Category Archives: Religion

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

Are We or Will We Ever Be Free at Last?

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Time has vindicated Dr. King. Ultimately it is not Black versus White. It is justice versus injustice, haves versus have-nots. As long as Dr. King talked only about African-Americans he was relatively safe, but when he began to pull poor Whites and poor Blacks together he became a threat to the power and wealth elite. If he had been allowed to live, he might have even been able to articulate the frustrations of today’s shrinking middle class. Thus Brother Martin could have been a prophet of a sizable slice of America. This would have been a formidable challenge, but it was never allowed to materialize.

One of Jesus’s points in the Sermon on the Mount was to seek the kingdom of God first and allow all other worries and legitimate concerns to follow it. Such a kingdom-focus doesn’t sit well with us. We would rather have seeking the kingdom as a consumer spending habit or path to political goals. We would rather settle on being in the best church, denomination, or path (Me against the World) in contrast to others of the same type, even if our path is the one constantly thumping how everyone should just get along. A Christianized humanism may be more comfortable to us than the gospel of Christ’s kingdom.

That’s where this book, Free at Last? The Gospel in the African American Experience, stands. It’s too biblical, too focused on Christ’s kingdom to light the torches of those looking to build a kingdom of their own.

In 1983, Dr. Carl Ellis wrote a book for an African American audience on the state of the church, the history of various Black movements, and how we can move forward. He revised and republished it in 1996 and it was republished as a special edition classic in 2020, which is the edition I read.

Ellis spends most of the book on overviews of different movements and cultural arguments Black leaders have made, both within and without the church, to recognize and defend the honor of African Americans. It offers a high-level framework for understanding decades of history. He gives the most attention to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, who disagreed on how to raise the dignity of Black families in a country that wants to either melt away their distinctions or marginalize them.

No one escape Ellis’s criticism because mistakes and bad actors have cropped up on all sides. Some Black leaders have painted Christianity as a White man’s religion, but Ellis separates civil religion and White-centered humanism from the biblical faith and traces these sinful influences through to today. White humanism he defines as a belief that White people and standards are the ultimate references for truth and values, White people being generally unaffected by sin. Many African Americans have adapted this view into a Black humanism, which again, for the churched and unchurched, is not Christianity.

Anything can become an idol, even, perhaps especially, good things. “Afrocentrism is truly magnificent, but it is not magnificent as an absolute. As an absolute, it will infect us with the kind of bigotry we’ve struggled against in others for centuries.”

Ellis notes a point in history when the solution to gaining dignity in American life was the melting pot, everyone blending into the surrounding culture, but the dominant culture rejected African Americans subtly and overtly. If they were to blend in, they would have to be subservient to Whites. That actually didn’t sit well with anyone but the abusers. America isn’t a country that can tolerate a permanent servant class for long. We tell ourselves we are the land of the free and the brave, created equal by the Almighty. Americans of any color won’t be content to stand in the alleyways and watch others parade by.

There are many ideas holding us back. In one chapter, Ellis describes “four prisons of paganism” found in many corners of the world:

  1. Suicidal religion, which attempts to deny reality or numb ourselves to it through various means (sometimes with a “militant shallowness”);
  2. God-bribing religion, which is any manner of attempting to curry favor with the Almighty;
  3. Peekaboo religion, which hides God behind other people or things so our allegiance and obedience can be focused on the other thing and not the Almighty;
  4. Theicidal religion, which includes all attempts to reject God’s existence.

Ellis states Peekaboo religion is a dangerous trend in the Black church for its tendency to revere the pastor (and his wife) more than they should. I’d say many independent White churches do the same thing, but the percentage would be smaller.

To rise above these errors, Ellis calls for creative preaching and church practices. He calls it being a jazz theologian, one who improvises on melodies in performing the truth for contemporary congregations and find new ways to reach our increasingly secular neighbors. His call might have more resonance if he pointed to a new application of truth and history that is working, but he may have wanted to avoid that specifically because he isn’t trying to start a new thing for others to copy. He wants us to know the Lord and His Word and look for ways the people in our area will hear them.

It’s not in the book, but I know Ellis is the head of The Makazi Institute in Virginia, a type of L’Abri fellowship for cultural understanding and engagement. That would be his take as a jazz theologian, not something just anyone could do.

One value of Free at Last? is a 60-page glossary covering many topics referred to in the book as well as many contextual topics not mentioned. I wrote a post about content from this section before.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

Religion

Being a captive ring

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The video above is one I found in my aimless wanderings on YouTube. The thing to bear in mind, if you watch it through (it’s not long) is that while I was watching it the first time, I had no idea what the artisan’s intention was. I thought at first the goal was a kind of Chippendale chair rail, and I simply found it visually engrossing, the same way I used to watch my Windows computer defrag.

And then it became “captive rings” (something I’d never heard of before), and I was astonished. What a wonderful thing, I thought.

And then it came into my mind –

[Let me just break in here with a disclaimer. I think I’ve made it clear before that I don’t believe in extra-biblical revelations, in the sense of treating them as the words of God. If I, or an angel from Heaven, tell you, “I have a new revelation from God for you,” run away.

On the other hand, I don’t doubt that God sometimes speaks to us personally, to encourage or even guide us. This may be a case of that. Or not. Remains to be seen. But I like it enough to share it here.]

So it came into my mind that maybe I’m like that piece of wood.

I’ve probably mentioned, in one or more of my too frequent navel-gazing posts, that the personality I possess now is not the one I was born with. I have it on good authority, from uncles and aunts, that when I was a little boy I was outgoing and friendly. These traits were knocked out of me in my upbringing, leaving me desperately shy and socially awkward.

To make it worse, all my life I’ve been informed by a series of employers (often while they were firing me) that it was precisely those personality traits (the ones I lost) that they wanted and didn’t get from me.

But looking at that woodturning video, it occurred to me, “Maybe I’m like that piece of wood. It didn’t start out to be a set of captive rings. It started out as a perfectly good, useful tree branch. First it was cut off, then it was dried in a kiln, then it was put in a lathe and subjected to a series of cuts and gouges which I can’t help anthropomorphizing as extremely painful.

But the result is something that delighted me. The captive ring piece is, to me, for want of a better word, wonderful.

Just possibly (I thought) I was put through all the stuff I’ve been through to make something wonderful out of me. (My guess would be my books, but who knows? Maybe I said the right words to somebody thirty years ago, and I’ve been riding on that one good act ever since.) I’m reminded of the potter in Jeremiah 18.

Of course, being me, I can’t resist looking at the question from the other side too. One should never forget the wisdom of this old internet meme:

Authors, Reading, Religion

Hubristic musings on Story

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Photo credit: Infralist.com. Unsplash license.

Let’s see. Where am I? I did a Zoom interview with a student from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay this morning. Some kind of history class assignment. She was supposed to speak with a more impressive Viking reenactor, but had to settle for me due to a glitch in the system. It was nice. She was an intelligent young person. Gave me hope.

I’m trying to figure out Adobe Indesign (not Light Desk, as I erroneously termed it last night; I saw the I and D logo in my mind, and they looked like an L and a D, so I vamped). I was referred to a YouTube video for an introduction, but that created as much confusion as it cleared up for me. I bought a book, which I shall try out this evening. I intend to learn this irrational, user-unfriendly mouse maze of an app, or die in the attempt.

Packed for my trip to Brainerd tomorrow. Paid my bills a day early, because I’m flexible that way. Walked to the post office for stamps.

But what shall I blog about? I think, on consideration, that I still have things to say about Story as a key to the universe, as if I didn’t overtalk my intelligence in my previous post on the subject.

Dale Nelson, in commenting on that post, noted that our Lord, when He came to earth, did not come as a philosopher, but as a storyteller. This is an excellent point, one I wish I’d thought of.

So I’ll double down. When God chose to reveal Himself to us in written form, He did not give us a book of systematic theology (I’ve often wished He had, but oddly He did not consult me). Instead, He told us a story.

Wouldn’t it have been a relief if the Bible had begun with The Book of Epistemology? We could have a Book of Trinitarian Doctrine, and a Book of Soteriology, and it would all end up with a Book of Eschatology.

The Quran is kind of like that, as best I understand it, based on my limited examination of the book, though it’s not very organized. The Quran is essentially a book of doctrines and commands. It’s not what you’d call a gripping narrative.

The Bible we’ve been given, however, is a narrative. God chose to tell what is essentially a story. There’s other elements in there – poetry, and law, and wisdom literature, etc. But it’s all set within an epic dramatic narrative. The world is created, Man is created, Man falls, Man runs berserk, God begins calling out a series of individuals, then a family, then a nation, through whom He will – gradually – reveal His purposes for redemption. Finally the Hero – God Himself in human form – appears and – through great sacrifice – undoes the Fall, conquers death and the devil. Finally, we’re given a glimpse of Christ’s ultimate triumph and the eucatastrophe.

A lot of church schism and religious war could have been avoided if we’d had a divine book of unambiguous theology instead of the Bible we got. But God hasn’t chosen to reveal Himself that way, either in His written Word or in His incarnate Word. He seems to prefer stories. And stories tend to be so… ambivalent. The better the story, the harder it is to explain.

During my recent long road trips, I decided to splurge on a couple audio books. Both were by Andrew Klavan – books I’d read before but wanted to revisit. My Minot book was The Truth and the Beauty, Klavan’s manifesto of art-oriented theology. My Green Bay book was The Great Good Thing, his spiritual autobiography.

I found The Great Good Thing easier to grasp. It’s a straight memoir, with its lessons fairly obvious. Great story, too.

But The Truth and Beauty, though fascinating and inspiring, eludes me at some points. Even after two readings, I still have a hard time articulating what the point of the book is. It’s mostly about how the Romantic poets followed their perceptions of beauty, which led them (in some cases not very far) towards the truth of Christianity in a world gone apostate.

But I can’t grasp the nub. I can’t tell you what Klavan is trying to say we need to learn from the Romantic poets.

And it occurs to me that’s the whole mystery of the thing.

Great art generally can’t be reduced to a formula or a moral. It leads you to a place where you confront an idea that is a Person. And persons can’t be defined – not within the limits of human reason. (God can define it all, I have no doubt.)

It’s a little like Zen, where you sit around and meditate until you “get” some irrational concept. I reject Zen, and I reject the irrational too. But the Buddhists have an inkling of some truth there.

Stories can lead us to an encounter with God. Reason can too. But neither the story nor reason automatically produce faith. The faith comes from an encounter with Jesus Christ. That encounter is a miracle; St. Paul knew, and the theologians have agreed, that it’s nothing either our imagination or our reason can produce. It comes from outside. It’s something you receive.

And you can’t always put it into words. You can only tell stories about it.

Religion, Writing

In which I try to think above my weight class

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Photo credit: Patrick Fore. Unsplash license.

Sometimes I have Big Thoughts, which seem to me important. It would appear self-evident, though, that if these ideas are any good, someone must have come up with them before me. And if nobody has, it’s probably because they’re not as good as I think they are.

But I forge ahead, in all the boldness of the simple-minded. I have a sort of an answer to the problem of Theodicy.

No, make that a proposal for an answer.

No, not even that. An approach to a proposal.

In any case, I’ve written about these matters here before, but I think it’s been a while, perhaps quite a long time.

The problem of Theodicy is familiar to many of you. It’s one of the really big questions – if God is good, why does he permit such horrendous evil to exist in His world? (Recent events in the Middle East have given us ample cause to contemplate this question, when we’re not weeping, tearing our hair, and stocking up on ammunition.)

My proposal for thought is that we ought to look at the universe as a Story.

Every writer knows that there’s no story without conflict. And conflict means pain. One of the hardest disciplines many writers must learn is how to torture their characters. Although I love reading exciting stories, I often fear I can’t bear the stress when a good author turns the dramatic tension (which means fear and pain) up to 10. When I’m writing, I’d much rather be nice to my characters (most of whom I quite like), but I know my stories would be degraded.

Does this help explain why there’s suffering in the universe? Is God telling a great story?

Now I can hear the objections – “That’s obscene! When we contemplate the evil suffered by innocents in places like Gaza, it’s simply an insult to suggest that God is using those people like toys in some cosmic story-telling game.”

To that I reply – very tentatively – suppose it’s not just a game. Suppose stories aren’t actually trivial?

Suppose stories are the most important things there are?

Suppose our universe is not just “a” story, but “THE” story – and that story is the glory of God, the music of the spheres, the liturgy of the Great Throne, the song of angels.

If that still seems trivial to you, I ask this question – “What can you suggest that’s more serious than a story – if you’re in it?”

And suppose – just suppose – you had an assurance from the Author that somehow – in some way you can’t comprehend – the ending would be happy?

Religion

Arizona School Board Member Suing for Right to Quote Scripture in Meetings

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A newly elected school board member of Peoria Unified School District Board in Glendale, Arizona, has been told to stop quoting scripture at the beginning of school board meetings because the district believed it was a violation of the First Amendment. They took this stand in response to letters from organizations such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Now, their new school board member is suing them.

Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

Toward a More Reasonable Faith and Words Written or Generated

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My all-time favorite song is Michael Card’s “God’s Own Fool,” published in 1985 on the Scandalon album. That may have been the first album I bought with my own money. It’s a song about Jesus being misunderstood during his earthly ministry. The last lines are:

So, surrender the hunger to say you must know;
Have the courage to say, "I believe." 
Let the power of paradox open your eyes
And blind those who say they can see.

I could understand if someone took lines like this to encourage blind faith, a faith that doesn’t question what we read in Scripture or what our ministers teach, but Christian faith isn’t blind. It’s reasonable and fits the real world He created.

When Jesus tells Peter to check the mouth of a fish for a coin to pay their taxes, Peter believes Him and checks the fish’s mouth. When Jesus tells a couple of His men to go into town, find a donkey and colt tied up, bring them to him, and if anyone asks what they’re doing, say that the Lord needs them, they go into town expecting to find exactly what He has said. That’s a reasonable faith. It’s one that recognizes the limits of our knowledge, not one that denies knowledge altogether.

But what else do we have today?

Art & Literature: David Platzer writes about a Paris exhibit on Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. “Edmund Wilson—who was generally sympathetic to her work and compared it to Yeats, Proust, and Eliot—noted in a 1923 Vanity Fair article that her word-portraits of Matisse and Picasso published in Camera Work made it ‘evident that Gertrude Stein had abandoned the intelligible altogether.'”

Words: If you or someone you know have shown symptoms of being a witcracker, call the number on your screen. You are not alone.

American Words: American pioneers had to make up words for a new world. Rosemarie Ostler writes, “Often these simply combined a noun with an adjective: backcountry, backwoods (and backwoodsman), back settlement, pine barrens, canebrake, salt lick, foothill, underbrush, bottomland, cold snap.” “Yankee is also almost certainly a Dutch contribution. Various theories have been suggested for the word’s origin (for instance, that it’s a Native American mispronunciation of English), but the most likely one derives the word from Janke (pronounced ‘yan-kuh’), a diminutive of John that translates as something like ‘little John.'” (via ArtsJournal)

Artificial Intelligence: Tech companies are hiring writers and poets to compose somewhat refined work, particularly in Hindi and Japanese. “It is a sign that AI developers have flagged fluency in poetic forms as a priority, while refining their generative writing products.” To what end? (via ArtsJournal)

Photo: Fairyland Cottages Minnesota, 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Religion

Pietists vs. Confessionalists

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Portrait discovered in Copenhagen,, believed to be Hans Nielsen Hauge.

I wrote a fairly long meditation on Pietist Christianity and legalist Christianity yesterday. And I think I failed to actually say one of the things I meant to say.

Which is ironic, because that was one of the very weaknesses I meant to criticize (gently) in my hero, the Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge. Some years back I began work on translating his works, a project another linguist has since taken over. Mostly to my relief. Because Hauge is exceedingly hard to translate. I’ve heard of one scholar who started the same project years back and simply gave up in frustration. “He’s untranslatable!” that person said.

I think that’s an exaggeration, but I sympathize. Hauge is very hard to translate. The man was in no way a systematic thinker. He was an enthusiast. He poured his words out onto the page, it appears, just as they came to him. Sometimes he goes on for pages without a period or a paragraph break. I imagine Hauge as being very much like a certain pastor I once worked for. He hired me precisely for my writing skills. Because he found it almost impossible to actually get to the point. He communicated all right in person, because he could supplement his words with facial expressions and gestures. But when writing he just lost his way.

After many years, I think I finally figured out Hauge’s point. It’s a point he never states in so many words, but once you’ve figured it out, it illuminates all the rest of his verbiage. And it explains some of the puzzling – or even apparently unorthodox – things he seems to say.

That central point, I think – and I mentioned this part last night – was that he believed that a true believer – someone who was genuinely “awakened,” as he put it, would find the Christian life easy. They would be filled with the same joy and love he felt. We all know how love lightens burdens. When I was in love, long ago, I would have done many things far outside my comfort zone – and sometimes I actually did those things – just to please her. Just to be close to her. Love made hard tasks light.

This is a beautiful vision, and I believe it’s true in the Christian life to some extent.

But it’s not equally true for everybody. And it’s not always permanently true . I have good reason to believe that Hauge himself, during his ten-year imprisonment, when he was denied books and visits from his friends for long periods, eventually learned that the Way could be hard. He never lost his faith, but he learned that even true believers can struggle.

Some of us aren’t like Hauge. Our experience with God may be lower-key, less emotional. We have a smaller tank of emotional fuel to burn (those of us who are introverts feel this especially). We’re more like John Haugvaldstad, who needed rules and lists to keep himself on the straight path. I believe he took it to an extreme, but for some people this pattern seems prudent. Books like Jordan Petersen’s 12 Rules for Life fill a need for them (us).

Among us Lutherans there’s an old tension – sometimes fiery verbal warfare – between the Pietists and the “Confessionals.” The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod is the largest and best-known Confessional church body in the US. Going back to the days of immigration, the Pietists and the Confessionalists anathematized one another. The Pietists (like Georg Sverdrup, subject of the journal I edit) condemned the Missouri Synod as cold, formalistic, Catholic-adjacent, and spiritually dead. Confessionalism, Sverdrup wrote, provided a “sleeping pillow” on which members of dead congregations could slumber while their pastors tried futilely to do all the work of the church on their own.

The doctrine-centered Missourians, on the other hand, condemned the Haugean Pietists as unstable, emotional enthusiasts. If synods and pastors didn’t keep a close eye on the laity, checking their every statement for orthodoxy and basically barring them from any kind of spiritual ministry, then everybody would just go crazy. Subjectivism would take over. You’d have churches abandoning traditional sexual morality, and syncretizing with other religions, and reciting something like, oh, “the Sparkle Creed.”

Which, sadly, is just what happened. Missouri Synod theologians rarely hesitate in making the charge that all the aberrations we see today in The Very Big Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless (as I call it) spring from the subjectivism inherent in Pietism.

I have to admit their prophecies came true.

But I still think Hauge and Sverdrup had a point.

The heart of my own theology, for many years, has been the Incarnation. The Word became Flesh. Somehow, through the power of God, body and mind came into harmony. Justice and Mercy kissed. The absolute and the subjective cooperated perfectly in the one perfect Man.

That’s what I want to see reflected in the church, and in myself.

Religion

Hauge and Haugvaldstad

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Bust of John Haugvaldstad outside the Mission School in Stavanger.

My mind was so uplifted to God that I had no consciousness, nor can I express what occurred in my soul. For I was outside myself, and as soon as I had come to my senses again, I understood that I had not been serving the beloved God who was good above all things, and that I now thought nothing in this world worthy of esteem. That my soul experienced something supernatural, divine, and blessed, that it was a glory that no tongue can express. I remember it to this day as clearly as if it had been a few days ago, though 20 years have now passed since God’s love visited me so overwhelmingly. Nor can anyone dispute this with me: for I know that everything good in my spirit followed from that moment, especially the sincere, burning love for God and my neighbor, that I had a wholly altered attitude and a sorrow over all sins, a passionate desire that people should share with me in that same grace, a particular desire to read the holy Scriptures… (Hans Nielsen Hauge’s memoirs, trans. by me)

I hope this little essay won’t be too provincial to interest our readers. I’m writing, as I do so often, about the Lutheran “sect” in which I was raised, the Haugeans. I came to some realizations about the Haugeans this past weekend, based on reading I’d been doing and some conversations I had with other members of the Georg Sverdrup Society. The wider implications, I think, touch all Christians.

The Haugean movement, especially as it developed among Norwegian-Americans in this country, was probably best known for its legalism. We were the kind of people who (by and large) did not drink or smoke, did not play cards, did not attend the theater or dance. There were great revivals among the Haugeans in America, especially in the 1890s and the 1920s. After that, the rains never seemed to come again. My own observation, based on what I know of people who grew up in my church in the 1920s, was that the young people were embittered and driven away by all the rules. Being “awakened” seemed to mean (to those young people) a commitment to following the rules. Forever.

Based on some recent reading, I think the fault for this probably lies, not with Hans Nielsen Hauge himself but with another man, John Haugvaldstad (1770-1850). I suppose I bear some familial guilt for this development, since Haugvaldstad was a neighbor to my Hodnefjeld ancestors on Mosterøy Island (before he moved to Stavanger), and they were close friends and supporters of his.

Look at the excerpt from Hauge’s memoirs above. That’s not the testimony of a rule-bound soul. It’s the testimony of a man in love. I think Hauge ought to be imagined as a man with a big smile on his face. All his work, all his rugged foot-journeys, his long days and hard work, even his imprisonments, were experienced with joy, because he’d fallen in love with Jesus. For Hauge, the Christian life was fun. That was how the movement began.

But when Hauge went to prison, John Haugvaldstad arose as leader of the movement – at least in Stavanger, an important Haugean center. And Haugvaldstad was a very different soul from Hauge. Haugvaldstad struggled with temptation. At last he decided that the only way to handle temptation effectively was to avoid all questionable activities (“if it’s doubtful, it’s dirty”). Debauchery and fights happened at parties, so avoid parties, dancing and drinking. In fact, avoid all music other than hymns. Don’t play cards. (Smoking was acceptable in some circles; it depended.) Don’t attend the theater. Don’t read worldly literature. And on and on.

It was Haugvaldstad who made the Haugeans teetotalers. Hauge himself was always opposed to drunkenness, but he sometimes seems to have served brandy at social gatherings and he served beer to his household at Christmas. In a famous conversation, he said to John Haugvaldstad, “Ditt Væsen er taget, ikke givet!” Which means, “Your temperament is taken [upon yourself], not given [by God]!”

But Hauge went to prison, and he died young, and Haugvaldstad prospered as a businessman in Stavanger. He was highly regarded (he’s considered one of the founding fathers of modern Stavanger), and not without reason. He was a very good man, a man with great concern for the poor. He did much good for his neighbors, and for Christian missions. The esteem in which he was held led many people to make him their role model. The “temperament” of Haugvaldstad became the Haugean norm.

Today, in our situation, I would very much like to see the spirit of Hauge return. I think we could use it.

Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

They Need an Explanation to Feel a Level of Control

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I read one time that Hitchcock wasn’t going to end the movie Psycho the way he did, but his producer insisted he provide an explanation. The story couldn’t end with a wrap-up of the crime. It needed a psychiatrist to give the audience a reason for it. This is because Americans want to know why an evil thing occurred and how could it be prevented in the future.

I felt this need while listening to a couple crime stories this week. In one story, four boys in rural Vermont decided to break and enter a remote home. Two of them said they would murder anyone who happened to be home, and they all carried knives to help, if the need arose. It did, but only the original two attacked the mother and daughter they found. The story was mostly told by one of the two in police interviews. He was an emotionally distant Mormon kid who lacked friends and was beginning to explore gang activity.

In the other story, an elderly couple was kidnapped in an effort to rob them. He said he would kill them after he’d obtained all the money. The wife was able to tip off the cops, who located the man through his car. This culprit was a family man, described by a church member as a Christian who had it all. He had been even a church elder at some point. But along with all of this, he was also a constant manipulator.

If evil like this can come from both social outcasts and respected members, what can be done to foresee or prevent it? We need a healthy understanding of our common depravity, and that out of the heart these and other great sins come. We are not good people. Only the Lord can make us so.

What other things can we say today?

Great Musician: Tony Bennett died this week. Ted Gioia writes, “I probably own 30 or 40 of his albums, and his singing has been part of my life since childhood—when my Sicilian father played Tony Bennett records at our family home. At times, it almost felt like Bennett was a member of my extended family.

… “I could fill up an entire article just with stories of his acts of kindness. He radiated decency and generosity of heart. That showed up in his life and his music.”

Against Apathy: “Artists endure who attend to the world. Details are precious. Art is collecting and arranging them.”

New York City: “As for libraries, the sad truth is that, precisely because of the abandonment of broken-windows policing, those sheltered spaces are havens for the homeless and drug-addicted more than they are resources for the scholarly and intellectually curious.”

Found Music: The Kiffness takes internet videos and makes music with them. The one from July 15 seems appropriate to add here.

Photo: Christie’s Restaurant sign, Houston, Texas. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Religion

AI-Driven Bible Knowledge

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Writing for Christianity Today, Adam Graber suggests problems with artificial-intelligence-driven Bible reading software.

“As a digital theology expert, I believe these kinds of ‘BibleGPTs’ will continue to advance, proliferate, and eventually become proprietary systems. And as this happens, the church and its leaders will be prompted to make some momentous decisions about the Christian canon. This will, in turn, influence how we interpret the Bible and impact the future of our faith and practice.”

He goes to describe how AI-driven research tools could become like the knowledgeable friend who always has a ready answer for any question but who isn’t grounded enough in the Word to answer wisely every time. It may become another easy way to quickly survey the Bible, thinking we understand more than we do.

If you read the whole article, it doesn’t end as sensationally as it begins. He concludes saying we need to understand the Bible for ourselves, but the tone of the whole leans too much on people’s laziness. That isn’t new. We’ve always been lazy. I doubt AI will usher in more lethargy than we already indulge with the Internet.