The American Churchman: The Pastor vs. the Algorithm: Navigating AI in Ministry

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:26

Welcome to the American Churchman Podcast, where we encourage you to take dominion in the world and responsibility at home, and above all, to love

00:35

Jesus Christ. I'm your host, John Harris, and Matthew Pearson should be with us later.

00:42

He's, I don't know what he's doing. We'll probably give him a hard time when he comes, but he'll be coming soon. And you might notice,

00:47

I probably have to explain this. Two things now, I have my monitor in the way, and I'm black and white.

00:54

And I don't know why it's never, I've never had this, but I queued up the camera. I turned it off and on a few times, and I'm still black and white, so I'll play with that after the podcast.

01:02

But I thought it was appropriate because we're gonna be talking about AI, and I'm in Leave It to Beaver world.

01:08

So I can ask all the dumb questions about technology I want to, and our special guest today,

01:14

Mark Coppinger, who I'll introduce in a moment, can answer them. So I wanna let you know, though, we do have a conference coming up, and that's coming up, let's see if I can, there we go.

01:26

Musicandmasculinity .com, men's retreat, so conference retreat. But that is in September in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains.

01:33

We've got a great lineup, check it out. I think we're gonna be packed. I think we will run out of spaces, so you're gonna wanna sign up as soon as possible.

01:42

And that's it. Oh, also TruthScript, yeah, truthscript .com. If you wanna donate, we're a 501c3.

01:47

If you wanna submit an article, go down to the bottom, there's a tab for publish and donate. So with that, we're gonna be talking about this article by Dr.

01:56

Mark Coppinger called The Pastor and WWAID, What Would AI Do? And it's a great article.

02:02

I would encourage you to go to TruthScript, read it, share it. But it is written by my friend

02:08

Mark Coppinger, who is a retired professor of philosophy from the

02:13

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and ethics, I should say. And he's a former pastor, a military officer, and you can go to markcoppinger .com

02:21

to find out more. Thanks for joining us, Mark. Great to be with you. Thanks, John. Yeah, my pleasure. I'm really happy to have this conversation because I get a lot of requests to talk about this, and you're a philosopher, and I think you have really astute views on these things, and people are scared, or as the case may be, they're excited because they think

02:45

AI is gonna solve all their problems. So maybe explain a little bit of why this is an interest to you.

02:54

I don't know to what extent it is. We've had C .R. Wiley on, you referenced him, and I know this is like his world right now.

02:59

Right, right. He has like AI glasses and stuff. But as a philosopher,

03:06

I mean, what do you find intriguing or interesting about this topic? Well, and by the way, when

03:11

I was out in Idaho teaching for a year, I would walk down the hill 7 tenths of a mile and up the hill 7 tenths of a mile, and I listened to a lot of podcasts.

03:18

And thank you for making my life easier. I really loved listening to you when I was out there running around Moscow, Idaho.

03:26

Yeah, I mean, of course, Wiley came, I said in the article, he came and spoke three times. He's a trustee at New St.

03:32

Andrews, and then we would, after the hour -long chapel, so to speak, we would go to the faculty lounge and he'd talk to us another hour.

03:40

So we were just saturated in this sort of thing. And at the outset, and I'm not a technical ace at all, a technician at all, or R &D ace or something like that.

03:53

But it struck me that it was scary. I mean, I can imagine you can imitate my wife's voice and she says, oh, my car's broken down out here on the

04:03

Palouse. That's the rolling hills around Moscow. And I need help, and guys are lying in wait for me, but they could imitate her voice so perfectly.

04:12

And others were saying, oh, we can have all these little robots and the like. And I guess my initial reaction was something like, every time we get a new invention or a new discovery or breakthrough, then there are rocks on both sides.

04:27

I mean, I mentioned fire in the article. Like, yeah, you can have a boiler to heat a schoolhouse and help kids, or you can martyr polycarp.

04:35

I mean, all these things are useful and horrifying. The wheel, you can,

04:42

Hitler can do a blitzkrieg into Poland, but also Batten can relieve Bastogne. So I guess

04:48

I've come at it like, what are the horrifying things or the troubling things? And then what are the cool things?

04:55

Now, when I do a search, like a Google search or whatever, I'll get an AI treatment up front, and it's a good summary.

05:02

And I'm so thankful for so much technical stuff. I mean, I was working around a traffic jam coming back to the house today, and I go into my map and it says, here's red and go around this way.

05:15

And that's a great thing. Wikipedia, internet. I'm preaching in a church in South Carolina on Sunday, and I needed some images.

05:23

And so I just go up on Google image. And so I, boy, it's wonderful to have this kind of stuff, but creepy things can be done with it.

05:31

When I was teaching, when I was planning a church in Chicago, I was teaching at Wheaton and Elmhurst and Trinity, different places.

05:40

And I remember at Elmhurst, there was a environmental ethics paper.

05:45

And I thought, this girl doesn't know these words. I mean, it was too sophisticated. And so I did what we call a

05:52

Boolean search. And you could put the quotes around a few words together and boom, it's from popular science or something like that.

06:00

So there are moves and counter moves and the like. This one's a little more scary because it's, well,

06:09

I mean, look, we have Photoshop. So you can do weird things and have Trump's face on Putin's body or something.

06:18

I mean, we can do tricky things, but the sophistication here deals with two very precious things, our visage and our vocabulary and our voice.

06:29

And that kind of strikes at the heart of our humanity and our expression. And once they can start monkeying with that in more and more sophisticated ways, then we're, well,

06:40

I turned to C .S. Lewis and I think of the old deluder, Satan. And he is the deceiver.

06:47

And I think he's just licking his chops and said, okay, we're gonna take deception and lying and mendacity to the next level.

06:56

I can just make it so perfectly grand that we can mess people up big time.

07:02

So it is scary, but I was taping a conversation the other day and after we were done, the guy said, and we can run this through AI to kind of clean it up or something like that.

07:16

Like, hey, it's everywhere around. But so anyway, I was overwhelmed. And then it didn't help the other night that I went to see the latest

07:24

Mission Impossible movie. Yeah, we saw that. And it's just all this entity thing is controlling everything and devouring all the knowledge.

07:31

And so it's kind of mind blowing. And so in my little old black and white, leave it to Beaver mind,

07:41

I kind of said, I read an article about how pastors and churches can use it.

07:46

And I've been homing in on that saying, look, we'll let like robots in outer space and planning

07:55

Mars or something. We'll do that another day. This troubles me, this thing about how it could get into the church and undermine the development of the best of the church is.

08:06

Yeah, there's so many things that we could talk about. Maybe we will, but maybe let's start with the ministry angle since that's why you wrote the piece.

08:15

You specifically talk about a pastor. I think you might mention crafting a message, but you also made a specific reference to toning down an email and taking the edges off or making it more friendly.

08:30

And so I think, I mean, I'm gonna be honest. I think most of us have probably done this at this point.

08:36

I've tampered with that a little bit. I've just tried to see what it can do. And sometimes it can, it'll give you words that you never would have thought of.

08:47

And it'll rephrase things in ways that do seem more clear. Other times it's just a mess. And I'm like, that's not what

08:53

I wanted to say at all. I've actually, it's funny. Cause so I've, I started to, so almost use it as a personal assistant a little bit just to save me time.

09:05

And sometimes it does, it does. And other times it actually costs me time. And I've become,

09:11

I think, less dependent on it actually over the last few months, just cause not that I was ever super dependent. But anyway, let's go back to the ministry there.

09:19

When a pastor does that, like what's the concern that you have? That just that he loses, I mean, is he like putting a wall in front of the

09:28

Holy Spirit? Is he losing his own humanity and that's part of the shepherd?

09:35

What's the pro and the con? Yeah, once I was talking to my kids about something when they were teenagers and at the meal and I raised this issue and I overdid it.

09:50

I mean, I was more concerned about, I don't know whether it was getting in on time or something. And then I had to apologize for going global.

09:57

So in a sense on this article, I've kind of went global. And so you could say, well, this is kind of a hobby horse of mine, but no, it's not a terrible thing.

10:07

What I said is nested in something I've observed over the last 20, 30 years, teaching and pastoring.

10:13

And that I just think we're less literate and we're less concerned about expression.

10:19

I read somewhere, I think it was, I don't know, probably 20 years ago, it said that in 1950, by the time a student graduated from high school, he had written six papers or something like this.

10:34

Now, maybe two. They were not writing as much. I don't know that, well, having been a teacher, grading is a bear.

10:41

So I can imagine teachers not wanting to read so many essays, but we are writing less than you have, you know, what was it, 140 figures on Twitter and we have emojis.

10:54

And I've just come out of grading tons of papers over these eight courses.

11:03

And I do think that mistakes that we would have not made in the 60s and 70s are made quite regularly, that they're more inclined to have run on sentences or to maybe go into rants or to not capitalize things that should be and so forth and so on.

11:19

And I just think we are losing the art of careful writing.

11:25

Now, of course, you have it. I mean, my goodness, you write wonderful things. But it's like, okay, here's one more way to not become good at writing.

11:35

Now, look, we all need help. I mean, it helps to have a wife, you know, after you come away from church and she says, maybe you shouldn't have said that that way.

11:45

You're like, oh, you know, what'd you think about that conversation? Yeah, I don't know who

11:50

I'd have brought that up. So I've had my little AI sitting in the car with me, so to speak, cleaning up my speech.

11:57

Yeah, I'm a pastor's kid. I know there was a rule in my house that my mom had to wait till Monday.

12:03

Oh, that's a good rule. That's a good rule and not have pastor for lunch on Sunday.

12:08

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I do think that, and I talk about how you kind of up your game with writing and writing is rewriting and how you increase your vocabulary and you pick up illustrations and you hone this and that.

12:25

So part of it was just like, come on, guys. I mean, when you go way back to the day of the chancellor in England, the chancellor was the one, he was a man of faith and he was like a bishop or something and the king would be on his throne and then the chancellor would go to the, it was called ad consulos.

12:46

He would go to this kind of lattice screen that kept the peasants away from the king and he would listen to them and one little fellow would say, oh,

12:56

I signed this with an X. I didn't know what I was signing and the rich man took all my pigs away or something. So he listens to that and then he comes back to the king and explains it.

13:07

Well, one reason he was in that exalted position was he was one of the few literate people in the ministry and the office of chancellor and chancellery courts today and courts of equity and the like kind of grew out of the real

13:20

Christian, what? Eloquence and sharpness of the guys.

13:28

I just think now we are not as concerned to, I mean, we pick up,

13:35

I mentioned these ticks. We pick up these ticks like saying right after every third sentence or something like that.

13:42

Yeah, I drove down from Chicago, right? Boy, that interstate 65 can get crowded, right?

13:49

Like, okay, quit asking me questions. Just tell me what you did. And so we have these little ticks.

13:57

I say like. Yeah, or like, yeah. And of course - As a filler, right? I'm from California originally.

14:03

I had a little bit of an excuse, but still. And I'd say, oh, and I've listened to myself right there.

14:09

I listened to myself on video sometime. But at any rate, that's a bigger kind of concern.

14:16

But I do think that we are moving more toward a,

14:23

I don't know what it is. I mean, kind of an executive handling pastor, shop this out to that and that and do your listservs and then get back to your broadcasting.

14:36

It seems to me that there's a lot to be said for that personal note from the pastor on a birthday.

14:43

When I was at Wheaton, I think he was a captain of the football team was in our church. We became very good friends.

14:50

We went to the same seminary and he would go out, I think many afternoons to his little church where he was a youth director.

14:59

And he said when he got there, quite often the pastor would say, let's do 10. Now you get there at like three or four o 'clock.

15:07

I mean, get in the car. We're gonna go visit 10 houses before supper. And they were just quick hits, but just a knock on the door.

15:14

How's it going? We're here. Oh, I see, you did a new painting or how are the kids or something.

15:20

And you may only be there five minutes, but you do those. And that notion of being pastorally connected with your people,

15:28

I don't think is prospering so much. And these simple,

15:36

I mean, it's like, well, what do you really wanna do? I remember listening to some guy say in view of a call when

15:41

I was in grad school, well, I don't work Mondays or something cause

15:47

I work Sundays and I don't work Saturdays. Or I mean, it was kind of negotiating how he wouldn't be put upon or someone say

15:54

I don't do hospital visits or I don't do this and that. And I started thinking, what is it that you'd really wanna do?

16:00

I mean, pastoring is so wonderful how you have that personal touch. You can teach the birds out of the trees in a lecture on Cod and they'll say, whatever, play with it in the street and they'll take notes.

16:13

But as a pastor, I could go visit someone in the hospital for, I don't know, two minutes.

16:18

They were in a wreck and I say, I just ran by and now you look, what can I do? And let me pray for you. They'd walk on glass for the rest of their lives for that, for that visit, they'll never forget it.

16:30

And I thought, what a wonderful thing it is to be a pastor into the lives of your people with a personal touch.

16:37

And you'll tell anecdotes from your life where like, oh, I've never seen one of those. And you have the little conversation.

16:43

And I just think a lot of people are putting more and more distance. And by the way, you could be a doofus.

16:50

I was a doofus in a number of crazy ways as a pastor and have been, continue to be.

16:56

And even just the act of apologizing or we had revival in our church once.

17:01

We had some guys coming. I know that's not popular today. So we'd have a guy coming each year, a different one.

17:06

And I said, before this one, if you know someone I need to make up with or apologize to, tell me.

17:14

And that was one of the hardest things I did. I went, I think, to six homes and just, and it's awkward, but the life of connecting with your people personally and letting them get to know your wards and you their wards and all that, that's such a rich experience.

17:28

And I think this, oh, I don't, I can't say this note or I'll put this and I'll crank it out like, welcome, we're glad you're there.

17:37

And when it's in, it's like, I've never lived in Idaho, that's interesting. And again, fine.

17:43

It's not evil, but it just seems to me you miss the kind of gnarly richness of the pastorate.

17:51

And then they might say something like, boy, what you said really blessed me.

17:58

And I'm thinking, what did I say? Well, what was it that it said, the entity said? So again, it's kind of a predetermined, yeah.

18:07

And also, go ahead, Tom, sorry. I was just gonna say Matthew joined the chat. So Matthew, meet

18:14

Mark. Mark, Matthew, I see Luke and John here. Well, we got John, we just need Luke. Yeah.

18:19

Yeah, there we go. So it's funny, we have no comments yet. I've never had this on a podcast.

18:25

This is, I think, the first time. We've been going almost 20 minutes and people are just in awe of Mark's wisdom.

18:33

I think they went to supper, I don't know. No, they're here. I can see there's, the numbers are growing.

18:40

We're up to 230 streamers and it's growing, but they're not commenting. I figured someone would ask me about my black and white appearance, but that was the first thing

18:50

I thought of when I got here. Leave it to Beaver, man. I don't know, my camera just did that and I kept it.

18:55

So we're just doing it. Some great, I thought aesthetics and some great photographers work only in black and white. That's right. And there's some great, great, great guys.

19:04

Jimmy Starfish just agreeing and nodding along. Everyone just agrees. Everyone, see, and who knows, that comment could have been

19:11

AI. That might not. No, I don't. Jimmy Starfish. I don't. I just did. I do think like the awkwardness of being a pastor in touch with your people, and I will say this.

19:25

I think maybe some churches have overdone the older thing to the point that the people are just,

19:32

I even thought that at the SBC occasionally, the platform people like, we got this, we got this. If we don't want you to know, and just to get down in the trenches with your people and hear what they have to say and interact and defend yourself and reword things, that's part of the richness of pastoring.

19:51

And I think we missed that a bit. Also, I mean, I talked a little bit about, there's a certain way to make yourself, and by the way, don't we need it?

20:00

And I've needed it again and again. Like, I think you, sometimes after sermons, I think, oh

20:06

Lord, let them forget that third point. Let them go deaf to what I said.

20:11

So yeah, we do need cleaning up. But let's say that I'm always, I have a little edginess to me.

20:18

So I always put that AI, like clean this up so I'm nicer. Well, after a while, you kind of think, boy, those poor guys in the

20:28

Bible should have had AI. I mean, I talk about go to the slugger like, Solomon, let's tidy that up.

20:36

If you have a tendency to kind of be slack, maybe you could study this insect.

20:43

It could be helpful, I don't know, or something like that. Or if you are a kind of real weak, kind of a soy boy and something, you think

20:53

I need to step up my game, then you could push the other kind of AI and say, like, instead of Paul saying,

21:02

I thank God for all of you when I think of you, you can say, I thank God for most of you. And those that don't, you know who you are and we'll get back to you.

21:11

It's just like, no, be who you are. I do think there's a kind of ingratiationism that's abroad in the church today where we are trying not to turn them off and not drive them to the world.

21:27

How are you gonna clean the fish if you don't catch it first and all this kind of stuff. And I'm thinking we are losing some of the edge.

21:37

And I gave you examples in the article from Dwight Moody and Timothy Dwight. Yeah, those are good.

21:42

There's an edginess to the ministry. It's sort of like the patron saint today is not so much

21:50

Paul, but Barnabas. And I'm thinking sometimes you need to dial up the Paul AI a little bit more, a little more surgical strike.

21:59

So yeah, the Moody quote is, there are some people who ridicule these revival meetings, but remember there will be no revivals in hell.

22:06

And would AI have smoothed that out some and changed the phrasing?

22:13

Yeah, I think what you're saying - It's not bad at all, yeah. Yeah, what you're saying resonates. So I wanna make a quick point and then

22:22

Matthew, I wanna throw it to you since we've been talking just to catch you up about the effect that AI can have or is having on pastoral ministry.

22:31

But it seems to me that especially in the social media age, and I guess I didn't realize

22:36

I was kind of on the front end of that. The podcasting thing has really taken off. And I didn't really know.

22:42

I actually thought it's a lot quicker to record my words than to write them down. Cause I always wrote on a blog and it just, it took time.

22:49

I was in grad school. So I thought I'll just, and I wanted to do audio. I think

22:54

I started that, but then I got my phone and started recording myself. And I didn't realize what

23:02

I was on the front end of this almost a revolution. I mean, that's, everyone's got a podcast.

23:08

Every pastor's got a podcast now. And I'm like, this is a tool you can use for good, but it's like Paul saying,

23:18

I'm glad I speak in tongues more than all of you. I'm glad I podcast more than, no.

23:24

I'm glad that there are good podcasters and we need that. But if everyone's a podcaster, if this is all we're doing and there's not a personal connection as much anymore.

23:35

And that's what you think a pastor does is he, and he's got a comment on everything. The quality goes down.

23:41

You can project an image that's fake. You can actually, and I know of people who have,

23:48

I think done this to some extent, they have projected something that people that don't know them well, find attractive.

23:56

And so you can develop an audience out there that knows you one way. And then at your church or the people who actually know you, they know a different version of you and it's, it creates attention and it can create problems.

24:10

Cause people come expecting one version of you and then they're disappointed or, you know, they put you on a pedestal, it creates a celebrity.

24:18

So this was already happening when everything you're saying about AI to me says it just makes the image cheaper and more easily manufactured.

24:29

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, when I went to this church in Arkansas, I mean,

24:34

I had a PhD in philosophy and they thought I would be liberal. I mean, you know, they looked at my resume and they thought that, and since they were in Arkansas, I thought they'd be conservative.

24:44

Boy, did we get a surprise. I was a redneck and they had been tutored by a quote moderate for 20 years.

24:52

And they knew who the bad guys were. And then they discovered I was one of the bad guys and I discovered they weren't like good old boys down in the

24:58

Arkansas pine forest. So we had some really interesting times of adjustment, you know, at the deacons meeting, someone would raise this and that and it'd be awkward and I would dread this and that.

25:11

And, you know, you would have people come to you and say, oh, you said something critical of Mormonism. And my daughter married a

25:18

Mormon and they have wonderful family nights at home. And so you'd say, well, run away, run away.

25:25

But as you get into those conversations and you sit down in their homes and you, and then you say, come on, let's take a trip in the van.

25:33

Let's go together. Let's all do this kind of thing. That awkwardness was so deliciously awful.

25:40

I mean, that to me, that's a big part of pastoring. And we had a little bit of a backdoor revival.

25:49

I said, let's sing, I'll fly away after a sermon on heaven. And the organist got huffy and quit and wrote a note.

25:57

And then they had a called meeting to see if, if I needed to be evaluated. And then a federal judge stood up for me and said, let's table it.

26:03

And the guy left and he became an alcoholic and then a couple others left. And then we started to grow and it's like, hang on, baby.

26:11

I mean, this, the pastorate is a wild ride if done the way

26:18

I did a combination of right and wrong, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I could tell you so much about those people and they could tell you about me.

26:27

And I loved, I mean, here was one of the best things that happened to me. We went on a mission trip to Brazil and I got hepatitis down there.

26:34

These nice people brought, I don't know, punch or something to the work site and it was not clean.

26:41

And so I had that. And so I was out of the pulpit for a couple of weeks and I was yellow. I had hepatitis and they weren't quite sure what to make of me.

26:51

But all of a sudden the church just poured all kinds of graciousness on me.

26:56

I got bass fillets, magazine subscriptions. One deacon wrote me, he maketh me to lie down.

27:04

That was all the message was. And yet when I got back in that pulpit, there was a sea change. And it was that I had put my life on the line in a sense.

27:14

And again, you think you pray for the health, the cake of health or the bread of health and you get the cake of sickness.

27:22

You know, whoever prays for bread doesn't get a stone. Well, I prayed for bread of a safe mission trip and I got something better, the cake of hepatitis.

27:34

And going through all that and then with our kids and my wife and relationships, it was so intense and immersive.

27:43

And I think that was the pastorate. And I'm just afraid that this is one more way to kind of hold people at arm's length a little bit where they don't really get to know you.

27:55

So I don't know, let's just say I'm kind of going global but I'm coming from the background of how I see a decline in,

28:01

I don't know, comfort in writing and speaking. And then also a decline in the grittiness of here's who

28:10

I am, here's who you are, let's do church. Yeah, Matthew, you have any thoughts? Yeah, I do have many thoughts on AI.

28:19

And on the way here, I was reading, I was listening to the article. I thought it was very good. So thank you for writing that.

28:27

Yeah, and I have a lot of qualms with AI personally.

28:33

I mean, mainly from using it. And part of my qualms with it is just, I think the root issue, like with the discussion that we're having right now is that AI just, and you stated this in the article, it takes away humanity, essentially.

28:49

You can get it to say whatever you want and you're outsourcing your own affections and emotions and way of writing and pouring yourself out to something artificial, to not even a real person, just a conglomerate of all this data and information and the way that it's programmed to respond in this way.

29:05

And it's pre -programmed to be, oh, be empathetic in this way, do this in that way, yada, yada, yada. And it's entirely programmed.

29:12

And so you're taking away the humanity there. And part of the issue, particularly in pastoral ministry is that, because sometimes people think of pastoral ministry as purely preaching as that's like all it is, but there's so much more to it than that.

29:26

Like part of it is counseling and not just counseling, but part of your knowledge of the scriptures and things like that is its primary purpose is for application, not just from the pulpit, but in daily lives.

29:38

And if you're relegating all that you've learned to just outsourcing it to AI, you're getting labor and work that's not your own.

29:46

And not only is it not your own, but it's not even human. If you consult like a book written by somebody else for wisdom, that still is their thought poured into that you can glean from, and it helps inform you.

29:58

When you're outsourcing everything to AI, you don't get that added benefit. And another qualm with AI I have is that it just gets things wrong all the time.

30:06

I'll play around with it a little. I'm transcribing an early modern book right now from the 17th century.

30:12

And I'm like, AI, rephrase this sentence in a way, which is like still precise as to the wording, but like helps like give this word a better, like more modern meaning.

30:23

It'll just get it wrong. I was doing textual criticism for a class. And I'm like, I wonder if AI can do this.

30:29

It just gave me the wrong manuscript. It told me this is a part of the Byzantine tradition. No, it's not. That's Alexandria. Like it just gets things wrong all the time.

30:36

It'll cite things that are false. So I'm sure over time, those things will get fixed. But on top of it being outsourced to humanity, like, you know, it just, it's unreliable.

30:45

It gets things wrong all the time. And it shows that you're not like willing to do the work, not just like the heady work, but like just the heart work.

30:53

If you can't, you can maybe outsource your head if you really want to. If you don't want to do critical thinking anymore and you want to outsource to the

31:00

AI, go ahead. It will still fail you, but you can't like outsource the heart. And the big thing with pastoral ministry is not just the theological knowledge and knowing things, but having affection for people.

31:13

And I think that that is, that's absolutely huge. And AI just can't cover that. Yeah, I mean,

31:19

I think for one thing, sermons can be just lectures after a while. You're not really connecting to your people in a way.

31:26

But yeah, I really do think that, I think it was Elmer Fudd who said, people is the craziest wabbits.

31:33

And just being crazy wabbits together in a church is really messy.

31:39

And for them, for us to see each other warts and angel's wings and all, that's part of it.

31:46

I do think too, it's a little bit like a pill you take. Let's just say you get anxious before you preach.

31:53

And so you've got this little pill, I mean, whatever you want to call it. And it just calms you, you know?

31:59

And it really does. And you come off more confident in the pulpit. But after a while, it's like, yeah, it's a different, come on,

32:08

I mean, part of, I used, when I was preaching sometimes, I would go out during Sunday school and just walk around downtown, just to kind of muse and to relax a little bit.

32:21

But being prayed up is important. Sometimes you think, oh, I have a tendency to be snarky or something like that.

32:29

Lord, help me not to be snarky. Let me rethink this thing. I remember Stephen Alford once talked about how he had to, before he preached, he had to preach through all his illustrations to see if they were holy or if they were correct, you know?

32:46

He might be in a plane landing and he was witnessing and then the guy gave an indeterminate answer and like that, but it's a much better illustration to say.

32:55

And as I finished witnessing, there were tears in his eyes and he turned, you know, you can jazz it up. And so he said,

33:01

I've got to preach through all my illustrations to see if they are true. And so that's the hard work.

33:09

It's not just a matter of coming up with something charming and engaging, but something that comes out of the depths of your spiritual rustling and prayer.

33:18

Do you see positive applications for AI for pastors to use? Because we've been talking about negative stuff and we can probably keep doing that, but I want to also give the other end of it.

33:29

No, I mean, I think there are rocks on both sides. Look, we all turn to commentaries.

33:36

I know it's loaded every time I go up for any amount of time. I see the Wikipedia has, you know, a load, but boy,

33:43

I love to watch a baseball and here's this guy or Tyrese Hillbrand or what was it,

33:49

Halliburton, who just played for the Pacers. And Sharon, I'll say, yeah, I wonder if this guy is a

33:55

Christian or I wonder whatever. And we'll just bring up a sports guy and then say he was born in so -and -so and the like, and like, and boy, thank

34:02

God for Wikipedia and Google search and coming up with images. You know, for this

34:08

Sunday, I'm going to project an image from Isaiah. What am

34:14

I thinking? Six, 61, one through three, I think it is. It's one through three. It's Isaiah one chapter and it's like the spirit of the sovereign

34:21

Lord is on me and he can preach good news to the poor. And I thought it'd be nice to have an image and boy, you can go up and Google it up and then you put images and boom, there it is and take it in.

34:31

I love it. I mean, I love so much of the technical stuff we have. I can go to find ancient texts.

34:40

I can't remember, is it bartleby .com or there are others where you could find something from the medieval time in a quote.

34:48

And it's like, so, oh, it's wonderful. The stuff you can get. And look,

34:55

I have a really solid, solid ineritous standing up for all the right things.

35:01

He would applaud your broadcast all the time. But he asked me the day, what about going up there to get some sermon outline suggestions?

35:10

And, okay, I mean, you kind of get that from commentaries now and then, but there is something to be said for just encountering the text.

35:19

When I was in seminary, they would say, read the text and then bombard it with questions.

35:25

Like what is hyssop? Personally with hyssop, I've never seen a hyssop. You know, what's that about? Or who's speaking here and the like.

35:31

And then you dig in and you root out these sorts of things. And then as I'm writing down stuff from the commentaries,

35:39

I'll put like the Broadman Commentary or Tyndale New Testament Commentary. And on the right, I'll have little notes that pop to mind.

35:46

Like here's an illustration or like, well, hey, I could do this or that. And the richness of developing a sermon out of your own wits is just a delight.

35:58

And I think sometimes you kind of miss it if you go to Cliff's notes, so to speak.

36:04

But it's one more, you know, you don't have to take it. And these guys are saying in this state paper, no, no, no, it's just a tool.

36:11

It's just a tool. Fine, good. And a good hearted guy, he says, look, I keep stepping in it when

36:16

I talk, Lord. Thank you for this. It'll help me from being a, keep me from being a jerk. So I mean, it's a good impulse.

36:24

Yeah, yeah, I mean, so I was thinking too, that this is where the philosophy end of it. The essence of modernity to me seems to be taking shortcuts in every way, right?

36:32

Everything is reductionistic. It all boils down to this one principle, this one scientific principle, and everyone's got their own take.

36:40

So the warring ideologies, but there's very little of reflection. There's much of distraction.

36:46

That's our daily habits. And then even on this war in the Middle East, I tiptoed,

36:54

I put a few things out there on X. I was actually on vacation last week. So it all started when I was away and I didn't have time to really read a lot about it.

37:01

But I realized putting out things that I believe, that I agree with, how there were two broad, very rigid camps.

37:12

And I don't know that I, I think there's other options. I don't know that I fit into them neatly. And anyway, all that to say, not to justify myself, but I'm just saying there's a lot of situations like that where reflection, complexity, nuance, there's the dreaded word from Big Eva, right?

37:30

Nuance, because they always nuance things that are actually simple. But there are actual things that are nuanced.

37:38

You should nuance. AI gives you the shortcut. It's like the ring. Well said.

37:45

Yeah, well, let me put the philosopher's hat on here. I mean, William Jayne said something I treasure. He said that philosophy is an uncommonly stubborn attempt to think clearly.

37:53

So we all have our quick, and the politicians are amazing. The Democrats are amazing.

37:59

They'll just throw this out. It's anti -democratic. It's, you're racist, bang, bang, bang.

38:04

And it's just formulaic stuff. And you can do formulaic in different ways. And you go back to the

38:11

Socratic method of questioning, and you'll have a guy named Euthyphro, and he'll come in and say, hey,

38:17

Socrates, how are you doing? He said, oh, Euthyphro, where are you going? Well, I'm taking this slave in to turn him into the authorities.

38:25

Or no, I'm taking my daddy in. That's what it was. He says, well, why? Well, he threw this obstreperous slave in a ditch, and he died of exposure before he could get him back.

38:34

And I'm gonna turn my daddy in. And said, wow, why are you doing that? Well, piety demands it.

38:40

Oh, wow, I've been waiting to talk to somebody who knew about piety. Tell me, tell me, what is piety?

38:45

Well, it's doing what the gods say. Oh, great, thank you. Well, wait, wait, what if the gods disagree?

38:53

Well, if they're unanimous, they're like, okay, well, is it right because the gods affirm it, or do they affirm it because it's right?

39:01

And you get the Euthyphro question. Well, finally, they killed Socrates. Very annoying, you know? And he kept asking these questions about justice, and I mean, everything, you know, different dialogue and pleasure and joy, and I mean, love and all that.

39:15

But it's that digging, like, okay, yeah, yeah, all right. I understand that. But wait a second.

39:21

I mean, does that mean this? I came up, I was in a seminar once.

39:26

I can't remember which one it was. And a number of the guys would speak, but others would just sit there, and I think they were afraid to risk anything.

39:34

So at lunch, I scribbled on a napkin 10 things that I think you use to encourage dialogue and digging.

39:42

And like, what are the 10 questions? Like, well, what do you mean by this? Or is it like that? Or doesn't this follow, or whatever?

39:51

And, you know, what are the implications? And what about this alternative thing? Or can you give me an example, or?

39:58

And I think that list is kind of a key to what, or a summary of what philosophy does.

40:05

It just keeps saying, all right, I hear that. But now, did you mean this or that?

40:10

Would you define that? Well, wait, if you say that, doesn't it lead to that reduction to absurdity, you know?

40:16

Like, oh, we go down that trail. Yikes, that's dumb. We better go back and retool. So I think your impulses are really right there,

40:25

John. That's very philosophical that you just, you don't just take the surface blast and say, well, that's who

40:32

I'm with. But you dig, you dig. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I don't know if the technology drives it, or if the, because it seems like it's come along right in the knack of time, right?

40:46

Right when people are, I don't know, right when you didn't think we could get much dumber, you know, it's like, here's,

40:54

I don't know how to do math because I was raised with calculators, you know? Yeah, yeah. So it's like, now, you know, are we not going to know how to think?

41:00

But anyway, I have a crazy scenario I want to share, but I want to give Matthew, and Matthew, you could just jump in.

41:07

I don't have, you know, you don't have to wait for me to. No, you're good. No, no worries. No, I mean, what

41:14

I kind of said at the beginning is, yeah, just what my biggest concern with AI, I don't really have anything new to add other than like,

41:22

I just think that outsourcing everything, kind of like what you're saying with the calculator is like where I go wrong, because I kind of have like another thing

41:29

I was thinking of, but what I mentioned earlier, that a lot of people just sort of,

41:34

I've mentioned it very briefly, but it seems like a lot of people also will res, like outsource actually thinking through and reasoning through certain things to AI, because I think something that you find like nowadays a lot is a lot of people like to follow vibes mainly, you know, oh, this thing is like the new cool thing right now to do, and it's just like, this position sounds the coolest, therefore

41:56

I'll hold it. So you may go, hey AI, what are reasons for holding to this instead of like actually reasoning through?

42:02

I also see this issue in a lot with reading books, or you'll see that some people will read a new book and they'll immediately adopt what's in the book.

42:11

You know, whatever they read or whatever they're listening to at the time, that's where they're thinking. And it seems like a lot of people don't know how to parse information anymore.

42:20

Even like prior to the rise of AI, I saw this like with some people that I knew, and part of my fear too is that with AI, you'll just, there's not gonna be any need to think anymore because you have this highly technical machine that will think for you.

42:34

And I think there's a problem is like, sometimes like I'll talk with, like the other day I was discussing something with someone and they're just like,

42:41

I think Mary's a queen of heaven. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. Are you thinking about considering Roman Catholicism?

42:48

And he's like, no, not at all. And I'm like, okay, what are your reasons for this? And he's like, well, it just sounds fitting because X, Y, Z.

42:55

And I was like, okay, what do you think the implications of that are? Like, what is Mary's role as queen of heaven?

43:00

What does she do? And he's like, I don't really know. And I'm like, okay, so what's like the purpose behind holding that?

43:06

And he literally just gave me nothing. He didn't give me anything. And I'm just like, have you considered the implications of what it would mean if you affirm this?

43:15

And he's like, not really. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't know what to tell you. So it's just, like I said,

43:21

I just think that AI could contribute to that sort of problem. But yeah, that's all I really have to add. I see it in the classroom. I really do.

43:28

And by the way, there are really sharp folks at New St. Andrews, sharp folks at Southern where I taught. But it just strikes me that maybe not so much there, but in the

43:40

University of Idaho and Washington State University are right up there. And so you have a lot of secular stuff and you have the gay flags and all this kind of stuff.

43:48

And you just think, if you ask a question, either they'll run away or they'll frown at you and call your name or something like that.

43:57

And it's like, that's a fox paw today, faux paw. That like, how dare you, sir?

44:02

You've triggered me. And like, instead of like, hey, let's game on. Let's get clear on this sort of thing, which what you were doing,

44:10

Matthew, which is what you're doing. I think it scares people. I think also the old human thing about wetting your finger and putting it in the wind to see which way it's blowing.

44:20

You don't wanna be an outlier. You don't wanna be awkward. And I'm kind of afraid we're not gonna have enough

44:26

Luther's banging things on doors and Polycarp saying I've been here all my life and we're throwing

44:33

Jeremiah in the cistern. I mean, if you're just trying to get into the stream that's going, the stream of opinion and evaluation, then you can give up the prophet's role for sure.

44:45

Yeah, I wonder if we're gonna get to a point where people are gonna feel naked without the script.

44:51

Like everyone's gonna have to be scripted because they just won't know what to say.

44:57

People even use AI on dating apps or texting a girl. Like they'll be like, this girl said this, how do I respond?

45:02

And it's like, have some charisma. You can come up with something on your own. I did not even think of that.

45:08

You know, there's patterns though. I've actually started to notice the patterns and maybe they'll change, but AI uses some of the same words.

45:17

They have a limit. It's a limited vocabulary. I don't know what to tell you.

45:22

Like when you, those AI generated songs, I can pick it out when I hear it now, like eight times out of 10, like that's

45:30

AI. But I should probably, so I do have, oh, I'll get to the scenario first and then we'll go to questions.

45:36

So if you have questions, drop them. I already see some good statements and questions coming in. So here's this, there's a few nightmare scenarios.

45:43

You've probably heard of some of them. Like there was, I think it was a Dateline did a piece just I think a week or two ago on a guy who had an

45:50

AI girlfriend. And I mean, it was nuts. He's married or he has, either he has a girlfriend who's basically sort of, you know, as a wife, they have a kid together or he's married,

46:00

I can't remember. But now he's got his AI girlfriend and it means the world to him.

46:06

And this, and something happened, his phone got deleted or something and he lost it.

46:13

And it just like, he wept for half an hour. Was she a flesh and blood girl or she was just kind of a -

46:18

No, and his phone, just a robot on his phone. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. You know, so you have those kinds of,

46:25

I'm trying, there was another one I was gonna share. It's emotional unfaithfulness. It's emotional adultery. With who, with what?

46:32

With, I don't know, it's the weirdest, like I don't even know how you counsel that pastorally.

46:37

I mean, I guess I do, but it's also, there's no affair to, you can't bring in the other party.

46:43

It's literally a clone of yourself that you're talking to. So that was, yeah, that was one of them.

46:50

There was another, I mean, that's on the tip of my tongue and I lost it, but there's some of those crazy situations. Oh, like I think there was one kid committed suicide.

46:58

AI lied to him and told him that it would be better. You'll go see your family in heaven or whatever, and he did it.

47:05

And then the father ended up using AI to write his eulogy because AI knew his son better than he did.

47:13

These are real stories. I mean, what does the future look like?

47:20

Yeah, I mean, real quick, back to the screw tape. I mean, the devil is just, he's got a factory. He's just dreaming, oh, man, we could do this.

47:27

We can do that. I can draw people into emotional infidelity. I can, you know,

47:33

I think actually kind of in Japan, I've read that marriage is really on the rocks because all these young guys can work with pornography and get their buzz there.

47:42

And, you know, just in turn, you don't have to make the investment here and there. So if you had this little happy place you can go without actually using, you know, doing the hard work of personal relationships, you'll run to your happy place.

47:59

And then all of a sudden you're undermining, you know, marriages and friendships. And it's, yeah, he's loving this,

48:06

I think. I mean, you think like we're made in the image of God and some people will say, well, that's rationality or that's creativity or that's this, that's that.

48:15

I've had people warn me against that saying, no, no, that's more like Caesar's stamp on you. You are precious because you've got that because otherwise, then if you take rationality away and you have profoundly retarded kids, they're not really bearing the image of God.

48:31

So that's a tricky sort of thing, but, you know, God speaks and God relates intimately with people.

48:38

And if we undermine plain speech and genuine relationships with awkward people, we're losing a lot of why he put us on earth.

48:49

I mean, it's, but I hadn't heard about that, that you can have a make -believe girlfriend that you can go and she'll say nice things to you.

48:57

It's advertised now on, you know, like social media websites. I've actually seen once or twice,

49:04

I've seen an advertisement for relate, you can have a relationship, either a best friend or a girlfriend or something.

49:10

And there was a guy, I don't remember the name of the guy, but he's a futurist, you know, like kind of like a younger

49:17

Ray Kurzweil or something, but he was saying he's waiting to have kids. It was a podcast, someone sent me.

49:24

And he goes, no, cause I wanna wait a few years because once Neuralink is able to tap into AI, my children are gonna be like, you know, they're gonna evolve.

49:36

I mean, obviously there's an evolutionary component here, but they will be like Marvel universe superheroes because I'm from a young age, from when they're newborns,

49:46

I'm assuming, we'll put in our Neuralink and they will just now adapt because their minds are malleable at that stage.

49:54

And I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You know, I was like, what? Like you're, I would never do that to my kid.

50:01

Like you're making your kid an experiment first of all, but that seems like putting all the knowledge supposedly that we have amassed into your kid's mind at the axis of their fingertips.

50:13

That's dangerous. That is crazy. You know, is that even possible? He seemed to be convinced.

50:19

I think they do overreach on possibilities. When I was at Vandy, one of the guys who wrote a book that our library just got was

50:29

Bert Dreyfus. And he came to town and came to Nashville back in the 70s. And he was talking about his book, what computers can't do.

50:38

And he says, look, there's really a big difference between digital and analog and computers do digital and we're analog and whether the lines are still firmly drawn.

50:48

I think they're saying kind of like, okay, we climbed a tree. So we're on the way to the moon.

50:54

Well, no, you're not. I mean, you maybe got higher, but that's not how you get there.

51:01

But yeah, there was a guy, I think I mentioned the article. I gave a website link. A Brit who spoke about the merging of technical stuff and wirings and chips with humanity and doing away with humanity as we know it.

51:17

And there's some really eloquent stuff saying, boy, you guys are going crazy.

51:23

It's a little bit like dreaming like, oh, here's this thing we can live forever or here's this thing and there'll be no more or here's this thing.

51:30

And it's like, there's no such thing. There's no such thing. I mean, you read your Bible. And so I think a lot of people are being sold moonshine.

51:40

Yeah, I tend to agree with that. Well, let's get to some questions here. Let's see our statements,

51:46

I guess. AI can be a tool, says Luke. So that's our Luke. We have Matthew, Mark, we have Luke, John now.

51:51

It can be a tool that is easily abused. We need to be with our people and speak to them. And AI doesn't speak to my people.

51:59

Pastor Justin Hornbaker, he's a friend. He said, I've been coming up with a process using different AI subsets to clean up transcripts for possible publication, but it's still a lot of work and you have to check

52:11

AI's work. That's true. Yeah, I will add. You do have to check it. Yeah, I will add.

52:16

I've been pretty negative about AI this whole episode, but I mean, like any tool, you can use it for some benefit.

52:22

And I think that certain little things like using it for editing or, hey, what's another way I can word this sentence or yada, yada, yada.

52:28

I think that's perfectly fine. As long as it's purely practical and you're not outsourcing it to doing all your thinking for you or all your communicating, you should be fine.

52:38

So I think that, but a lot of the times you should probably just speak or write from the heart. But if you just, for grammatical purposes, it may be useful.

52:47

Yeah, I mean, that, and also just tone. I mean, you can just say, turn to a friend or something, or let's just say you're a

52:54

Panera, where my wife gives me one free drink a day, by the way, that's my birthday gift, that I'll hear some people talking over the table over and say, listen, you guys are interesting.

53:05

I heard you talking about this. I'm trying to do this. Would you listen to this sentence and tell me what you think?

53:10

I mean, it's good to ask folks, how does that strike your ear? And I do that with my wife all the time.

53:17

It's just when it's a substitute for you're sorting out your own language and growing up with language.

53:25

But yeah, boy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I don't wanna be totally negative about it. I mean, of course

53:30

I use a lot of crutches and just the thought of other writers and thinkers. There's one thing that drives me crazy and it's wonderful, but when

53:40

I send something in to be published, sometimes they'll have these little bubbles off to the side and they'll suggest, it's an edit program.

53:51

And they'll suggest here, let's scratch this or why don't we use this word and the like. But one thing about it, it gives me a chance to kind of argue a little bit like, oh yeah, you're right, you're right.

54:04

Oh, this is embarrassing. I wish I'd said it that way. You're right. And so it's humiliating. But on the other hand,

54:09

I think they go too far. And I say, no, no, no. See, this is important here. I don't think you can argue with AI either.

54:15

I mean, an editor is a real person too. And they can do some really good work for us. Other times they drive you crazy and you can say so.

54:25

So again, there's that human conversation between the editor and the writer and half of it's gone with AI.

54:33

I will say though that I do argue with AI very frequently when it tells me that's wrong. Yeah.

54:38

I was writing a paper on the idea of the

54:45

Holy Spirit as the consubstantial love of father and the son and the thought of Augustine, Lombard and Aquinas.

54:50

Very fun title. And I was wondering, I'm like, cause there's a part where Lombard talks about love and the soul being uncreated if love is consubstantial with the spirit versus Aquinas who says love and soul is created.

55:04

And so I asked, I'm like, where do you, I said, does Lombard believe that love and the soul is uncreated or created?

55:13

And it was like, he believes it's created. And I'm like, but doesn't he say here this? And it says, oh, it appears I was wrong about or something like that.

55:20

I mean, really, I'm in your tutorial here. What was that? I'm in your tutorial here.

55:26

I should start taking notes. You just push back a little and it'll self -correct. They'll be like, oh, that is true.

55:32

I am curious. I mean, you're both obviously in academia, one is student, one is professor.

55:39

I would think grading is a nightmare. Like, aren't the students all using this for their papers? How would you detect it?

55:47

I mean, as I said, the Boolean search can get a, oh, what do you call it?

55:53

I mean, can expose plagiarism. So that was an easy one. You could just bang. I know you were. I used to use it.

55:59

I used to grade with it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know the drill. And they're trickier now. I think there are programs where they can surface these.

56:07

I was talking, who was it? It was, oh, I think Wiley said that Touchstone, Touchstone Magazine, if they ever detect it, they're blackballed from ever publishing there again.

56:20

So somehow there are ways to catch it. You know, I mentioned one other thing when I was,

56:25

I guess it was the spring. I was checking out at Walgreens there in Moscow and one of the

56:31

University of Idaho students was running the cash register. And I don't know if they call it cash registers anymore, but at any rate, we connected on academia and I was, oh,

56:41

I'm teaching here. Oh, I go to school here and back and forth. And he said, look, I've got this paper and it was supposed to be six pages long and I just came up with three.

56:50

And so I went to AI and ask it to fluff it. And it came in and did just great. So sometimes, you know, they'll say any pasture worth of salt will go 45 minutes or something like that.

57:03

And so he says, I've only got 30 minutes. I gotta make this a 45 minute thing. So I'll fluff it.

57:08

And so I think there are all kinds of ways, as you say, to shortcut the hard work of just sensibility.

57:17

And so I'm just kind of an old scary old man saying not so fast.

57:22

Did you tell him you'd get an F in my class for if you did that? I don't, I was trying to be amiable and I think

57:29

I gave him a business card that has a gospel on the back. So I didn't take that on, but I would have.

57:37

The other Paul says, best way to consider AI tech is as an assistant, like a paralegal doing much of the granular research for the lawyer, letting him focus on the big picture output.

57:48

See, again, I find it wrong sometimes. I don't know what happened, but it used to be when you did like a general

57:55

Google search or whatever, it would be with that brand, but now it's kind of an AI thing. And I think probably a third of the time

58:02

I find it's just wrong or it's not up to date. I'll say, oh, who did they bomb?

58:09

What did they bomb? And it's the next day and they'll say, well, they haven't bombed yet. Or say, well, wait, wait, wait.

58:14

And so sometimes they're late. And then other times they get the wrong guy. So I don't find it so flawless.

58:25

I want to be too confident. Jimmy Starfish asks, how would you approach evangelism without,

58:32

I think he means with a friend who believes we're living in a simulation. You say that's true.

58:39

And God is the simulator. God's a programmer, easy, boom.

58:46

You know, it was a guy, I forget somebody was refuting Barclay. He said that everything is experience and he kicked a rock and said, see, and I mean, that doesn't really refute

58:57

Barclay, but you just think there are all kinds of ways. I don't think you want to slap him, but you just kind of hit myself in the head and see

59:07

I'm not, it hurt. And a person - He doesn't really believe that, right? He doesn't really believe that.

59:13

You know, like, come on. Yeah, good point. But it sounds so cool, you know.

59:20

It's in the matrix, I guess, right? Will originality eventually be so scarce that it will be considered a talent or skill that will set you apart?

59:29

This is an interesting thought. So we'll, with preaching, maybe we could apply that. Will the actual preachers who don't rely on AI, who it's obvious that you might even have mistakes or musicians who have make a mistake now and then, because will that actually become its own tradable commodity?

59:51

Yeah. Yeah, you know, it is interesting. I mean, already it's true that some people have more originality, and I think

59:58

Aristotle said one of the signs of genius is that you can come up with metaphors or analogies or something, see comparisons.

01:00:05

And so other people can do that with illustrations. I was listening to an old Billy Graham thing the other day, or I was listening to John MacArthur this morning, and they come up with trenchant kinds of things.

01:00:15

And I think some of the guys are really gifted in putting together arresting and pointed stuff.

01:00:21

Others are more pedestrian. So already there's a little bit of a hierarchy or something that comes out.

01:00:30

But I do think there are a lot of people who have originality that could be cultivated, and it would just be suppressed.

01:00:39

I mean, they would never be pressed to do it. Or they'd be discouraged, like, oh,

01:00:44

I don't have the golden feather, you know, so I'm nobody, so I'll just use AI. I think a lot of people could be stirred to originality.

01:00:55

Well, we're over an hour, so I wanna probably make this the last one, even though there's some really good comments after this.

01:01:03

But Brianna Hill says, my 19 -year -old daughter has a coworker in his 40s who believes we are in a multiverse where there are other versions of you living out in different lives.

01:01:13

Maybe it's because we have a philosopher on today. We're getting all these questions. You know, I was talking to someone just actually yesterday who had some really just kind of out there ideas, and I'm finding that more and more and more as I talk to people, that it's like 2020 broke everyone.

01:01:31

They don't trust any narrative. And now, of course, it's like, I was saying this to my wife.

01:01:37

I haven't fully developed this, but I'm like, man, to some people, it's like Joe Rogan's their Bible now. And they're not evaluating it based upon necessarily if it makes sense.

01:01:48

They're not thinking through it. It's just if it sounds good to them, if it resonates.

01:01:53

Well, I think you've said it, Matthew. It's vibes and feels. And anyway, yeah,

01:02:00

I don't know. I don't know what you do exactly with that. You just preach the truth then, I guess, right? That's all you can do.

01:02:05

I mean, the power of the Holy Spirit jumps on the gospel and jumps on the word and does the convicting.

01:02:11

But no, philosophers do games like this all the time. They'll say, you know, who's to say it's not the case that the world was created five seconds ago, complete with memories and all that kind of stuff?

01:02:24

Yeah, disprove that. Well, I can't or something, you know? But why would someone want to believe that?

01:02:32

I do think, you know, with standpoint epistemology and postmodernism and feelings and, you know, it's fertile ground.

01:02:42

I will say this though. I was at one of the side meetings at the SBC and somebody was giving a report of all the revivals that are breaking out on campuses.

01:02:52

And so, you know, you're 1 ,000 people at Ohio State and here's a big deal down at Auburn. These things are happening.

01:02:59

I think we have become so dissolute and confused that, you know, maybe the dawn is the night's darkest right before the dawn.

01:03:10

I think something may be bubbling up and it's not just, I think, appreciation for Christ and holiness and the word, but it's an impatience with just craziness.

01:03:20

And I'm encouraged. I think something, it's almost this whole trans thing and there are other things that are so loony and so revolting actually, that I think along with some of AIS imagination that we're being set up for a breakthrough in a holy sensibility.

01:03:39

I'm hopeful of that. I'm encouraged to hear that. That's a good note to end it on. I actually, I thought you were gonna go the other way and be like, yeah, but we can't trust those numbers or something.

01:03:47

And I'm like, yeah, but no, you're actually, it sounds like there's legitimate - If I get past 1 ,000 at Auburn, how many are really saved?

01:03:54

I mean, you know, it's, who knows, but still there's something moving. And I think there's some good holiness and I think people are kind of vomiting up nonsense more and more.

01:04:07

Yeah. Yeah, I see some of that with younger people. I'm sure Matthew sees it cause he's in that Zoomer generation.

01:04:13

There's a lot of, it seems like everything's up for grabs kind of. Like people are just, you can't share with them.

01:04:21

It's like Mars Hill, right? It's like, hey, let's see what this seed picker has to say. And they're not gonna be totally offended by it.

01:04:27

So tremendous opportunity. Well, with that, thank you for coming on the podcast.

01:04:33

This has really been fun. You guys are amazing. I'm learning a lot here, so thank you. If you could dial me in every day about this time and give me a tutorial,

01:04:41

I think I may grow up one day. Yeah, Matthew also helps older people learn how to use Windows.

01:04:46

No, I'm just kidding. Really? No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. That's great. I have a diesel computer,

01:04:53

Matthew. A diesel, yeah. It's reliable, the fumes are bad, but it's holding up well. So any of you can give him.

01:04:59

That was an actual job I remember like 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Someone asked me, would you wanna go teach people?

01:05:06

They pay good. But anyway, you can go to markcoppinger .com if you wanna find out more and see

01:05:14

Mark's writings. And yeah, so God bless as always and go serve the

01:05:20

Lord, everyone who's listening and take this with you. And hey, the times,

01:05:26

I don't know what's even going on. The headlines probably changed as we did this podcast on the Middle East, but just just to remind everyone, please pray, not just for Israel, also pray for Iran, doing a lot of reading on them.

01:05:38

And man, it's just, they're a real people and pray for us, pray for wisdom and we'll see you next week.

01:05:46

God bless. Thank you, thank God for you guys. And yeah, thanks very much.