A church for (and against) the world

A church for (and against) the world

What should be the church’s posture toward the world?

The challenge, as with bodily posture (hunched shoulders, rounded back, neck forward), is that posture solidifies at a subconscious level, without us noticing. (Did you just sit up straighter?)

To this point, I recently reread an excellent essay by the theologian, Natalie Carnes with the following subtitle: “Reconsidering the Church-World Divide” (here). She begins by drawing attention to other articles with titles like this: “World versus Church: Who Is Winning?” (…a line that could only be more cringeworthy if read by Howard Cosell).

I won’t rehash Carnes’ full argument, but it includes a helpful reminder that Scripture contains BOTH protagonistic and antagonistic passages on the church-world relationship. Both “for” and “against.”

Church Against World

For instance,

“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?”

~James 4:4

Or even stronger,

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.”

~1 John 2:15

Church For the World

On the other hand, numerous passages reveal God’s radical heart for the world, which calls us to a similar “for-ness”: loving, serving, and practicing incarnate presence.

Most famously,

“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

~John 3:16

And this,

“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

~2 Corinthians 5:19

The following line from 1 John is even more interesting since it comes in the same book (above) that contains, arguably, the strongest anti-world prooftext:

“He [Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

~1 John 2:2

Pro or Contra?

So… which is it?

Should the church be for or against the world?

It has long been acknowledged that different passages can mean different things while using the same word. Hence, “world” (cosmos) is a bit like “flesh” in its varied biblical meaning. In some cases, it means God’s good-but-fallen creation, loved and reconciled by Christ’s work. In others, it refers to a willingness to embrace ideologies and behaviors that set themselves in destructive opposition to goodness, beauty, and truth. Hence, as my former professor, David Wells, once wrote: “worldliness is anything that makes sin seem normal and righteousness seem strange.”

In the end, this much seems true: A Christ-like church must be both for and against “the world.” Yet the more important point is that this dual posture cannot take any form we wish: Our antagonism must always be housed within a larger protagonism.

Carnes puts it like this:

“the ‘versus’ of the church and world is enfolded into a larger for-ness. . . . There is a kind of against-ness: God did not leave the world to its own deterioration and destruction; God placed God’s own body against the forces of sin and death. And yet how could this story be told apart from the larger protagonism . . . which begins with a God who ‘so loved the world’?”

If you get nothing else, get this:

  1. A church bent primarily on defeating the world inevitably becomes more like it.

On the other hand…

  1. A church bent only affirming the world inevitably ceases to be “for it” since we have nothing to offer that the world does not already have.

The first point explains why rigid and partisan forms of religious fundamentalism often harbor and hide some of the darkest sins (see here)–whether sexual abuse, excusing and elevating authoritarian leaders, and even forms of violence. The second point explains why many exclusively pro-world (“affirming”) churches are basically empty. Why go? Especially when there’s golf and sleep and football.

We need both points, for as Carnes notes, “the world” is not merely something “out there” but “in here” with the dividing line running not only between groups, denominations, or political parties—but through every human heart, including mine.

Thus, Paul gives this crucial reminder not to pagans but to Corinthian Christ-followers who have lost the plot: “though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does”-i.e., with violent, snarky, flailing, win-at-all costs power plays (2 Corinthians 10:3).

Conclusion

If this were my classroom, I’d grab a marker and try to illustrate a better model for envisioning the church-world relation: beyond strict division or simplistic overlap (see below), and toward a complex and mysterious layering that sets aside combat metaphors in favor of more agricultural ones–since Jesus used those too. Something like this:

In one sense, I am borrowing from Saint Augustine, who says it this way:

She [that is, “the pilgrim City of Christ the King”] must bear in mind that among [her] very enemies are hidden her future citizens; and when confronted with them she must not think it a fruitless task to bear with their hostility until she finds them confessing the faith. […]

In truth, these two cities are interwoven and intermixed in this era, and await separation at the last judgment.

~De Civitate Dei, 1.35

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[Indistinct chatter]

[Indistinct chatter]

“If I ever write a book about technology and modern life, that will be the title.”

I said that to my wife recently as we were watching Netflix. We were using closed captions since the kids had just been banished to their rooms. And during the course of the episode, I was struck by how one caption appeared more than any other, entombed in brackets: [Indistinct chatter].

And now that I’ve mentioned it, perhaps it will stand out to you as well.

It appears everywhere on the shows we consume: In crowded restaurants, on bustling streets, inside Dunder Mifflin, in Ted Lasso’s locker room, and virtually everywhere else.

You might “indistinct chatter” is the soundtrack of our lives.

In a literal sense, and especially for the hearing impaired, the caption alerts viewers to a constant buzz of unintelligible and unimportant speech, humming somewhere in the background. But the more you think about it, the more it starts to feel like a kind of oracle or prophetic diagnosis of what ails us in our age of noise and news and social media. Who’s speaking? We can’t say. What language? IDK. What makes this wave of jumbled words more consequential than, say, the noise made by my neighbor’s lawn mower? Nothing, really.

Still, the caption-generating gods of Netflix feel compelled to include them in a font that is just as large and bold as actual dialogue, lest we miss this apparently important detail. And in a weird way, that’s basically my goal here. Have you noticed how much of modern life can be summarized by what’s in those brackets?

You could take that observation in a dozen different directions.

But here are two quick attempts at showing why it matters.

When words become white noise

First, we become so accustomed to indistinct chatter—unintelligible and unimportant words that wash over us almost constantly—that we find it hard to function without it. The chatter soothes us. Silence is unsettling. And we cannot bear to be alone with our thoughts. Eventually, washing dishes, driving a car, or even using the restroom become unthinkable without a verbal (or visual) security blanket of incessant, often vacuous, noise. Air pods, tik tok, twitter. You hear it now.

I’ve seen the effects of this especially in college students who say they cannot read, focus, or do homework without various forms of media running constantly in the background. This too is indistinct chatter. Though “Background TV” is another for it. And despite some obvious benefits—dampening the noise across the hall, or making one feel less alone within an empty apartment—psychologists also caution that our addiction to such electronic noise carries costs: We use it to drown out inner monologues that need attention, and we may eventually find ourselves unable to follow more complex arguments, conversations, or plot-lines since our word-diet is now filled with empty calories. Reflection becomes difficult. And idiocracy encroaches further.

Only the shrillest are heard

Second, to be noticed in a world (or news cycle) of constant chatter requires one to shout–or perhaps to make a scene. Subtlety is lost. And eventually, poets, preachers, and reasonable politicians are replaced by demagogues and provocateurs.

Before we know it, our cultural Caps Lock remains constantly illumined like the faulty tire pressure light upon your dashboard. After awhile, you don’t even notice it. We are seeing the cost of this now in our shared political lives especially, where (to quote Yeats), “the worst are full of passionate intensity,” while the rest are just really, really tired.

So what’s the solution?

As usual, the way forward begins by noticing the way that caption has come (metaphorically) to dominate our lives. In the words of Andy Kennedy,

Every great solution starts with someone noticing a problem. Noticing is underrated. Notice more. Good things will follow.

But noticing is not enough. We must also make decisions, at least periodically, and for sustained intervals to unplug from machines and environments that threaten to drown us in indistinct chatter.

Here though is an irony. As I write this, I am seated outside by the fire while robins and bluejays and large group of black crows are performing their own bit of background noise. It too is unintelligible. Yet it hits differently than a steady stream social media alerts, breaking news, doom-scrolling, calendar reminders, and the targeted ads that constantly assault us. Is it chatter? Of a sort. And yet.

As the Psalmist writes:

There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race” (19:3-5 KJV).

Which is to say, go touch some grass. And for just an hour, disable captions.

Hello friends. Please subscribe to these posts via the button on the home page to receive future posts by email. This is helpful since I’ve decided (mostly) to uncouple the blog from social media. I’m grateful for you. ~JM

Something more than civilization

Something more than civilization

In-keeping with my claim that reading is rereading, I spent an evening recently flipping through Alan Jacobs’ excellent book, The Year of our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an age of Crisis.

He notes how, in a time of total war, an assortment of Christian poets, novelists, and philosophers produced some of the most remarkable and enduring work of the century. The players include Jacques Maritain, W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Simone Weil, and T. S. Eliot.

More interesting still was that these folks were neither pastors nor theologians, and they did not focus explicitly on current events (i.e., the latest headlines), though the geopolitical world was quite literally on fire.

Instead, they turned to the humanities and education—poetry, novels, philosophy, and habits of prayerful contemplation—as ways of rebuilding the ruins of a fallen civilization on a more robust foundation than merely the desire to “save” civilization.

Perhaps civilization has been imperiled, wrote C. S. Lewis in 1942, “by the fact that we have all made civilization our summum bonum [highest good]. And “Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.”

Many of them also identified a malignant common thread between the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and even many within the allied powers: a technocracy of domination, devoid of humane religious and moral underpinnings.

As Auden wrote, in a paragraph on “techinique” and “temporal power,”

“What fascinates and terrifies us about the Roman Empire is not that it finally went smash but that . . . it managed to last for four centuries without creativity, warmth, or hope.”

Or Jacques Maritain in Education at the Crossroads:

“Technology is good, as a means for the human spirit and for human ends. But technocracy, that is to say, technology so understood and so worshipped as to exclude any superior wisdom and any other understanding than that of calculable phenomena, leaves in human life nothing but relationships of force, or at best those of pleasure, and necessarily ends up in a philosophy of domination. A technocratic society is but a totalitarian one.”

Or C. S. Lewis:

“What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

LESSONS FROM THE RUBBLE

Jacobs’ point is that each of these writers (despite deep differences and numerous blind spots) strove with astonishing energy—at what might seem the least convenient time—to throw a lifeline to their readers in the form of deeply literate and thoughtful form of Christianity, which was neither a withdrawal from the public square, nor a breathless regurgitation of political talking points. “I see no hope for the Church,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it allows itself to become just an echo for the press” (or government).

Thus, if one wants to learn what a faithful form of cultural rebuilding looks like, we would do well to consider their examples.

Here then are Jacobs’ concluding lines—which seem more needed now than ever:

“If ever again there arises a body of thinkers eager to renew Christian humanism they should take great pains to learn from those we have studied here”

SIGNS OF LIFE

I revisited the book, in part, because Jacobs just announced his coming retirement from the Honors College at Baylor University. Still, as he heads off to (hopefully) write more books, there are signs that small pockets of this kind of thoughtful and historically-rooted Christian education are beginning to bear fruit.

The work isn’t sexy, and it won’t garner headlines, but it is happening in small corners even now.

Case in point: This Spring, twelve students signed up to take an Honors College class with me on Dostoevsky and discipleship, as witnessed in his brilliant but difficult novel, The Brothers Karamazov. The students come from a host of majors—accounting, biology, ministry. Most don’t need the course to graduate, but they’ve been convinced, partly by my soapbox evangelism, that the way through life’s toughest questions is more likely to run through the Great Books than by machine-gunning prompts into Chat GPT.

Evidence 2: Last week, I drove down to Oklahoma Baptist University to learn from one of their Honors seminars in which college students meet at 8am each morning (roughly 4am “CST” [College Student Time]) to discussGreat Books from a Christian perspective. The class was excellent. Not a smartphone in sight. Books and notebooks open. Insightful conversation. It was led by a church history professor, and the program is overseen by Oklahoma’s former poet laureate, Ben Myers.

Evidence 3: As I thumbed through a catalogue of books due to come out soon on the topics of theology, the arts, and culture, it was striking to see how many of those authors had been shaped and trained (in some way) by what might be called the “Baylor pipeline” in which Alan Jacobs has served for years within their Honors College. I am under no illusions (whatsoever!) that Baylor is a perfect place. Still, at least one pocket there has become quiet but consequential hub of deep and humane Christian learning, tucked within a Big 12 school.

All that to say, take heart.

For in the words of Auden, though “our world” seems “Defenceless under the night,” still, “Ironic points of light / Flash out whereever the Just / Exchange their messages.” And so,

May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame

Hello friends. Please subscribe to these posts via the button on the home page to receive future posts by email. This is helpful since I’ve decided (mostly) to uncouple the blog from social media. I’m grateful for you. ~JM

Love is God, but not like you think

Love is God, but not like you think

C. S. Lewis famously proclaimed,

“Love ceases to be demon only when it ceases to be a god.”

He was quoting M. Denis de Rougemont. But just two sentences later, Lewis writes the following in his own words:

“the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God” (The Four Loves, p. 7).

In one sense, I agree – as do scores of Christians who assert some version of the following: God is love, but love is not God.

For instance, A. W. Tozer:

Equating love with God is a major mistake which has produced much unsound religious philosophy and has brought forth a spate of vaporous poetry completely out of accord with the Holy Scriptures and altogether of another climate from that of historic Christianity.

Or (after a quick Google search), the “Fierce Marriage Podcast,” which describes an episode like this:

“God is love… but, love isn’t God!” In this episode we’ll look at the wonderful, counter-cultural, biblical idea of love.

The idea here is that we often make an idol of what we call “love”—as defined by feelings of romantic ecstasy, emotional attachment, sexual desire, or a piercing (almost painful) longing for another creature—whether it’s for a boyfriend, a child, or a Labrador Retriever.

There’s truth to this danger, especially because most of us—whether we know it or not—are more children of Romanticism (e.g., Rousseau, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Disney, Nicholas Sparks, Taylor Swift) than we are of a cold and sterile Rationalism. What’s more, the danger is not that we would love too much, but that our loves become misdirected and disordered, so that we chase endlessly after a particular feeling, and end up worshiping created things instead of the Creator. Ironically, to do so may also destroy the objects of our love (and ourselves) because created things cannot possibly bear the weight of divine expectations.

In response, Lewis, Tozer, and “Fierce Marriage” have this to say: God is love (1 John 4:8), but love is not God.

AUGUSTINE’S REBUTTAL

It may surprise us to learn, however, that the greatest theologian in church history disagreed, at least in one sense.

Saint Augustine by Philippe de Champaigne

Saint Augustine wrote this in reflecting on 1 John’s claim that “God is Love.”

“[V]ery Love is God: for openly it is written,
‘God is Love.’”
~ Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 98.4.

If his assertion seems flimsy, Augustine then returns to 1 John (and other texts) for additional proof: “whoever abides in love abides in God” (1 John 4:16). For Augustine, it’s crucial to note that Scripture is not here describing a flowery human emotion, but a divine person (more on that in a moment).

Hence, if (1) God is Love, and (2) abiding in Love is abiding in God, then it follows inescapably that (3) Love is God. On one level, the argument may be read somewhat like a math equation. You cannot say 2+2 = 4 without also affirming that 4 = 2 + 2. If Deus (God) = dilectio (love), then the converse is true. And that fact does not care about your feelings.

LOVE AND TRINITY

But… (and we must not miss this “But”) Augustine’s argument then takes a turn that makes it very different from a pop song, fused with a Nicholas Sparks novel, drizzled with a sugar-free glaze of suburban spirituality.

He begins to think about the Trinity.

His question is as follows: If God is Love, and if Love is from God, and if abiding in Love is abiding in God as God abides in us (all of which are taught in Scripture), then which person of the Trinity ought to be identified as the divine Love that simultaneously fills us even as it links us both to God and other people?

Augustine’s answer is the Holy Spirit,

“by which the begotten is loved by the One who begets him and in turn loves the begetter.”
~Augustine, De Trinitate, 6. 7.

After all, Augustine’s favorite Bible verse was Romans 5:5:

“God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” ~Romans 5:5

WHO IS RIGHT?

So, should we side with Lewis or Augustine?

In the end, it depends entirely on whose definition of “love” you’re willing to accept, and which god you’re talking about. Augustine writes of Love’s divine origin, Lewis speaks of creaturely echoes. One is the pure spring, the other is the creaturely river that flows invariably through tainted soil. Lewis thus explains:

Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. It’s voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself (The Four Loves, emphasis mine, p.7)

In the end, Lewis, Tozer, and “Fierce Marriage” all defer (in differing degrees) to a fallen and culturally-defined account of the word. Hence, they speak of it as a “demon” when it assumes the place of a “god.” I get this move. And I’ve probably made it too.

But it comes at a cost, not just because it risks sounding like illogical nonsense (2+2=4 but 4 ≠ 2+2), but because it means we’ve settled(?) for a fallen definition in place of the real thing. Dare I say, for “mud pies in a slum because [we] cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

Augustine defines Love in light of the Trinity, so “demonic” definitions are ruled out from the start.

Of course, that’s no defense of twisted, selfish, or sinful expressions of what we call “love” down here. (Augustine knew that better than most.) Instead, it’s an invitation to let God define the word that is itself definitive of God’s holy character, poured out by the Holy Spirit, into our hearts.

In other words: Love is God, but maybe not like you think.

Hello friends. You can subscribe to this blog via the green button on the home page to receive future posts by email. This is helpful since I’ve decided (mostly) to uncouple the blog from social media. I’m grateful for you. ~JM

Reading is Rereading

Reading is Rereading

After my sermon last Sunday, a friend asked, “How many books do you read per week?”

Surprisingly, the answer is usually “less than one.” To be sure, I read daily: Scripture and academic works in the morning; and something outside my field at night—fiction, history, or biography. (I’m currently near the end of Simon Schama’s fantastic but entirely-too-long history of the French Revolution.)

Still, I suspect I read slower than most people.

My friend’s question emerged because I had referenced several books in the sermon (probably too many books, if I’m honest). These authors included A. J. Swoboda, Joshua Jipp, Will Guidara, Ingrid Faro, and Wendell Berry. And, you know, Luke’s Gospel.

I was able to draw on these books, not because I had read them last week. (Only one fell into that category, and I didn’t finish it.) Instead, I could retrieve them because of the way I read and annotate books. (And I do mean physical books—with pages, spines, and a total lack of pixels.)

I mark them up like a graffiti artist tagging a boxcar and I dog-ear pages with content I want to retrieve, usually with a one- or two-word annotation: “Blog post,” “Article,” “Micah 6:8 book,” “Sermon Illustration,” “Atonement doctrine,” “No!”

When it’s time to write a message, a lecture, or a book of my own, I’ll consider what previously-read works in my library might add something; then I’ll flip through the dog-eared pages quickly to see what fits. It might take 30 seconds per book.

The massive benefit, however, is that I’m able to retrieve things that I no longer remember.

Perhaps that habit can help you too.

Of course, some caveats apply:

  1. You can’t dog-ear every page. If you highlight each word, you might as well not do it. I aim for less than ten dog-ears per book (four or five is best), otherwise you’re just doing entry-level origami.
  2. Slow down. Reading is about growth, not “finishing.” Studies suggest slower readers—that is, those who read at the pace of speaking rather than the pace of word-recognition–retain and remember far better than others. Hear this: In a world of distracted digital rabbits, be the turtle.
  3. Read broadly. No one wants to listen to someone who only reads business books (welcome to the late 90s and early 2000s in many evangelical denominations), or sports, or academic tomes, or jingoistic histories, or partisan political opinions disguised as “a Christian worldview.” The best writers, preachers, and thinkers read broadly. After all, I can only speak to all of life if I read intentionally in ways that touch upon the diversity of human experience. Otherwise, we become like the old man on the Simpsons who proclaims loudly that he hates everything but Matlock and Metamucil.
  4. Man cannot live (or preach) on books alone. As much as I want to champion reading actual books over the brain-rot of cable news, TikTok, smartphones, and the temptation (even in academia…) to say “AI” over and over as if it’s a magic spell that substitutes for thought and work and expertise—the fact remains that we live increasingly in a post-literate age. Hence, I’ve been inspired by authors and preachers who can draw not only on books, but on other sources too. I recall several moving illustrations in Jake Meador’s recent work that came from the world of streaming television—since, let’s be real, his audience is more likely to recognize those illustrations than they are a reference to Charles Dickens. Thus, when Jesus preached, he told more stories about seeds than Stoic philosophers.

CONCLUSION

In the end, take this as an encouragement that slower readers can still be deeply formed by books—and then pass that blessing on to others. In fact, formation may be more substantial precisely because of its slowness. Likewise, one need not have a photographic memory to retrieve wisdom and beauty from texts that no longer occupy one’s short-term memory.

Reading is rereading.

And marking.

And dog-earing.

And pulling off the shelf when the time is right.

Hear then, the word of the Lord: Be the turtle. Make reading great again. Practice selective, recollective origami.

In fact, if you’re looking for some books to practice on, see here.

Hello friends, and thanks for reading. Please subscribe via the button on the home page to receive future posts by email. This is especially valuable to me since I’ve decided (mostly) to uncouple the blog from social media. I’m grateful for you. ~JM

“The world is possessed”

“The world is possessed”

“I’ve found it an effective rule of therapy to accept . . . that most people nowadays are possessed.”

So says the psychiatrist Dr. Thomas More in Walker Percy’s darkly funny dystopian novel, Love in the Ruins. The subtitle describes it as “The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a time near the End of the World.”

I was carrying the novel through a Tulsa coffeeshop recently when a stranger stopped me to remark, “That book changed my life.” (What a gift it to hear such words in an age where many of us spend our free time staring into 3-inch screens that are the self-authorized equivalent of Fahrenheit 451.)

Percy was a Southern writer and a practicing Catholic whose works engage themes of alienation, faith, and the decline of American culture. Though written in 1971, Love in the Ruins reads as more relevant than ever in its focus on cultural unraveling, partisan factions descending toward violence, unchecked technological power, and, well . . . demonic possession.

After all, how else can you describe some of the mind viruses that have taken root in segments of American cultural and political life?

The book is also funny. All sides are skewered, but my favorite barb involves a group of (clearly) evangelicals who partner with an evangelistic organization to hold Pro Am golf tournament that includes a massive banner which reads, “Jesus Christ: Greatest Pro of them All!”

But back to Satan.

A WHIFF OF SULFUR

It can be a dangerous to speak of demons and possession loosely.

Richard Beck rightly observes that we too often smell “a whiff of sulfur” around our enemies. Hence, allegations of satanic interference have been (and still are) used to excuse acts of violence. (They were used that way against Jesus.) And in the words of a more recent writer, “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one.”

Still, I’ve been struck recently by passages like 1 John 5:19:

“…the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

What does that sound like? (And believe me, I am not speaking only of non-religious folks when considering the afflicted.)

I was at an conference years ago where a roomful of academics (the technical term is a “balding of professors”) were debating the difference between being “filled with the Spirit” and being “possessed.” One of which we normally assume to be more common than the other.

At this point, the distinguished scholar Ephraim Radner spoke up to say something like the line from Percy: “Well, maybe the whole world is possessed.” It carried weight since he’s about the farthest thing imaginable from a wild-eyed witch-burner, or an exorcist for hire.

My goal here is not to exhaustively develop this idea.

Partly because I do not know what to make of it.

So let’s turn to two quotes from authors smarter than myself.

C. S. LEWIS

First, C. S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man:

“We are born into a world where magic and miracles are seen as fairy tales, but in truth, we are under a spell ourselves—the spell of modernity. To break this enchantment, we need the strongest enchantment of all.”

He’s wrong to call it modernity.

Or at least that label no longer seems right. Perhaps Nietzsche was closer when writing of the “old strong gods” returning to the stage after mistakenly being assumed dead somewhere in a prior Act of the drama.

L. M. SACASAS

Second, here is L. M. Sacasas, in his argument (borrowed from Robin Sloan) on the need for “verbal amulets”—a metaphor for short quotations that have the power to guard our hearts and minds against the “spirits of our age.”

Such phrases or fragments [are] charged with a certain power. Like an amulet worn around the neck, these words might somehow shield or guide or console or sustain the one who [holds] them close to mind and heart.

In this way, these words may function like prayers of blessing and protection against a kind of “groupthink” that could almost be termed, corporate possession.

Sacasas suggests the following as examples holding exorcistic promise:

“Ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being.” ~Hannah Arendt

“We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.” ~Simone Weil

“We live the given life, and not the planned.” ~Wendell Berry

“Attention has moral implications.” ~L. M. Sacasas

AN AMULET OF MY OWN

I’ve been pondering all of this as I work on my next book, which offers what I hope will be a “spell breaking” look at a single verse of Scripture (a verbal amulet from the Old Testament). More on that some other time.

The working dedication reads as follows:

For Teddy Brian McNall

Here is an amulet.
Put it on. It is made not of precious metal, gems, or bone—
But of ancient words in foreign tongue.
Keep it close to ward off the evil spirits of our age.

And here’s to you this week, dear reader:

May you receive the gift of exorcism.

Hello friends, thanks for reading. Please subscribe to receive future ones by email. This is especially valuable to me since I’ve decided not to promote the blog much on social media these days. I’m grateful for you. ~JM

When (not) to use AI: a Venn diagram

When (not) to use AI: a Venn diagram

I created a Venn diagram recently to articulate when I think use of AI is ethical and when it’s not.

The smaller circles represent ways in which use of AI is problematic, while the remaining white space illustrates helpful ways in which one may utilize it to save time or accomplish meaningful tasks.

I want to be clear on two points: First, I do use programs like Chat GPT for some things. So I am not proposing a blanket rejection. And second, my focus here is almost exclusively on LLMs (Large Language Models) used to generate text and language. Thus, I am not interested in other ways that AI may be helpful, say, in coding, accounting, or other areas of life. My focus is on words.

My question is a simple one: When do programs like ChatGPT contribute to the good life, and when do they make me dumber, less personal, and less capable of being formed into a thoughtful and connected human being?

Let’s start with efficiency. As Jacques Ellul famously warned, the modern pull of “technique” tempts us to reduce every aspect of life—including relationships and spirituality—to a question of efficiency. In essence, if it saves time, do it.

Of course, efficiency may be a good thing. I do not ride a donkey to the office. I own a dishwasher. And I do not etch my writing on wax tablets. Broken, inefficient processes can be both frustrating and blameworthy. However, there are times when the modern idolatry of efficiency causes harm to others and ourselves.

Allow me to explain:

Circle #1: Efficient but Immoral: The most obvious way AI-use becomes unethical is when our drive to save time leads to immoral choices. Case in point: When I ask students not to use ChatGPT for a particular assignment (because I want them to think and grow by wrestling with ideas and words), to do it anyway is cheating. True, they may not get caught. But it is wrong nonetheless. Likewise, if my church expects me to write my own sermons (as they ought to… ), if I outsource an undo amount of that reflection to a robot, I am in the realm of immorality.

Frankly, many immoral decisions (whether robbing a bank or visiting a prostitute) are driven partly by our thirst for efficiency, which is to say, the drive to get something as fast as possible with the least amount of effort. And in these cases, the fact that it “saves time,” is hardly an excuse.

Circle #2: Efficient but inaccurate: A second problem with AI is the proliferation of falsehoods, inaccuracies, and other bogus depictions of reality. That’s because while programs like ChatGPT do a great job of producing grammatically correct sentences, they do not necessarily prioritize truth.

Hallucinations abound. And evidence is not hard to find: Sites like Google now prioritize bogus AI images of real animals, even when they look nothing like the actual creatures being searched.

LLMs invent sources that don’t exist, as attested by a friend of mine who was surprised to find his own name in footnotes, listed as the author of numerous academic works that don’t exist. And by some accounts, it’s going to get worse.

As Ted Gioia argues,

“Even OpenAI admits that users will notice ‘tasks where the performance gets worse’ in its latest generation chatbot. …

This isn’t a flaw in AI, but a limitation in the training materials. The highest quality training sources have already been exhausted—so AI is now learning from the worst possible inputs: Reddit posts, 4Chan, tweets, emails, and other garbage.

It’s going to get worse. Experts believe that AI will have used up all human-made training inputs by 2026. At that point, AI can learn from other bots, but this leads to a massive degradation in output quality.

In other words, AI will soon hit a brick wall—and face a dumbness crisis of epic proportions. That will happen around the same time that AI will have pervaded every sphere of society.

Are you worried? You should be.”

I can’t say whether all of this is accurate. But it further raises the specter of “the bogus” at a time when we are already drowning in it.

Circle #3: Efficient but impersonal: Now for the saddest (and weirdest) one.

As I watched the 2024 Olympics on Peacock with my kids, one of the commercials that ran on maddening repeat was the now infamous “Dear Sydney” ad for Google Gemini. The premise is bizarre. A dad asks AI to write a fan letter on behalf of his daughter to the American sprinter, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone: “I’m pretty good with words,” he intones, “but this has to be just right.”

Responses to the ad were a mix of confusion coupled with a collective gag reflex. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WANTS AN AI-WRITTEN FAN LETTER!?? pretty much summed it up. Or in the words of Alexander Petri, that ad “makes me want to throw a sledgehammer into the television every time I see it.” After all, how do you possibly ruin the universally endearing act of a child authoring an imperfect but adorable note to her hero? Hey Gemini, can you help with that?

Google isn’t alone. I heard recently of a dad who asked ChatGPT to write the speech for his daughter’s wedding. And I personally received an 10-page email from a stranger, asking me to answer a list of questions about one of my books, The Mosaic of Atonement. For a small-time author, letters from readers can be encouraging (and sometimes not). But this one ended with an admission saying that it had been composed by AI. To be clear, the sender hadn’t bought the book. He hadn’t read the book. And he hadn’t even taken time to WRITE THE EMAIL he had sent me. Still, he wanted me to write a long response. (A friend suggested that I plug his 10-page email into ChatGPT and ask for a 10,000 word reply in Klingon.)

My claim for this third circle is simple: We should reject AI in instances where more genuine human interaction and personal attention is reasonably expected. That’s not every use of words (as when I asked ChatGPT to help me smooth out the legal jargon in an insurance claim after my car was totaled… [I repent of nothing!]), but it does require us to discern what parts of life cannot be delegated without a loss of love and human care. As L. M. Sacasas writes, “attention has moral implications.” (And that includes fan letters, sermons, and your daughter’s wedding speech.)

The potential cost is high: In addition to someone wanting to throw a sledgehammer at you, our epidemic of loneliness will continue to creep into domains normally immune to it. After all, as C. S. Lewis wrote, “We read to know that we are not alone.”

Circle #4: Efficient but infantilizing: For those who care about education and formation, this may be the most important circle. Admittedly, “infantilizing” is probably not the best word for it, but it speaks to the fact that education and discipleship are meant to move us toward maturity. And on that point, L. M. Sacasas seems right to note that the most important question to be asked of any technology is, “What kind of person will this make me?”

That is, how will this use of AI shape me?

In the humanities especially, to labor slowly over words, sources, and ideas is—without question—the best way to grow as a thinker and communicator. Believe me, the work is slow and often frustrating. But it changes you in ways that cannot be accomplished otherwise. Somewhere in his five million published words, Saint Augustine remarks that “people will never know how much I changed my mind by writing.” That sentiment resonates for me—in part, because I read and wrestled with it as I wrote a PhD on Augustine’s theology. That work changed me, tedious though it was.

In at least some cases, when we outsource the labor of thought and articulation, we move backward on the scale from Idiocracy to Augustine—which is a pretty fair diagnosis of many ills that currently afflict our cultural, political, and spiritual lives. (Let the reader understand.) The grammatically correct sentence is not the goal of writing. The goal is a well-formed and mature person.

In the words of Alan Noble, teachers must attempt to convey that

“the process of writing, when done well, is working magic in their minds, making them into better thinkers, better readers, better neighbors, better citizens. That writing will help them know themselves and others around them. But that writing will also take hard work, just as all good things take hard work. And to use AI to help with that hard work will rob their minds of all those good things. It would be like going to the gym to lift weights only to have someone come along and lift them for you. You’ll never grow stronger. You’ll never grow. You’ll only waste your time.”

Perhaps this case feels like a losing proposition. So be it. A final lie from the idol of efficiency is that only “successful” tasks are worth undertaking.

But for teachers and pastors especially, when it comes to the case for wisdom in our use of technology, the words of T. S. Eliot (in “East Coker”) still echo over the wasteland of soulless bureaucratic prose:

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

For further reading on this topic, the folks cited in this post are excellent: Alan Noble, Ted Gioia, Alan Jacobs, and L. M. Sacasas.

Hello friends, thanks for reading. Please subscribe to receive future ones by email. This is especially valuable to me since I’ve decided not to promote the blog much on social media these days. I’m grateful for you. ~JM

The LORD prepared a fish

The LORD prepared a fish

My colleague, Dr. Brian Turner, is a master teacher. Last week he drew my attention to a line from Jonah 1:17 while covering a class for me:

“Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah….”

Translations vary for the underlined verb: designated, prepared, ordained. They are all about the same. Yet it was Brian’s next question that stuck with me.

“Was that fish a punishment or a gift?”

Well?

Of course, the two need not always be opposed. In Jonah’s story as we have it, the thing that kept him from drowning was the monster that swallowed him.

I use “monster” advisedly since it is the word Jesus chose when recounting Jonah’s story in Matthew 12. In Mosaic of Atonement, I noted how Christ likens his own time in the depths of the earth to Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of a ketous: monster, sea beast, or sea serpent. Why say it that way? (There is, of course, another Greek word for fish [ikthus].)The early church had a field day with allusions to Leviathan and Sheol—and they are not entirely unwarranted.

But for my class, Dr. T’s conclusion was as follows: “That fish rescued Jonah.”

I’ve been thinking about that line ever since, and it feels pregnant with applications:

First, perhaps we ought to exercise some caution before distinguishing what feel like punishments from gifts of saving grace. The DUI. The divorce. The downsizing. All hurt tremendously. But time is needed to know how they might be turned for good.

Second, the line from Jonah reminds us that divine sovereignty is a mysterious but ultimately benevolent doctrine. Don’t believe the press. Though God authors neither evil nor death—he does enlist unlikely incubators in the service of his grace. He’s still preparing fish. Hence even “monsters” and Sheol may turn out to be part of the “all things” that work together for our good. That’s the sign of Jonah of which Jesus spoke.

Third, a deciding factor between punishment or gift was what Jonah chose to do while in the belly of the beast. So too for us. To be merely swallowed by the fruit of foolish choices (or mere bad luck) is not enough. To be clobbered may not change us for the better.

Not every jail cell is rock bottom. Not every diagnosis grants a new lease on life. Not every firing becomes “the best thing that ever happened to me.” What we do next matters.

As Jonah recounts: “I called out of my trouble and distress to the LORD, And He answered me; Out of the belly of Sheol I cried for help, And You heard my voice” (Jonah 2:2).

Of course, it would be wrong to diminish every tragedy or consequence as somehow a sugar-coated blessing in disguise. Not so. Sometimes a fish is just a fish. And some occurrences are just evil, plain and simple. Hence, Isaiah was right to pronounce “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil” (5:20).

Still… I think Dr. T. was right to seize upon the value of this verse: “The LORD provided a huge fish.”

I’ll end with a line from Walter Wink that has always stuck with me when questioning which “monsters” to curse and which to kiss.

“History belongs to the intercessors—those who believe and pray the future into being. But to see the future, it is necessary to kiss the dragon—to embrace the terrifying and the repulsive—only then does it transform.”

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Reclaiming my voice without losing my soul

Reclaiming my voice without losing my soul

For the past few years, I’ve taken a huge step back from writing and posting online.

No podcasting. Virtually no blogging. Hardly any social media that wasn’t family content or pictures of my Solo Stove burning in the background. (Incidentally, hit me up if wonder how close you need to sit to one of those to singe off part of your right eyebrow. As of last weekend, I know.)

The reasons for withdrawal seemed obvious. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are napalm for the human soul. Leading the Honors College at OKWU takes time. And one can only have so many unpaid side-hustles.

To be frank, I was noticing a deterioration of both my mental health and the (what is the word…?) non-stupidity of topics I was writing on.

After all, if your blog purports to be on “theology and culture,” it feels inevitable that you will eventually look back and find that you’ve been sucked in by the all-powerful tractor beam of the 24-hour political news cycle. Those topics are matter, and I enjoy reading a few thoughtful voices on them. Still, it began to feel like I had unwittingly entered a Faustian bargain governed by an algorithm and forces of polarization that can only be described—in biblical vernacular—as principalities and powers.

So I quit. As I assume Paul would have if he realized most of his letters on “theology and culture” had turned out to be about whatever some Roman prelate or Pharisaical influencer had scrawled yesterday on an ancient message board.

Unfortunately, withdrawal has costs too.

Especially if you feel your gifts and calling have to do with trying to say something interesting and important to an audience beyond your Solo Stove and the last eyebrow standing.

I think by writing. And despite the cesspool of social media, the fact remains that world is still pretty remarkable, vexing, funny, and shot through with mystery and joy.

So, why this post?

My commitment for this year, is to reclaim my voice without losing my soul.

Posts will be shorter but (hopefully) more frequent. There will be fewer references to what some government official or professional provocateur said five minutes ago. And ideally, I’d love to de-couple this blog entirely from the major social media platforms.

That may mean moving to Substack eventually. But for now, I’m going to try working with the WordPress interface—where we are now. (I’m also working on a new book that I’m very excited about.)

So if you’re interested, please subscribe to the list that allows you to receive these posts via email (on the homepage of this blog). And if you enjoy it, by all means, tell someone else.

With that said, I’m grateful for you. And I’m excited to reclaim a voice that hopefully still has something to say.

Grace+peace, Josh.

Which book should I write next? (take 2)

Which book should I write next? (take 2)

Alright… let’s try this again. Apologies that the poll wasn’t showing up when I tried to post this yesterday. I’m trying SurveyMonkey instead of the “quick and easy” option in WordPress.

I’m wondering if readers of this blog (Both of you? Mom?) might help me decide which book I should write next.

I’ve been busy early this summer with academic writing, but I’m shifting gears now to work on a book that would be for anyone: pastors, plumbers, parents. Here are the options. All titles are tentative. And I don’t promise to follow your advice. But I do appreciate it.

Vote via the poll at the end (that is, if it works this time. If not, just post a comment).

Walk Humbly: Micah 6:8 as a Guide to Faithful Living
As I have returned to Micah 6:8 over the years, I have come to see it as a much-needed means of recalibrating my misguided priorities, reminding me of what God has “shown,” and providing a prophetic alternative to the cultural and political extremes that threaten to squeeze the church into their misshapen molds. But what does it mean to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

Jesus Preaching: Sermons and the Son of God
Jesus preached. But his sermons are unlike ours. As a companion text for preaching classes, or a guide to pastors, the book explores how we can better proclaim the gospel of King Jesus by learning from his sermons and his unique approach to preaching.

Food God: Meals as means of Grace
In Scripture, meals are often how God displays his love and truth, even as their misuse marks key moments of human sinfulness. Designed to be discussed around a table, this book explores how breaking bread can still point us to Christ and his uncommon flesh-and-blood community.

Thanks for the help. (Survey Monkey link below.)

Which book should I write next?

(Thanks for the comments as well. It’s great to hear your feedback!)

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And see here for my own books.