TESTING, TESTING, TESTING.
Insanity.
We’re living in an utterly insane world. No doubt about it. Two happenings stand out: Climate Change, the direct result of our infatuation with poisonous oil, fueled by our desire to speed up history, and AI, Artificial Intelligence, the brazen attempt to replace God by means of human ingenuity, inspired and infused and initiated by the Arch enemy, God’s eternal opponent, who was kicked out of heaven, and landed, feet first, on earth. All too evident in the events unfolding now.
TESTING: Is the church still a counterweight?
The church has basically become powerless, mainly because of its preaching of leaving the earth and going to heaven, promoting this heresy either actively or by implication. Of course, just as in World War II, 1939-45, in the Netherlands where I was born and lived till 1951, there were pockets of resistance to the German occupation, so too, today, there are reforming attempts by an Earth/Church movement, a sort of fifth column contingent consisting of a roaming remnant of religious refugees.
TESTING: Can they still affect change?
The climate crisis means that we have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade, the way we travel, the way we eat, the way we think, the way we pray, the way we bring THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. Of course, these needed changes ain’t gonne te happen: too drastic. So, God is going to affect the change Himself.
Should I mention debt?
In addition of the climate debt, which is too immense to be repaid or restored, there also is monetary debt, expressed in dollars or euros. The boastful US president who wants America to be first, has a first in the per capita national debt of $115,000 for each of the 350 million American, in addition to their personal debt, such as mortgage, car payments, credit card money owed. It all is based on steady, well-paying jobs, now endangered by AI taking over routine work.
TESTING GOD.
There is fierce competition out there who or what will rule the world. The final battle is about to happen. Not only we are being tested: God too is on probation.
Of course, this has always been the age-old contest, starting in Paradise, openly staged in the Bible, as recorded in 1 Kings 18, describing a contest between God and Baal.
As Robert Wright puts it in his bookThe God Test: “Never before has the near-term future … held such a wide array of not-implausible paths for humankind that would be so wildly transformative.” But will this be heaven or hell? Heaven, says Elon Musk, who predicts “an age of amazing abundance” – although he also sees a 10-20% chance of killer robots murdering us all. Hell is more likely according to Geoffrey Hinton, one of the intellectual founding fathers of AI. “My intuition is, we’re toast,” he told an interviewer in 2023. And talking to Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Infinity Machine, a book about the quest for superintelligence, Hinton estimates p(doom) – the probability of human extinction – at 50%, “because I haven’t got a clue how to estimate the real number”. “As soon as evolution [of AI] kicks in, we’re fucked,” he adds cheerfully. But whether it’s God or Godzilla, artificial superintelligence is just around the corner.
That battle, that age-old battle, is now reaching a climax.
TESTING TECHNOLGY.
There was a prophet, a French Christian, Jacques Ellul, who wrote The Technological Society, more than 70 years ago. I bought the English version in 1965.
In his 1954 book the French author and philosopher Jacques Ellul discusses an idea he refers to as “technique,” which he defines as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity”; in other words, the idea of technology divorced from any specific machine, advancement, innovation, or field of science or industry.
After putting forth his definition, Ellul offered a startling hypothesis: Technology has already outpaced humanity, and it is only a matter of time before humans lose control over it. Having control over a particular type of technology, such as computers or automobiles, is meaningless, Ellul believes, because technology as a whole has a life and mind of its own. Furthermore, he fears any solution we might develop to counter the controlling effects of technology has already been countered by technology itself, even if we do not know the details of said solution. That is how far ahead we’ve allowed technology to progress. This hypothesis is especially startling when one considers that it has been more than 70 years since Ellul formulated it.
Jacques Ellul. A true prophet.
Testing times.
God is testing us. Life is always a battle: Now the lines are drawn: succumb to the machine, or live the Kingdom life in preparation for the New World to come.
Pray without ceasing, especially for the roaming remnant of religious refugees, me included, both within the church and elsewhere. Always thinking and hoping.