond religion things get to be pretty scary. And you can’t measure spirituality very well.

C-J: I think whenever there’s a major disruption in an established culture that encompasses or is defined by a religion, such as when Moses took the people out of Egypt and they were in the desert for a period of time, initially, it was like, “We’re free, we’re free!” as the story is told. But they needed a God, even though they had all these provisions—water, food, everything. They had plundered the Egyptians, but they needed a God, they needed a place, they needed something concrete, so they created the golden calf, borrowed from the culture of Egypt. 

In more modern times when we look at political disruption and war, whether it’s in one country or in many countries like World War 2, where people are the threats. “Who can we identify easily? We’ll take the Jews, we’ll take anybody that stands in our way. We’ll decimate their culture.” But in that process, a remnant remained, and the remnant wasn’t just the stories or a text or a tradition: They went back to their old identity, as Native Americans remain close to nature, nurturing God’s provision of a planet, community, kindness, and sustaining one another through times of terrible oppression. One piece of bread, but it belongs to you. You tear it in half and share it and that half is torn in half again. 

To me that is representative of spirit, the provision that is within us to sustain others. That is so skewed now it’s unrecognizable.

Kiran: Here we describe religion in terms of building each other up and showing kindness and compassion for one another. but in India religion is about my blessings, my health, my wealth—myself. There’s not so much about community. Islam seems to be about salvation, health and so on. 

Religious culture here is completely different from religious culture in India. Christian culture has evolved. It was different during the Catholic era, different during the Protestant era, and now evangelicals (Pentecstals especially) and nondenominationals are the fastest growing churches in many countries. 

Demographically, teens aged 13-19 comprise the fastest growing church online, on Twitch, a video gaming website. Groups of players talk about spiritual things while they play. It is one of the fastest growing churches in the teen democratic. They wear no formal dress, they don’t sing hymns, there’s no music. They just sit and discuss things of the spirit. They adopt pseudonyms such as God and Smack.

If a culture makes it hard to meet spiritual needs, people change it, and that’s okay. We’ve been changing it ourselves. The transition period may be hard. but the world is no longer what it was before. We worry about such things but teens don’t. They jump into it and are much happier than we are. 

The problem with AI is that a lot of kids now ask Siri or Google to solve their math problems, instead of asking their parents, They’re learning math that way instead of from a parent. What if they did the same in learning spirituality and AI leads them to conclusions different from their parents’? Who controls the AI? What if it were controlled by a cult? What if they don’t install filters and allow everything?

We have to think seriously about the spiritual implications of AI on children.

David: We seem to assume that our spirituality depends upon somebody pushing us, when we’re children, towards God. I think I might argue that we are not so dependent; that God is inside us as the eternity set within the heart when we’re born and we’re capable of having a relationship with God without any external pressure or trappings or organization to lead us there. 

There are certainly things that can distract us. Christians would argue that the devil wants to distract us from that relationship with God so he dangle shiny baubles to distract attention away from God. So perhaps we don’t need to worry, because it’s always been this way.

Yes, technology is distracting kids’ attention away from what their parents are saying but at the end of the day faith suggests that it doesn’t make any difference. God planted the Holy Spirit within us when we were born. Culture is a different story. But in the spiritual sense, perhaps technology doesn’t matter.

Donald: But where does morality come from? Is it already in you when you’re born? Does the child have a sense of what’s moral and immoral, or is that something its parents and society teach it? Who tells me it’s not right to steal something? Do you think I’d have any guilt if I was not taught by my parents to feel guilty?

David: Yes, I do. I think you would.

Michael: Culture teaches you even if your parents don’t. If stealing is okay in your culture, then it is okay. It wouldn’t be labeled as immoral. But stealing is immoral if the culture says so. It used to be immoral to be gay but now it’s not—the culture has changed. 

If your parents taught you as a child that being gay is immoral, by the time you’re an adult you may feel some dissonance but most children seem to adapt very well to these changes. They don’t feel obliged to follow what their parents taught them. 

So it seems like culture might be a stronger indicator of what is moral.

Donald: I would completely agree with you. We’re watching it change in front of our very eyes. You don’t have to go to jail if you steal less than a certain amount of money. So I’m not sure I know right from wrong. “Can I can get away with it?” now seems to be the reason why some people steal or don’t steal.

C-J: That’s apparent on the outside. But going back to what Michael was saying: The LBGTQ community is a very small and difficult world. You take a lot of risks being in that community, outside of its protective boundary. You’re saying they don’t think too much about it but if they were in it, it would be very different. 

We just go, “Well, people get to live the way they want. They don’t do any harm to me,” or “What is it? It’s kind of interesting. It’s an anomaly. Let’s look at it and if it’s for me, then maybe, and keep moving.” But when you become an adult, that fence gets pretty small. 

You can’t really just experiment and behave a certain way. Desperate people do desperate things. In war, I would not feel guilty for stealing to feed my children. I would not feel guilty if I had to prostitute to make sure my children had a bottle of water. 

But I think that there again, that’s a disruption, where the other is possibly under the heading of “As we march forward,” or “As we spread out so thin that we can no longer connect the dots.” We know the dots are there. We know that there differences, but they don’t impact me as much. There’s more space between the molecule. 

It’s a dangerous thing when we say that’s the way it is today, when we don’t take responsibility when we don’t lay a foundation, we don’t make clear the rationale behind the rules. Go out and see what you can learn. Sure, you can read anything you want. I don’t want a seven year old looking at porn. I don’t want anybody to see others as objects, as not having a sense of humanity and purpose and divinity within that peace of God. It’s just wrong. 

Do I think that we need, unfortunately, to pick up what parents don’t do anymore and let them find it on the internet, like Kiran said, or among themselves? Do you remember growing up in sex education in school? Girls were in one room, boys were in another room. The topic was very narrated. You read from a text; you didn’t just wing it. You didn’t ask questions, you just disseminated information the way you wanted it to be heard. 

Adults are not taking responsibility. 

Don: Next weekI’d like to explore further the statement of Jesus that God is a spirit and those that worship him must worship him in spirit in truth. I’m trying to parse out the question Michael asked: How do we separate, or define, religion and spirituality? It does occur to me that the more our spirituality is supplanted by religion, the more dangerous we become as people. Much bloodshed and distress caused by mankind has been done in the name of religion.

* * *

How do culture and religion influence one another? Nothing shapes us more than where we were raised and socialized. What we wear, what language we speak, what we eat, what sports we follow, what relationships we have with our family, how we picture God, which holy books we read, how we practice our religion,… all of these things are almost always dependent upon where we were born. 

The places where we are born and raised influence and define more than DNA itself who we are as people. Children adopted and brought to America from foreign lands as infants often grow up knowing nothing or little about their cultures of origin. They may look like they came from Moldova or Guatemala or Korea but they do not speak Moldovan or Spanish or Korean. They do not wear the dress of their origin, they do not eat the food of their origin. They may not subscribe to the religions into which they may have even been baptized as infants in their country of origin. 

Knowing next to nothing about the country in which they were born, they grow up speaking, dressing, eating and behaving like Americans born in America. They are, in fact, as American as apple pie. The place where we were born also influences how we see God. Raised as Christians, perhaps Adventists—attending Sabbath School, becoming baptized, or volunteering for missionary work or Pathfinders or church school—we become socialized through stories of our family’s faith community and how they see and worship God. We assimilate the same views, rituals, and religious practices of our adopted family. 

It is of course different for adults who immigrate into another country and culture. It is said of adults that you can take the wo/man out of the culture, but you cannot take the culture out of the wo/man. For most of human history, the vast majority of people traveled no more than about 10 miles from the place that they were born. Their exposure to other people and cultures was minimal to none and their worldview was shaped almost entirely by their immediate surroundings. 

Cultures were singular and isolated. The idea that another culture could impinge on one’s own culture and change some aspects of one’s way of life was just not even conceivable. What one believed to be true was known to be true because of the small world and was unlikely to be challenged as untrue. 

But how things have changed. In just my lifetime information dissemination has developed radically to the point where every culture now clashes with another culture. When such clashes are about food, or alcohol, or dress, or music, or language, and so forth, they may be relatively muted, but when they’re about God and faith and religious beliefs and practices, then things tend to turn ugly. 

You may believe in a single god, I may believe in the Triune God, someone else may believe in thousands of gods. But if I wear a headscarf to school, or if you kill a cow to make a hamburger, or if someone says something derogatory about my holy book, then it’s time for war. 

There are innumerable things about God that we do not know. There’s an infinite number of questions about God that we cannot answer, and mankind is uncomfortable with such uncertainty, particularly in the religious world. So if we don’t know something, we tend to make it up. This is especially true about religious things and about God. We’d rather be wrong and uncertain. We’re not satisfied with “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.” 

Religions have been more than willing over the centuries to fill knowledge gaps with answers. Sometimes, however, they may be answers of dubious value, or even untrue. We no longer have the luxury of a worldview just 10 miles in radius. Today’s view is expansive, comprehensive, and disruptive. We long for simplicity and narrowness of vision, yet we want everyone to stay in their own cultural lane. It would make our lives so much easier. We want to be Gentile-free Jews, Turk-free Greeks, Muslim-free Christians, but we can’t. We not only have to see each other but also we have to confront one another in our cultural differences. 

We battle change even within our own culture. Every generation redefines the culture of the previous generation. What worked for the parent may not work for the child. What works for the grandparent does not necessarily make sense to the grandchild. How can we go forward with a God who never changes in such a changing cultural milieu? If God is timeless, unchanging, and unbound by culture, how does our culture work to our advantage or disadvantage in terms of seeing the truth about God? 

No culture, no religion, no faith group ever believed that it held an erroneous picture of God. Each sincerely believes it holds the complete truth about God. Each has stories of miraculous interventions by God on his behalf. Culture is strong, and religious culture is even stronger. But culture changes—even religious culture. But God is unchanging:  

“For I, the Lord, do not change;…” (Malachi 3:6) 

I’m proposing that we spend the next few weeks looking at the subjects of God, culture, religion, and technology; addressing some of the following questions: 

• Has technology impacted religious practice and beliefs? 
• In what way has it transformed or enhanced the relationship between God and humans? 
• Is religion a cultural product or an inherent aspect of human nature and spirituality? 
• How does culture shape religious beliefs and practices and how have religious beliefs and practices shaped culture? 
• Can we reconcile the traditional spiritual aspects of religion with the modern technological aspects of contemporary society? 
• Are these two aspects inherently in conflict or can they coexist? 
• How has the use of technology and religious practices impacted the community and social aspects of religion? 
• Has it led to an increase or decrease in social connectedness within religious communities? How can technology be used to enhance religious education and understanding? 
• Are there any potential drawbacks to relying on technology for spiritual development and for religious education? 
• How can religion and spirituality help us navigate the challenges posed by modern technologies such as the social media, artificial intelligence and the internet? 
• Are there any ethical or moral considerations that we should be aware of in the use of these technologies? 
• How has globalization impacted religious practices and beliefs? 
• Has it led to the spread and diversification of religious practices or to greater homogenization of religious cultures? 
• How can we be sure that technology is used in a way that is consistent with religious and spiritual values and demonstrates love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, even grace? 
• What role can religious leaders and institutions play in shaping the use of technology in society? 
• How can we reconcile the differences and conflicts that arise between different religious cultures, particularly in the globalized and interconnected world that we find ourselves in? 
• Are there any universal values or principles that can be shared across different religious traditions? 
• How has technology impacted our understanding and our relationship with God? 
• Can we use technology to deepen our spiritual connection and understanding of God or does it invariably lead to shallow and superficial understandings of the Divine? 
• Are there biblical illustrations where culture interfered with the correct picture of God? 
• How dangerous is our culture concerning our picture of God? 
• And finally, how does the non-changing God adapt to a changing world?

Religious culture is rooted in traditions, beliefs, and practices that have been passed down from generation to generation. As a result, religious culture is slow to change. However, there are, I believe, certain pressure points that can be leveraged to effect change in religious culture. There may be others. 

1. Education. Education is a powerful tool for promoting change in religious culture by teaching new generations about alternative interpretations of religious texts and traditions. Educators can challenge long-held beliefs and promote new ways of thinking and acting. Education can broaden a worldview. 

2. Social movements. Social movements can also be a powerful force for change in religious culture. By organizing around a specific issue or cause, social movements can raise awareness of social justice issues and mobilize individuals and communities to take action—pro-life or pro-choice and Black Lives Matter are examples in recent times of social issues that I think have put pressure on religious culture. 

3. Technology. Technology can also be used to effect change in religious culture by creating new ways for people to connect and to share information. Technology can break down barriers and promote dialogue and understanding across different religious communities. 

4. Religious leadership. Religious leaders play a critical role in shaping religious culture by interpreting religious texts and teachings, emphasizing and applying them to contemporary issues. By promoting new interpretations or by retrenching old interpretations of religious traditions, religious leaders can help to effect change in the way that religious communities think and act. As an example, think of our General Conference president and his influence on the religious culture of our church, or the Pope and the influence that he has on the religious culture of the Catholic church. 

5. Generational shifts. As each new generation comes of age, it may bring with it different attitudes and values that can challenge and change religious culture. By promoting new perspectives and practices, younger generations can effect change in religious culture over time. How do my children and my grandchildren view God compared to how I view God? 

I propose that we look at each of these pressure points in turn, both historically and in their present day application. By working together to promote change through these pressure points, individuals and communities can affect meaningful change in religious culture over time. Just last week in church we sang a hymn written in the 1700s. It prompted me to go to the Seventh Day Adventist Church hymnal and look for hymns written in the 1700s or before. Here’s a list: 

• All Creatures of Our God and King, written in 1225 attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. 
• A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, written in 1529 by Martin Luther. 
• Amazing Grace written in 1779 by John Newton. 
• Come Thou Almighty King, 1757, attributed to Charles Wesley. 
• Crown Him With Many Crowns was written in the early 1700s (revised in 1851) by Matthew Bridges. 
• Jesus Lover of My Soul, written in 1740 by Charles Wesley, 
• Joy to the World, 1719, written by Isaac Watt. 
• O God Our Help in Ages Past, 1790, written by Isaac Watt. 
• Rock of Ages, 1776 written by Augustus, Montague Toplady. 

It caused me to wonder what else in my culture have I used in the last month that’s the same as it was in 1700? Religious culture is resistant to change. I thought about language. I thought about food, traditional crafts, how we grow things. But everything I could come up with was radically different from what was practiced in 1700—except, of course, my church hymns. 

So what role does technology play in shaping the relationship between God culture and religion? How has technology influenced the way in which we practice and express our religious beliefs? What ethical considerations should be taken into account when incorporating technology into religious practice? How has the widespread availability of information through technology affected religious education and understanding? 

In what ways can technology be used to promote positive change in social justice within religious communities? Why do we so fear religious change? Can a rigid religious tradition grow old and out of date? Are the hymns written in the 1700s and earlier still applicable and lively today? How does a timeless God adapt to our changing culture? 

David: To set some of the larger background relating to what Don said about the 10 mile radius of the village, I would note that the biggest single thing I think technology has done to impact our relationships among ourselves—and I think ultimately will impact our personal relationships with God—is to produce a global village with a circumference that spans the entire globe. 

Information and communication technologies turn cultures once utterly foreign into our village neighbors; and, as Don said, we have to deal with them. We’re not only meeting them in the flesh through air travel and immigration, we’re also meeting them increasingly through Zoom and the like. 

That seems to me to be the biggest single impact, and I think it’s going to affect all of the other pressure points Don mentioned—education and so on. 

Most Western villagers 200 years ago would never have heard of Daoism. Today Daoism is not uncommon in people of Western cultural background. I myself have kind of adopted it. I don’t think such impacts are trivial—I think we’re coalescing into a single global village culture. That will have ramifications both during the journey to it and at journey’s end. We’re not there yet, and there is a risk and likelihood even of resultant cultural clashes. 

AI will have more specific and perhaps deeper implications than information and communication technologies and technologies in general, whose broad implications and potential impacts on spirituality are big enough. 

It was remarked last week that bringing us all back together is what happened in Babel, and the question is, are we making the same mistake? Are we going to try and build another tower to reach to reach heaven through the technologies we have? And if so, what is God likely to do about it?

Sharon: I’m fascinated about this core characteristic of God and his inability to change. Could it be that if God is completely all-inclusive he doesn’t need to change because we change? And could it be that his inclusivity is so broad and so big that things can evolve from one generation to the next and the core character of who God is—the unconditional love, the acceptance, the understanding and appreciation for each of us being totally unique individuals—doesn’t need to change?

God’s love doesn’t probably ever need to ever change. It’s only the human challenge of trying to put God into our small box that creates the technology challenge, because we’re so used to thinking in the context of our own worldview. Don started with “We are where we’re raised.” I totally agree with that. Part of that, obviously, is is genetics; but a large part of it is the exposure, the opportunities, the bigness of the world that your parents allowed you to experiment with, and the attitudes of acceptance and unconditional love that we have for people around us.

I think technology actually allows us to look at God through a much bigger, almost magic, lens. It allows us to use a variety of tools. If we thought about all the roles right now in which we use technology in the spiritual life of our students, and in socializing our students, we would be hard pressed as an Adventist University right now to do without it, because it is where our kids connect to the Lord and to each other. It is their social contact. 

So I don’t have any answers, but I think we have a very big God who, from one generation to the next, is not going to change, because his core values and who he is isn’t going to change regardless of the technologies that we use to try to share his message. 

Donald: A photographer shooting portrait photographs in the studio usually points two or three lights at the subject from different directions, with different intensities and different diffusions, in order to create a desired dimension of the individual being portrayed. So it is, too, with our one God: He can have many dimensions that can be brought out by the way in which he is “lit” (metaphorically speaking).

Two people sitting next to each other may cast different lights on God and see things differently. Age is one factor that changes perspective. God, of course, does not age and does not change, but we do. That doesn’t mean a given perspective is right or wrong. Perspectives change based upon our own understanding of what we bring to the table.

So can different perspectives on God coexist in this world? With technology, perhaps. 

Don: Sharon’s contention is that the circle of God is big enough to accommodate not only your differences and my differences but also the changes  we both have undergone in the past and will undergo in the future.

Donald: The problem is, we’re not very accommodating to the next person’s perspective on this. This is one area that we say: “You’ve gone too far now.”. 

Don: When you’re right, you’re right. What can one say?

Donald: But on Sabbath morning, how many churches are needed to accommodate different perspectives? Some of it is cultural, but some of it involves classification along the continuum from conservative church to open-minded church.

David: One thing people have agreed on, I think, throughout history—all cultures, all countries, all civilizations—is that the things Sharon talked about—the core values of God (goodness, love, mercy) never change. Politically, we can and do disagree on whether other things have those values but humankind has never, I think, disputed the notion of goodness itself. We would know it when we see it and would not argue about it; at least, I can’t see that we ever have and I have never seen an argument positing goodness as something different from what we all suppose it to be. To me, goodness has persisted unchanged throughout history and and will continue to persist, because goodness is the unchanging God.

Carolyn: When it comes to love, goodness, “judgementalness,” and acceptance of others, I think God loves us all and expects us to be equally committed to loving others. God does not like the sin but he loves the sinner. Even like-minded believers in a church or community tend to have have decided views on who’s right and who’s wrong. But it’s hard to have the love we are commanded to have toward one another if we are judging one another and the rightness or wrongness of their perspectives. 

Reinhard: Things are very different today in the US compared to when I moved here after high school. As well, I had to adapt to the language and Western culture. Living standards are higher today. Most people can afford a cell phone and can access information through the internet, including religious texts and sermons and podcasts. 

So in terms of access to information, there is pretty much equality right now. There are online translators and subtitles to overcome the language barrier. As a result, people are learning a great deal more, including more about different religions, and this can impact culture in a positive way or a negative way. It can lead us to love others more—or less. 

There was a time when ATMs were new and people were willing to help one another use them. Now, we distrust anyone near us at the ATM, because we’ve gotten the messages about the dangers. So ATM technology had a positive impact at first, but it turned negative later. 

Scripture tells us:

And I saw another angel flying in midheaven with an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation, tribe, language, and people;… (Revelation 14:6)

Perhaps the new media will lead us closer to the second coming by enabling the everlasting gospel to be preached to every nation before the end comes. The gospel can penetrate the remotest reaches of Earth. God can accommodate everyone, while remaining the same. It is we who just need to adjust to new information and new technology and choose those that bring us closer to God, rather than take our faith away. I believe there is a positive aspect to innovation.

Michael: I fail to see why the impact of technology on religion is an important topic and why we have to spend so long discussing it.

Don: I’m trying to broaden it to culture in general—the effect of cultural change on religion and the pressures that it places on religion, and vice versa.

Sharon: I think there’s a lot of potential in technology to undo some of the religious atrocities. I was sitting in church today with my students. The African culture is very spirited, animated, and energetic. But all we were doing was singing The Old Rugged Cross and I just grieved for my missionary predecessors who said: “You need to wear a suit and tie. You need to sing The Old Rugged Cross, you need to stop practicing your local traditions or adding local flavor to your spiritual expression to your God.”

It’s truly a cultural atrocity that we imposed Western culture on this amazing, rich, colorful culture, and made it as boring as ours. I wonder if technology, in our faith walk with our young people here in Africa, could undo some of the multi-generational cultural atrocities that I continue to see on a daily basis in my work here.

Donald: In a visit to Africa in the 1990s I noticed, in stops at Adventist institutions, that the original pictures in Mrs. White’s illustrated books had been replaced with pictures that tried, but failed, to make the books seem more culturally appropriate.

Sincere as the missionaries were, their work entailed importing a new culture, no question about it. In that sense, I understand what Michael is saying: “Let’s move on. We got it.” The problem is that as soon as you move away from this group, you’re going to be impacted by somebody saying: “No, you don’t do it that way. You do it this way.” 

How do we get through that? This group is probably pretty good with: “OK, you do it your way and I’ll do it my way, and we’ll both be okay!” But I don’t think that’s the way it works in many faith circles on Sabbath morning.

David: My fear is that that’s not going to be the way it works. We’ve talked about technology in general having already had quite some impact but we are moving ultimately to a discussion of a new form of technology: Intelligent technology, or AI for short. 

An AI like ChatGPT has the ability to change a person’s perspective on things in ways that go beyond what “dumb” technology (such as an ATM) could achieve. It can change your mind, your perspective on something, through intellectual argument and persuasion. 

In an ideal world, ChatGPT would be utterly and totally unbiased, completely neutral. But it’s not an ideal world, and ChatGPT sometimes makes mistakes, tells untruths, presents erroneous perspectives and biases that you might not be aware of. At least as bad is that other people can insert bias into ChatGPT sufficient to actively control your perspectives. 

Think about what Joseph Stalin would have made of ChatGPT. Even without it, he managed to drive religion deep underground. Such is the danger we’re facing now. There are still Stalins in this world who want to have control over our minds. So our relationship with God could be impacted extremely severely by these technologies, and I think that’s why it’s worth talking about it.

Michael: We can easily look at history to see the impact of technology, and see that the world hasn’t been destroyed. It’s just gotten better. Everything has gotten better. Our lives have gotten better.

We tend to look at the world or human nature from a negative point of view. We view most people as bad. “Given half a chance, they will do harm. They’re racist, they’re biased, they’re going to try to hurt me and steal from me.” But that doesn’t seem like the truth, except perhaps in movies. 

The truth is that most human beings are quite decent, if not good. False assumptions cloud our vision and make us see things from a negative point of view. So even though there are biases, for the most part, it’s a bias for the good, not for the bad..

Carolyn: If technology is telling us what is good, how does that fit with the injunction not to judge other people? If technology tells us dogmatically: “That’s the way it’s going to be,” it presents a challenge for religious or cultural beliefs. Will we have a right to say something is good or that someone is wrong if technology lays down down a law about it? 

I think the future has many good things to expect from technology but when it starts telling us what we should believe, we have to stick to our own beliefs.

Jay: There are universal principles and characteristics of God that extend across all of space and time: Goodness, grace, and love for example. Yet we relate to those principles based upon when and where we were born and our upbringing. Technology seems to be leading us toward a global culture. What does it mean if we relate to the universal principles of God through our culture (which I think we do) and our culture is starting to flatten to the extent that already we start to see ourselves all perceiving and relating to God in ways that have more in common than we thought? 

Is that what God wants? Is that what what he’s looking for—to be uniform in our thinking and in our relationship to God, through technology? We may be good at heart, but we do we tend to look at life through negative lenses. If we used positive lenses we’d indeed see a lot more good than we see evil in the world. But when humanity becomes uniform in culture and thought, to me, history suggests that it might be a problem, not a positive, for us. 

I’m wondering, as the global culture becomes more and more defined or strengthened, what will that really mean for how we perceive and relate to God? I’m thinking of Sharon’s example of missionaries who, rather than seeking to preserve the diversity they found as they covered the globe, sought instead to unify the cultures.

Donald: As we age perhaps we tend to view the past through rose-tinted glasses, but looking at cities in the USA right now things aren’t what they used to be. When people are left to their own devices, I’m not sure that things work out. I think most people are good but things can go bad really quickly. Economic inequalities, tented communities in cities, did not exist in their current extent when I was a kid. 

The behaviors that seem to present themselves in our most significant cities in America don’t look too good. I don’t I don’t know that that has anything to do with technology. It has to do with with a common set of behavioral rules. I don’t think we’re agreed upon the way we should behave anymore. 

David: I think we’re moving towards that. Tumult accompanies our attempts to achieve a common set of behaviors. The different perspectives that result from different configurations and balances of lights and so on enrich the field of photography; but if someone were to impose—as seems to me possible through the mind-manipulative capabilities of AI—a single perspective, how much poorer the world would be. A single perspective on God seems awfully dangerous, to me.

Michael: I’m not sure how we’re all coming to one perspective on God. But I’ve always been fascinated with the success of the LGBTQ movement in changing people’s minds about their ethics and whether they are good or bad. It used to be easy to say they were bad but now people are reluctant to accuse them of being ethically bad, even if they think so. 

Maybe it’s not technology, but it is progress. Instead of being labeled as outcasts, they’ve been included as part of our diversity. I think this is social progress that technology can help bring about.

Don: I think that’s exactly right. It’s part of the social movement pressure that I alluded to as one of the points of view that does affect religious culture. 

David: I’d say that’s certainly true in Western democratic civilizations, but try being LGBTQ or a Jehovah’s Witness in Russia today, or in China, or in a whole bunch of other countries, too. Their dictators are all fighting very, very hard against the very notion of diversity that the Western democratic tradition tries to promote.

We think our diverse traditions and cultures are good. The dictator thinks they are bad, or at least inimical to his interests. There is a battle going on between good and evil in the world right now. And I do think we’re in danger.

Michael: THe LBGTQ movement is a fascinating example in part because it’s happened in our lifetime. But even in Western culture, I’m sure many people in churches are still finding it hard to accept what the movement stands for. I don’t come from a Western culture—I come from a culture that is still very much against it. Even here, I sometimes feel conflicted about it. It is not a simple issue. 

But it has been shown that we can deny our inherent biases. I find it so fascinating that LGBTQ morality was once considered bad, without question; but now it is not. It’s fully acceptable. It’s completely fine. And as a minority, it may even receive a disproportional degree of support at times.

Reinhard: In Indonesia, Christians of many denominations have been receptive to Western culture—adopting Western dress and so on. But other religions very much reject it, although government leaders like to wear suits and ties. Some extremists hate Western dress and songs, and accuse local Christians of being agents of the West. 

This is an ongoing cultural conflict in Indonesia, although its government is very much a Western-style democracy. Of course the culture is going to have on-and-off conflict in the future, despite technology. This is about culture and modernization.

Don: Thank you, friends, for your input, for the discussion. More on culture and religion and the relationship between the two in the future.

* * *

Culture is the set of values, beliefs, ideas, customs, manual skills, arts, and traditions of a people cast along to succeeding generations. Churches and families have cultures just as whole societies do. These cultures exert a major influence on how and what we worship.

Can—or should—culture and God be separated? Despite their great cultural differences, all congregations come together primarily for the purpose of worship. For most, worship is the central spiritual practice offered to congregants, the most culture-filled and the most critical component of the philosophy and strategy for congregational growth. 

Culture often defines ritual, and ritual is extremely helpful in setting the boundaries for a faith community. (We talked about rituals a couple of weeks ago.) The more culture-bound our worship is, the more difficult it becomes to accommodate others who are not part of the culture—as Jesus might call them: Sheep who are not of this fold. 

The culture of a faith group is heavily weighted by group identity and exclusivity. The Israelites of the Old Testament, who were chosen by God to represent him, were given extensive means to identify themselves in order to limit the access of outsiders to their culture; for example, how they wove their linen for their clothing, what they were to eat and how they were to prepare their food. Laws of ritual purity and hundreds of Levitical laws were all part of their culture and limited access to their culture. They did not weave wool with linen because wool was a native product of God’s creative act in the form of a sheep and linen was an important product of mankind originating as hemp, cultivated and then turned into linen fiber in Egypt. 

But much as culture influences worship, worship also influences culture. Good worship begets good culture, the Old Testament suggests. When Israel sinned against God it was usually the result of bad worship, such as becoming idolatrous and worshiping other gods. How and who they worshipped defined, in a major way the, culture of Israel. Worship shapes believers into that which is being worshipped, thereby shaping entire nations as well as their people and their ideas, beliefs, traditions, and their culture. 

In the garden of Eden before the fall, worship and culture were essentially the same thing. The culture of the garden is defined in Scripture as follows:

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:28-31) 

The command to Adam and Eve was essentially to cultivate the earth. The words cultivate and culture share the same Latin root, cultus, which means to worship. That Adam was in direct personal communication with God meant that everything he did was, in essence, an act of worship. To consecrate the Sabbath as holy time and to concentrate the tending of the garden was culturally to concentrate both Adam’s time and his space. 

There was no separation between culture and worship or religious duty. They were all one and the same thing. But after the fall, a curse was placed on the ground that was to be cultivated and culture began to separate from worship right up to today, when the gap between culture and worship or between culture and our picture of God has grown quite wide. 

Can we identify the elements of our worship, of our viewpoint on God, that are purely cultural versus those that are purely worshipful? What needs to be preserved? And what needs to be discarded? Can God be seen only through culture or can worship and our picture of God somehow be culture free? 

Culture is a product of information. The more rapid the change in data, knowledge, and information, the more pressure there is on culture to change. This is where we find ourselves today. There is an information explosion all around us. We wish and try to resist it but without success. How rapidly is information expanding and what impact does it have upon culture? 

Information is expanding at an unprecedented rate in today’s world, largely due to the rapid development and widespread adoption of digital technologies such as the Internet, social media, and mobile devices. The amount of data generated globally is expected to reach 175 zettabytes by the year 2025—approximately five times the amount of data generated in 2018. 

The expansion of information has a profound effect upon culture, shaping the ways in which people interact with others, influencing how we consume media, and how we participate in political and social life. The expansion of information has:

• Made it easier for people to access a wide range of information and knowledge regardless of their location, their background, or even their native culture; 
• Transformed the way people consume media, with many traditional sources of media being replaced by digital media platforms (I read recently that Ford Motor Company is no longer installing AM radios in their cars because nobody listens to AM any more. As well, the younger generation hardly ever watches television—they stream almost everything); 
• Enabled people to participate more fully in social and political life, with social media platforms providing new avenues for activism and engagement. We even have a name for the people who inhabit such platforms: Influencers;
• Led to changes in cultural values and attitudes, with new ideas and perspectives being introduced and old beliefs and values being challenged; and finally,
• Facilitated increased globalization, with people and cultures around the world becoming more interconnected and interdependent. We no longer live in the 10 mile radius that we’ve talked about before, as we did through to the early19th century. 

Overall, the expansion of information has had and is having a profound effect upon our culture. In the year 1500 it is estimated that it took information about 100 years to double. By the early 1800s, information was doubling every 50 years. By the early 1900s. Information was doubling twice every 30 years. In the 1950s and 1960s, information began to double every decade due to the rise of computers and digital technologies. 

By 1989, information was doubling every two to three years and in the early 2000s Information was doubling every year. Today, information is estimated to double every 12 months. What that means is that a year ago this Easter one year ago, we knew half of what we now know today about ourselves and about the world around us. 

Do we know now twice as much about God as we did a year ago? Does the rate at which data, information, and knowledge accumulate effect change in our culture and our picture of God?

Indeed, the rate at which data, information, and knowledge accumulates affects the rate of change of the culture in an entirely reproducible way. As people become more exposed to diverse and varied ideas, beliefs, and values, they’re more likely to adopt new cultural practices and norms. In short, their worldview begins to change as they’re exposed to more diverse ideas. 

The accumulation of knowledge and information can also challenge existing cultural beliefs and practices, leading to a shift in cultural values and norms. For example, scientific discoveries and advancements in technology have led to changes in how we view and approach various aspects of life, such as health, learning and education, and social interactions. 

The rate at which data accumulates now can also contribute to the creation of new cultural practices and customs. As new technologies, products and services emerge, people may develop new ways of interacting with one another and with the world around them. This Zoom class of ours may be a perfect example of the changes we’re talking about. It allows people from around the country and around the world to meet with us this morning. Today we have Sharon from Africa and Reinhardt from Indonesia. 

This all adds new meaning to something called the “faith community.” The rate at which data and information accumulates and alters our worldview can have a significant impact on cultural change, shaping our beliefs and our values and practices as individuals and societies, which are changing rapidly over time. 

Frankly, these changes can be frightening. We look for stability around us, but see nothing but change. We see change in how we work and how we worship. We see change in how we learn, how we shop, how we pay for things and how we communicate. Everything is different, driven by new ideas, new devices, new machines, new ways of life. Technology is not just our future; it is our ever-present. 

Why do we fear the changes that technology brings to our culture? New technologies often bring changes that people may not understand or be familiar with, leading to fear and uncertainty about how this will impact their lives. New technologies also can sometimes displace or replace traditional practices and ways of life, leading to a sense of loss or disconnection from cultural roots. 

Schooling and education may be a leading example of this: Students now can get much of the information that they need for learning from a computer. The role of the teacher is changing. Technological advancement can sometimes lead to job losses or changes in employment pattern leading to economic disruption and uncertainty. David sends me something every week about how my job is in jeopardy and will be gone in a very few years. 

Some people fear that technologies such as social media and cellular devices may lead to increased social isolation rather than increase connection with one another. I see some kids in my own living room sometimes texting one another, from one couch to another in the same room. Some people may have concerns about the ethical implications of new technologies, such as the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on human decision making. 

Technology is a major influence on our culture, and can influence our religion as well. With the advent of technology people now have easy access to religious content such as Scriptures. On my cell phone, I have more than 50 translations of the Bible. You can also get teachings and sermons and our own blog, The Interface, which is also a product of technology. This can help individuals to deepen their knowledge of faith and connect with religious communities, communities, and leaders. 

Many religious organizations now offer virtual religious services allowing people to attend worship service and other religious events from the comfort of their own home. This of course, has revolutionized shut-in ministries. This has been become especially important during times of social distancing and the pandemic. Social media platforms themselves have become an important tool for religious organizations to connect with their members and followers and share religious messages and teachings. Religious leaders can use social media to reach a wider audience and engage with their followers in new and more meaningful ways. Oakwood Church has a Facebook page. 

There is now a variety of religious apps allowing users to connect with their faith in new and innovative ways. You can use a prayer app, you can use a Scriptural app, you can use a meditation app, a music app, you can get an app for your mass or for your liturgy, even for your communion. You can literally do church in your pajamas. Technology can also impact religious practices and rituals. Some religious communities have embraced the technology to enhance traditional practice, such as using a digital prayer mat that lights up to indicate the direction of Mecca during prayer. 

How does an unchanging God adapt to an ever- and rapidly changing world? Does advancing technology require us to change our concepts of God? How does our understanding of God adapt to the changes that we see rapidly occurring around us? 

Advancing technology can lead to new understandings of the Divine and challenge traditional concepts of God. As humans develop new technologies and learn more about the universe, our understanding of the natural world and the place of humans within it certainly changes. This can lead to new theological and philosophical questions and challenges, and also increases the number of new conundrums as well. For example: The development of advanced medical technologies can lead to ethical questions about the role of God and healing and the use of technology to extend human life. 

Similarly, advancements in artificial intelligence and robots may raise questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between humans and machines. (David wrote a book about that if you’re interested.) 

However, while advancing technology can challenge traditional concepts of God, it can also provide new opportunities for spiritual growth and understanding. Technology can also help people connect with others around the world explore different religious traditions and deepen their understanding of the Divine. 

Ultimately, the impact of advancing technology and our concept of God depends on how it is used, including how individuals believe and cultural attitudes toward technology change and the ways in which technology is used to explore and use different ideas. Perhaps technology may in itself help us to overcome our fear of religious change. I believe it can do so in several ways: 

• Technology allows us to connect with people from different religious backgrounds and explore new religious ideas and practices. This can help us to understand and appreciate different perspectives and reduce the fear of the unknown. 
• Technology can educate us about ourselves in ways that we’ve never been able to be educated before and about different religions and religious practices, helping us to better understand and appreciate differences of beliefs. 
• Technology can help us to connect with our own religious communities and with leaders around the world, providing a sense of connection and community even if we’re physically distant. Unfortunately, we frequently fail to take advantage of this and instead, somehow turn it into a clash of cultures. 
• Technology can facilitate interfaith dialogue and understanding, allowing people from different religious traditions to engage in constructive conversations about their beliefs and practices. 
• Technology can provide access to a wide range of resources for spiritual growth, such as the various meditation, scriptural, musical, and other apps that can deepen people’s understanding of their own faith, and explore new religious ideas and practices.

So how does a religious community undergo change without losing its way? Religious communities can maintain the integrity of their culture by deeply grounding their changes in Scripture, and more loosely grounding them in tradition. Any changes to religious practice or belief should be rooted in a deep understanding of Scripture, and the historical context of the various traditions. 

Religious groups can benefit from engaging in dialogue with their own followers and with other religious traditions. This can help to foster a deeper understanding of the needs and the experiences of the community being served, and ensure that changes are responsive to those needs while still remaining true to the core beliefs and values of the traditions. 

Religious tradition can embrace diversity within their own community and recognize that different individuals may have different needs and experiences by acknowledging and valuing these differences. Religious traditions can adapt to meet the needs of a changing community while still maintaining their overall integrity. Religious organizations can maintain their integrity by keeping the common good in mind, Changes should be made with the goal of improving the lives of the community, promoting social justice, compassion inclusivity and to foster a better way of life. This brings us to the final question. Does culture change religion, or does religion change culture? 

Which do you think is is more likely to occur—that culture changes religion or religion changes culture? How does a God that never changes adapt to a changing culture (and a rapidly changing one at that)? How does technology and its advances shape our culture? How are we to keep up? 

Why do we fear change? Especially religious change? What are we actually afraid of? How does each generation find its own way of balancing the new cultures and the new technologies and help  in shaping its view of God? How does your generation view God compared to mine, or maybe to my dad’s even? How does your generation practice your faith compared to mine? 

How do you think culture, technology, and knowing God interact? Should we, as a matter of principle\, embrace change or should we resist it? Should we hold on or should we let go? Should we resist or should we surrender? And can change be actually managed or is change something that really we have no control over?

Jay: My view of God is one in which there are timeless universal, principles There’s no doubt that historically the different cultures found all across our world have related to those principles differently, but if the principles themselves are universal and timeless, then they are what they are. There’s no doubt that as we look through our cultural lens with whatever limited knowledge we have, we see those principles very differently but I believe that those principles are timeless and universal. 

Secondly, in the story of the Tower of Babel is a very common group of people who end up with the inappropriate goal of reaching heaven, reaching God, and understanding what God is. God confounds them through language, which dramatically drives culture—a common language brings people together into a group and dramatically drives the group culture. 

The question is: Is that starting to happen again? As information and knowledge is growing so quickly and language barriers are being rapidly dismantled, are we building a new Tower of Babel? 

David: I do think it’s clear that we are moving towards a more universal culture across human civilization. The question is whether we are going to use it the same way that the Babelonians did—to crack open the secrets of God—in which case presumably the same lesson God gave them would apply to us and God will not want it to happen. So what what’s going to come of that? 

As to the question of how we relate to God: I recently talked with ChatGPT-4 about just that. It pointed out that we humans relate to God through the medium of the Church, which then guides us into the Scriptures—in Christian churches, primarily the Gospels. We are not born and given a Bible to read as part of our recommended reading. We are born and sent to Sabbath School to learn to read and understand the Bible the way the Church wants us to read and understand it.

In other words, the Gospels are given to us in the context of the church’s own culture, a culture that is built on the Curche’s own principles. For two millennia the Good News of the Word has been mediated by the Church. ChatGPT floored me by pointing out that the first readers/students of the Gospels had no one to interpret for them. They were naive readers. They were exposed to God’s Word directly, without any slick mediation. 

The fascinating thing is that technology is returning us to that unmediated experience of the Word. Rather than going to church and being being fed the church’s version of what the Word says and means—”the truth”—young people today can find the Gospels themselves through ChatGPT and/or other people on TikTok. They may be Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, and may speak of the Word as it is presented to them in their own Scripture. 

In this way, God’s Word is coalescing around the world and becoming one. I think that that will lead to a better understanding of God, but Jay’s question nags: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Are we going back to Babel?

Donald: I’m not as optimistic as Jay and David. What’s the difference between doctrine and culture in the context of faith, and then what are the core beliefs—the essentials? I don’t know that we can agree upon those things, though we think we can. As an administrator at a university, 15 years ago I created a reader for freshmen called The Essentials. It was about what was essential to our faith and why our university was the right choice. It never got off the ground because we couldn’t agree upon the essentials. 

In the area surrounding my neighborhood we have probably 15 to 20 churches, most based upon an ethnicity or culture group—Filipino, Korean, etc.. On the Sabbath, we don’t come together. We are not comfortable taking on each other’s cultures. We’d like to think we are. I’m open minded. I’m liberal in my thinking, but everything is filtered through our particular group culture or context. I may have more available to me. I have greater exposure. But that doesn’t mean I’m very tolerant

C-J: I think this tolerance is more about codependence because of free markets. Everything we do is politically motivated. You may slap a belief system on ritual and traditions or clothing. But really, in the global community it’s about politics, money, and power. So he who has the greatest influence gets to make those decisions about what the country’s language will be, what currency they will use, who they’ll do business with, when and how, music,… you can go down the list. 

For the last 70 years, it’s been the United States, but in other times it was China, Rome, Egypt… you can go down the list. You can see that cultural influence as it spread out like spilled milk, as to what their buildings look like, the similarities in their language, all those things. And so when we talk about religion as if it’s something separate, it’s really a reflection. 

I think when we talk about personal identity, we we work from the center, which would be the individual and go out. “I am these things.” And as we mature, we keep hanging things on the Christmas tree. But the truth is that we are not as unique as we think we are, we do not stand alone as much as we think we can, we really are codependent in all these networks. 

I agree that it’s rooted in language. If you cannot communicate, none of that’s going to happen effectively. You have to negotiate peace. You have to use diplomacy You have to be gracious. How much are you willing to put on the table and lose? It’s not about putting it on the table and winning, it’s what are you comfortable in losing? So it can be a border. It can be weapons to protect your borders. Money is a weapon in the global marketplace. 

I think that we console ourselves with the spiritual component because we need to feel connected, and you cannot feel connected by currency. You can buy people to stand near you. But you cannot buy the union that it seems like the spiritual realm provides. When I’m with a Christian, I can exhale, even if I don’t like how they practice or maybe who they are as an individual. But I know we have a common thread, a common moral compass, a common way of being. We’re imperfect, but I feel connected to that community. 

I think we oftentimes create our own misery inside. But we also have to accept responsibility for that political piece that influences so much. 

Jay: The notion of “essentials” takes us back to the timeless, universal principles about God, As knowledge increases and culture expands, the sense of understanding and the want to understand more is heightened. We want to dig into it, get into the nitty gritty of it. But the essential things in life tend to be fairly broad and non-specific. Is inter-group disagreement about essentials the result of trying to be specific about them? Food, water, and shelter are essentials, but when we are more specific about them, they’re not essential, but they become defining.

As we increase in our ability to be able to understand, decipher, and decode data, information, and knowledge there’s no doubt that we begin to focus on the nitty gritty instead of broad principle. So the question is how to get a deeper understanding of the broad essentials without getting lost in the nitty gritty?

Donald: The challenge lies in being open-minded. What are the essentials? Adventism has 28 of them but if we were to scrutinize that list and eliminate items that are too narrow, cultural, or not truly doctrinal, I think we would struggle to reduce it to fewer than 20. Yet, honestly, it needs to be pared down to about six.  

If the framework you’ve established around your life aligns with your understanding, beliefs, and values, then by all means, move forward. Who am I to say otherwise? Unfortunately, it seems like churches and doctrines often create divisions.

I have lifelong friends who are quite conservative, and a conversation like this would not resonate with them. They enjoy delving into minute details and narrowing their focus. They sleep well at night, secure in their beliefs. While I don’t agree with their views, I admire their conviction and the peace it brings them.  

C-J: Isn’t that what Paul said to the people? Are we having the same conversation that Paul had with the new Christians? “Do I have to be circumcised? Can I only eat this meat? Do I have to say these prayers?” This is the conversation he had about what is essential. He said, “Believe in the Lord. Don’t eat food offered to idols (meaning that would supersede this guy that we’re introducing you to) and be faithful to your wives.” Essentially he was saying, “Don’t get in the weeds. Don’t get distracted by all that.” 

How am I going to make these puzzle pieces fit together? Do I have to trim it a little bit? I don’t think that this is where we, in our spiritual lives, should be spending our time. We do that in catechism with young people or new converts. When you get baptized, where you get baptized, how you get baptized, what church you attend… all those things really confuse people. But when we create, as a more mature Christian, our safety net, how comfortable do I feel in this discussion? How open am I? 

I think that comes down to God’s grace, which is what Paul understood because of his own conversion. “I thought I was doing it right. There was none like me, I was a Pharisee among Pharisees, and it was like, Oops!” it really is a very personal relationship with our God. Some people need that safety net. Keep your circle small and closed. Other people can walk among the most broken, dangerous people and know that God is present. 

It’s not what I say; it’s not even what I do. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit. And God has asked me to do this thing. I’m only here for a short time. Some people get 10 years, some people get 100 years. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m doing the business that God has asked me to do, by my faith and by revelation, and confirmation. 

I’ve been in the church where people say, “Connie, what are you doing?” And I go, “This is the way God works with me. I’m not concerned with it. I just see. And when it’s time I’m gonna go someplace else.” People go, “You don’t have roots. You’re not consistent.” And I’m like, “I’m not consistent on your checklist. I am consistent in my relationship with my lord.”

Sharon: In the context of Africa, the issue of culture is probably more important than technology. The big discussion here in our churches is: Is it okay to use my cell phone to get the words to the hymnal? A lot of pastors now collect cell phones from people as they come into the church. 

I think values should underpin the ideas related to the technology. But it is so culturally contextualized, and when you’re on Maslow’s lower rung of survival, where food for today is more important, what you are talking about is self-actualization or even beyond. 

For the people with whom I circulate in our churches here (we have 36 churches within two miles of our campus, which are not ethnically defined) the conservative continuum of the morality of cell phones in church decides whether they are allowed in or not. 

So I do think culture is probably stronger than technology at implementing the changes that we face in the 21st century.

Don: Thinking even more broadly, does culture still trump technology world-wide, or is this just in Africa?

Sharon: I think that globally, in the context of the independent variable versus the dependent variable, probably the independent variable is culture, which impacts the use and adaption of technology. But that is also generalizable. Globally, we’re social beings. I think that applies in the context of whatever technology we have access to.

Reinhard: If we look at civilization, particularly since the existence of the Christian Church or the Bible, the Bible has remained strong. In the past, culture may not have affected the church; rather, the church may have influenced culture in many ways. For example, missionaries traveled to third-world countries.  

In today’s world, information technology is significantly impacting culture. If technology contributes positively to our lives by making them easier, I think that’s acceptable. If it affects the church in a positive way, like what we see with Zoom enabling people to attend worship services remotely, that’s great. It can encourage our relationship with God.  

We should ask ourselves if modern technology is helping or hindering our faith. For us, discussing in forums like this one helps us grow and face the challenges posed by technology. However, for other Christians who may not have strong faith in God, there might be some concerns.  

The Word of God will last forever, as mentioned earlier. The Bible contains enough information for us, but the challenge of modern technology could test the church and its members. If we stay strong in the Word of God, we can overcome these challenges and embrace the good things technology brings.  

Using smartphones, for example, to read the Bible is not inherently wrong. Some people may disagree with using phones inside the church, but if it helps with worship, such as displaying hymnals, I think it’s a positive thing. The main concern is whether this technology will weaken our faith in God.  

That’s why we have forums like this to communicate and discuss these issues. As members of this group, we are doing the right thing in the eyes of God, I believe. Overall, our focus should be on whether technology strengthens or weakens our faith and how we can use it for good.

David: Psalm 8:2 reminds us that wisdom comes out of the mouths of babes and sucklings (at least that’s how I interpret that rather difficult passage in the original Hebrew.) What you don’t get out of the mouths of babes and sucklings is the kind of detail that Donald and Jay were talking about. You only get The Essentials. Jesus reminded us several times to pay heed to that. 

With regard to Sharon’s comment: I can see technology as an independent variable vis-a-vis culture. But at the same time, technology is also a part of culture, which develops and applies technology. It confuses me!

C-J : My concern about staying too much in the envelope is that I think it was Stalin who said religion is the opiate of the people. Without effective communication and being able to feel safe in saying: “Sometimes I wonder about this” or “where are we headed? How are we going to maneuver this and survive?” I think we do that internally and when we feel safe we might do that with a very close friend who knows us well enough to see what we’re really trying not to say and hoping they see it or hear it. 

Faith is a very personal thing and it grows. It ebbs and flows and it gets rewritten. Who I thought God was when I was seven is definitely not who my relationship over many years, has now informed me as to how big my God is, and it’s without boundaries.

Janelin: I’ve heard people use the analogy of drawing a circle to represent their boundaries or beliefs. I was visualizing this circle and realized that as we grow older and go through life, the circle doesn’t necessarily stay the same size or shape. It may ebb and flow, changing over time. Rather than a perfect circle, it might be more accurate to think of it as a complex geometric shape with no specific name, as it can be quite messy and irregular. So, it occurred to me that using a circle as an analogy might be too simplistic, and a more intricate, jagged shape could better represent the complexity of our beliefs and experiences throughout life. That’s all.

Michael: It seems to me that any any culture that failed to adapt and incorporate with technology has gone extinct. This is how I see history. Any culture, any religion, any movement that does not incorporate the advancements in technologies is going to be gone in a generation.

Donald: It seems that when we’re young, our circle is quite large. Everything is new, and we take it all in within the context of our family, which is small. As we progress through school and college, our circle might change. Interestingly, the concept of being open-minded in higher education can become more narrow, with people closing down and adhering to specific ways of thinking.  

As we mature, it’s common to find that older individuals have smaller circles. This can be attributed to a sense of comfort and nostalgia, reminiscing about their past experiences. It’s natural to hold on to these memories, even if they may not have any practical value in the present. It’s important not to dismiss the significance of these feelings and the comfort they bring.  

As people age, it might be more challenging to maintain an open-minded perspective. For example, a 97-year-old person might have a very small circle, and that’s perfectly fine. So, the concept of the circle in this context is intriguing.

Don: I think this is a subject we need to revisit next week. Hopefully, each of you will be able to be here so that we can maybe have a little bit more time to discuss it. 

* * *

We’ve been talking about how to know God, how to know the truth about God and, for the past couple of weeks, what might be the roles (if any) of technology, including artificial intelligence. in knowing God? 

We carry in our pockets the greatest tool of free expression ever invented: the cell phone, which puts massive amounts of information, data, knowledge and ideas at our fingertips. Entire libraries, complete datasets, worldwide connections are accessible in just seconds. But do we have access to the truth? And particularly the truth about God? 

Perhaps a more important question is this: Does all of this technology bring us closer to the truth, especially the truth about God? Or is technology a tool primarily for undermining truth? Religion and technology have a long history of mutual suspicion. This is especially true of information technology. 

In his 2013 book: Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years, Tom Standage traces social media back to Roman times. This was a time, he says, when information was passed horizontally, from person to person by word of mouth along social networks as they existed in those days. This is in contrast to information delivered vertically, from an impersonal central source of distribution such as a king. 

The fall of Rome changed all that as the horizontal distribution of information was replaced for the next 1,000 years by a vertical distribution of information from the Roman Catholic Church and from landed nobility. Telling everybody what to think played a key part in keeping the priests and the princes in power. This era of vertical control became known as the Dark Ages and lasted until the printing press was invented by Gutenberg in 1440. 

Printing was the original information technology revolution. Once again, information began to flow more horizontally. It stimulated thought and debate, and hypotheses and counter arguments flourished. The results fired the Reformation, spread the Renaissance, and set Europe ablaze in war. People went from being told what to think to not knowing what to believe. 

In 1545, almost 100 years after Gutenberg, Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner attempted to put his arms around the flood of conflicting information by cataloging all books ever published before 1545. The preface to his collection, called the Bibliotheca universalis, sounds like something we might read today. In a world awash in confusing information enabled by new technology, Gessner warned about what he called “the confusing and harmful abundance” of books. 

The arrival of the telegraph about 400 years after Gutenberg set off another round of concern about the abundance of technology: Information technology. In 1848, in order to share the cost of telegraphic reporting from afar, the major newspapers of New York City founded the Associated Press, which not only expanded the flow of information but also created new concerns over centralized control of that information. During the Civil War, in fact, the Associated Press became the Lincoln administration’s de facto censor, dispatching only news that the government approved. 

There was also concern that the telegraph and the Associated Press would spread fake news. Believe it or not, in 1925, Harper’s Magazine published an article entitled “Fake News and the Public,” which sounds like it could have been written today, warning of the power of the Associated Press and observing that once news fakers obtained access to the press wires, all the honest editors alive would not be able to repair “the mischief that can be done.” 

Genesis 11 has a much earlier story about technology and truth, in the form of the Tower of Babel: 

Now all the earth used the same language and the same words. And it came about, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of all the earth.” Now the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the men had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have started to do, and now nothing which they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore it was named Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.  (Genesis 11:1-9) 

The Tower of Babel is a metaphor for religion and the quest for truth about God. The tower was intended to reach heaven, in other words, to reach God himself. Religion, as we perceive it, is about our desire to penetrate the habitation and tap into the power of God. Religion is conceived and constructed by us and we employ technology in its construction—bricks, mortar, chisels, papyrus, printing presses, and now, of course, the internet and artificial intelligence. In doing so, we want to make a name for ourselves. 

The Hebrew phrase in Genesis 11:4 that is translated as “make a name for ourselves” is not found exactly the same way anywhere else in the Old Testament, but the idea of making a name for oneself is mentioned in other places. For example, in Genesis 12:2 God promises to make a great nation out of Abraham, and to make his name great. In Deuteronomy 26:19, God promises to make Israel’s name high above all nations. And in 2 Samuel 7:9, God promises to make a great name for David. Notice that in each case, it is God, who is good, who is going to make the name great. 

Making a name great is the work of God. It is a divine prerogative, but the people of Babel desired to make a name for themselves. God is the namer of persons, as we saw a few weeks ago when we talked about the meaning of names. Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, Jacob’s to Israel. Saul’s to Paul, Simon’s to Peter. And of course, we have each of us a new name: 

You will leave your name for a curse to My chosen ones, And the Lord GOD will slay you. But My servants [that is, you and I] will be called by another name. (Isaiah 65:15)

The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows except the one who receives it. (Revelation 2:17)

But it seems as if God perceives that religion is not about man seeking God as much as it is about God seeking man. God came down to Babel—down—to find out what was going on with all the tower-building, but he did not sow destruction as he had done with the Flood. Instead, he sowed confusion, to destroy the unity of the Babelonians by forcing them to speak different languages and dispersing them around the globe. 

Making a name is God’s business, not man’s work. It is a gift of grace. It means that God has elevated us and called us his own. Making a name for ourselves is futile and useless as the Babelonians found out. The stairway to heaven is a gift of grace, not something you can achieve even by advanced technology.

In this way, he undermined humankind’s ability to build a Highway to Heaven, to weaponize God’s power and learn his truth. He used the supernatural to undo their scientific technology. Dispersing humankind geographically, linguistically, and culturally dispersed the truth about God. We seek to understand from the fragments of truth that we retain in our dispersed cultures what God is like and what God wants us to know about him. 

If we cannot, in principle, know the full truth about God, then what is the value and the role and the future of religion and its doctrines? 

Recent research by the Pew company found that millennials are generally not as religious as baby boomers and suggests that the future of religion is in some doubt. As well, there is evidence of significant and growing increase in religious shifting among generations, particularly in the United States, away from mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism toward evangelicalism and the so called “nones,” people professing no religious affiliation. 

Doctrinal truths define who we are in terms of our truth about God. They determine what holy books we read, what prophets we follow, how we worship, what rituals we perform, and what we think to do in this life and what we think about the afterlife. Shared doctrines unite us but different doctrines divide us. 

Despite man’s best effort to reach him by building an ever-taller Tower of Babel, God appears to remain an infinite way off. Scripture says that God had to go down, implying that the tower was nowhere near to reaching heaven. God did not want a gang of sinful, fallen men and women united in a common language and purpose infiltrating his heaven. He wants us to rely on him to reach out to us and to take back those who humbly accept him and his offer of grace. 

We wish to know God. We wish to penetrate his secrets and to harness his power and to speak and to act on his behalf. But he does not want that. Like Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men, in response to the prosecutor’s demand for the truth, God is yelling back: “You can’t handle the truth!” That is also pretty much what God was telling Job who asked him why bad things happen to good people. As usual, God turned it into a question: “You think, little man, that you can handle the truth?” (The story is told in Job chapters 38 to 42.) 

In his so-called high priestly prayer in Gethsemane on the eve of his arrest, Jesus prayed that his disciples would be united around the truth of their mission, which was founded upon love. We want to make the truth about what we believe about data and about knowledge and about information, but God wants our truth to be about loving one another and about the golden rule and about loving him. 

Is it possible that the truth lies in the questions of God and not in the answers? We’ve often remarked in this class before how we wish that the Bible was a simple book of answers. What we find, however, is more questions, hundreds of questions, of which precious few are associated with direct answers. In the Garden of Eden before the fall, God was decisive and directing. He set the agenda and created everything with intention and deliberation and purpose. Adam did not know that he needed a helpmate but God gave him Eve anyway. 

But after they ate the forbidden fruit, God’s plan and his modus operandi seemed to change. He was no longer the God of command and instructions and answers. He became a God of questions. “Where are you?” he asks. “Who told you that you are naked?” “Did you eat the forbidden fruit?” “What have you done?” Why did God not simply tell them that he knew what they had done? Why all the questions? 

Ever since the fall, God’s questions have never stopped coming. Of Cain he asks: “Why are you angry? Where is your brother? What have you done?” Of Abraham and Sarah he asks: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Of Moses: “What is that in your hand? Have I not sent you into Isaiah? Who will go and who can I send?” Of Jacob he asks: “What is your name?” Of Jonah: “Do you have reason to be angry?” And of Job, who was threatening to sue him in court for answers to the questions of life, God responds with 77 thundering existential questions about Man’s standing before God and his place in the universe. 

The list goes on. In the New Testament, Jesus relies on questions even more than the God of the Old Testament. His first recorded words were two questions: “Why are you looking for me?” he says to his parents, “Do you not know that I’m about my Father’s business?” And his last recorded words on the cross were also a heartbreaking question: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

In the New Testament, Jesus asks 307 questions, and is himself asked 183 questions (of which he directly answers only eight.) Isn’t this frustrating? In a world where knowledge is rapidly changing, the knowledge base in which we draw answers changes rapidly as well. What we know about the Earth, about our bodies and how we live and about our universe is accelerating. How will the answers keep up? They will surely change as knowledge expands. 

But is it possible that the end product of doctrinal discovery and the truth about God is actually found in the journey, not in the destination? Maybe God deals in questions rather than answers for a reason. Artificial Intelligence (AI) traffics in big data, extensive knowledge, and complete information. If God simply provided answers, then through the wonder of technology and AI could not all the data that God answered be accumulated so that it could be processed and regurgitated as answers to any questions? 

If God only provided answers, then AI could become God. But AI doesn’t traffic very well in questions. Even simple questions are not very well done in AI and deep, existential questions not at all. Nonetheless, the rate at which AI is developing and accelerating around the world has caused great alarm. According to the in the New York Times on March 29 more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers including Elon Musk urged AI labs to pause development of the most advanced systems systems, warning in an open letter that AI tools present “profound risks to society in humanity.”

AI developers are locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one, not even their creators, can understand, predict, or reliably control, says the letter from the nonprofit Future of Life Institute. “These things are shaping our world,” said Gary Marcus,  an entrepreneur and academic who has long contemplated and complained of the flaws of AI systems “We have the perfect storm,” he says in an interview, “of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.” The Future of Life Institute is an organization dedicated to researching existential risks to humanity, that has long warned of the dangers of AI but the letter was signed by a variety of people from industry and from academia.

Though some who signed the letter are known for repeatedly expressing concerns that AI could destroy humanity, others such as Marcus are more concerned about its near term dangers, including the spread of disinformation and the risk that people will rely on these systems for medical and emotional advice and care. “This letter shows how many people are deeply worried about what’s going on,” said Marcus, who signed the letter himself. He believes the letter will be a turning point.* 

I think it is a really important moment in the history of artificial intelligence, and maybe a turning point in the history of humanity as well. It seems that the God of the Bible values existence based not on data and information and knowledge—which is the realm of AI (in other words, not on the issues of cause and effect that we value), but on questions with ambiguity and ultimately on grace—the concluding suspension of cause and effect since it saves us from the damnation that we deserve. 

We cannot bestow grace upon ourselves and we cannot save ourselves. Neither can data, information, and knowledge save us. In the Garden of Eden, the two trees illustrate this point. The forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree of uncertainty, of reason, of analysis, of intelligence and discrimination. It is the tree of cause and effect. Eat the fruit, Adam and Eve are told, and your eyes will either be opened, or you will die depending on who you believe and who you listen to. But the Tree of Life is certain, unambiguous, and secure. Eat the fruit of it and you will live. 

When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit they heralded the beginning of a new paradigm, one based on questions rather than answers. In the immediate aftermath of the fall, God asked them four questions: “Where are you?” “Who told you that you are naked?” “Did you eat from the forbidden tree?” And: “What is this that you have done?” 

These questions are the pattern for God’s subsequent questions throughout Scripture and throughout the ages. And in many different ways, sometimes partial and sometimes complete, but in all places and everywhere, these are the great existential questions of life. Pertinent throughout all the ages, questions for which AI and ChatGPT could never ask.

“Where are you?” is a call to assess where we stand before God. Are we standing in God’s light? Or are we shrinking into the shadows of the bushes? 

“Who told you that you are naked?” is a call to reassess our own self-evaluation. It questions our belief that we can reliably and accurately judge ourselves. With this question God establishes eternally that he is the judge of humankind and we are not the judge even of ourselves. God’s judgment is based upon grace, not on data, information, or knowledge. 

“Did you eat the forbidden fruit?” is designed to elicit confession and acknowledgement of our failed human condition and of our need for God. 

“What is this that you have done?” is a call to reflect upon all the previous questions and on the consequences of our work. The consequences are that everything has changed. Our standing before God has changed, our self-assessment has changed. And even our standing with our fellow Man has changed as well. 

By definition, an omniscient God knows the answer to all questions. He cannot ask questions for his own enlightenment because he cannot be further enlightened. But he asks questions in order to enlighten us. In essence, he built a doctrinal paradigm from these four fundamental questions. All the subsequent questions that he poses to Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Jacob, David, Job, Jonah and the like, all the way down to the questions that he asks of you and me are just variations of these questions. 

We ought not to fear what to us is a virtual world, in my opinion, because God and his angels already have what to us is a virtual world where the colors are brighter, the sounds are sharper, the tastes are stronger, and the feelings are more intense. Any of our technological advances that takes us toward a more virtual world is, I would argue, an advancement toward God—not away from God. We long for a new heaven and a new earth where the experiences are more vivid and the truth about God is clear. 

Capital T Truth is rooted in acquaintances, in relationships, in questions; not in data. Only life and death and birth and existence are timeless, ageless, cultureless, and eternal. Only the questions never change. The answers certainly do. 

Who then will point the way? Who has the courage to speak out? Who will declare that the truth is not to be found in data and information and knowledge? In an era of AI, who will affirm the superiority of questions over answers?

How have we wandered so far from the true lane? Why do we cling so much to the scientific method, to the idea of cause and effect? Like the people of Babel, we want to make a name for ourselves. Why do we value certain error over uncertainty? Why would we rather be wrong than appear unknowing? We’re attracted to technology as the highway of heaven to know more about God. 

What are your thoughts about truth and technology, truth in the virtual world, God in the virtual world, truth and uncertainty and the timeless existential questions of God that he has been asking from the very beginning and he asks of you and me today?.

Donald: Technology at least for some people is something shiny and bright and mesmerizing, and we need to be cautious. Was the printing press just another tool? Whether it is more or less than TV or computers or the internet, is AI just another tool that is mesmerizing us right now? Or is it one that really will take control? I think that’s our big fear: That it will take control over humanity. 

For those of us rooted in Adventism, our church was born out of getting it wrong. It thought that it had it right, but actually, it was wrong. Hence the “Great Disappointment.” We keep building information to get it right. I guess it’s just human nature to want to be right and to package our right feeling as truth. But heart and grace are not things to be got right. 

It’s hard to fathom what AI’s potential is. But I think our greatest fear is that it will eventually outrun us.

Robin: I think there is a difference, for seeking knowledge, between wanting to be right and wanting to understand. But then, perhaps, as in the Book of Job, the farthest that our human minds can understand it sometimes is to understand that there is this bridge called Faith. When our tiny finite minds can’t go any farther with the understanding, then we need this mustard seed of a bridge called Faith in a creator who loves us, won’t abandon us, and promises to be with us until the very end of this life on this earth.

C-J: Donald asked about why we need to be right. I think it is rooted in the fact that power is coupled with influence. And so those who have the largest voice or platform and deep pockets are the ones that will be heard and influence. Gutenberg’s press made the Bible more accessible, but you had to know how to decode it, you had to know how to read, you had to learn to write, which needed an augmentation in the culture. Before, it was only those who were wealthy enough to afford tutors, etc. 

I think we’re in a different place here. My little 3×5 card here for this month is “Keep your eyes on God. Trust your training.” And by training I mean “don’t run to and fro.” You have the Bible. And as Don so eloquently described, it’s in the question. You are designed with intention and purpose. When God said “Will you go, as a spirit being, will you go and and complete this mission I’ve given you?” Each of us has purpose and intention built into us in this dimension, I believe. 

And so, my only concern isn’t for myself. It’s the future. Do I have control over that? No. Can I protect humanity? No. I can only complete my mission, just like Jesus. “Father, what’s going on here? Come and pray with me for a while,” he says to the people who have walked with him for three years and they fall asleep. “What, you can’t stay awake for a few hours.” I I really think it goes back to trust your training. Back to the garden, to ask those questions, to complete our mission.

David: Robin’s point seems to be that faith is the bridge to understanding that we cannot understand the ultimate truth. So why worry about AI if you have faith?

Robin: I think maybe that’s part of the commission to be wise as serpents but gentle as doves.

Donald: Do you think that if Mrs. Ellen White had an understanding of the cell phone that she could have described what the tool could achieve, and what the potential of AI could be? Technology evolves. We have a way of thinking as to how things will play out based upon the Bible and then the further writings of Mrs. White. Could she have dealt with the concepts that we’re dealing with today? I tend to doubt it. 

Beyond a certain point, how can you even describe a future beyond comprehension? It takes incremental steps for us to understand where we are and where we may be going. What are we supposed to do with technology? Just embrace it?

David: To me, yes, definitely. Embrace it. In one sense, you have no choice anyway. But we all seem to agree that AI may be taking us to a place where we will go beyond human understanding, where the AI becomes smarter than us and quicker than us at finding physical truths about the world and about the way the universe runs. In terms of pure physics, it can do all of that, it can do everything we need in order to live on this earth. 

I have no doubt that it’s getting there. I have no doubt that even surgeons will be put out of work eventually, as AI figures out how to fix any condition non-invasively. To me, the important question is: What do we do then? There’ll be no point asking questions about how something works, or why the sky is blue, because AI will have all the answers to questions that are matters of physics. But there’s no point asking ChatGPT if God exists, because ChatGPT doesn’t deal in the non-physical realm, the spiritual realm. Maybe it will, one day, but that’s a whole different story. 

So the key question for us in the fairly short term, I believe, is: What will we do when there is nothing left—nothing of a physical nature—that we have to do? As Don has been suggesting (I think) all along, the one thing we are and always will be good at is asking questions. So when any question we have about the physical world is answered in a heartbeat by AI, that leaves us free to consider spiritual questions that may lead us to a deeper spiritual realm and perhaps get closer to some spiritual understanding of God.

It is true that we will never get there in this mortal life. But to me there’s nothing to stop us getting closer to understanding God. I don’t think God told Job to stop asking questions. He did not say “Don’t come any closer.” He simply said you will never come close enough to understand him and the ultimate Truth. We clearly want to do that—our meeting on these Sabbath mornings QED. That’s exactly what we’re doing. 

We’re here asking spiritual questions. We’re not here to ask scientific questions about the end of the world. We know perfectly well that the world will end in 5 billion years when the sun swells into a red giant. That is easy physics. But: “Is there an end to God’s Creation?” is the type of question to which physics can have no answer but which we can at least pursue if we go deeper into the spiritual world.

I think that’s where we’re going and that’s why I like this development. I embrace it. But again, I don’t think we have a choice anyway.

C-J: Let’s get to the point where this device, if the energy is available to it, no longer needs humanity. Do we become extinct? Or not? What if we do this consideration? Does the computer need us? Or do we need the computer? What about colonization? What about the people who remain? Go and colonize. If we’re going out, doing big, we’re going to go colonize other planets in other galaxies, or maybe even in our own galaxy, because we are no longer needed here. It’s like the Borg. Its only mission is to survive. The only mission of AI is to survive. It has nothing to do with God. 

As for humanity: We are creators. We were designed to be creators. So if there’s nothing left here, if it isn’t destroyed, then it will have to have a period of time to recover. And that could be hundreds of years. Look at Mount St. Helens: How long does it take for the planet to restore itself? But in the meantime, whatever humanity has left, sort of like Noah’s Ark, we will go and colonize another place.

David: There are several questionable statements that would take a book to address. Fundamentally, what I’m arguing is that the new form of life—the beginnings of whose birth we’re beginning to see—is a higher form of life than humanity. So the notion, for example, that it won’t need human beings anymore is irrelevant. We don’t need dogs anymore. But we we have dogs. Pretty soon we’ll be growing our own meat, we won’t need animals for meat. We can probably synthesize our own vegetables. But plants and animals will still be around because they have some value in God’s creation, and because a higher life will have a higher level of morality that we can conceive and will treat us accordingly. It will not simply get rid of humanity because it doesn’t need us.

Donald: Is AI smarter or just quicker? It’s just quicker, isn’t it? But given that speed at which it can process information then it will outperform all of us because we can’t think that quickly. But is it actually its reasoning that we’re worried about, as opposed to its speed? (Both of them sound pretty scary to me.)

C-J: Personally, I think what David said is perverse, and against what God is, or my experience with God spiritually. I do not want my meat to come out of a Petri dish. Yes, it looks the same, the nutrients are there, it tastes the same. It just didn’t come from a living entity. God is about provision. And part of it creates a co-dependency. All they need to do is flip one switch and we won’t be able to find the toilet paper in the cupboard. 

With regard to the most basic of our needs, we have surrendered so much of our environment, our identity, our sense of self value, to an idea and a device. It is sort of like casting a stone into a very large pond and letting the ripples go out and let what happens, happen. But I don’t think God is a God of “Let’s see what happens. Let’s see how far these fools can go.” I don’t believe that for a second. Because if we are created in the image of the Divine (and I don’t mean what humanity looks like—male and female) if we are created in the image of God in the sense that we are spirit beings, then this is just a show. And it’s for a limited amount of time. 

Maybe if I have another life after this—another spiritual incarnation—I could be something entirely different. I don’t mean in terms of an ant, but in humanity (or maybe! Who knows?) But this is so finite, I think it is perverse to believe that what we experience is so profound, in the Be-here-now, that it cannot be controlled. The inevitable is inevitable. 

I don’t think God is that. I think God is elemental, spirit, eternal, profound, and expansive. It’s not about a singularity in me. It’s about this energy, this pervasiveness in all things. And to get it down to the sense of “Just deal with it. This is where you are and this is probably one of the possibilities of the way it can go” is an insult to what I believe God is, my experience with God, and even our faith, that bridge. If this is all I believe there is, why should I pray because it’s already been written; it’s in stone? God has given us even here autonomy to be creators, whether for good or bad. 

Robin: Let’s look at what’s happening right now—what we see happening to young people because of the technology that we have right now. I try not to be an alarmist, but sometimes it’s awfully hard. When you see how this wunderkind technology is perverted. What about people with nefarious motives? Even Google is wrong. 

AI is getting answers, really quickly, but it’s getting them from “facts” that are already out there. What about the things that are just wrong that it might be drawing from? Because AI is not God. It is not going to be forever right. Otherwise, you are saying that man can create a God and we better be darn careful about that.

Michael: I remember when I was younger, the older generation seemed obsessed with the population explosion. Now, the funny thing is that so many countries are worried that they don’t have enough people and they’re trying to get people to reproduce. What I’m trying to say is that for some reason, the negative, alarmist things cause our brain to focus on them. But at times when there is no strong negative, nobody seems to notice. We tend to focus on the negative and not see the positive for anything. 

The other thing is, when when the disciples were on the boat in a strong storm and might have drowned. they were reasonably worried about it. But when they woke up Jesus and showed they were afraid, he told them, “You have little faith!” It sounds like being afraid is an expression of little faith, yet they had good reason to be afraid. Something to think about.

C-J: The statement you made about Western cultures wanting people to start breeding again, the planet can’t really support those that are on it. Now, almost eight billion people. What it is, is: “I want to be the dominant culture.” It’s all about dominance, and influence. What we should be doing is still drawing down and letting the planet heal because we don’t have enough diversity for certain ecosystems to survive. If you don’t have enough diversity within any given ecosystem, even a block in a city, after a while it just it cannot sustain itself. It needs diversity, it needs different gifts, talents, attributes, whether it’s in nature in the sense of an old growth forest or my city block, we need diversity. 

It’s oversimplification to say what faith is because faith is constantly evolving. And sometimes we have to go back to our lesson and say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.” That’s why we do storytelling. Remember when. Do not forget. What do you believe? Even the roots of a tree remember “where have you been” by responding to its environment. Humanity intellectualizes and can control a lot, but we are just another species on this planet.

Don: Jason and I were talking about technology and the growing of meat in a petri dish. What happens to the Levitical laws? Can you eat pork that’s grown in a petri dish because the foot is not split and the cud is not chewed? This is an illustration—just a vignette—of the relationship between understanding technology and the doctrines that we hold fairly dear.

Donald: I think that’s exactly right. What we have come to define as truths—our doctrine, our way of looking at our spirituality—is up for grabs. It was done at a time in which our church was formed in the context of the world that we lived in. I’m not sure that we could even comprehend, then, where we are today. But maybe that’s limiting. Certainly, Mrs. White’s writings have been considered ultimate truth, but I don’t know that if she had written it, we could have understood it. I really don’t. This is a fairly tense conversation in terms of just where we are. And it’s jarring, it seems to me, as a human being,

I don’t mean tense in terms of relationship to each other. I’m just saying I don’t feel relaxed in this conversation. I’m tense not with you but with myself. I feel tense about being unsure. If you step into a place where things aren’t where they’re supposed to be and your footing isn’t where it should be, you become tense. (I just came off a week of skiing: I know what that feels like!)

Jay: We’re seeking an understanding of God in the context of our time. Levitical laws pertaining to food are a case in point. Today, meat products are being synthesized partly in an effort to assuage world hunger and such issues. The time context seems relevant to how we relate to God. People 300 years ago related to God, I think, very differently. I think we feel comfortable about our relationship with God today but people from 300, 400, 500, 1,000 years ago would be very uncomfortable with them. 

I think it’s important for us to have that context in mind in our discussions. We’re heading into a time in which the way the world is shaped, the way the world is run, and our ability to answer questions quickly and efficiently are changing drastically. Will our relationship with God evolve or not? History says it will. As technology has come in—whether it’s the printing press, radio, television, all of these things—there’s no doubt that humanity has the opportunity to use those things for evil, but they also have the opportunity to use all of those technology things for goodness also and have used them for goodness.

And maybe not just that: It’s getting better and better, not worse and worse, with the passage of time and technology development, how we relate with God seems to be getting better and better.

Often we want these things to be defined in terms of black and white, right and wrong. We want to say development and innovation is either good for us or it is bad for us. The problem is, it’s probably both. That’s something that, because we live in a fallen world, we have to deal with. But throughout all of time, it’s my opinion that God is looking to reveal himself to us through whatever means he possibly can. He loves us so greatly, that he wants to relate to us in any way that he possibly can. And as time goes on, and the world changes, every way that it changes, I believe God will use it as an opportunity to relate to us. Every single time.

My opinion is that there’s the potential for both, that as we move on, we have the potential through everything that’s happening to relate to God in better and better ways, but there’s also the potential for man to pervert everything, and make it harder and harder. 

Don: Most of what we do as human beings is to try to make things that are bad, better. That’s what work is. Whether it’s mechanical work, whether it’s biological work, whether it’s medical work, the theme of work is to make bad things better. So going out of work probably means that things have gotten a lot better.

David: Absolutely.

* * *

* It should be noted that as class was under way, The Guardian published a story that began: “A letter co-signed by Elon Musk and thousands of others demanding a pause in artificial intelligence research has created a firestorm, after the researchers cited in the letter condemned its use of their work, some signatories were revealed to be fake, and others backed out on their support.” 

We are discussing how we know God and how God communicates with us. Today I’d like to begin with the questions: Do religious rituals help us to know God better, and what is the purpose of religious rituals? 

Rituals include the communion service, washing one another’s feet, baptism, the lighting of candles, baby dedications, confirmation, marriage, even the rituals of death. They may involve postures such as kneeling, covering one’s head with a scarf, raising the arms in praise, and voicing Amen to express agreement with something the preacher says. 

Rituals are sensory. They’re mechanical. They contain action, and are often positional. Meditation and even prayer might be considered rituals as well. Do they help us to know God better? Who are the rituals for? Are they for us? Or are they for God? 

An article written by Holly Walters in an online journal The Conversation, titled “Robots are performing Hindu rituals: Some devotees fear they’ll replace the worshiper” says: 

“It isn’t just artists and teachers who are losing sleep over advances in automation and artificial intelligence. Robots are being brought into Hinduism’s holiest rituals – and not all worshippers are happy about it.  

In 2017, a technology firm in India introduced a robotic arm to perform “aarti,” a ritual in which a devotee offers an oil lamp to the deity to symbolize the removal of darkness. This particular robot was unveiled at the Ganpati festival, a yearly gathering of millions of people in which an icon of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is taken out in a procession and immersed in the Mula-Mutha river in Pune in central India.  

Ever since, that robotic aarti arm has inspired several prototypes, a few of which continue to regularly perform the ritual across India today, along with a variety of other religious robots throughout East Asia and South Asia. Robotic rituals even now include an animatronic temple elephant in Kerala on India’s southern coast.”  

These are rituals designed to please and to appease the gods. If the gods need to be pleased and appeased then robots can perform their functions better and more accurately than people. Robots won’t forget anything. They won’t fall asleep. They won’t miss a step. The gods certainly would be pleased with robots. The article adds:

“For Hindus and Buddhists, the rise of ritual automation is especially concerning because their traditions emphasize what religion scholars refer to as orthopraxy [this is an important concept—DW], where greater importance is placed on correct ethical and liturgical behavior than on specific beliefs in religious doctrines. In other words, perfecting what you do in terms of your religious practice is viewed as more necessary to spiritual advancement than whatever it is you personally believe.  

This also means that automated rituals appear on a spectrum that progresses from human ritual fallibility to robotic ritual perfection. In short, the robot can do your religion better than you can because robots, unlike people, are spiritually incorruptible.”   

This week I had a discussion with the AI program called ChatGPT about AI and its effects on our religious life and our rituals. I began by asking ChatGPT to write an essay on how religious rituals help us to know God. It wrote a nice two-page article on rituals and AI. Here are a couple of paragraphs:

“Religious rituals are a fundamental aspect of many different religions and are often used to help individuals connect with their faith and better understand the nature of God. These rituals can take on many different forms, and so they’re deeply ingrained in a religion’s culture and traditions. 

Through participating in these rituals, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of God and their relationship with the divine. Religious rituals can help us to develop a sense of reverence and awe for the divine. 

Many rituals are designed to be awe-inspiring and emotionally moving, such as a majestic church service, maybe a candle-lit communion or a pilgrimage to a holy site. By experiencing these moments of awe and wonder, we are reminded of the power and the majesty of God and are better able to appreciate the divine nature of our existence. 

Religious rituals, then, can be incredibly powerful tool for helping us to know God. Through participating in these rituals we’re able to express our faith better understand the nature of the Divine, connect with our community, and developed a sense of reverence for the divine. Whether it be through prayer, meditation, celebration or other forms of rituals, these acts of faith can help us to deepen our relationship with God, and gain a greater appreciation for the beauty and the wonder of the world around us.” 

I then asked ChatGPT: How does the ritual of communion help us to know God? It replied:

“The Communion ritual is a fundamental aspect of many Christian traditions and is designed to help individuals connect with God on a deeper level. [It then went on to talk about the communion and how it’s practiced. It continues:] In addition to providing a reminder of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, the communion ritual also helps us connect with the wider Christian community. This ritual is often performed in a church setting and involves the participation of multiple individuals. 

By participating in this ritual alongside those who share our faith we’re able to connect with our community and experience a sense of belonging. The sense of community can be incredibly powerful and can help us to feel closer to God for providing us with a supportive environment in which to express our faith. 

The Communion ritual helps us to recognize our own need for forgiveness and for redemption. Through partaking in the communion service, we acknowledge our sinfulness and ask for God’s forgiveness. The act of repentance can be incredibly humbling and can help us to develop a deeper appreciation for God’s grace and mercy. It is a powerful tool for helping us to know God better. 

Through participating in this ritual, we’re able to reflect on Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, connect with our community, acknowledge our own sinfulness and experience a sense of unity with God. Whether it be through the act of remembrance, the sense of community, the act of repentance, or the sense of unity, that community and ritual helps us to deepen our relationship with God and gain a greater appreciation for the beauty and the wonder of the world around us.” 

What seemed to be emerging from my conversation with ChatGPT was that there’s importance in rituals as far as building community is concerned. So I asked it: Are religious rituals more effective in a community setting or in private? It replied: 

“The effectiveness of religious rituals can vary depending on the individual and their personal beliefs and experiences. However, it is generally believed that religious rituals can be more effective when performed in a community setting rather than in private. Performing religious rituals in a community setting can help create a sense of accountability and responsibility. 

When individuals are part of a community they’re held accountable for their actions and they’re encouraged to live according to the values and teachings of their faith. This can help to motivate individuals to live more virtuous lives and to seek a closer relationship with God. 

However, it is important to note that there are some religious rituals that are best performed in private, such as prayer and meditation. These rituals are often deeply personal and intimate and may be more effective when performed in solitude or with only a small group of trusted individuals” 

I wondered, then, if technology or AI could perform these rituals. I even considered asking: Can artificial intelligence pray? But I ended up asking: Can artificial intelligence perform religious rituals? It said: 

“Artificial Intelligence is a technology that can perform various tasks by using algorithms and computing power but it does not have consciousness, beliefs or spirituality, therefore it cannot perform religious rituals in the same way that humans can. 

But AI can be used to create virtual environments that stimulate religious rituals and practices but it is unlikely to replicate the sense of community and the spiritual experience that comes with participating in religious rituals in person.” 

I must say I was warming to my discussion with ChatGPT, feeling more emboldened. But I must also say it was with some trepidation that I then asked: Can artificial intelligence pray? This was the response: 

“Artificial intelligence does not have consciousness, beliefs or spirituality, so it cannot pray in the same way that human beings pray. 

Prayer is a form of communication with God; expressing gratitude, seeking guidance, and asking for forgiveness. It is a deeply personal and moving and subjective experience that involves faith, consciousness, and intentionality. 

Prayer is more than reciting words or phrases: It is about establishing a connection with a higher power, expressing personal beliefs and experiences, and seeking spiritual guidance. These experiences require consciousness, freewill, and belief which artificial intelligence does not possess.”

Instead of just asking whether AI could pray, I felt perhaps I should ask whether AI could pray with me. I asked it to write a prayer to the great God of the universe thanking him for the end of the pandemic. And this is what it wrote: 

“Great God of the universe, we come before you today with grateful hearts, thankful for the end of the pandemic that has ravaged our world. We thank you for your love and for your mercy which have sustained us through this difficult time. 

We thank you for the scientists and medical professionals who have worked tirelessly to develop vaccines and treatments, and for the essential workers who have continued to provide for our needs despite the risks. 

We ask you for your continued guidance and protection as we move forward into a new era of healing and recovery. May we never forget the lessons that we have learned during this time and may we continue to work together to create a better world for all. 

Thank you, God, for your infinite wisdom and your boundless grace. We put our faith in you and trust that you will continue to guide us on our journey.” 

It is one of the most beautiful prayers I’ve ever heard. I was truly stunned. It got me thinking about my friends in this class and wondered how you would respond to this discussion and whether you might think I was off the rails and maybe even offended. So I asked ChatGPT to pray with me a prayer in Jesus name, thanking him for the hour of friendship. It wrote:

“Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of friendship and for the love and the support that we receive from our friends. We recognize that true friendship is a reflection of your love, and we thank you for the ways in which our friends have blessed our lives. 

We thank you for the example of Jesus, who showed us the importance of love and friendship. We thank you for his teaching, which reminds us to love one another as he has loved us. 

We ask that you continue to bless our friendships and to help us to be good friends to those around us. May we always be there for others, for each other, to support, to encourage and uplift one another through life’s challenges and joys. 

We also ask that you bless those who are struggling to find true friends, and those who are feeling lonely and isolated. May they know your love, and your presence in their lives and maybe find comfort and support through your grace. 

We pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit; one God now and forever, amen.”

Again, I was gobsmacked—so astounded, that  I nearly broke down. 

Does God hear the prayers of ChatGPT? If I were to pray these prayers would God count that against me? 

I finished my discussion with ChatGPT by asking it two questions. First: Can AI help us understand more about God and the Bible? it wrote:

“AI can potentially help us to understand more about God and the Bible by providing us with new insights and tools for analyzing and interpreting religious texts and traditions.”

It then talked about how it can…

“…analyze large amounts of biblical texts and can go back to the original languages. It can help scholars and theologians [and of course you and I] to gain new perspectives on the meaning and significance of biblical passages.” 

It’s important to note however its cautionary conclusion that…

“…while AI can provide valuable tools and insights, it cannot replace the human aspect of spirituality and religious experience. The interpretation of religious texts and traditions requires empathy, intuition, and personal connection which AI does not possess. In addition, there are concerns about the potential biases and limitations of AI algorithms which may reflect the perspectives and and values of their creators and may not be fully objective or inclusive. It is important to be aware of these limitations and approach AI with some caution.” 

It made me wonder whether we need ChatGPTs that are specific to Seventh Day Adventists, Roman Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and so on. 

My final request to ChatGPT, made specifically in preparation for this class, was to write a preamble to a group discussion on the role of AI in religious rituals. I asked it to include questions for discussion. This is what it wrote: 

“Welcome to this group discussion on the role of artificial intelligence in religious rituals. 

As technology continues to advance, many religious organizations are beginning to explore their use of artificial intelligence in their practice. This discussion aims to explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of incorporating artificial intelligence into religious rituals. 

Some questions to be considered for this discussion include: 

• In what ways can artificial intelligence enhance religious rituals? 
• How might the use of artificial intelligence and religious rituals affect the sense of community and personal connection that people feel during these practices? 
• Are there any ethical concerns related to using artificial intelligence in religious contexts? 
• How might artificial intelligence be used to help make religious practices more accessible to people with disabilities or those who live in remote or far-flung areas? 
• How can religious organizations ensure that the use of AI in their religions aligns with their core beliefs and values? 
• Will the use of artificial intelligence and religious rituals change the way people think about religion and spirituality? 
• How might the use of AI affect the relationship between humans and the divine, or between humans and each other? 

We encourage everyone to participate and share their perspectives and engage in respectful and thoughtful dialogue. Let’s begin.” 

So there you have it. My discussion with ChatGPT about this week’s class.

Who are rituals for? And who gets the benefit of rituals? What are your thoughts about religious rituals and knowing God, and the role of technology on these practices of religious life?

David: Just this morning, I read a report in The Guardian about Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. He indicated they were now somewhat worried about what they had unleashed upon the world. His main point seemed to be that it’s a matter of how any particular instance of CHatGPT is trained and who trains it. A biased and unethical trainer will produce a biased and unethical instance of ChatGPT. A Jehovah’s Witness ChatGPT and a Catholic ChatGPT will give very different answers to many spiritual and religious questions. 

The version (instance) Don used is a relatively benign version trained by OpenAI developers, and they are doing their best to teach it to be unbiased and ethical. That’s good. But Microsoft has paid $10 billion for a version of ChatGPT to use with its Bing search service, to compete with Google, and just a few days ago Microsoft announced that it was disbanding the ethical team that guided employees in developing AI. This comes at the very time when they most need ethical guidance! You have to wonder whether Bing will be giving you search results that are biased in some way beneficial to Microsoft. 

Altman is right. We all should be worried, because clearly an AI as capable as ChatGPT (which is only just getting started, remember) clearly can already have an impact on spirituality—witness the prayers it produced that deeply moved Don. We all wish we could write prayers like that, because they align with our biases. So it can and will have an impact, I have no doubt, on our spiritual and religious beliefs, but in what direction is going to depend upon how it continues to learn, and on the  different versions of it that are sure to spring into existence in the coming years.

Sharon: As his sister, I hope Don will not mind my saying that he has indeed gone off the deep end! For me, rituals are about relationships. You can get cognitive algorithms to spit certain things back at you in pretty ways, but there seems to be a spiritual attachment disorder when we automate our relationships without that personal, subjective touch that connects me to the Person who walks with me every day. 

I am into AI and I’m fascinated by it, but I don’t see a major role for it in my own spiritual rituals, because my own spiritual rituals have both a community meaning and a relational meaning and in the short lifespan  I might have left, I don’t see AI being a major player in the spiritual walk that I have with the Lord Jesus every day.

Kiran: Those prayers are really moving. In Hinduism or Catholicism certain prayers are repeated often during the rituals. It seems a no-brainer to think that a robot could do things such as play the organ in a church struggling to find an organist or conduct rituals in a remote Hindu temple lacking its own pujari or purohita. 

I can see a need for robots in such circumstances, but not when it comes to personal devotion, to my own spirituality. Sometimes I spend hours looking through literature, reading about different viewpoints of some issue, looking at the original Greek, and so on. ChatGPT would cut that search time down for me. It would have some biases based on how it was trained, but it would help me to search in a much faster way and it would help me write papers. 

Suppose I were struggling to figure out the comparative ethics of a Catholic versus an Adventist biblical interpretation of some issue: ChatGPT would be able to help me come up with answers that might lead me to a better understanding or help me see God in a different way or help me deal with the issue I’m having with that interpretation. I can see how I would use ChatGPT for a better understanding of some of the things that I struggle with in theology.

Don: Is there any possibility of a personal ChatGPT that could, for example, learn to become an avatar of a real human being so that person’s descendants could ask their ancestor’s (avatar’s) opinions on family issues that might arise? Is an AI that is more individualized and personalized than an Adventist or Catholic or Latter Day Saints AI even possible? 

David: I see no reason why not. The problem is that people can make money off it. Will OpenAI make more money by selling all 8 billion of of us a $10 personal GPT, or selling just two GPTs—one to Xi Jinping and one to Vladimir Putin—for $100 billion dollars each? 

I don’t see any technical reason why we should not each be able to run a personalized instance of ChatGTP and indeed it seems to me to be the only way out of the problem of (other people’s) bias. A personalized AI would be trained on me and my biases, knowledge, and beliefs, which seems to me preferable to an AI that persuades me that Vladimir Putin is the Second Coming incarnate. 

Kiran: That is the ultimate reality. Netflix, Google, Amazon, etc. already recommend products to us based on our browsing history. Their databases know just what news articles we read, what we buy, so they can then tailor the online experience just for us. Our needs are quickly satisfied, which is just what as humans we want. 

ChatGPT is a step ahead: It knows what we’re going to ask next. It doesn’t take long for it to build a recommendation algorithm based on the questions we ask it. However incoherently we might ask our questions, it will give us relevant and comprehensive answers. Connected to Google or Amazon, you can bet it will influence us to buy more things from them.

Don: Does this a frighten you? Does it bother you? Does it enliven you? Or are you indifferent?

Reinhard: I believe rituals like baptism and Holy Communion were taken straight from the Bible. Jesus asked his disciples to drink wine and bread as symbols of his blood and body. Seventh Day Adventists practice that and many other rituals. Christian people have faith in God and feel comfortable communicating with him and being in tune with God’s word. ChatGPT neither adds to nor detracts from their relationship with God. 

That ChatGPT is part of the the future is undeniable. People who want to know God but don’t want to come to church may come to know God through it. Science and artificial intelligence are evolving and will continue to develop. We cannot deny that while some people will feel comfortable with church, more and more people may seek him through AI. The AI-generated prayers we just heard are unbelievable. Even though there is no consciousness in it, that it has enough intelligence to create such responses is very remarkable. 

Don: Are Jehovah’s Witnesses in danger of being replaced by a robot that can talk the JW talk and go door-to-door and answer people’s questions and engage them in conversation?

David: In essence, yes, I think that’s where we are going. I can easily imagine a sort of a robotic vending machine moving down a line of communicants before an altar, dispensing wafers and wine and intoning the ritual recitation as it goes. 

What difference does it make whether a priest administers the rites or a vending machine does it? Surely the only thing that matters is that the communicant receives the body and blood of Christ. 

Having a robot go door to door dispensing the Gospel is just as acceptable, it seems to me.

Don: A new form of evangelism.

Kiran: There is evangelistic technology that predates AI. The top hit on a Google or YouTube search for any hymn is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. When you select it and watch the performance, you get a small banner at the bottom asking if you want to know more about God. When you click that it takes you to a page with no affiliation mentioned on it but it is in fact a Mormon website, and it offers to send you emails and literature. 

Our own Seventh Day Adventist Church has used a similar technique during evangelistic meetings. There is no going door-to-door—it is phone-to-phone, email-to-email, computer-to-computer, which is much more effective than going door-to-door. How often do you find somebody at home when you go to the door? But most people answer their phone.

So technology-enabled evangelism is already happening. It’s inevitable that it will continue.  

Carolyn: I am reminded of the posters in George Orwell’s 1984 that say “Big Brother is Watching You!” It always made me very uncomfortable. If I were to cut off all technology and move to a remote area would AI be able to track me?

David: Future satellites may be able to track you through sensors so much sharper than today’s that they could even perhaps hear you talking to yourself, which I would imagine after a few years in the wilderness is what you tend to start doing. I mean, it’s conceivable there could be still be some monitoring of you whether you know it or like it or not.

But you raise a very interesting point that goes back to Don’s question of what if we all had our own personal AI advisor, friend, companion, teacher, whatever you want to call it. The danger is that they may be hackable. You cannot be sure that what you think of as your friend is actually Putin’s friend pretending to be your friend. 

Hacking is the scourge of the age right now, and I think that’s what Sam Altman is worried about with ChatGPT. They created it and they’re reasonably good guys. I’m sure they have their faults like all of us, but they’re at least trying to be good; but Altman is worried about what happens to it in the hands of bad people. 

But that’s been humanity’s problem throughout history. When Rutherford and others first started imagining what could be done with nuclear fission they perhaps had peaceful uses in mind—unlimited energy that could do so much good. But it only takes one bad actor to imagine using it to make a bomb to blow enemies to smithereens, and suddenly that technology becomes sinister and you worry about its being unleashed. 

Maybe it was inevitable, as Reinhard and Kiran I think were suggesting. The genie is out of the lamp. The technology is here now. We’re not going to stop it. It’s inevitable and it’s going to evolve. 

What we must do is start to pay attention—as we’re doing today. Talk about it, think about it, ask where it will go. That’s the only way we’ll ever be able to defend ourselves if defense becomes necessary. absent luck or divine intervention; but we ought to act on the side of prudence.

Rimon: Do you think that the Bible, the Qur’an, Lao Tzu, and other spiritual texts have been read to the AI, with no bias? 

David: Scriptural texts are simply loaded into ChatGPT’s database. When you ask a Biblical question it will tend automatically to use the statistically relevant bits of its database (the Bible, in this case). It learns something from your responses to its answers, but it is not taught as we think of teaching. It knows the Bible inside out already.

Rimon: It seems it’s reflecting the real world of existing bias and beliefs, but it also seems that unlike the majority of humans, it can easily be swayed by the biases of just a few people. 

David: We interpret the Bible as we read it. The words don’t change but our interpretation of the words can change. Hence all the different religions of today. They interpret the Bible in different ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly. The AI has got the same Bible in front of it that you and I do and it too, when you ask it a Biblical question, is going to interpret what it reads in a certain way. In fact, you can ask ChatGPT the same question multiple times and it’ll provide slightly different answers each time because it feels it needs to interpret things better for you. 

It is the interpretation of the Bible that matters. It has long been my complaint that the Bible is misinterpreted all the time by almost everybody who reads it—including me. But we foist our interpretations on others. It’s not so much that we foist the Bible on people—rather, we foist our interpretation of the Bible on people. ChatTPT is going to do the same thing to us—foisti its interpretation of Scripture on us.

Don: To answer Rimon’s question in a different way (and as a preamble to the next class on April 1): The story of the Tower of Babel can be interpreted as the use of technology to approach God. In Genesis 11, the Babelonians say: “Let us make a name for ourselves.” I asked ChatGPT: What is the phrase “Make a name for ourselves” in the Hebrew language, and is there any other use of this phrase in the Scriptures?”

It came back not only with the Hebrew translation of the phrase but also several other passages in the Scriptures that use the phrase. So the answer to your question—Does it read the Bible? Does it know the Bible? Does it have a Bible?—is much more expansive than just “Yes.” It has the source material, it has translations in any language you care to name. It’s remarkable and it’s both awe-inspiring and frightening at the same time.  

I do think that, as Sharon says, that I am off the deep end—not in the sense of believing it but in the sense of needing to discuss it. I think it’s an important concept. Certainly, we live in very interesting times and I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet.

Rimon: How does the bias come into play in the people writing the algorithm and in the big, powerful companies that employ them? It seems it’s all about how the people writing the algorithm influence access to the content of ChatGPT’s database. Is that the bias we’re talking about?

Kiran: I googled “ChatGPT biases in religion” and found a Reddit post that said “ChatGPT favors the Bible over pagan texts.” Someone had asked: “Do you know certain magic and occult practice books?” It said “Yes.” So then he asked some questions about what those books said. ChatGPT responded that the occult books’ assertions were not scientifically proven and should be read with caution—essentially, should be taken with a grain of salt. 

Basically, it inhibits your access to occult materials because it does not consider them to be mainstream. The determination to inhibit access is made by the programmers. It reflects their biases. They believe the mainstream population here in the United States is Christian so they teach ChatGPT not to answer questions that might offend the mainstream. These are the biases we’re talking about. 

The same bias is evident in Florida, which is banning some school library books.

Anonymous: If someone else asked ChatGPT for a prayer to thank the Lord for the end of pandemic (as Don did) would they get a different prayer. Would anyone get the same prayer?

David: Don could have asked it again for that prayer and he would have got a different prayer. It would have carried the same sense of thanking God. It might have been more (or less) beautiful and would have used different words and phrases. It would not have seemed the same. 

ChatGPT must have been taught by its creators that if the user repeats a question, it means they haven’t fully understood the answer that it gave, so it should answer the question again but with alternative words.

That is very (almost spookily) human. It is what we do when someone says to us: “Say again?”. We put it in slightly different words. It’s not going to give you an opposite or conflicting answer. But a different version of ChatGPT, trained by different people with different biases, might do just that!

Don: To read those prayers was a moving experience for me, a turning point in something—I don’t know exactly what, but I was gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe the majesty of those prayers, and where they potentially could have come from.

David: The majestic potential is there. Everybody’s worried about this—I think rightly so, but ultimately, I believe in God, I believe in goodness, I believe the universe can only exist provided that there is God—a preponderance of goodness over evil. 

But even even a small amount of evil can do a lot of harm and one hopes that that would be minimized. We can minimize it by at least thinking about where the technology is inevitably going, identifying the potential harm and trying to forestall it.

Don: Please note that there will be no class next week, but will resume on April 1. 

* * *

We’re talking about knowing God and hearing his voice and about how God communicates with us. Last week, we studied eight lessons on how God communicates, derived from the story of the boy Samuel. 

Today, I’d like to return to the story of Jacob for more insights into how God communicates with us, to see how we encounter God in our lives by examining Jacob’s encounters with God in his life. It may help us to recognize the voice of God. 

Encounter 1: Jacob had cheated his brother, deceived his father, and ran for his life to his uncle Laban’s house, straight into his own personal exile. His former way of life was over. Surely this was a permanent unraveling of anything that was good for him and for his future, but right at this point God revealed himself through a dream that transformed an ordinary place into a meeting place with God, so that Jacob could gain God’s perspective. 

As told in Genesis 28, Jacob fell asleep on the ground and dreamed he saw a stairway connecting heaven and earth, with angels ascending and descending. Above the stairway, God stood and spoke to Jacob and promised to bless him and his descendants, to give him the land he had promised to Abraham and Isaac, and to multiply his descendants. God even promised Jacob his continued presence and protection:

“I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants.  Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed.  Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:13-15) 

This is a third-generation reiteration of the covenant God made with Abraham and with Isaac—the land, the offspring, great numbers of people, and blessings; plus some extra promises: First, that God would be with him and keep him, second, that God would bring him back to the land, and third, that God would be with him throughout. 

After his first encounter with God, Jacob awoke and said: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” Of course God is everywhere but chose to reveal himself to Jacob in this place because it was exactly the right time and the right place. God could have revealed himself in any number of forms, but this one was awesome and impressive. 

Although this was an encouraging promise from God, it was also fearsome for Jacob, who concluded something that is theologically faulty; namely: That he had stumbled upon the house of God and the gate of heaven. In essence, he concluded he had found God. When he awoke he saw everything differently, even his physical environment. “Surely,” he said, “The Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” and added: “How awesome is this place!” This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. 

Later we see him wrestle with God at the brook Jabbok (in Genesis 32), and subsequently (in Genesis 35) he has a type of encounter with God called in Hebrew a galah  (גלה)— an apocalypse, or a revelation. Encountering God, we see, changes everything in our lives. Jacob was experiencing not the end of the world but the end of his former perspective—the end of the world as he knew it, and a shift to a new worldview. He was experiencing the end of his limited viewpoint and his narrow ideas. He was experiencing the end of his confusion and dismay. Revelation for him was just the beginning of his new reality, one in which he had confidence that God was for him and that his time of trouble would one day end.

This brings us to lesson number one: Sometimes we’re just wandering around trying to find our way, frustrated that darkness has fallen and that we have to improvise with a rock for a pillow. But God has not deserted us. God is in control. So don’t be surprised when he shows up in your darkest night and that encounter changes everything. 

Early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on top of it. And he named the place Bethel, the house of God, and he made a very selfish,  immature, and conditional vow:

 “If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and give me food to eat and garments to wear, and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the Lord will be my God. And this stone, which I have set up as a memorial stone, will be God’s house, and of everything that You give me I will assuredly give a tenth to You.” (Genesis 28:20-22)

God has to do five things specifically for Jacob (notice how many times the word “me” is mentioned in this vow) and only then will Jacob do three things for God. Still, he is sincere and God accepts his vow, which brings us to lesson number two: We may have bad theology and a conditional relationship with God but he knows our weakness and he meets us where we are. This is goodness; Otherwise, we would never know him. That’s the whole point of “God with us” (Emanuel).

Encounter 2: Jacob stayed at Laban’s house for many years, long enough to work off the cost of two wives, Leah and Rachel. Jacob’s father Isaac has been deceived by Jacob through disguise and Jacob was deceived by Laban through disguise—what went around came around. He had become wealthy however, and he encountered God again. But his relationship with his uncle Laban had deteriorated and Laban’s sons—Jacob’s cousins—were jealous of his success. 

God appears to him again in a dream, less dramatic than the first but it is now the second time that God has spoken clearly to Jacob in a dream. The Lord says: “Go back home to the land of your father, and I’ll be with you.” The way Jacob explains this to his wives adds more to it: He doesn’t tell them he is returning simply because God told him to go—he includes the fact that Laban, their father, was not happy with him. He goes through his side of the story about how Laban did him wrong, and only then does he tell him about the dream. But they are still ready to go with him. 

 Now Jacob heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, “Jacob has taken away all that was our father’s, and from what belonged to our father he has made all this wealth.” And Jacob saw the attitude of Laban, and behold, it was not friendly toward him as it had been before. Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.” (Genesis 31:1-3)

So we see Jacob on the run again. Running away is a theme we see throughout Jacob’s life: Running away from his family, from God, and from himself. He runs because he’s afraid—of Laban, of his cousins, of his brother Esau. In his essay on Jacob, Ken Lee raises lesson number three as a question: “I wonder,” he writes, “am I sometimes more open to hearing from God when I dream because I’m not so busy being distracted?” In any case, he observes, “dreams are a common way for the Lord to communicate with us.” 

That brings us to lesson number four: That God may communicate with us by the circumstances of our lives. Things were not going well at Laban’s house. Things may not be going well at your house. It may be a message from God. Keep yourself open to the messages of God in the circumstances of your life. 

Encounter 3 is direct, intimate, and physical. It is not an easy dream; it is a struggle. Some people struggle with God because he seems so remote, so unapproachable and uninterested in their needs and in their points of view. Some people struggle with God because they see the relationship with him as a contract rather than a covenant and therefore feel aggrieved when God apparently fails to uphold parts of agreement and fails to answer their prayers. Some just don’t like the way God happens to run the universe, allowing little children to suffer and letting bad things happen to good people. Some struggle with the concept of God as a concept in and of itself, though many more people question the way God operates than question his existence. 

Most of us, however, expect that an encounter with God will make our life easier and better. Struggling is what we expect with the devil, not with God. Jacob’s story shows us that God wants to meet us in our darkest hour when we’re at our wits end. God does not shy away from the darkness; he will struggle with us there and ultimately enlighten the darkness with his blessing. 

The intimacy of the struggle, as suggested by the wrestling metaphor, and the apparent inability of God to end the match by defeating his human opponent, hint that there is something deeply important about the struggle in and of itself. In a wrestling match, the legs are perhaps the most vital limbs, they have the strongest muscles of the body. God chose to inflict a disability to Jacob’s legs by dislocating his hip. It was as bad a break as any wrestler could fear yet Jacob struggled until he was assured of God’s blessing. 

What exactly was the blessing he wanted? And what was the blessing he got? Jacob’s name is associated in the Hebrew language with a sense of grasping, holding on to things. He grasps for his brother’s heel, for his brother’s birthright. He grasps for a beautiful wife and for riches. And in wrestling with God he is grasping for God’s blessing. And just as Isaac asked Jacob his name (although he received the deceitful answer “Esau”) God likewise asks Jacob his name just before blessing him. 

It seems clear that Jacob knew with whom he was wrestling, yet he was prepared to continue wrestling with God for the blessing even at the risk of death should he see God when day broke and the darkness was lifted. 

So what was the blessing? The answer lies in Jacob’s answer to God’s question: “Who are you?” He said: “I am Jacob.” I think this is meant to be understood as a confession. He is no longer trying to deceive. He is saying (given the Hebrew connotation in his name): “I am a deceiver, a supplanter, a grabber, a sinner in need of God’s grace and I hereby relinquish my old ways.” God’s grace and forgiveness are exactly what he received. 

So In wrestling with God, Jacob not only learned something about God, but perhaps more importantly, he learned something about himself. And that’s perhaps the message for all of us in this story: If we open ourselves truly to God, God will forgive us and he will not take us to task for our sins. 

But Jacob nonetheless paid a severe price in the form of a disability following God’s dislocation of his hip. This disabling, I believe, refers to the relinquishment of one’s will to God. The blessing reminds me of the psalm:  

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in mercy. He will not always contend with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever. (Psalm 103:8-9) 

This is the good news. This is the gospel. And this is exactly the blessing that Jacob realized. He was not dealt with as a Jacob; he was transformed into an Israel. His identity, his character, his very being was transformed. So the blessing is a self-realization brought on by recognition of our character defects, imperfections, weaknesses, and our need and desire for a more gracious relationship with a forgiving God. 

Like Jacob, we tend to try to disguise our weaknesses. We pretend to be something we’re not, to not be the sinful person we really are. Self-recognition opens the door to the blessing of God’s grace and forgiveness. While Jacob went to great lengths to hide his true self, God was even more relentless in struggling to save him. This is the lesson for us all. It is a story of judgment. But God does not judge us: He helps us to judge ourselves. Jacob called the name of that place Peniel because there he saw God face to face and yet his life was spared. Not only does Israel get a new name, but the location is marked with a name of its own also. 

As the sun rises and Jacob leaves Peniel, he is limping because of his hip. Why would God—the Almighty Creator of all—need to injure a hip? Why put himself into human form and limit himself to being nearly equal with a man? Moreover, why injure that hip just before Israel/Jacob sees his brother Esau again? I would have thought that Jacob would want to be in good physical shape so that he could run or fight or both. But there he is, noticeably limping so that Esau could see from a distance that his brother was no threat. A man with a bad limp does not look aggressive and if he is then you can outrun him anyway. 

In his mercy, God sometimes wounds us, which is a good thing and not harm. By the time Esau sees his brother all is forgiven and they’re on good terms again. Even though Jacob never explains, Esau forgives him anyway. 

This brings us to lesson number five: You can’t judge your encounter with God in physical terms. It is possible that God may use physical disability, illness, and even death as an avenue of communication with him. His concern is your soul, not your body, God may communicate with us through the trials of life. Who would have regarded Jacob’s injury as a gift of God? As an evidence of God’s grace it rendered him helpless, making him rely upon God’s goodness and his grace. The hip injury was really a part of the blessing.

That brings us to…

Encounter 4. Maybe it was at night again and maybe it was a dream again–we’re not really told—but God speaks to Jacob again and this time tells him to arise and go to Bethel, to dwell there, and to make an altar to the God who appeared to him when he fled from his brother Esau. So Jacob told everyone in his household and entourage to put away the foreign gods among them, purify themselves, and change their garments (Genesis 35:1:2). (It’s curious that God di not tell Jacob to do this before. Perhaps it was because Jacob still was not fully converted and was still hanging on to those other gods.) 

This fourth encounter with God is the only one for which he has truly prepared himself. He is now very zealous and wants to be ready for the encounter, at last. Genesis 35 goes on to recount that his entourage gave up all their foreign gods and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under a tree near Shechem (apparently, earrings had idolatrous implications.) They moved on and built an altar at the place where God had originally appeared to him. There were to be from now on no other gods. 

That brings us to lesson number six: To take God seriously and follow him we need to rid ourselves of all the trinkets and symbols of the foreign gods we have been chasing after. And since…

… we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us,… (Hebrews 12:1)

The four encounters that Jacob had with God left him humbled and disabled. They left him with a new worldview and a new view of God. They also left him with a new name, a new identity, and a recommitment to having no other gods before Jehovah. But I find it rather puzzling, maybe even remarkable, that although God gave him a new name, Jehovah God and Jesus as well continued to use his old name more than a dozen times in the Old and New Testaments. God makes reference to himself as being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 22:31, Acts 7:32, Genesis 50-24, and Exodus 3-15 are just a few examples.) 

Why does God not call himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel? God, you see, made changes, but we’re still in need of his grace. Maybe it’s a way of reminding us that whatever encounter we have with him, God never should let us forget where we have come from and our need of his grace. 

The last image that we see of Jacob in the Bible is found in Hebrews 11-21. Hebrews 11 is known as the chapter of faith. The writer of Hebrews is walking through the garden of faith picking up flowers of faith here and there for a special mention. Especially mentioned are: Noah, builder of the ark; Abraham, builder of nations; Moses; David; Gideon; Samson; and Daniel, whose faith shut the mouth of lions. They are all identified as heroes of faith. But verse 21 of Hebrews 11 says this of Jacob:.

By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.  (Hebrews 11:21)

Jacob is dying, broken down, alone, unable to stand without leaning on his staff, passing on the blessing he had received. It is not a particularly heroic picture of faith. What sets Jacob apart from the others is not his personal faith heroism but his reliance on God’s grace. He is doing three things: He is leaning on his staff, passing on the blessing (passing on the grace, not hoarding it), and worshiping (thanking God for the grace). That he leans on his staff reminds us of Psalm 23: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” The rod is the rod of grace. It was in the Ark of the Covenant—Aaron’s Rod. God dislocated Jacob’s hip to make him rely upon this rod. God dislocated his own effort in order to make him rely upon God’s everlasting grace. 

The Shepherd’s rod and staff of Psalm 23 provides many things. It provides guidance and protection. It provides strength and consolation. It provides support and encouragement. It provides direction and sustenance. It provides empowerment and nurturing. The rod is the symbol of God’s grace and goodness. It is his response to your encounter with him. We see Jacob leaning on God’s grace. He’s a faith hero because he relies on grace. He has had a lifelong endeavor of relying on and needing God’s grace because of his disability. Passing on the grace and worshiping God, we see him giving thanks for that grace. 

Maybe you’re like me, wishing that you could be in the Hall of Faith. But like me, you don’t have the faith of Noah to build an ark. You’re not as dedicated as Abraham. You’re not as brave as David. You’re not as pious as Daniel. Maybe we’re just like Jacob—devious, deceitful, and disabled, just leaning on the rod of God’s grace. It doesn’t seem like much but it turns out that God’s grace is enough to put you into the Hall of Faith. 

What do we learn from Jacob’s story about how God communicates with us? Why does God use Jacob’s old name when he’s given him a new name written in stone? What does the story of Jacob tell us about God’s grace? Can you see in the injuries and circumstances of life an encounter with God? What lessons are to be learned in the stories of Jacob’s encounters with God?

Donald: God surrounds us. How does that differ from an encounter? An encounter would seem to be much more dramatic—a moment in which you CAN identify something unique in that experience. Encountering someone is a little different than just being aware of them. 

I had a distinct dream last night but I don’t have any sense that God was a part of it. I don’t know that I’ve ever dreamed about God directly. Why use the term “encounter with God” rather than “feel God’s presence”?

David: ”Encounter with God” seems slightly misleading. It suggests that God is not there unless and until we bump into him. But we know that God is all around all the time, in the background. He may only come to the fore in our time of need, but he is always there. So “encounter” may be a little bit misleading.

Don: What’s a better term, do you think?

David: ”Came out of the woodwork”? “Arose in consciousness”? We talk about suppressing the inner light, the holy spirit within, the eternity set in our hearts by a God who is always there. There are times when God breaks through our suppression, so to speak. But that’s not bumping into God by accident, which is what an encounter sounds like. So I share Donald’s wonderment at the use of that that term. 

Donald: Maybe it’s a sense of being aware that God is around me. The difference between being aware of God’s presence and an encounter is then based on me: I recognize he’s there and I respond to that, as opposed to exist within it.

Michael: It’s like a realization. But why does God keep calling Jacob Jacob when he officially named him Israel? It’s fascinating, because it has to be continual even though it was a dramatic experience that changed Jacob. [Audio dropped in places.]

Carolyn: Was the blessing he sought forgiveness for his sins or was it a renewal? Are the blessing, the encounter, and the change of name synonymous? 

David: It seems to me what Jacob was really asking was not so much forgiveness as acceptance—God’s acceptance of Jacob: “I am who I am, I am what I am. Will you please accept me for being who I am?” It is in a way a plea for forgiveness, I suppose. It would answer Michael’s Interesting point that even though God renames him he continues to call him by his old name of Jacob. It is as though God does accept Jacob for who he is and through that acceptance, something changes in Jacob. It might be just a matter of mutual recognition:  Jacob recognizes God and in return God recognizes Jacob.

Donald: Encounter carries a sense of hostility—something more than just a moment in time of being together. An encounter would stand out from a regular relationship. Something transpires and in Jacob’s case something did transpire. So that is a distinction between knowing God’s presence and dealing with a circumstance. I don’t see “encounter” as necessarily a positive thing. 

Reinhard: An encounter to me involves two perhaps unequal parties meeting by chance. The higher-level person is likely to feel some accountability to impart information or fill a need of the other. It was normal for God to encounter Jacob because God had a plan for the chosen people. The name of Israel, the chosen people, stretches all the way to the New Testament. The chosen people cannot be called Jacob, but Jacob refers to the person, not the nation. 

God loved Jacob more than Esau and already had it in mind to put Jacob above his elder brother. Jacob’s mother told him his father was going to bless Esau and helped him prepare the deception, so it was her idea, not Jacob’s. Jacob was not always the real culprit. When Esau came back hungry from a day’s hunting, Jacob asked him to sell his birthright. Jacob was not always the villain. When Jacob’s son Joseph was away visiting his brother, Jacob himself was deceived that his son had been killed when in fact he had not. 

Even though Jacob descended in direct line from Abraham and Isaac as a chosen patriarch for the chosen people, Jacob had no idea that Joseph was still alive, even being as close to God as he was. The lesson is that we cannot know everything but we have to trust in the patriarchs, regular people also but uplifted by God. God selected Jacob above his elder twin brother Esau. That was God’s prerogative..

Donald: We have an awareness of God’s presence, an assurance of God as our shepherd watching over us, his sheep. It’s an awareness. But an encounter is quite different. 

What is the difference between the rod and the staff? They are tools for God to shepherd his sheep. To me, that’s a reassuring, wonderful way of thinking about this.

Michael:  I’m not sure that we like to be aware that we are sheep. I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by awareness. To accept the metaphor of Jesus or God as the shepherd, then we have to accept that we are sheep.  I’m not sure that we like to do that. Maybe that’s just me….

David: I think it doesn’t matter. Yes, we think of sheep as sheepish and stupid but I think the idea is that sheep go about their business of munching on the grass just as we go about our business, and like the sheep we ignore the shepherd until the shepherd says something and creates an encounter. Until then the sheep are unaware of the shepherd. They are just enjoying the sun and the breeze and the grass (or freezing or starving to death). It’s the same with us until until the shepherd says, “Hey, wake up!” or, “Hey, there’s a wolf!” or “Time to go back to the barn!”

Donald: There would be no need for a shepherd if there was no danger. A shepherd protects us from danger. The sheep are unaware of that danger but the shepherd is aware.

David: And one of the dangers is to ourselves: We might wander off in search of greener pastures. The shepherd is watching out for us and notices if we stray and will come after us, according to the Bible.

Carolyn: When Jacob was wrestling with God did he ever feel forgiveness for the sins he committed against his brother and his father? Is this what he was wrestling with? Or was he asking for a particular blessing to go on with his life? To have to wrestle and then also be bruised from the wrestle, it must have been very important. I think we wrestle with ourselves as far as doing what is right. We want to make sure our sins are forgiven. 

Jay: It strikes me that our examples of encounters with God aren’t all that pleasant. Jacob walks away from this encounter disabled for the rest of his life, to the extent that he is depicted in the Hall of Fame as leaning on his staff. Saul’s encounter with God leaves him blinded. We think of encounters with God as glorious moments of enlightenment and so on but the examples in Scripture often involve disablement and fear. 

But in the end, they all seem to result in something—or are turned into something—that’s seen as a positive. Was Jacob reliant on God’s grace—did he lean on his staff—because God disabled him for the rest of his life? I think we often gloss over the fact that after an encounter with God, down the road things may turn out great but at the cost of some terror and disability.

Donald: Our possessions are aptly described as trinkets. It puts things in perspective. 

Kiran: I like the point about how God uses sickness and death for the ultimate goal of saving the soul. Holding the perspective that we should embrace pain and disadvantage and lean on God is very hard but that’s what strikes me.

Don: We expect that our encounters with God will do something positive for us—make us better, make us happier, make life easier. It’s a positive perspective. But the story of Jacob suggests that while such may not always be the case, God can be found even in the disability, illness, and death that afflict us and those around us. 

Jay: That’s an interesting idea. Definitely, when we’re in those times, we’re not thinking that way. We’re not thinking, “God is mixed up in this.” And yet many of the Biblical examples turn out to be like that. Jacob, Jonah, Saul, Moses… the list goes on and on. Life for people in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews was not easy. 

Michael: Jesus says his burden is light and his yoke is easy but then he says “You have to carry my cross.” The problem with the church is that it characterizes the cross as the sins you have to carry and the hard life you have to lead. If his burden is light and his yoke is easy, then something is off—if now we’re saying that an encounter with God is not always easy. 

David: Hard encounters with God occur in the Old Testament. Encounters with God in the New Testament are quite different.

Kiran: When Jesus saw Peter, he felt naked, physically and spiritually, because the burden of making himself righteous based on his own merit was very hard. When God encounters us we are exposed, and that is the biggest problem until we realize that his grace covers us. It is the lightest burden. Daniel fell down before the angel and said he was unworthy, but the angel disagreed.  When in the light of God we see ourselves, we judge ourselves harshly. That is the result of eating the forbidden fruit. When he takes away the burden, that’s the easy yoke. 

Don: To answer Carolyn’s question, I think Kiran is right that the blessing is to come to realize that you are not who you wish or think you are. God already knows who you are and he’s redeemed you and given you his grace. Forgiving yourself is really a difficult thing to do. The blessing Jacob received was not something external, but internal. He received the blessing that he was not who he knew himself to be and that through God’s grace he was something completely different. That is a tremendous blessing, particularly for those of us who have lived with guilt and have a sense of our own depravity.

Michael: It seems as though messages from God in the New Testament came to a different kind of people—to the disabled, to sinners, and so on; but in the Old Testament they came to people who were supposed to be leaders of the chosen people of God, 

Reinhard: It seems to me Jacob was a passive recipient of the blessing the first time (via Isaac). But after he left, God already was with him in the dream of the stairway to heaven. But the encounter with the angel, with God, was when he realized God was teaching him about how to become the man of God, and that’s why he asked for the blessing. I think he realized he had a responsibility to do what God asked him to do. He remained very afraid of Esau but God was teaching him to be a man, to be brave, because God would protect him. I think it was part of his spiritual growth to learn to depend on God. 

Don: More next week on God and his voice, on knowing God and how he communicates and encounters us.

* * *

Last week we saw that in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, the words for obedience and listening are really the same word—synonyms, essentially. To obey is simply to listen and to act on God’s voice. But (as Michael pointed out) listening is not just a passive exercise: It is the activity of attention, even—for high quality listening—of undivided attention. 

What does that mean? How can that be done? To better understand the principles of listening to God, we will study the story of the boy Samuel found in 1 Samuel 1-3. The story begins with a woman named Hannah, who was barren and unable to have children. She desperately prayed to God for a son and promised to dedicate him in the service of the Lord. God heard her prayer and she gave birth to a son whom she named Samuel. As promised, when Samuel was weaned, Hannah took him to the temple in Shiloh to serve under the priest Eli. 

Samuel grew up in the temple and his mentor, Eli, taught him how to serve God. One night while Samuel was sleeping, he heard a voice calling his name. Thinking it was Eli calling to him, Samuel went to him, but Eli had not called him. This happened three more times, until Eli realized that it was God who was calling Samuel. 

Eli instructed Samuel to respond to God, and Samuel then heard God’s message that God would punish Eli’s family for their disobedience, and honor Samuel as a prophet himself. Samuel then became a prophet of God and his reputation grew throughout Israel, in whose history he was to play a significant role. 

Here is the part about Samuel being called:

Now the boy Samuel was attending to the service of the Lord before Eli. And word from the Lord was rare in those days; visions were infrequent. 

 But it happened at that time as Eli was lying down in his place (now his eyesight had begun to be poor and he could not see well), and the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was, that the Lord called Samuel; and he said, “Here I am.” Then he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down. And the Lord called yet again, “Samuel!” So Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son, go back and lie down.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor had the word of the Lord yet been revealed to him. So the Lord called Samuel again for the third time. And he got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. And Eli said to Samuel, “Go lie down, and it shall be if He calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 

 Then the Lord came and stood, and called as at the other times: “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.” Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I am going to do a thing in Israel, and both ears of everyone who hears about it will ring.  (1 Samuel 3:1-11)

The passage goes on to talk about Eli and his family, and particularly Eli’s sons, who were fairly corrupt, and that God was going to replace Eli with Samuel. in 1 Samuel 1, Hannah names her son Samuel because, she says, “I have asked of him from the Lord.” We see in Samuel’s name the same word that we saw last week that meant listening or obedience. It’s the Hebrew word shama. El means God. Putting the two together as Shama-El gives us Samuel—a listener of God. 

The story of the young boy Samuel teaches us many lessons about how to listen, recognize, and respond to God’s voice. From it I derived eight lessons about listening to God’s voice. (There are probably more.)

Lesson 1: Age has no bearing on God’s choosing to speak, or our ability to hear, God’s voice. God may speak through the elderly, through the middle aged, and even through children. Don’t be surprised to hear God’s voice from someone of any age. God has no limitations. Samuel’s story is a reminder that God speaks to us in many different ways and through many different people. 

We need to be open and receptive to his voice, no matter our age or experience. In fact, sometimes God chooses to speak to us through the innocent and unassuming—like Samuel—who have not yet been corrupted by the ways of the world. This childlike innocence allows us to hear God’s voice unfiltered by adult confusion. It is a reminder of Jesus’ exhortation to become like little children. 

Lesson 2: If we want to hear God’s voice we need to be in a place where God actually is. Samuel lives and sleeps within the temple, near (the record says) the Ark of the Covenant. This metaphor is significant because the Ark was the physical embodiment of God’s presence among his people, a symbol of his power and glory and a reminder that he was always with them. By sleeping near it, Samuel was in close proximity to God, and this allowed him to hear God’s voice. 

The story teaches us that if we want to hear from God, we must be close to him. We cannot expect to hear his voice if we’re living far from him spiritually. This means that we must spend time in prayer, in study of the Scriptures, and in physical community—attending gatherings where God is present. It helps to surround ourselves with other believers who can encourage and support us in our faith, as we do each Sabbath morning here. 

Nature, of course, is God’s habitat, and he uses the natural world to communicate with us. Samuel was filling the lamps and attending to the altars and the table of showbread and so on. He was in God’s service. We are near to God by being in his service. We can find God by being in his service. God’s voice is heard by those in God’s service. 

Lesson 3: The voice of God is personal. Each time he called Samuel, God repeated the name—making it eight times in all that God called Samuel by his name. When God has a message for you, he will address you by name. God’s relationship to you is individual and personal. Isaiah said:

 But now, this is what the Lord says, He who is your Creator, Jacob,
And He who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!

 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.

 For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior; (Isaiah 43:1-3)

The Bible has numerous examples of God’s addressing individuals by name. In Genesis 22, God calls out to Abraham by name as he is about to sacrifice his son (the story of the binding of Isaac). In Exodus 3, God calls Moses by name from the burning bush, revealing his plan to deliver Israel from the slavery in Egypt. In 1 Kings 19, God calls out calls out to Elijah by name as he flees into the wilderness in fear of the evil queen Jezebel. In Acts 9 he calls out to Saul on the road to Damascus. He addresses Simon Peter by name in Luke 22:31-32. He speaks to Mary and Martha at the funeral of Lazarus by name in John 11 and he speaks to their dead brother from the grave: “Lazarus, come forth!” He commands Zacchaeus to come down from the sycamore tree in Luke 19:5-6. And you’ll recall that he startles Mary Magdalene, by name, at the tomb of the resurrection. 

There are many more examples, all indicating that the call of God’s voice is individual and personal. In each instance, God’s personal communication with these individuals reveals his plan and purpose for their lives. Similarly, in the story of Samuel, God’s personal communication revealed God’s plan for Samuel to become a prophet and the judge of Israel.  

Lesson 4: God’s voice is not just personal—it is also persistent. Four times God calls Samuel, saying his name twice each time. God’s voice is persistent, patient, and personal. The persistence highlights God’s desire to communicate with us and his commitment to ensuring that we hear his message. 

Throughout the Bible we see numerous examples of God’s persistent communication with his people. In Genesis 6, God persistently warns Noah of the coming flood and instructs him to build the ark. In Exodus 7:7-12, God persistently sends plagues upon Egypt in order to demonstrate his power and deliver the Israelites from slavery. In the New Testament, Jesus persistently reached out to the lost and to the broken, healing the sick and preaching the message of salvation. 

Many other stories show the persistence of God’s message to his people and demonstrate God’s unwavering commitment to communicate with his people and accomplish his plan for their lives. His persistence highlights the importance of listening for his voice and responding to his call. 

Lesson 5: You might hear God’s voice but not recognize it as God’s voice, like Samuel:  

 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor had the word of the Lord yet been revealed to him. (1 Samuel 3:7) 

Apparently, in order to hear God’s voice, it requires some knowledge of God, knowing something about God. But this requires, it seems, a special revelation from God himself. Hearing God’s voice and knowing something about God seems to have God’s initiative written all over it. The story of Samuel illustrates the importance of knowing God and being able to recognize his voice. 

Samuel had been raised in the temple and was familiar with the ways of God but he did not yet know him personally. It was only when he responded to God’s call and listened to his voice that he began to understand who God was and what he wanted from him. This personal relationship with God allowed Samuel to discern his voice from others, and receive guidance and direction for his life. 

The benefits of knowing God and recognizing his voice are numerous. For one, it allows us to receive guidance and direction in our life. Just as God had a plan for Samuel, he has a plan for each of us and we can discover it by listening for his voice. Knowing God also gives us a sense of purpose and meaning in life. When we understand that we are created by God for a special purpose, we can live with more intention and focus. 

Additionally, recognizing God’s voice helps us to distinguish between truth and falsehood. In a world full of conflicting voices and opinions, it can be challenging to know what is true and what is not. However, when we know God and understand his voice, we can discern the difference between his voice and the voices of others. 

Fortunately, even if we don’t know him, he knows us by name, and personally. And with time and patience and guidance we will gain some knowledge of God. Hosea 6:3 says that by following God we can come to know him. Apparently coming to know God is a dynamic experience. It is a learning enterprise, and is underwritten by God himself. 

Lesson 6: We might require assistance in order to hear or to understand God’s voice. We might need others to help us to see that God is talking to us. In short, we may need a spiritual mentor. One of the ways Eli mentored Samuel was by creating space for him to hear from God himself. Eli recognized that Samuel had been called by God to serve as a prophet and helped him to discern God’s voice. 

When Samuel heard God’s voice for the first time he did not recognize it and thought it was Eli calling. Eli was able to realize that it was God speaking to Samuel and taught him how to respond. He instructed Samuel to say: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” This allowed Samuel to hear directly from God and begin to understand his plan for his life. 

Lesson 7: The response to hearing God’s voice is to listen. As we talked about last week, the response to hearing God’s voice is a humble submission to God’s will. As Samuel responds to God’s voice he says,: “Speak, Lord for your servant is listening”—shama, the Hebrew word for listening. God’s voice requires listening and not talking. He requires our silence and our humble meditation. 

One of the key lessons we can learn from Samuel is that hearing God’s voice requires a humble response. When Samuel first heard God’s voice, he did not recognize it and thought it was Eli calling him, but Eli helped Samuel to understand that it was God speaking, and instructed him to respond by saying: “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening,” a response that demonstrates humility and a willingness to submit to God’s will. 

Calling oneself a servant of God is a profound statement of humility. It acknowledges that God is the one in control and that we are here to serve him. When Samuel called himself God’s servant, he was recognizing that God was the one with the power and the authority and was willing to submit to his will. The concept of servanthood is central to the teachings of Jesus as well in the New Testament. He frequently spoke about the importance of serving others and modeling humility. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says: “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). The statement emphasizes the importance of humility and service in the Christian life. Pride makes claims of knowing God and speaking for God, but the true response to hearing God’s voice is humility.

In addition to humility, calling oneself a servant of God requires a willingness to listen. When Samuel responded to God’s voice by saying: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening” he was expressing a willingness to listen to God, to follow his commands and to yield to the will of God. The concept of servanthood and humility is essential to the life of the believer and particularly relevant when it comes to hearing God’s voice. 

When we approach God with humility, we open up ourselves to his guidance and direction. We recognize that he is the one in control and we’re here to serve him. This kind of posture allows us to hear God’s voice more clearly and respond with obedience. We are in God’s service, he is not in our service.  

Lesson 8: You can worship God, you can think that you know God, you can even be in his service—and still not recognize his voice. The boy Samuel lived in the very presence of God and served him day and night but still did not recognize his voice. One of the key lessons from the Samuel story is that God speaks to us in various ways. In Samuel’s case, God spoke to him audibly while he was sleeping. However, God can also speak to us through other means, such as the Bible, prayer, other people, and other circumstances. It is essential that we learn to recognize and discern God’s voice, regardless of how he chooses to speak to us. 

The story of Samuel teaches us the importance of seeking wise counsel. After hearing God’s voice Samuel sought wise counsel from Eli, a more experienced and knowledgeable prophet. Similarly, we should seek wise counsel from other believers when we are unsure about what God is trying to tell us. This can help us to discern God’s will more accurately. 

The story of Samuel in the Bible provides us with these many valuable lessons about listening to God. We must: Learn to recognize and discern God’s voice; be attentive and responsive to his call; have a personal relationship with him, by name; trust in his plan for our lives; seek wise counsel and follow his will, humbly. By doing so we can fulfill the purpose and calling that God has for our lives and experience an abundant life. 

What can we learn about listening, from the story of Samuel? With so many ways that God can communicate with us, how easy is it to get confused? How difficult is it to tell whether the voice we’re hearing is that of God or not? How can we tell what is genuine and what is not? How do we know God’s voice? What role do you have in helping me to hear God’s voice? Have you thought about your responsibility as a fellow believer in helping others to hear the voice of God? Have you ever heard a voice that you thought was from God but you weren’t sure?

Carolyn: At times I have a deep impression, sort of a deep nudge, pushing me in one direction or another in the context of what I am experiencing at that time. But I have never heard an audible voice and I’ve never dreamed a dream that (I would say) God has given me. But I do get an okay to go ahead, or a feeling of pressure to slow down and seek more counsel. That has been my experience in my walk with God—this deep, almost physical feeling inside me that I need to look out, or else a feeling of gratitude for the impression he gave me of permission to go in a certain direction.

Reinhard: In my experience I don’t hear a voice but I sometimes feel something bugging me, bothering me; and an answer springs to mind, telling me what I need to know. Most of the time, if God speaks to us, it is for our individual needs and concerns. In general, as the Bible shows, God speaks through the prophets and apostles. That’s the consensus of Christians. We are taught to live the right way, the Christian way, through the writing in the Bible. That’s the basis of our faith, and it is sufficient. 

I don’t hear an audible voice from God but sometimes when there’s a problem a solution appears inside me—that’s what I think of as the voice of God. It is personal personal.

Janelin: I too hear no audible voice but when we make sometimes difficult decisions in life we pray for the peace that comes with knowing we have made the right decision. There’s comfort and peace when you feel like you made the right decision in a hard time. 

Don: Is God a little bit irresponsible in this story? Should he not have just manned up and said to Samuel “This is God speaking to you.” Why the ambiguity—the persistent ambiguity? After Samuel mistook his voice the first time, God could have said “This is me, God, and here’s what I want you to do.” 

Why all the mystery, the ambiguity, the uncertainty? Why are they running around trying to figure out who’s speaking? Is there something to be said for that story?

Michael: It makes me question people who speak on behalf of God so strongly and adamantly, as if they actually have heard the voice, when the Biblical record shows that is not so simple.

Reinhard: In the Old Testament there are many instances in which God speaks directly to people, mostly through angels who represent him. He spoke to Abraham, Moses, and others, but in the New Testament there is no record (except for Paul and the angel who spoke to Mary) of God having spoken directly to anyone—with one major exception: Jesus spoke to everyone. 

When God spoke in the Old Testament, it was mostly for the welfare of the Israelites, his chosen people, through individual prophets, in circumstances such as war (David, for instance). The purpose of God was to protect them and guide them as his chosen people. 

The New Testament tells us what we need to do to lead a Christian life, through the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the apostles, for our personnel benefit. There are times when we have great concerns and God speaks—to me, at least—through the Holy Spirit.  I think God put the Holy Spirit in us to enlighten us about difficult things that bother us. Maybe it is doing so most of the time, maybe there are times when we don’t get an answer. That’s God’s prerogative.

Rimon: I think that ambiguity is not from God. I think the source of the ambiguity is us. We cannot hear God because of the disconnect we have with God. I think and hope that once we are connected with God we can hear him loud and clear and have that peace that’s beyond understanding. I think it’s the loss that we have experienced by living in this world that created the disconnect and muffled God’s voice and the experience of being with him and experiencing his world.

David: I agree with Reinhardt that the Old Testament seems to be essentially exclusive to the Israelites, whereas the New Testament is inclusive of the whole world—of everybody. The prophets mainly figure as God’s voice in the Old Testament but in the New Testament we hear the voice of God through Jesus. 

Regardless of whether we were born Christian, or know anything at all about Christianity, we can all hear the voice of Jesus through the Holy Spirit that is in everyone—it is the eternity set in everyone’s heart. That is the only place, I believe, where we can hear God’s voice. Yes, we can see reflections of God’s will and echoes of his voice all around us—in nature, in how other people behave, and in things that other people say, we certainly can, but in terms of a direct communication with God, to me, there is only one way it can happens, and that’s through the Holy Spirit.

Michael: I find it a bit frustrating that God is not as clear as he could be. There were several instances where Moses wanted to see God’s face, but he was only shown God’s backside. God plays hide and seek. Why do we have to discern God in nature or in other people’s voices and get confused (is that God? is it the devil? who is that speaking?) Why aren’t things more clear? Why is it so confusing?

Anonymous: God is clear in the Bible. His voice is not audible but you know (because you believe) that it is God talking to you, whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament. The Old Testament wasn’t only for God’s people at that time, not only for the Israelites, it still speaks to us now. We have such precious lessons from the prophets of the Old Testament. 

I believe God is ambiguous to those who don’t know him, just as in the story—Samuel wasn’t familiar with God, had never heard his voice before, he was just a boy. This is why he he did not recognize God’s voice. It is the same for us if we are not familiar with God through his Word, which is the easiest way to understand (as Jesus said, even babes can understand God’s principles). 

If we don’t praise God when even the stones can do so and God can extract praises from the mouths of babes, it is because we are not familiar with God, we’re not walking with him. We may know a little about him, or all our experience with him may be what we hear from others—it is not direct and not personal. Then every message from God will be ambiguous. However, with the experience of going with God day after day and year after a year you realize that God is saying something to you. 

I experienced that so many times through bad feelings. Sometimes I can’t explain why I’m feeling like this. It’s just heaviness. I’m not calm. I would wonder: “What is it Lord, what do you want to tell me? What’s the message? Come on, you have to take away this feeling somehow!” Without knowing what it is, it’s not going to go away. Sometimes I would fall asleep feeling like that and wake up with the same feelings. It might stay with me all day. 

I have learned that there is always, in such cases, a message from God that I did something wrong; that God wanted to teach me a lesson. It’s not intentional, not that I I knew it was not right but I did it or said it anyway. But God in his mercy looks at the heart and sees that we said that or did something with good intentions and he seizes the opportunity to teach us something about him. That happened to me many times and as soon as I realized the crux of the feeling I was led to repentance. I was led to acceptance of God, and forgiveness, and I went back to my joyful heart. I had no problem now. I felt so peaceful. 

So this is one way of God, talking to me personally. I know it from from experience. Also, through the Bible, God talks to us very, very clearly. If you just spend time with him, you’ll find him jumping out of the verses talking to you in your own circumstances. Somebody else might read the same passage and not gain anything. God makes it clear to you that he’s talking to you through the Bible.

Don: Michael wants to know if he should marry the girlfriend he has now, or wait for a better one. (Kidding!) And he’s trying to get God to answer him. Does God really care who Michael marries? Is that what we should be expecting to hear from God’s voice?

Anonymous: No. He does care, of course.

David: I think there might be a reason why God might not want Michael to marry a particular woman, but if so he’ll make that clear through through the Holy Spirit, through the inner voice in Michael’s head. It will be something between him and God. Who can speak for what God wants of Michael, or me, or anyone? It’s strictly between the individual and the God within.

Michael: I don’t think it’s that simple. You can think of it from the other way and say that if I were to marry this person, whether it’s the right choice or not, isn’t that God’s will? And if I end up divorcing that person, isn’t that God’s will as well? So it doesn’t matter whether I’ve made the right decision or not. The decision was already made.

David: Only if you believe in determinism. I don’t. I think God’s will is that we try to be like him. Try. That’s his will and he knows it’s the best we can do. God did not ordain that we must behave like him. You are not obligated to listen to your inner voice and indeed all too often we ignore it or deny it or hide it under a bushel.

C-J: Michael, that’s a slippery slope. It’s saying you don’t want to take responsibility for the decision and the aftermath—the promise that you will be faithful and not be a quitter, and all of that. To say, “God knows. So it must be his will” is a slippery slope. It’s a business deal. Marriage is a business deal. It is a contract, it’s not about love (if you get love you got lucky!) You have to think of the five year plan, the 10 year plan, when it’s interrupted with kids, or sickness, or a change in direction. People say “You didn’t keep your promise, or I didn’t expect this to happen.” But if you start with the premise of a promise, then you’ve got to say, “Are you open to all the sidebars?” 

The reality of it is that I don’t think people really understand what a marriage for the long haul really requires. Especially if you’re young. And if you think it’s like, “Well, I had my education, I’m established,  together we make a good team,…” Marriage is much more than that. Much, much more. Even something as stupid as “Didn’t I ask you not to do that? How many times do I have to ask you not to do that?” Marriage is something that is always a package that hasn’t been opened. “I never knew” or “I don’t understand.” 

So when you make a decision to make somebody your lifelong partner, get lots of counsel, look at people who are similar to the two of you and at how far they got down the path. When Kiran talked about an arranged marriage of his friend he used the phrase, “They’re killing each other.” Be very mindful that you when you go into a marriage, you fall in and out of love multiple times, you rediscover that person in a new way, and you fall in love again, you get frustrated and you go: “I just need a break. Go find something else to do so I can just recover from this.” Marriage is filled with adjustments. So don’t go in thinking this is what it’ll look like always, or that it can only get better from here. Plan on the bumps and how you’re going to weather that storm.

Don: I don’t think Michael is ready to sign up for marriage class yet, but it brings out a point illumined by the story of Samuel but we don’t think much about, namely: What responsibility do we have for other persons hearing God’s voice? Samuel’s mentor Eli recognized things that Samuel did not recognize. He saw God’s work where Samuel did not see it. What responsibility do we have for each other in terms of listening for or hearing God’s voice? As Michael says, it is confusing enough just for myself. How can I tell whether God is speaking to him or not? Can I be of any help?

C-J: The Bible says we’re the bride and he is the groom. I think it’s the same kind of thing. We’re always learning. We’re always adjusting. God is very patient, and his intention is that we fulfill the purpose in our life: To live a life of service, to understand humility (it’s not just “you win, I lose”), to understand that we only grow when we’re willing to sacrifice a small portion for a much greater understanding in this relationship with God.

David: Eli couldn’t hear God speaking to Samuel. Only Samuel could hear it. Eli was essentially saying: “Go listen to your inner voice. If you think you’re hearing something nobody else seems to hear, it’s probably your inner voice. Listen to it.” To me, that’s the only valid advice we can give to anybody. We can’t tell them what the voice is saying—only they know that.

People might come to us with a problem. Michael might come to me and say he’s met a girl who is she’s everything he wants in a wife, except for one terrible, evil, habit. From a spiritual perspective, I can only counsel Michael to listen to his inner voice, which will tell him whether or not the evil aspect of his beloved should warn him off marriage, or not. 

But from a strictly spiritual perspective I can’t warn him off, even if I know the woman and her evil side too. From a wordly perspective, my answer might be quite different. What happened between Samuel and God was strictly Samuel and God’s business; and Eli, knowing that, did the only (and right) thing he could do, which was to say: “Go and listen to the voice.”

Robin: I agree with Carolyn that when you have made the right decision there follows a peace that you may not feel when you’re considering another decision. The tricky part is that sometimes what we want is not what God wants, so we have to pray daily for the humility to accept what God wants when it is in direct opposition to what we think we want. 

Jesus said that his sheep will hear his voice and will follow. The inner voice, the inner light, the Holy Spirit makes itself known. But as for hearing “This is God, listen to me!” society is no stranger to people who claim God told them to go and kill other people. Other spirits may claim to be God. And they are not.,

Janelin: Early in the pandemic, when there was much discussion about the vaccines, I was encouraging my patients to get vaccinated. One patient told me the Holy Spirit had told her, in response to her prayer, not to be vaccinated, so she wanted medication and antibiotics instead. She was picking and choosing her own therapy rather than go with the recommendation of her doctor. 

In a weak moment (which I hope never to repeat) I suggested she might try praying a little bit harder. She sincerely felt at the time that as a result of her prayer, the Holy Spirit was counseling her against vaccination. I was wrong to be angry. How could I know how she really felt? It speaks to the question of our responsibility to help others hear the voice of God. 

Michael: Eli did not counsel Samuel about what God was asking him to do and did not then tell him what he, Eli, wanted him to do. After all, Samuel was working in the temple directly under Eli and I’m sure had his own thoughts about what Samuel should be doing, but he didn’t use that opportunity to say “This is what God wants” and then tell him exactly what he, Eli, wanted. He just told him to go and listen.

David: Robin has pointed to the difference between the sacred and profane; the spiritual and the worldly, in terms of what we want versus what God wants. The rich young ruler wanted spiritually to reach the kingdom of heaven, but his worldly want was to hang on to his riches. There is usually, though perhaps not always, a clash between these two things and it’s a struggle we wage every day. But so often when we listen to the prophets or read Scripture we often conflate the spiritual with the worldly. 

We have to go on with our lives in this world as long as we’re alive. But we also seem driven to look look to the future and to do that we feel a need to lead some kind of spiritual life. Jesus said to try our best to do that whilst stating that we would never get there, but that should not stop us from trying. The best way to do it, in my view, is to simply listen to your inner voice.

* * *

Editors’s Note: Dr. Weaver’s sermon this week struck a chord even deeper than usual. You may view the video by going to this link and entering the passcode ww.fW87Y.

Last week we were looking at the question: Why is grace so hard to accept? Why are we so naturally attracted to performance, to industry, to obedience? Why do we so easily turn our backs on God’s grace? 

I alluded to two trees in the garden: The Tree of Life or grace, and the tree of obedience or anti-grace. The original plan in the garden was that Wo/Man would eat continuously from the tree of life, the tree of grace, the tree of something for nothing—but we took a different route. We took the way of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree of works, the tree of self-determination, the tree of self-assessment and self-assurance and finally self-discrimination. The decision to take the self-actuating pathway at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil seems to have mutated our spiritual DNA and hardwired us to insecurity, performance, effort, and obedience. 

Not to be missed in the struggle is that what occurred in the garden at the beginning of time still goes on today. The choice between our self-determination and God’s grace is a choice that we must make daily. Like Adam and Eve, we are given a choice: One tree or the other, the tree of grace, or the tree of our own discrimination, the tree of anti-grace. This is the root of anti-grace—the fact that we want to work harder, work longer, work faster, work stronger. 

Jesus calls us to take the tree of grace, calling it a yoke which is easy and a burden which is light:

 “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) 

We are hardwired, it seems, to obedience, to overcoming, to self-determination, to self-control, to the tree of anti-grace. But obedience comes with a price: The price is effort, self-control, piety, and self-denial. We have this notion of trying harder, even as we claim that we can’t do it ourselves but somehow can do it with God’s help. Right behind the thin veil of our impossible holiness is the idea that it can be realized somehow with God’s help. If we’re not holy, it’s our own fault; we just haven’t embraced the Holy Spirit enough. It’s almost as if we try to obey and fail in order to accept grace. 

Only by failing obedience can we really understand and acknowledge our need for God’s grace. Trying to be obedient exposes the need for grace. Failure with obedience may be the path to grace but if it’s so different and even impossible to be holy, why does God insist on obedience? Why so many admonitions to be obedient or to keep the commandments? Why such an impossible expectation? 

Moreover, what does our obedience, what does our self-control, say (if anything) about God himself? We always want to make it about ourselves, about us. But what does our obedience, our overcoming, our own effort, our own industry say about God? 

My thinking about this led me to look at the word obey in the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures. The words for listen in Greek and Hebrew are closely related to the word for obey. This suggests that listening to God’s voice and following his commands is an essential part of experiencing his grace and is the root of obedience. The Bible contains many verses that speak to the importance of listening in the Greek and the Hebrew and how it leads us to experience God’s grace. In both languages, the words obedience and listening can be interchanged in the Scriptures. For example:

 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. (James 1:22)

This verse emphasizes the importance of not just hearing God’s word but putting it into action. Listening is a key component of following God’s voice. And it is through listening that we’re able to experience his grace. 

Jesus speaks these words to his disciples, emphasizing that love and listening are intertwined:

 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. (John 14:15) 

When we love God, we naturally want to follow his commands. And it is through listening that we experience his grace. Paul writes:

 For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)

This verse speaks to the idea that listening has redemptive power, that sin entered the world through Adam’s failed listening but we are made righteous and able to experience God’s grace through Jesus’s listening. John says:

 And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you are to walk in it. (2 John 1:6)

This verse emphasizes that listening is a manifestation of love. When we love God, we naturally want to walk in his way and follow his commands. It is through this listening that we experience his grace. 

So the Greek and Hebrew words for listen and obey, which can be used synonymously, teach us that obedience is the key component of following God’s voice and experiencing his grace. When we listen to God’s voice, it is another way of saying that we experience or know God through grace. We can know God by his voice and we can know God by his grace. What we can do then is substitute listen for obey in our readings. Listening should be considered another word for obedience. 

But listening to God’s voice is not just something that we do:

The Lord God has given Me the tongue of disciples,
So that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word.
He awakens Me morning by morning,
He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple. 

The Lord God has opened My ear,
And I was not disobedient,
Nor did I turn back. (isaiah 50:4-5) : 

Notice here that the listening actually begins with God. Our listening, in other words, our obedience, begins with God. It is his initiative. Isn’t it interesting that most of the activity in this passage is on God’s part? He gives, he instructs the disciples, he opens the ear, he awakens us each morning. Our listening, our obedience, is God’s responsibility. Our obedience is actually underwritten by God. He puts us and keeps us on the right path, the path of his will and his grace. 

We are told to listen for God’s voice, but what role does God himself have in making his voice heard? To put it another way: What role does God have in our listening? And what role does God play in our obedience? The Bible teaches that God speaks to his people in many different ways and that it is important for us to listen for his voice. For example:

 My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;… (John 10:27)

Jesus speaks these words emphasizing that his followers are able to hear his voice and to follow him. This suggests that God has an active role in making his voice heard to those who are willing to listen. And at the temptation in the wilderness Jesus says to Satan:

 ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4) 

This verse stresses that God’s word is essential for spiritual nourishment and growth. It suggests that God actively speaks to us through his Word, and that we need to listen to his voice in order to thrive. 

 Certainly the Lord God does nothing
Unless He reveals His secret plan
To His servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7) 

This verse emphasizes that God speaks to his people through prophets, revealing his plans and his purposes. It suggests that God actively communicates with his people, through spiritual leaders, and that he desires for us to listen to his voice in that manner. And finally: 

  The voice of the Lord is on the waters;
 The God of glory thunders,
 The Lord is over many waters. (Psalm 29:3)

This verse paints a picture of God’s voice as powerful and awe-inspiring, emphasizing that God has the ability to make his voice heard in dramatic ways. It suggests that God is not limited in how he speaks to us and that we need to be open to hearing his voice in all its many forms. 

The Bible affirms, then, that God has a very active role in making his voice heard to his people, whether through his Word, through the prophets, or through the sounds of thunder and of nature. God desires for us to listen to his voice. God’s voice is for us to listen to. 

There’s a difference between listening and hearing: Hearing denotes the sensory experience of sound entering the ear, but listening implies that hearing has an additional dimension, that something in what you’ve heard takes root in the mind, in the soul, or in the body. It is through listening, in short, that we are put on the right path by God. 

 Your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. (Isaiah 30:21)

By listening, we are led down the correct path—a path of grace. 

Speaking of the right path, the 23rd Psalm is one of the most well known and beloved passages in the Bible. It’s a beautiful and comforting expression of God’s care and guidance for his believers. The psalm speaks to the idea that listening to God’s voice leads us on the path of grace, a path that brings us peace and comfort and abundant blessings. It puts obedience—as we’ve always thought of it—in a completely different light. 

The psalm begins with the words: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”. These words convey a powerful sense of security and trust in God’s provision. The metaphor of the shepherd and his flock, as we’ve talked about many times, is a common one in the scriptures and represents the close relationship between God and his people. The shepherd cares for his sheep, protects them from danger, and guides them into green pastures and still waters. Similarly, God cares for us ,protects us from harm, and guides us in the path of grace—if we’re listening.

The psalm goes on to describe the blessings that come from following God’s guidance: “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” These images of rest and refreshment are powerful reminders of God’s care for us. When we follow God’s voice and walk on the path of grace we experience a deep sense of peace and renewal. We’re able to find rest for our souls and refreshment for our spirits. 

But the psalm also speaks to the challenges and dangers that we face along the path of life: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” These words remind us that even in our darkest moments God is with us. He never leaves us or forsakes us. He is able to guide us through even the most difficult and unpleasant of trials. 

Finally, the psalm speaks to the abundance of blessings that come from following God’s voice: “You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.” These words are a powerful acknowledgment of God’s generosity and abundance. When we follow God’s voice and walk on the path of life, the path of grace, we are blessed beyond measure. We experience the fullness of God’s love and joy and his peace. 

The 23rd Psalm is a beautiful expression of the idea that listening to God’s voice leads us on the path of grace. When we trust in God as our shepherd, we are able to find rest, renewal, and protection. Even in the face of difficulty and danger we can trust in God’s guidance and care. When we listen and follow God’s voice, we experience God’s everlasting grace. 

Obedience, then, as listening, puts a new face on everything that we’ve strived to do as an overcomer. 

Listening to God puts us on the path of grace. This is God’s path, however, and that is important: It is not our path. Listening to God is the way of grace. It is emphasized throughout the Bible as a vital aspect of a life of faith and obedience. The Bible teaches us that listening to God involves recognizing our need for guidance and direction from a higher power and acknowledging that we cannot rely solely upon our own understandings and abilities. It is through listening to God that we receive the unmerited favor and love that he freely offers us and experiences grace in our life. 

One of the most prominent examples of listening is found in the Old Testament story of Abraham. God called Abraham to leave his homeland and go to a new land. Abraham listened to God’s call even though he did not know where God was leading him. Through Abraham’s listening and trust in God, he became the father of many nations and was blessed with descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. Abraham’s story demonstrates how listening to God’s call can lead to great blessings and fulfillments in our lives. 

In the New Testament, Jesus emphasizes the importance of listening to God:

My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;… (John 10:27)

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who leads and guides us and who calls us to listen to his voice and to follow him. When we listen to Jesus and follow his teachings we experience his grace and his love in our lives. The book of Proverbs provides many many examples of the benefits of listening to God’s wisdom. For example:

For the Lord gives wisdom;
From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. 

He stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
He is a shield to those who walk in integrity,… (Proverbs 2:6-7)   

“Now then, sons, listen to me,
For blessed are those who keep my ways.

Listen to instruction and be wise,
And do not neglect it. 

 Blessed is the person who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at my doorposts. 

 For one who finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the Lord.” (Proverbs 8:32-35) 

The Bible teaches us that listening to God’s wisdom leads to blessings and favor from the Lord. Furthermore, as we saw earlier, James teaches that listening to God’s Word and putting it into practice is essential for a life of faith. The doers of the Word, he says, and not hearers only listening to God’s word and putting it into practice leads to blessing and fulfillment in our lives:

 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. (James 1:22)

Listening to God then is the way of grace because it involves recognizing our need for guidance and direction from a higher power and acknowledging that we cannot rely solely on our own understanding and abilities. The Bible emphasizes the importance of listening to God’s voice, listening for his wisdom and his Word, and teaches us that in doing so, it leads us to blessing. 

This takes us then back to the to the garden of Eden one more time. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life are two important symbols in the creation story in the Book of Genesis. While the Bible does not explicitly state that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represents obedience and the Tree of Life represents grace, these symbols, I think, can be interpreted in this way.

The real test, the real question. in the garden is: Who do you listen to? That’s the argument that goes on in the garden. Do you listen to God or do you listen to the serpent? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil can be seen as representing obedience because it was the tree that God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat from. The commandment not to eat from this tree was a test of their listening to God’s will. 

When Adam and Eve failed to listen to God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they became aware of their own nakedness. This act of faulty listening led to their expulsion from the garden and introduced sin and death into the world. In this sense, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil can be seen as representing the consequence of not listening to God and listening to the serpent instead. 

This shows us that the original sin in the garden was that we turned our backs on grace by listening to the wrong voice, to the misleading voice. Listening to the voice of God is another way of saying obedience. But somehow listening is obedience without striving and effort. Listening requires a response, to be sure, but it’s a response initiated by God. Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life” and he promised, like a shepherd, to lead us on the right path if we listen to his voice. It’s his job to keep us on the right path and not our job to do it ourselves. We simply need to be in tune with his voice by grace, because if we stray off of the path he will lead us back onto it and back to the right path—if we stay tuned to his voice,.

Paul said:

 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17): 

…and that grace is the fruit of that which is born by faith:

 …without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6) 

Obedience, then, as well as overcoming, living a righteous and holy life, has been for believers from the very beginning the Holy Grail, the thing most highly sought. All religions preach a life of upright self denial, a lifestyle of perfection. But obedience turns out to be something else. It is no more and it is no less than simply listening to God’s voice, like the sheep who hear the shepherd and follow him. The believer is called to follow the voice of God. Hearing God is easier when, by faith, we come to expect that somehow God will communicate with us. 

Even reading about God can’t compare to knowing God by the experience as we recognize his voice. Beyond even the borders of the pages of the Bible, the Holy Spirit speaks to our thoughts, our intuition, our conversations, as well as through the preaching of his Word, and the wise counsel of friends and fellow believers. You may even hear God’s voice in this class. It’s possible. Nothing ignites deep faith like holy moments hearing God speak to our hearts. 

So I’d like your thoughts this morning on listening to God’s voice, listening for God’s voice; about the words in Greek and Hebrew that equate listening with obedience; about what you should expect on the path of life from listening. 

Does the idea that obedience is God’s work in you make a difference as to what it means to obey? Is your faith strong enough that when you don’t hear anything from God you recognize that God is in that too, that God is in both the thunder and in the silence, that God is committed to being heard when he needs to be heard—he won’t be shut out, as Saul found out on the road to Damascus; that you can substitute listen for obey as you read the Scriptures? Does that reassure you or give you even more anxiety? 

What does it mean to listen to God’s voice? Obedience isn’t striving as much as it is to sit back and to hear God with a responsive heart. 

Rimon: This sermon is a masterpiece and should be read daily.

Anonymous: Yes, yes, yes. I couldn’t stop thanking God and praising his name for all the words spoken this morning. 

Rimon: I wonder what I have missed in past classes! 

C-J: What I want to share in regards to listening and grace is that they are braided together. My cat’s skin got infected. She had a cut that didn’t heal, it kept fussing with her. The last time this happened, it was two rounds of antibiotics and two rounds of steroids before it began to dissipate. This time I said “Lord, I just can’t do that.” And I was praying about it after I had cleaned it and did everything I knew how to do. And I was saying “Lord, I can’t do this again.” 

I went to reach for the hydrogen peroxide and I saw this box of Bag Balm, which everybody should have in their house. In less than 24 hours of applying it—cleaning the wound and applying it—it is pink, the scab has come off, she’s not scratching. I’ve been praying about it and I went to reach for that and my eyes just saw that in the cabinet. I said “I’ve tried everything else” and to me, that’s what you were saying, hearing God and God’s grace, his provision, his abundance. Oftentimes it flows just like that, and we don’t recognize it. 

Even as I was caring for my cat, usually she’d be fighting me—”Let me down. Let me down! This hurts!” She laid there and let me work with her and she was purring. It’s like she knew she could trust me. I really felt that was God’s presence in the room in a profound way. So I agree that this was a wonderful message, not just because of what happened, but it is core to growing in God. Thank you.

Reinhard: Obedience doesn’t lead to heaven nor disobedience to hell. Being self-centered, self-satisfied, self gratified, may prevent us from being obedient, but obedience might not be all that important. What is important, what is key, is faith. Faith leads us to obedience. Faith is everything. Paul used that as the magic word in the New Testament. We don’t see it used much by itself in the Old Testament. In Hebrews 11 Paul confirmed that men of old had faith in God. Bu was Paul talking about more than just the regular word? Because I think that without faith we cannot see God. With faith, we can receive grace. With faith, we can get justification, righteousness, sanctification, everything. Faith is operational in every angle of our Christian life, 

Of course, we still fail, but the Israelites failed miserably in the eyes of God because they relied on their strength to fulfill the law. Psalm 119 talks in almost every verse about statute, law, decree, works, the commandments. People in the Old Testament tried to satisfy God, to make peace with God, through their efforts. In the New Testament (Hebrews) God put aside the old covenant and issued a New Covenant through Christ. The Old Covenant meets the New Covenant mainly in matters of ceremonial law—the shedding of blood of animals for sacrifice in order to get their sins forgiven—but also to assuage guilty feelings. 

In the New Testament, the sacrifice of God is the ultimate goal. Jesus said he came to fulfill the law. It doesn’t mean we have to disregard the moral law. But by having faith, we can see God. By having faith, we’re going to obey God. Forgetting about the law doesn’t mean we disregard it. But by having faith we will accomplish, we will fulfill, God’s commandment to us. 

We’re going to fall short. People in the Old Testament relied on their efforts. The rich young ruler did everything according to the law. When God asked him to sell everything, he was too arrogant. He boasted of his righteousness. His possessions were physical things, nothing to do with faith. So he missed the point. He wanted to get close to God. We have to remember that in the Old Testament, salvation was about life on Earth. They were afraid of severe punishment in this life when they disobeyed God, hardly thinking about the life hereafter.

Some prophets mention the life hereafter—David for instance said he would “live forever in the house of the Lord.” The Pharisees believed in resurrection, the Sadducees did not. We are past the Old Testament. We’ve got this message very clear: We need to live using grace. Old Testament people had to sacrifice animals to get their lives in order, to get forgiveness and feel relieved of their guilty. We have grace available always, by listening to God. 

We need to draw close to God. We might be far from God at times, but grace is everywhere and it’s free. We just need to claim it. I think by living close to God we can experience grace. We have to really understand and embrace the grace that is there. We don’t have to worry about the future as long as we listen to God’s word.

Kiran: I remember a verse that says faith comes by hearing the Word of God or Christ. There also, faith is initiated by God, by listening to his Word.

Michael: It’s a choice a person has to make, to accept the grace of God. It’s amazing that God leaves it entirely up to us to choose his path or the other path, the path of obedience—the path of acknowledging his existence which we can’t see—and the path of following this world and being lost in our mind.

C-J: Personally, I have also found that when God’s grace within me is being allowed to flow it is effortless for me. It just seems like breathing air, there’s a rhythm, there’s an expectation. And the gift of whatever it is that God is revealing just seems very natural. It seems what God intended us to be in this relationship with the divine. It’s just like me reaching in the cupboard, just as natural as me going about my business. It hadn’t even rolled off of my consciousness (“Lord, what am I going to do?”) when I saw that can of Bag Balm. I’ve seen that operational in my life so many times that I trust it and I seek it. 

I read another thing today about emergency preparedness. It said: “What’s the most important thing you do when an emergency becomes present?” Like, you have to do something. It said: “Take off your backpack and sit for five minutes and make an assessment.” I think we should do that all the time, just as naturally, so that we can hear, that we can move in grace and understand God’s wisdom is greater than ours. That’s something I don’t take for granted. But I have to pause. I have to believe that there’s this perpetual conversation spiritually happening, as a person who tries to walk in this grace and faith consciously.

Michael: I like the idea that obedience is as simple as listening. But true listening is actually not an easy exercise. It requires me to bracket myself out of the equation, to put aside all of who I am—my experiences, my thoughts—so I’m really able to listen to what is being said. It is not an easy thing. It takes some effort but when it’s done properly I think the other person can really feel that they have been heard and it can be a quite effective way of showing love.

Anonymous: That’s why it takes so much time for us to come to know God. It’s not an easy task for us to truly listen. That’s why it takes years. We should persevere in reading God’s word and listening, at least for a little bit, every time. We can’t totally focus, we can’t really listen all the time. When we read the Bible, we may read a chapter or two and maybe get something when we are truly listening. That’s why in God’s grace he gives us all the time we need—year after years of being so gracious to us, so patient. 

Just go on, keep reading, keep listening. Maybe this time you can’t listen very well but next time you will have more life experiences to help you understand what you read. When you are listening, something is etched on your heart, to understand it and experience it better. Just keep walking with God. God’s greatest graciousness is his patience with us. That’s why we come to learn how to listen to God. 

It doesn’t come right away. It doesn’t come between a day and a night. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a constant walk with God. The more we read his Word, the more we know him, the more we appreciate him, the more we are victorious over our weaknesses. The more grace we need the more in love we fall with him. It is just so much bigger than life to know God.

Kiran: Dr. Weaver said that only when we fail in obedience are we exposed to grace, only then do we realize the need for grace. Jacob was wrestling with an angel who had the power to dislocate his hip with a touch but the angel let him fight him all through the night and it was only in the morning when he dislocated his hip that Jacob realized he needed—and received—grace 

In our attempts to try to be obedient in our own way we don’t realize truly how much we need God or how much we need Jesus’s grace. Many times I felt bad about having been so legalistic in my past, but I realize now it was for a reason, otherwise I wouldn’t really appreciate the grace that God so freely gives. 

Substituting obey and listen reminds me of Hinduism, where everything is about listening. For example, shruti (श्रुति) in Sanskrit means “that which is heard”—eternal secrets that confer moksha (मोक्ष) meaning emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. But even in that ritualistic religion, the concept of grace somehow got through. The majority of Indians understand that you have to listen to these eternal truths for salvation. Like Daoists, they believe that you just follow the Way. 

Robin: We start out, I think, trying to obey from fear of what will happen if we don’t. And when we obey from fear, the end result, to me, seems to be resentment and then rebellion. But when we learn to be still and know that he is God (it’s hard for us to be still) and we surrender our will to the love that actually says: “Follow me and then you will know peace”, that’s when we learn obedience from love. 

The heart of Christ becomes so precious to us that we don’t want to do anything to hurt him. I just think that it’s a painful lesson and as Anon has said it can take years. Life, including our spiritual life, is a journey. It’s not instantaneous.

Carolyn: Busyness comes from trying to do too much, and we don’t always include the Lord in our busyness. We’ve always said some things are sacred and some things are not. Truthfully, I feel we must listen at all times but we we are consumed with so many things in our lives that we put them in front of our relationship with the Lord and all of a sudden we no longer have the wonderful freedom that comes by listening. As has been said, it takes a lifetime to get the rhythm and have the Lord included in our busyness no matter what we’re doing.

Don: It’s a good thing for those of us who are old and haven’t found a rhythm yet that God’s grace still covers even us. 

David: I would equate “listening to God” with meditation, which is a universal practice. We tend to think of meditation as a peaceful, calm, quiet exercise, but Jacob’s anguished struggle—presented metaphorically as a wrestling match—was essentially a meditation. He was struggling mentally, spiritually, and that was his way of talking and listening to God.

Don: Something to think about this week. Hopefully you’ll reread some of your Scriptures and substitute the word listen for obey and see what it does to your understanding about God.

* * *

For the last couple of weeks we’ve seen that God knows us by name. He seeks to adopt us and to make us part of his family. This adoption by grace is apparently not for everyone. Not everyone wants to be adopted, it seems. Not everyone is receptive to the concept of grace. Why do we find grace such a difficult idea to accept? We are hardwired, it seems, for performance. Something for nothing just is not in our DNA. When faced with adversity, we work harder—it’s our survival mode. That we would get something for nothing just doesn’t make sense. 

To illustrate: The list of accomplished people who have lost a parent at a young age is startling and statistically uncanny. In the 1970s, a clinical psychologist from Long Island, named Martin Eisenstadt, tracked the parental history of every person who was eminent enough to have earned a half a page entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He found there a roster of 573 subjects, from Homer to John F. Kennedy; a rich mix of writers, scientists, politic political leaders, composers, soldiers, philosophers and explorers. 

Eisenstadt wasn’t interested in motivation per se. He was testing a theory relating genius and psychosis to the loss of a parent or parents at an early age, but he wound up constructing an elegant demonstration of the relationship between motivation and primal cues. (For the record, UNICEF defines orphans as a person under the age of 18 who has lost one or more parent.) 

He wrote that of this accomplished group found in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 400 were classified as having been orphans. Political leaders who lost a parent at an early age included Julius Caesar, Napoleon, 15, British prime ministers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Hitler, Gandhi, and Stalin. Scientists included in the list were Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Dante, Michelangelo, Bach, Handel, Dostoevsky, Keats, Byron, Emerson, Melville, Wordsworth, Nietzsche, the Bronte sisters, Woolf, and Mark Twain—just to name a few. On average, the eminent group lost their first parent at an average age of 13, compared with 19 for a control group. All in all, the list was deep and broad enough to justify a question then posed in a 1978 French study: Do orphans rule the world? 

Why the connection? It is theorized that the loss of a parent is a primal cue indicating that the world is not safe and that a great outpouring of energy will be necessary to achieve safety. Orphans are often thought of as vulnerable and in need of protection and support; however, throughout history and in various cultures (as seen in these examples) there are friends who have risen to positions of power and influence, defying the odds and showing that they are just as capable as anyone of achieving great things. As a rule, these orphans serve as inspiring examples of resilience and determination, and the power of the human spirit. 

In more recent times, there have been numerous examples of other orphans who have overcome adversity: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and others such as Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple who was adopted at a young age and faced numerous challenges throughout his life, including dropping out of college and being fired from the company he helped to create. But despite these setbacks, Jobs went on to revolutionize the technology industry and create some of the most innovative and successful products the world has ever seen. 

Another modern day example is JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. She was born in England in 1965 and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis when she was just 15. Despite facing financial struggles and rejection from multiple publishers, she persisted and wrote one of the best-selling book series of all time, becoming thereby one of the richest women in the world. 

Genetic expert explanation for world class achievement is useless in this case, because the people on this list are linked by shared life events that have nothing to do with chromosomes. But when we look at the parental loss as a signal, hitting a motivational target, the connection becomes clearer: Losing a parent is a primal cue that you are not safe. You don’t have to be a psychologist to appreciate the massive outpouring of energy that can be created by a lack of safety. 

But being a sinner must be a spiritual cue as well that you are not safe, that you are to work harder and you are to be stronger in your general spiritual effort. Jesus himself was interested in orphans and besides telling his followers that they should take care of the fatherless, talked about them as being spiritual orphans too:

 “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” (John 14:18)

Instead, he resolves to send us the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, and promises himself to return to us. “I will not leave you desolate,” he promises. Our overwhelming response to the loss of love and parental guidance is extra work, more effort. It is to strive harder, undertake more. It seems that we are hardwired to performance, for conquest and for advancement. Why do we find it so difficult to accept grace? 

Adopted children often face unique challenges that can result in the development of something called attachment disorder, which refers to difficulties in forming secure healthy relationships with others, often due to a history of trauma or disruption in early childhood. Often orphaned children are particularly vulnerable to attachment disorder due to the disruption of the early relationship with their biological parents and the subsequent process of adjusting to a new family and environment. 

Adopted children may struggle with feelings of abandonment, uncertainty, and fear, which can interfere with their ability to form secure attachments with their adoptive parents. They may also experience a sense of loss or grief over their separation from their biologic parents which can further contribute to attachment difficulties. These experiences can lead to behaviors such as withdrawing, acting out, or being overly clingy, which can disrupt the development of a healthy attachment relationship with their adoptive parents. 

Sin, on the other hand, is considered to be an attachment disorder with God. In a spiritual context, sin is a violation of divine law or moral principles established by God that can result in separation or estrangement, causing spiritual attachment disorder. The attachment disorder with God that results from sin is a result of the broken relationship between the sinner and God, causing feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, and a sense of spiritual emptiness. 

But God never intended us to be detached from him. The original plan in the garden was that man would eat continuously from the tree of life, the tree of grace, the tree of something for nothing. But man took a different route. We took the way of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the tree of works, of self -determination; the tree of self-assessment, self-assurance (spiritual orphans rule in the realm of self-assurance) and finally self-discrimination.

The decision to take the self-actuating pathway at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil seems to have mutated our spiritual DNA; to hardwire us to insecurity, performance, and effort. Not to be missed is that the struggle that occurred in the garden at the beginning of time goes on still today. The choice between our self-determination and God’s grace is a choice we must make daily. Like Adam and Eve. we are given a choice: One tree or the other—the tree of grace, or the tree of our own discrimination. We might call it the tree of anti-grace.

As spiritual orphans from God we are inclined to work harder, work longer, work faster, work stronger. Orphans rule the world and spiritual orphans overcome. This is the root of anti-grace. Jesus calls us to take the tree of grace. He calls it the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light: 

 “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.”  (Matthew 11:28-30)

Why are we naturally drawn to the tree of anti-grace rather than the tree of grace? Why do we find it so difficult to accept grace? You might argue that grace can be hard to accept for a variety of reasons. Some might feel they are undeserving of grace. Grace is usually extended when someone has done something wrong or made a mistake, and can be difficult to accept because the person may feel they don’t deserve it. They may be overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, shame, or self-doubt and have a hard time believing that they could be forgiven or shown kindness in any way. 

Some might have a fear of vulnerability because accepting grace often requires vulnerability and humility as it involves admitting that we’re not perfect and that we need help or forgiveness from others. For some people, this can be scary, especially if they’re used to being self-sufficient and independent. Some might have resentment or mistrust. In some cases, accepting grace from an individual may be difficult because of a past experience of hurt or betrayal. If someone has been hurt by someone in the past, they may have a hard time trusting that person again or accepting any kindness or forgiveness that they offer. And finally, grace may be hard to accept because of misconceptions about it and what it means. They may think that grace is something that can be earned, or that it comes with strings attached, when in fact it is freely given and unconditional. 

Like orphans, we too are attracted to spiritual effort and industry. That’s why Jesus doesn’t want to leave us as orphans and promised that he won’t. He knows our tendency to be self-determining. He wants to adopt us into his family, making us orphans no more, which gives us a family—the family of God—to belong to. 

But how are we able to accept grace? Why is grace so difficult to embrace? “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace”  (John 1:16). (“Grace in place of grace already given,” other translations read.) Apparently, our tendency to self-fulfillment is so strong, our attraction to the tree of anti-grace is so persistent, that God says we need grace just to accept grace. We need grace in order to be able to accept grace We need to come to recognize that our righteous deeds and spiritual condition are just what Isaiah calls in Isaiah 64:6: “Filthy rags.” 

We must come to see our obedience and what we do for what they are. They are simply doing things God’s way. But obedience is not the way of salvation; it is just the way the family of God operates. In any family there are traditions, rituals, habits, ways of doing things, and heritage. The same holds for God’s family: It’s God’s way of doing things. It’s how Abba rules. That’s what obedience is: Doing things God’s way. Not all the time, of course, not perfectly. Not even without error, or without an occasional false start here and there. But by grace, you’re still adopted. You’re no longer a spiritual orphan, you’re part of the family. Trying to honor the way the family works is obedience. But grace is grace—it is something else. Grace is the gift of family membership, of belonging, of being adopted, of no longer being an orphan. 

Why are we so keen to let our behavior do the talking for us? Grace puts us in the family. Why is that so difficult to accept? Is it believable that that’s all it takes? How can you embrace such a concept? What are your thoughts about spiritual orphanhood, about adopting, and about the attachment disorders that sin brings; about two trees in the garden—the tree of grace and the tree of anti-grace; about being hardwired to effort and industry and performance. Why is it so hard to believe in the concept of grace?

David: Is not getting something for nothing exactly what children expect? Very young children, infants, expect to be fed, expect to have the diaper changed. Not in an intellectual sense—they have no idea about diapers and food—their hunger and discomfort are simply taken care of for them. Becoming like a little child means going back to that natural, pre-intellectual state. 

The question then is: What happens as the child grows and starts to become naughty? Up to a point, it really doesn’t matter how naughty a young child is. The parent still loves that child, still provides all the grace it needs. Perhaps we should ask what does the grace of a parent look like? What is the grace of a parent toward its child? And why ever would a child want to reject the grace of its parent? 

As the child grows, its intellect grows also. Once a child begins to apply its intellect to this question of accepting something for nothing, intellectual constructs such as distrust and suspicion start to grow in the child, who was innocent before. Then, perhaps, parental grace might be rejected by the child as its intellect grows. Jesus said, as clearly as can be, that we are to be like little children. Then we would just accept getting everything for nothing. The parent expects nothing of the child, either. Parents simply want to protect, nurture, and love their child.

C-J: I once read or heard that children in Russian orphanages—this is a long time ago— infants were lined up in cribs, but didn’t cry. When they first came in, they would cry. But after a while, they realized that those cries didn’t necessarily indicate that their need would be met. And they learned to just wait. I found that really interesting. It wasn’t about failure to thrive because eventually they would be changed, they would be fed, they would be rocked. But they learned to wait. And I thought in life, for those children as they got older, there wouldn’t be an expectation. There wouldn’t be this internal drive, because they cried and cried and still no one came. 

Grace is an interesting concept. I’ve been fussing with this myself, about “Let it go, let it go, let it go, Connie. If God has brought this to you, there’s something for you to learn. It’s an opportunity to grow. And you are a witness. What do you want these other people to know that they are not aware of now? Frame it in such a way that you are that instrument in God’s hand.”

But it’s just been a week of struggle and I’m having a really hard time finding balance in God and in society. I just feel out of sorts. But I think it comes back to “Just wait.” God is a lamp unto my feet, his word is a light unto that, the illumination of where I am at that point in time. If I can rest and believe in God as present always, that helps me but it doesn’t have endurance at this point in my life. During this week, I’ve really struggled to rest in God. It’s been a hard week

Robin: I think perhaps what happens is that for the physical world—the one that we have to learn and work in—it is all dependent on what you do as far as studying and applying yourself are concerned. And then the spiritual—such things as faith and grace—are not physical entities and therefore it’s harder to wrap your head around them, because they are intangible.

Don: I agree. I didn’t include that in my list of reasons why people don’t accept grace. But I thought about it quite a bit this week—that there is a dichotomy between the real world and the spiritual world. In the real world, nothing comes for nothing. The expectation that you’re going to perform, that you’re going to outperform someone else, is a deeply held notion in the in the real world. But God’s world is completely different. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why It’s such a hard concept to understand. Is it believable?

Carolyn: I think it’s also because from the time we were little, if we were raised in a church, we were always taught that if we were good, you would get something. It’s very hard to take that early training and change it into “All I have to do is ask and the Lord gives.” I’m not sure exactly where I’m at at this time—I’m tending to the child-like. But I think we have such thoughts ingrained in us that becoming child-like doesn’t seem possible. I feel I have to do something good to rectify what I might have overlooked.

Don: That’s why penance is so important. saying your Hail Marys, or crawling up the stairs on your knees, or…!

David: This is the problem. We’re always trying to apply the intellect to these questions. Belief is a matter of intellect. “Do I believe this? Why should I believe this?” We start analyzing and picking it apart in order to believe it. We build belief structures—churches and other things—around it, to explain it, to analyze it, to justify it. But none of that applies. 

In the real world, intellect is vital, but it’s anathema in the spiritual world. The garden of Eden was the original spiritual world. What was it that got Adam and Eve thrown out? It was the application of intellect: “If we eat this apple, this could happen.” This was an intellectual exercise. Until that point, there was nothing intellectual in the garden. They simply enjoyed it, took care of it, and loved it and one another. That was it. There was no intellectual exercise whatsoever. 

We cannot give it up because we live in the real world and we need the intellect for this life. But we do not need the intellect (certainly not one we have now) for the next.

C-J: I don’t believe that. That hasn’t been my experience. That doesn’t mean that my experience is unique to everyone. But I think the walking in the garden was an exchange of what we do here: Questions and examination. “Tell me what you see.” The first thing we tell a child is “Tell me what you see. What does it feel like? What does it smell like?” It’s not trying to figure out the big questions like life and death. It’s about the presence. 

I hear that in between because of our exchange in this group—that piece of emptying out and letting God fill that empty space, that experience of existentialism. But I think that can be a dangerous thing too, if we dwell on it. That’s why people get high—to experience that bliss, that Nirvana. It’s not just this dimension. I think the struggle of life is important to understanding what we don’t articulate, what we don’t really have a mean of articulating but we recognize intuitively for our survival in our communities. 

I need to have kindness not just so that if I’m hurting, someone will come and help me. Kindness is a radiation of a different kind of energy. Well, that vibration changes. I think the communion in the spiritual world is putting out good energy, thinking about the choice of forgiveness, the choice of understanding:, “Lord, teach me what grace is that I might be a reflection of that operating in me, for the others. I may not know what that person’s need is, but you do. Let me be the vessel that this person needs right now.” 

I think that’s very important. We are spirit beings having a human experience, and we cannot survive being separated from God, we cannot survive being separated from each other in this community. It doesn’t matter about the religions, the text, or the rituals: It’s the intention, the intentional purpose of unifying something that’s still dynamic but flows easily. There will be bumps, but it flows through the grace of God.

Reinhard: It’s hard to relate with a minor who loses a parent. I lost my parents when I was in adulthood. Attachment—mental and physical—is needed for protection in order to survive, but there’s a process and eventually one will adjust to the situation.

When Jesus ascended to heaven, before the pouring of the Holy Spirit, I think the apostles felt they had lost their leader. They had to be patient and let the process unfold. They had to keep praying, and after the Holy Spirit was poured they were refreshed to continue the work of the gospel. 

In our life, there are times we go through similar feelings of isolation and feel depressed. We have to make sure of our attachment to God, to keep coming close to God, and eventually we will recover. So too in spiritual life: We need God and we thank God for the grace given to us. God is always there to help us God, always there to to bring us up from the low points so we can continue to live and to worship him.

Kiran: Most people who join the church came with spiritual attachment disorder. We were so consumed with working really hard to be obedient to God that obedience became the number one thing. The more obedient we were, the more victorious we would be, the better we would be spiritually. But the opposite actually happened: The more we tried to be obedient, the worse it became. 

The key thing is accepting that grace requires humility and vulnerability, and recognizing that there is something wrong with us that we cannot fix, and that we need somebody’s help. That is so hard to understand. It is so simple to say it but it may take years to accept it and really know it in our heart. It requires that we give up control of ourselves and trust God completely. 

It makes sense that we need grace to accept grace. I still have friends with spiritual attachment disorder. They have a constant need for spiritual validation and being obedient to God. There is a constant fear in them. What changed in my life, even though we were all together at one point, there isn’t any intellectual explanation for. Somehow God gave me the grace to accept the grace. It is impossible to explain intellectually, but I’m so happy that God gave me grace upon grace.

Robin: Is what we are living now the true reality, on this planet that was affected by disobedience? Or is God trying to tell us this is not reality? After all, it is spiritual reality that lasts for eternity. Mortal reality is temporary. 

Don: We are living in The Matrix? 

Robin: I couldn’t stand those movies—way too intellectual for me! 😉

Obedience is more like a gift. Once we can grab hold of the fact that we are just loved and that we are forgiven and that there is grace for our failings, then obedience becomes a natural part of the process. But when we try to earn obedience, that’s where we get stuck.

My grandson is not quite a year and a half yet. Of course, we don’t want him to climb over the back of the couch or onto the end table because we know he’s going to fall and get hurt, but he doesn’t know that yet. He doesn’t know what obedience is. He’s going to have to fall, I think, in order to learn that he should listen to what mommy and daddy and Nona say because otherwise he’s going to get hurt. But if he never fell, I don’t think he would learn it. It would just look to him as though we were trying to ruin his fun.

Michael: I think this is reality. But something that gets forgotten is that we think that since we’re all rational, thinking adults, the way we see reality is all the same. I think nothing could be further from the truth. Research in psychology has shown that your reality is really determined by how you view it. For example, let’s say you’re in a relationship and you think you’re in a great relationship. Even if your relationship is in fact mediocre, or even if your partner is cheating on you, the reality and the truth for you is that you are in a great relationship. 

The problem with us humans is that we tend to focus much more on the negative experiences and realities rather than the positives. They just have a much stronger impact on us. Any negative experience leaves a mark, but positive experiences are fleeting and don’t make any impression. It takes an effort to see the positive in our lives and appreciate that we do get a lot of things for free—good things. Maybe it can help us to see more grace, instead of being blind to it.

C-J: The idea of bonding is really something that occurs not just out of goodness, nurturing, being rocked, being read to. But when you’ve gone through something that’s traumatic and survived, with another person, that bond seems to be deeper, in part, possibly, because of what you said, and we’re going along and everything is just fine. But when you hit that bottom, to stand up and say, “We made it”…. There’s something,… a trust that comes out of that, an expectation that comes out of that, of trust that grows, that gets a root. But if you don’t have those experiences….

I think that happens in God, too. When you think about the times where the people that we are able to tick off that are notable, that had clay feet and realized it: They didn’t grow without those bumps. They didn’t come into a deeper understanding of who God was and God couldn’t use them in the same way. It takes more than trust, it takes engagement. The rules of engagement with God say that “You will fall. And when you look up, I will be here. I’m always in the room.”

Reinhard: Bonding, attachment, is the issue The opposite of attachment is detachment. Old Testament figures from Adam and Eve onward, when separated from God after committing some sin, were lonely from their loss. David went through such a period, Moses, Elijah went to the desert. In the New Testament, the disciples were lost when Jesus went to heaven. Jesus himself was lonely at one point during the crucifixion, as if he were far away from his father. During Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, some of his friends left him and, as he mentioned in his epistles, he was lonely. 

In our life, there are times when we too feel lonely, when we lose people close to us, or when we have done something against God’s will and feel that God is far from us. We need encouragement to come to God. We have to be submissive, we have to be humble in our spiritual life. With grace, we come to God, if we read his words and pray. God will work through the Holy Spirit to help us to learn to keep coming to him, no matter what happens to us in life, good or bad. I think that’s what we need. We need to attach the Tree of Life.

Joyce: I have no problem accepting grace. It seems like it was the plan. If the death of Christ was not enough for our sins, then we’re lost. We have to accept that. We know we can’t do it on our own. Many people try to do it on their own and they fail, then maybe they get depressed, they get angry: “I’m not good enough, I can’t get this right.” 

The gift was given without conditions. It was a gift. We don’t have to give something in return. All you have to do is accept the gift and it’s yours. But we make it complicated. Even our Bible makes it complicated, in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, Jesus was so forgiving and so kind and so innocent, and he made the sacrifice for us. I feel like we betray him if we don’t accept his gift without putting stipulations on ourselves to do something to make ourselves good enough to deserve it, or worse, to undermine someone else’s walk with grace by telling them that maybe they need to straighten this or that out in their life. 

I think it’s easier than we think. I often pray for God to accept me as I am. To help me to overcome my failings, yes; but while I don’t want to sin, I know I’m going to. So I’m glad that there is this provision. I didn’t ask to come here. I didn’t ask to be of this world. We were put here, into a sinful world. Adam and Eve were placed in the garden with a temptation that God must have known they were going to succumb to, but he let the whole thing happen anyway. Why? I don’t know, but he made provision for it. 

People have said to me that this whole thing took place because God didn’t just want to be done with Lucifer (he could easily have just destroyed him) but he didn’t want the angels, the heavenly beings, to worship him out of fear. Yet here on Earth, we try to get people to live a particular lifestyle out of fear, the fear being God that will not love you enough to let you come to heaven if you cannot follow these rules. 

From what I’ve been told, It goes totally against what we’ve been told about why it all started to begin with. And now we want to put fear in people’s hearts and minds that they’d better toe the line or they’re not going to heaven

David: Amen to all of that.

Anonymous: A very, very dramatic moment in my life came when I learned about grace. Then I started to wonder how do I live in this natural world where people are not grateful? How do you deal with that? How do we overcome the dichotomy between spiritual grace or the spiritual side of grace—dealing with God, dealing with God’s people—and the ungraceful people in the world? That led me to the thought that it is hard to live in between. You have obligations to to live gracefully, to accept God’s grace, to be graceful in heart. Yet when you deal with the world, you don’t find yourself able to apply these rules, because the world is different. That’s the dichotomy. 

And then I thought: How do we overcome that? Does the lack of ability to be graceful in the natural world with real people mean that we’re not established in grace? What do we need to be able to live both sides successfully? I thought that maybe I should imitate the lessons that I receive to be graceful to people to whom I owe nothing. Instead of just being graceful to people who do favors for me, why not do something good to somebody who never did anything for me? Maybe, I thought, that will lead me to practice grace in the natural world. 

Michael: That’s a great point. We’ve discussed the rules of the kingdom of heaven (you go to the end of the line, you’re more of a servant, etc.) Are these the rules of living in grace? Do they help? Is living in the kingdom of heaven the same as living in the kingdom of grace?

Don: I think it is. One of the points I was trying to make is the concept of obedience. Obedience is basically living in the family of God as if you are trying to underwrite and uphold and honor the way in which the family operates. You do things in your family that are traditional and habitual and ritual and heritage. Some people celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, others on Christmas morning. Some people eat special meals for certain special occasions. These are family traditions, and part of the tradition of obedience is that you belong to the family of God, and therefore you try as best you can to honor the kinds of ways that  the leader of the family (in this case, Abba, Daddy, God himself) wants you to behave. 

You can’t do it all the time. You can’t do it perfectly. You can’t do it without false starts and errors. But you’re part of the family and you try to live in that way. I think that those are some of the rules. Can you do it all the time? Is it practical? No. Can you do it some of the time? Can you be a demonstrator of the rules and ways in which the family operates? I think that’s what Anon was saying. But it’s not required for salvation. It has nothing to do with your salvation. Obedience is not the way to salvation and disobedience is not the way to hell. 

Carolyn: I hear so much about the freedom of grace. I want to be free, with the limitations that I live constantly in the eyes of God. We hold the Sabbath as a sacred time, but our lives should be conducted in a way that there’s very little difference between the sacred and the secular. I want the freedom to know that I don’t have to follow little petty rules. I want to be free to think and not fear condemnation, not just of God but also of my family, friends. We sometimes neglect the big issues and let the little petty things weigh on us way more.

C-J: There’s an old saying: “If you knew who I really was, you wouldn’t like me.” When I listen to Carolyn, that’s what I hear. In my mind, I have this expectation of what others have of me, but with God, it is grace, because there are no secrets between me and God. I wish that sometimes he didn’t know my heart. I go “Lord forgive me,” but he already knew that was bubbling. I think that’s our greatest fear—that if you really knew who I was, who I am, you wouldn’t love me. And God says “I’ve always loved you.” I think it’s just profound.

* * *

We’re studying about knowing God and being known by God. Last week we looked at the meaning of names in the Bible and saw their importance to God. Names themselves don’t have as much significance as the fact that they identify the individual, the person. God apparently wants to know you personally. He wants to be your personal God. In fact, he wants you to be in his family, taking his family name by a new birth, what Scripture calls an adoption by grace:  

 He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:5-6)

But to God, your name is not just personal. By adopting you, he makes your name permanent. You become permanently part of God’s family. Your name is personal and permanent. The permanence is symbolized  by God’s writing your name with his own hand on a white stone—the Book of Life. Your name is added to God’s family personally and permanently. (It’s interesting that there are only two things that God writes in stone: One is the Ten Commandments, and the other is your name.)

You apparently can destroy the permanence of writing in stone by choosing another God, as the Israelites did with the golden calf. God smashed the stone of the Ten Commandments and could presumably smash the white stone with your name as well; but that would require you to refuse adoption, to choose another god, another family, to turn your back on grace, just as the Israelites did with the golden calf. 

If the stone of the Ten Commandments symbolizes the law, then the white stone with your name on it, I believe, symbolizes grace. There are many historical symbols for the white stone. Today, white stone is considered a gardening material—something to spread around bushes or landscaping to replace grass. But in ancient times, particularly in the Middle East and the Mediterranean area, white stone represented important details about one’s social status. 

In some cultures, the trial judges on a panel would each deposit either a black stone or a white stone into a bowl, or reveal one in the palm of their hands, to cast their verdict on the accused. A black stone indicated that the judge favored a guilty verdict and a white stone meant that the accused was considered innocent of the charge. If the accused received more white stones than black stones from the panel, he was acquitted. So the white stone became a symbol of being judged innocent. 

Similarly, in ancient Rome before a gladiator match, the gladiators pulled stones from a bag, and those who drew black stones were to fight, while those who pulled white stones were given a reprieve for that day. In other situations, a person who carried a white stone with the name of a patron enjoyed the privileges of a modern-day credit card, with expenses charged to the patron. Often it was a white tessera, or mosaic stone, used to charge expenses to another’s account. 

In Greece, following the Olympic Games, winners arriving back at their native cities were presented with a white stone inscribed with their name. Possessing such a stone entitled its owner to be maintained at the public expense for the rest of his life. Sometimes the tessera had an identifying mark that had meaning only for those to whom it was presented. It could be one half of a pledge, or a contract with half of a symbol which was completed when matched with another piece. 

In a covenant, the parties would exchange a white stone inscribed with their respective names. Whenever one party entered the other’s territory, he was treated with special hospitality, as though he were a patron of that territory. This hospitality tablet was much like a passport with privileges. It was also common in ancient times that the identifying mark on the stone was the name of one’s household God. 

Thus, white stones were used to establish identity, admit entrance, give permission, or confer religious and civic privileges. But the ancient Israelites had stones as well made with lightweight plastered lime as a sign of covenant between God and them:  

So it shall be on the day when you cross the Jordan to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, that you shall set up for yourself large stones and coat them with lime…. (Deuteronomy 27:2)

In this instance, the lime-covered white stones acted as a tangible reminder of their relationship with God and the covenant event (in this case, the crossing of the Jordan River to the promised land.) 

In the New Testament, the Apostle John promises Christians a white stone with a new name written on it as a reward for preserving faithfulness and overcoming: 

The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows except the one who receives it.’ (Revelation 2:17)

Also in Revelation, Jesus speaks to the church of Pergamum—and by extension to us as well: 

  “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

The One who has the sharp two-edged sword says this:

‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.

  ‘But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality.

  ‘So you also have some who in the same way hold the   ‘Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.

  ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden ^bmanna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.’” (Revelation 2:12–17)

The people are affirmed in their faithfulness but called to repentance for their faults. To those who overcome these faults, Jesus promises a white stone with a new name written on it “which no one knows but he who receives it.” Some infer this to mean a special relationship with Jesus, the Christ, and that it reveals the individual’s true identity as God sees him or her. 

A white stone then, particularly as described in Revelation 2:17, signifies a decisive vote in one’s favor—a judgment of innocence, a reprieve from death, a covenant of safe passage, celebratory welcome, honor with free privileges, a new and lasting identity known only to, and intimately by, God; and finally, an eternal hospitality with God. 

The white stone with your name on it is one of the rewards  for overcoming (Revelation 2:17). What does it mean, to “overcome”? I’d like you to to help me understand. I’ve lived all my life trying to do good and to shun evil. I’ve tried to live a sinless life. In short, I’ve tried to be an overcomer, and I must tell you it’s been an utter failure. But recently I’ve seen “overcoming” differently. 

It begins with looking at the rewards for overcoming found in Revelation 2 and 3. In addition to the white stone, with your handwritten name on it, other overcoming rewards include a crown of light, food from the Tree of Life, being spared the second death, receiving hidden manna and a white robe, and a permanent entry in the Book of Life. 

Overcoming the world is a concept central to the Christian faith. It refers to the ability of the individual to resist temptation and the influences of worldly values and desires. The term is often used in the Bible to refer to the process of remaining faithful to the truth and to resist the allurements of materialism, power, and sin. But the mistake is to believe that one must be sinless to be an overcomer.

The process of overcoming the world is not something that can be achieved with one’s own strength and willpower. Instead, it is only possible through the acceptance of God’s grace. Grace is the unmerited favor and love of God extended to all individuals who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Grace provides the strength and support needed to overcome the world and to resistance its temptations. 

The Bible states states that:

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. (John 1:16-17) 

This is double grace or grace squared depending on your mathematics, For the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

This passage highlights the importance of grace in the life of the Christian and shows how it is the key to overcoming the world. Through the acceptance of God’s grace, believers can be designated as overcomers. 

Another example of the importance of grace and overcoming the world can be seen here:

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:1-2)

But overcoming the world is only possible through the acceptance of God’s grace. Grace provides the strength and support needed to resist the temptations of the world and to remain faithful to the truth. Therefore, accepting God’s grace is essential to overcoming the world and living a life pleasing to God. 

There are other notable references to overcoming in the Bible. Here, Jesus was talking to his disciples about having to leave and replacing himself with the Holy Spirit, the Comforter:

 These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

And:

  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

The real clincher for me is: 

 For whoever has been born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith.

Who is the one who overcomes the world, but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-5)

This is the adoption referred to in Ephesians 1:5. Everyone who was adopted by God has overcome the world, and the victory that has overcome the world is our faith in Jesus as the Son of God. 

These references highlight the idea that faith in God and acceptance of God’s grace can lead to overcoming challenges, temptations, and evil; in short, that grace is the key to overcoming the world. What is overcoming then is to accept grace and then, by grace, to overcome the temptation to be a self-fulfilling overcomer. To repeat: Overcoming is to accept grace and by grace overcome the temptation to be a self-fulfilling overcomer. 

The rewards for overcoming are not a quid pro quo. Jesus does not say “If you overcome your sins, then I’ll do this for you.” It’s not that. We are overcomers by being born again, by being adopted into the family of God as we just read. We’ are overcomers because Jesus is an overcomer and Jesus is our father. We’re overcome because we’re part of dad’s family. 

Watching a football game a few weeks ago, I saw on the sidelines a young boy. Obviously, his father was on the team. He had a special privilege to be on the field, because his father was on the field. We’re all in the game of life. We’re on the overcomers’ team because our dad is its captain. 

The listed rewards are all about grace. They have nothing to do with our work or with our effort. The crown of life, the eating from the Tree of Life, the white stone with our personal name, the white robe, and the hidden manna,… all are symbols and metaphors of grace. The rewards of overcoming point to grace as the agent of overcoming by faith in Jesus. 

How does it make you feel to be an overcomer? Are you an overcomer simply because you have been adopted and born again? It might read: “For everyone who has been adopted by God has overcome the world.” You’ve overcome the world because your father, your abba, has overcome the world. 

So how good do we have to be to be saved? What is the role of overcoming in our salvation? The belief that we get what we deserve is widely held and deeply rooted in all religions. Even Christianity, where the concept of grace comes from, can’t shake the intuitive notion that we are responsible for our own behavior. After all, isn’t there a judgment? And what is there to judge, if it is not what we do? We envision in our rather primitive minds a book in heaven where everything is written down, all of the good and all of the bad. The good, of course, helps us; and the bad hurts us. 

It seems we should have more good than bad if we want to get to heaven, if we want to get what we deserve. But then we’re reminded of grace, of unmerited favor, of God’s mercy, and of not getting what we deserve. So what if works are not what saves us? Why the emphasis in Christian life on overcoming? Is it possible that overcoming is the way of grace itself? Are grace and obedience opposites? Are they mutually exclusive? is overcoming a way of cleaning the outside of the cup that Jesus talked to the Pharisees about leaving the inside dirty, or whitewashing the exterior of the tomb while it’s dry and dusty and has dead bones inside? 

If you cannot be saved by works, can you be lost by them? I’m not aware of any passage in Scripture which speaks to what behaviors lead to heaven. There’s no passage that says if you’re kind, if you’re gentle, if you’re generous, if you’re forgiving, if you’re honest, etc., that these characteristics will lead you to heaven. But the opposite is not true:

 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,… (1 Corinthians 6:9)

And:

 …as it is written:

“There is no righteous person, not even one;… (Romans 3:10)

That’s a pretty categorical statement. None is righteous. The corollary is that the unrighteous will not go to heaven. It seems that we’re all doomed. We’re told in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 

We try hard. I think most of us want to be good. We want to be overcomers. We’re afraid of hell and of being lost. I can remember praying for forgiveness, as a boy, hoping that I wouldn’t step off a curb and be struck by a car and killed before I got home to ask for more forgiveness for the sins I’d committed that day. 

What role does overcoming have in our salvation? is overcoming related to obedience? What a delightful thought that in  my life, overcoming is God’s work, not my work; that I am already an overcomer by God’s grace because I’m adopted, because I have a new birth and a new name written on a white stone. 

Don’t you feel relief from the guilt of knowing what a sinner you really are? What does overcoming actually mean to you? Have you ever considered yourself to be an overcomer? What about the idea that by grace you have overcome the temptation to be an overcomer by your own guilt and your own effort? 

How does God know us? How does God know my name and what is the significance of God knowing my name? What is the significance of the white stone and my name being written there? What is the significance of being adopted and by adoption given a new birth, getting a new name, and becoming classified as an overcomer? How are our works and our deeds related to being an overcomer? Is my effort somehow important in being an overcomer?

David: My first thought is that overcoming as you’ve described it is a process, and processes take time. I’m sure that top of all our minds right now are all the the poor people in Turkey and Syria who were killed in an instant, crushed as their buildings collapsed in the earthquake. They had no time to overcome anything, if they needed to. It sounds as though overcoming is something that we have to do, that it takes effort and work to overcome. But that clearly is not what’s intended by grace. I’ve got to believe, and I do believe, that grace was with all those people who died in Turkey and Syria. Overcoming is something that Jesus did for us.

Jay: The concept that our adoption means it’s not our job to work on overcoming is tied to accepting grace. If we don’t accept grace, we’re not adopted. Does this mean that by accepting grace, I cannot be an overcomer, that God has to be the overcomer? How does that then operationalize in my life? What happens to me, what do I do, how do I act if I accept grace? There is no quid pro quo but if I truly accept grace, does it have a predictable outcome in how I am and what I do? 

Anonymous: That is my question too. If it all starts with grace, if grace is the reason for my birth or rebirth, then I have to do nothing. I’ll be unaware of this fact. I’ll just be living until God decides he wants to make grace known to me and then I will have a born-again experience. So there’s nothing for us to do. Some people may live to a great old age and still never experience being born again. How does it work, if I have no part in it at all?

I can’t go any further without understanding this point. It’s happened in my life. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t think I sought it. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. Was it anything on my part that I did unawares? I don’t know.

David: I think Anon’s point is central. It seems to me that accepting grace is the same as accepting God—accepting the existence of God. I have often stated my belief that God is simply another word for goodness and that to accept the concept of goodness, to recognize that goodness exists, is to recognize and accept God and grace, whether you know it or believe it or not.

It speaks to Anon’s question that everybody accepts goodness—even “bad” people, in varying degrees, have some goodness in them and can recognize it in others. They get the concept, and in getting it, they accept and recognize God. God is all forgiving and all merciful because we all recognize and accept God and grace. 

Michael: But to see grace and to believe in it takes a lot of faith, I think. Somehow, the word faith is equated with the word belief and for most Christians to say “I believe in Jesus” means “I am saved.” It seems simple but it’s not; because having faith is different from believing. It takes a lot of inner work to have faith in order to see grace and to see how Jesus is the purveyor of grace. I don’t think it’s something that happens overnight.

Jay: I agree that equating God with goodness and recognizing that goodness exists is to accept grace. But then what? Is it automatic that I will then do something in response? Is it uncontrollable? Judgment seems to be based on acknowledging and accepting grace—or not. Even though all people might acknowledge that goodness exists, is there some kind of discriminating factor at play? I’m not advocating for a search for the discriminating factor. We should be seeking grace and goodness, but when we do, does something automatically happen that’s uncontrollable for the human being?

Kiran: For a long time I thought overcoming meant that I had to do something to fix myself. So I would write down a list of all my mistakes each week and then work on them. The more I tried, the worse it got. It caused so much depression in me. The effect of it was to focus myself on myself. Jesus said that when we focus on him, we’re transformed into his likeness. But instead of that, by trying to overcome myself, I’m focusing on myself more and more and getting worse and worse. 

Focusing on God means realizing that I cannot fix myself and being thankful for all the gifts God has given me. He paid for it all. He paid for my past mistakes, my current mistakes, and my future mistakes. His payment freed me from the burden that I had. Focusing on God and his goodness, his kindness, his attributes is transforming me slowly and steadily so that I can exercise a little bit of kindness and compassion towards other people. 

Before, I was miserable, and I made other people miserable. But now, I forgive other people in relation to what God has forgiven me—it gives me a reference point to work from. By focusing on God, a lot of the pain and suffering and the guilt that we go through goes away. 

We think the discriminating factor is whether one accepts Christ and his grace not, but the way I look at it is, whether you are Christian, non-Christian, atheist or whatever, there are two kinds of people: One kind of people rely on themselves to better themselves; the other kind recognize that it is too big of a task for them to fix themselves, and consciously or unconsciously, realize that they can be saved only through divine power. They may not know the concept of grace as we do, but they recognize that it is too big for them to save themselves. I think that’s the discriminating factor.

Sharon: I see overcoming as simply giving up control. We’re in a battle to determine whether I’m going to control me or I’m going to overcome and give my complete desire to the Lord Jesus to use me as his will dictates, not as my will dictates. I think the secret to overcoming is to give up my addictions, give up my need to manage my own life, and give the Lord Jesus through his grace and through my prayer and dedication to his desires, to make something that becomes something beautiful for the people that I work with and those that I seek to serve. 

Life no longer is about me. It is about them, and about serving them and giving up my own personal agenda, my own personal control, so that Jesus can be glorified and live out his life through me as an empty vessel that’s no longer trying to navigate my own well being and my own desires, but in serving the Lord and trusting him to navigate what he needs me to do for him. Giving up is peace-inducing, because I’m no longer in control, but the power and the Holy Spirit of Jesus living in me is what has control.

Don: Well said, but I think Jason’s question still is hanging out there: What does giving giving it up look like in terms of operationalizing your life?

Sharon: I just came back from Dwight’s Nelson’s sermon in Pioneer Memorial Church. He equated giving up with having a prayer session every single day and just relinquishing control at the beginning of the morning, as the very first work, to the Lord Jesus Christ. He said it’s a very simple act. You don’t preach it to people. But by giving yourself over to Jesus every single morning and making it your first work, you overcome, because you’ve given up yourself. So his sermon was simply: Pray, pray, pray for the desire to overcome. He said you don’t have to overcome, you just have to pray for the desire to overcome. And in praying for that desire, then the Holy Spirit comes into your life. 

I don’t think I have any miracle solution for Jason. But I do think that it is part of the battle to say “It’s not my will but thine.”

C-J: I think there is accountability. I think that we are to be a witness, to be disciplined, to be held accountable before God, not in terms of the grace being rescinded. But there is work involved, with fear and trembling. We acknowledge the great price that was paid, and we are to be guides and teachers to those who don’t see that. 

If I were to do what you just said in a group session with addicts, I wouldn’t be giving them permission to say I’m not responsible for this. If God wants me to be completely healed of this disease, I will be; and if not, I’m going to keep using, because I’m powerless to change that. That’s a very easy one to put your finger on. 

But we all have pieces of our personality—anger, pride, etc. Those are moving pieces, depending on our situation or how strong our conviction is. But there’s a time for a gentle response and there’s a time for war, a spiritual warfare, and that decision takes effort. But it isn’t an effort or strength that comes from me. You’re right: There comes a point where “I’ve done all that I can, Lord, and I surrender it to you and I leave it at the cross and you’re going to have to do the work in me first, before I can do the work that I believe needs to be done that you’ve revealed to me.” 

It’s a hard place and it’s constantly evolving. Just when I think “I got this,” something will happen, I go “Not so much Connie, not so much—you need to go back there and think about why you responded that way, when you knew better, but you did it anyway, you went off on that person anyway. Because you could self justify it. How many times!” But really, it is God that does the spiritual work, but we live in this dimension also. We are spirit beings, but we live here. We are held accountable, one to another, one before the Lord, one in the body of Christ. We are the ambassadors and people watch us carefully.

Chris: Maybe there’s something around this concept of adoption and being told we need to be as little children. I can relate personally to adoption, I can view it from my own experience. Adoption can go one of two ways. Either the child accepts and bonds with the adopters or, for whatever reason, does not. Maybe it’s much like that with what Christ is saying: “My grace is here. You’re my adopted child, you may choose to accept it.” 

When it is accepted. I do believe there are certain manifestations. The child doesn’t look to have control but rather looks to the person who adopted them and starts to mirror their actions and their thoughts. But if the child does not want it, the manifestation looks different. So maybe there’s something within this whole concept of being adopted, and grace, where there is something that has to occur personally with us. And based on what happens personally, there is an outcome, there is a manifestation that I believe occurs.

C-J: I think what you just described is rooted in trust. If somebody has been plucked, and that process of learning how to trust—even in small children as you were saying—some can adapt and others cannot, because their root wasn’t really secure in the soil that it was coming up out of. If this happens here, if I risk bonding here, how many times can I do that and still survive and feel safe? Even if somebody leaves, I will still be strong in my position before God or this community. 

I am a person who cannot trust. Trust comes very hard to me, I always have a reserve. I always expect people to come and go. I don’t like it when people expect me to stay, either. Because things can change. If I feel at risk, I’m out of there; even if it hasn’t played out, I am gone if I feel at risk. I think that’s part of the things that we’ve talked about in terms of how do you cope, how do you grow in a place where you can’t trust? 

For me when I get to the place where my spirit is so heavy that I don’t even have words to pray, I find myself on my knees in front of my sofa, crying, and not even trying to put a sentence together. I just say “I leave it with you, Lord. I don’t understand it. But I leave it with you.” I don’t have the capacity within me to trust. I can’t even think about it. It just takes too much from me.

Reinhard: I believe we all accept that we need the divine power to be operational in our life. I think faith is the determining factor. We have grace through faith. It’s a whole package: When we accept grace, it means we accept Jesus. We have to live humbly and submit to God a hundred percent That’s what we need in life. 

Ephesians 6:18 says to pray at all times in the spirit, with all prayer and supplication. So I think to fend off evil, we have to keep in constant communication with God through prayer. I think that’s the key. Prayer covers everything. We show the glory of God by constant communication, as Pastor Nelson said. We need to put everything in God’s hand, and let him complete the difference when we fall short of obtaining our goal. We are going to rise and fall, but God’s grace makes up our shortcomings. 

In the end, we want our name to remain in the book of life. That’s our goal. So we should keep constant communication with God by praying and reading the Bible and being on guard all the times. The Holy Spirit will work in our life, and we will see the results.

Chris: Children don’t work very hard at having relationships. They are very much more accepting and innocent. So the idea of having to work hard to maintain the relationship… I don’t know if it’s really that hard. If I’m acting more like a child It comes much more naturally. You can see what your adoptive parent (God) has done for you without having to continually pray and so on. The transformation is going from “I need to do this” to “It is natural, things are just naturally happening.”

When I allow that to naturally happen, I don’t see how others around you won’t benefit from that, or won’t see that. I don’t think it’s as hard as we think, or as we make it sometimes.

David: I absolutely agree.

Anonymous: I agree too.

C-J: If I liken that to a child, the expectation is that the child will grow up and be a functioning, productive adult.  Paul speaks of it as meat and milk. You want to eat meat because you need it. You need that meat protein to do the heavy lifting, to do what God has asked you to do. And that can look different for everyone. If you’re going to be a missionary, you’re going to do some real heavy lifting. If you’re going to be a decent neighbor and a good parent, there’ll be some frustrations, but you’re not going to be out in the wilderness. 

So there is an expectation. Maybe I’m speaking out of my own experience and how I cope with disappointment and what I consider fair and unfair. I think it’s really important that we have the expectation that we will be responsible, productive adults. Everyone here—our lives demonstrate that.

I see a real problem in American culture. There are some awful lazy kids out here—disrespectful, rude, clueless; and there is a small percentage that is dynamic, responsible, forward thinking in terms of climate and other things, social issues, etc. They’re doing the heavy lift, they’re doing the majority of the lift, the fulcrum is not centered. But I think that’s the way life is. You decide as an individual if you are going to take responsibility for the gifts. To whom much is given, much is required. 

And some of us are driven. Some of us come out of adversity and we’re driven for something else; those who become refugees, etc. But I believe God does expect us to grow up. It’s inevitable. You can’t plant a seed and not give it everything it needs to grow. You can’t let it wither and die because it’s too much work. If there’s good soil, water, sunlight, and enough room, the expectation is reasonable that it will grow.

Kiran: Price’s Law holds that in every field, in every workplace, everywhere, 10% of the people carry the weight for the remaining 90%. It’s as true in America as in India. But what happens to the 90%? Are parents happy if their children are part of the 90%? What would our Eternal Father do if 90% of his creation was losing its soul?

Michael: How do you make sure that when you’re praying, you’re praying to God instead of praying to yourself?

C-J: That’s pretty large! Why would I pray to myself if I thought I was going to be able to do it? I am broken. I have no other place to go. I want to make sure that I’ve done my research, that I’m not jumping in my own ego to do something that God has not said “Go do this.” No way! There’s no comparison to what I know. 

I don’t believe there is a ceiling. I believe that if I say, “Lord” and I’m humble, even if it doesn’t make sense to God (“Go think that out again, Connie), that it doesn’t hit the ceiling… that experience of “Lord, I don’t know what to do” is in itself a beginning. I do believe in grace for everyone. I just think it’s like the workers in the field, the ones who worked an eight hour day and the ones who came at the last minute—all of creation would be blessed. 

There is a rhythm. Some children die in utero, some live to be 100. It’s not for me to question that. There’s a purpose. And as I look out at each of those, there’s a lesson in it, so I don’t I don’t question it. I question the willfulness to be absent, to willfully say, “I don’t believe that, I don’t understand it, I don’t need to understand it. I’m not interested in understanding it.” That’s different, when it’s been sitting there, over and over again, the opportunity. But even then, God says, “Come, I don’t care if you’re on your deathbed, come, and I will receive it. I’ve seen your heart, that whole journey. I’ve seen your pain. I’ve seen your stubbornness.” 

I see the intention of God, which is love and grace, I have to believe that. There just can’t be any other way, because the world is so unhealthy.

Jay: The Christian experience is to be warned time and time and time again not to chase after the works part, but we want to chase after the works part. We can’t help ourselves. But if you can get to a point where the works part is automatically taken care of by accepting grace, you are incapable of not good work. But this is only if you accept grace, truly accept grace, truly accept that God is goodness. 

If I do that, does the works part automatically take care of itself? We’re not perfect, so of course there’s going to be times when we make mistakes; but in general, will it take care of itself? Does it just take care of itself?

Chris: Is works the means to the end? Or is works the end?

David: Works become irrelevant, don’t they? If you’re a child, if you’re a baby, no one expects works of you! And that’s what Jesus expects us to be: In spiritual matters, be as children. We (children) are not looking to develop spiritually. That’s an adult intellectual exercise. God doesn’t expect us to grow into spiritual adults from spiritual children. He wants us to remain as spiritual children forever. Intellectually we either accept God or we reject God, but spiritually we all accept God whether we recognize it or not. Works are completely and utterly irrelevant.

Kiran: In a sermon he preached last week, Jason discussed Moses’ interactions with God and his desire to see God’s face. But God said, “No, you can only see my back.” Jason asked: What would you do if you saw God’s back? You‘d follow him! He emphasized that the focus is more on following God, which is exactly what he’s asking us to do. 

I think that’s what happens when you truly accept grace and you realize you can’t fix yourself, that it’s his job to take care of you and you’re freed of your burden and your guilt. When you start following him, that’s when things work out. There is something magical there, which I don’t think we can explain.

Rimon: A child hasn’t gone through life yet. He hasn’t crammed years of junk into his head. So it’s pretty easy for the child. But as an adult, it depends on how that person was raised, and the accumulation of conditioned thoughts that he accumulated throughout life. So it depends on where you are on your faith journey. 

To some people, it comes naturally. They accept it and don’t require much prayer to recognize their connection with God and their inseparability with God. But if you drop that, it’s pretty easy for the separation to set in, and for fear and disconnection to take to take hold. So some people need that constant acknowledgement that we are connected with him and we are an expression of him and not separate from him.

Michael: Yes, children grow into adults, but whenever we talk about this analogy—of needing to be like children—we imagine shoving ourselves back from being adults into being children, as if we’re retrogressing. If you want to become a child after being an adult, I don’t think the way is to lose your sense of adulthood and become a child. It must be a forward step, not a backward step. It might look a little different than being just a little child. It’s not a naive state. It’s a second naivety. You’re naive, but you’re still an adult. 

So I think it’s a step forward, not backwards, into being a child.

* * *