Devotional from Pastor Dave July 12, 2023

Recently I was reading back through the Signal Crest history book, “It Was Meant To Be,” which was published back in 1997. In the back of that book is the text of a speech that a Signal Crest church member Frank W. Wilson delivered at the Holston Annual Conference at Lake Junaluska, NC, in June of 1968. Mr. Wilson was a federal district court judge. The church’s library is named for him. It is a fascinating speech in which he addresses some of the “false faiths of our time,” such as wealth, technology, and even the law itself.

His speech includes these words about the astonishing technological advances of the times:

“A television program last week demonstrated how the computer might well replace the doctor in the field of medical diagnosis. At a judicial conference I attended within recent days, we were told that the computer would soon be writing judicial decisions for us. I haven’t heard it suggested yet that the computer will soon be writing sermons, but ministers should take heart for help is surely coming!” (p. 145)

When I read these words, it stopped me in my tracks. How prescient Judge Wilson’s words from 55 years ago were about the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) today. I don’t know how much medical advice or legal decisions AI is providing, but I did read that about 300 people attended a worship service last month in Fuerth, Germany, in which a chatbot generated and delivered a relatively coherent experimental sermon. Lord, help us all!

There is a lot of fascination with, and concern about, AI and its potential impact upon human life. Like every technology that has come before it, we will need to find ways to learn how to use it wisely and constructively to enhance and not detract from human flourishing. Ultimately we will need to rely upon God, whom we might call the OI – Original Intelligence – for that kind of wisdom and guidance.

To paraphrase the prologue to the Gospel of John, the Word of God – the OI of God – through which all things came into existence did not become computer code to be embedded into mechanical hardware, but instead became flesh, became a living, breathing human being, and dwelt among us, became embedded within the human family. “And we have seen his glory,” John writes, “the glory as of the Father’s only Son” (John 1:14).

For all of its fascinating potential, I don’t believe our AI will ever be capable of revealing the love and the mercy and the grace and the glory of our OI in quite the way that Jesus does. And I’d like to think that Judge Wilson would concur.