Perspective
There was an article in the August, 2023, issue of Vanity Fair, an excerpt from Jonathan Taplan’s book, The End of Reality. As it maintains that four contemporary billionaires (Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreesen) are creating an alternate, autocratic reality what I like about it is the following quote. It flies in the face of the claim that “religion is the opium of the people.” (Karl Marx, 1843).
“The men (and they are mostly men) who are inventing this world of super machine intelligence and biological engineering tend not to believe in religion. But they want to be gods. As the writer and commentator G. K. Chesterton contended in 1932, ‘The truth is that Irreligion is the opium of the people. Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world they will worship the world. But, above all, they will worship the strongest thing in the world’.”
So it was with Adam and Eve at the start (worshipping knowledge, in essence, and thereby desiring that they themselves become the strongest thing in the nascent world). Satan is always tempting to move in such a direction. Thanks be to God for Jesus’ reminder: Matthew 4: 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God
and him only shall you serve.’”
Taking in all sorts of things
This was a part of my sermon two weeks ago. “When someone good-naturedly asked me the other day if a pastor can see a movie with an R rating other than “The Passion of the Christ” (we were planning to see '“Killers of the Flower Moon”) I somewhat facetiously responded that I need to know what the church is up against: what are the other things people are taking into their lives. For the very same reason I read “This Present Darkness,” the initial “Left Behind” book, and “The DaVinci Code” ages ago.”
Dr. Dale Meyer had a devotion, yesterday, which had much the same point. He was talking about reading some daily newspapers. “Why do I need old-style physical papers? Why do I need hundreds of non-religious books? If I presume to teach what the precious little we can know about God, I must try to know what’s going on outside my Christian life. Seminary professor Martin Scharlemann once said, ‘A pastor’s job is to interpret reality theologically.’ The 20th century theologian Karl Barth put it this way. ‘Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.’
Thank you for the input many of you have provided! That helps point out to me the ways in which I might better be a help to you in the living of a life of a child of God.
The Truly Creative
I was reading the work of Susan Sucher, who describes herself as a “domestic empress” when writing for the periodical, Gilbert. She was writing in the July/ August 2203, issue which was devoted to a treatment of artificial intelligence (AI), the technology looming on the horizon. Here is a brief quote wherein she relates where true wonder is to be found:
“Women have the natural ability to facilitate one of the most sacred acts on earth – the incarnation of a new human being with an eternal soul. Similarly, but in a lesser way, all people participate in human creation when they write a poem, grow a garden, or build a home. As Chesterton points out in The Everlasting Man, ‘art is the signature of man.’ It is the eternal soul that differentiates humans and allow us to participate with the Creator to bring new creations into the world. We are most fully human when we are co-creators with God to bring forth babies, art, poetry, and the work of human hands.”
“The power of a mother cannot be understated. Her ability to gestate, nurture, and educate her children is the closes thing to a superpower that humans possess.”
We are nowhere near Mothers’ Day, but this was too good to postpone. God bless all of God’s co-creators!
1 Corinthians 10: 31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Ephesians 2: 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.