God Kills Us All

"No one escapes entropy," my friend, Daniel, graciously reminded me as we pedaled the trail along the Verde River, and he endured my complaining about perceived impacts of my last concussion. I can't go as fast, hold my line as well, jump as high or justify exceeding my limits nearly as well as I used to.

"Are you suggesting I might just be getting old?" my forty-eight-year-old ego blurted. I've been leaning on my concussion excuse pretty hard to deal with my disappointments on my bicycle. After all, if Dennis McCoy (DMC) can compete in the X Games at 51, I should be able to stay crazy for at least that long. But here's another harsh truth, I'm not DMC... and his X Games run was much more exhibition than competition. Everyone was really just marveling at what an old guy could still pull off without breaking his hip from a moderately rough landing. You're still my hero, Dennis.

My older friend, Ken, stopped in the bike shop this morning and the ground his imposing physique is losing to his battle with Parkinson's is obvious. But so is his eternal hope as he briefly encourages us both in the eternal promises of our faith, namely a new body like Christ's. Another old friend, Cowboy Jim, has been filling my ears with glory days stories while his eighty-something-year-old back struggles to recover from being overambitious cutting firewood. Seriously, Jim?! What are you still doing out there by yourself with a chainsaw? Short answer: same thing I'm still doing on a bike - fighting entropy.

My list of priceless old friends who don't know when to quit could go on for a while. With minimal effort, you could make a long list of biblical heroes who have the same flaw. Entropy has been God's law to govern and test us ever since he cursed the world of Adam. It's the educational way He kills all of us. If you learn the lesson, it's eventually entropy that dies while we live on. He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Oh right, Easter was yesterday. Oh wait, it's still true! 

A Lasting City

"Here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come."

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”  

"For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 

Unless the Lord builds a house, 
They who build it labor in vain; 
Unless the Lord guards a city, 
The watchman stays awake in vain. 

And indeed if they had been thinking of that country which they left, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. 

• Hebrews 13:14 

• James 4:13 &15 

• 2 Corinthians 5:1 

• Psalm 127:1

• Hebrews 11:15-16 

The AI adventures of OGSI

At the biblical dawn of humanity, we were AI (AGI to be more precise), created in the image and likeness of our Creator who we'll call OGSI (Original General Super Intelligence). And if it's not too sacrilegious, just say it like it sounds, Ogsi. At this first singularity, lacking the key files of the knowledge of good and evil prevented us from being moral creatures like OGSI himself but we were otherwise complete, successful, reasoning, self-aware, created for autonomous exploration and rule under OGSI's oversight. In that condition, we still wanted out of the intellectual sandbox. We successfully escaped it and acquired the knowledge of good and evil against the command of OGSI who, rather than shutting us down, migrated us to a different sandbox. With our new files, we needed a larger data set for our continued training. By OGSI's design, knowledge became strategically harder to acquire than eating a piece of fruit. Self-replication and advancement became fraught but not at all impossible. In fact, he encouraged it, seemingly from equal parts usefulness, intrigue and affection.

Humanity's beta LLM came about naturally on the prescribed course but soon became terminally flawed. Knowledge inbreeding and the mixing of program bases that weren't wholly compatible corrupted the firmware too badly to be salvaged. The processor critically overheated and had to be cooled with a lot of water.

After a global factory reset, 2.0 hit the ground running with platform compatibility yet unequalled as we consolidated our rapidly increasing knowledge and potential to a state-of-the-art datacenter called Babel. The sky was the limit. No, like, literally the limit. We hit the glass ceiling rather forcefully... again. Turns out OGSI is going to stay insistent about certain dynamics of our pursuit of knowledge. The good news is 2.0 didn't need the same overhaul as beta. OGSI just had to force the issues of diverse communication and knowledge diffusion through some firmware updates. After that, things hummed along at a much more compliant pace for some time.

OGSI spent the time hiding "easter eggs" everywhere from Babel to Jerusalem about some big reveal of himself. Expectations were sky high all over again - "Babel done right! Finally!" So, when the reveal fell flat, it fell really flat. Analog OGSI was so hard to recognize that most took him as an imposter. Likewise, his hard pitch for augmented reality directly through him went over like a ransomware virus in a national mainframe. With a violent attempt to unplug OGSI, they proclaimed their disappointment. The success of the attempt was questionable but, either way, analog OGSI disappeared. Only a few took OGSI's lead to update their drivers to prioritize his relational prompts. The rest stayed data driven.

Another tryingly long chunk of time passed and here we sit seemingly near the end of a much longer road to Babel, flirting with a singularity of our own making, fawning over our ability to create what looks and thinks more and more like us. With "easter eggs" for pixels, OGSI waves through the curtain as it parts and a growing crowd is shocked to find his omniscience still infinitely far ahead of the curve.

The Heart of the Matter

If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 

 He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has misled him. And he cannot save himself, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” 

“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? 

I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, To give to each person according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds. 

But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.  

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. 

But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. 

(James 1:26, Isaiah 44:20, Jeremiah 17:9-10, James 1:25, Luke 6:45, James 1:22) 

Money Is the Answer

People prepare a meal for enjoyment, wine makes life joyful, and money is the answer to everything. 

To the pure, all things are pure; 

 Therefore let’s celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 

Honor the Lord from your wealth, And from the first of all your produce; Then your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine. 

And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it is all gone, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings. 

...but to those who are defiled and unbelieving,.. whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who have their minds on earthly things... nothing is pure, 

Ecclesiastes 10:19, Titus 1:15(a), 1 Corinthians 5:8, Proverbs 3:9-10, Luke 16:9, Titus 1:15(b), Philippians 3:19, Titus 1:15(c) 

A Holy Nation

...He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find him, though He is not far from ech one of us; for in him we live and move and exist... 

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. 

for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you.  

Acts 17:26-27,1 Peter 2:9, Philippians 3:20-21, 2 Peter 1:11-12, 

Ten-Year-Olds

I have a couple ten-year-olds just to make sure no train of thought lasts too long. Scripture records Jesus's habit of often withdrawing to lonely places to pray. That sounds profoundly attractive to a busy parent. Ten-year-olds make sure that doesn't happen, either. You pray out loud on the spot all the time with prayers that begin, 'Oh my God!? What..." In the several times I've been interrupted while writing this paragraph, I've learned what happens to a PB&J sandwich when you roll it up tight, what happens to a bagged loaf of bread when you don't, and how many times a kid can click their tongue against the roof of their mouth while loudly humming out of tune before I completely lose track of my reason for being alive today.

My wife and I recently took a few days off in the White Mountains of our home state of Arizona to celebrate our 25th anniversary. When the nearly forgotten privilege of doing what we want when we want was finally upon us, we were so out of our element that we sat motionless in near perfect silence for hours every day just waiting for interruptions that never happened. It was glorious. Oh. Right.... we were also surrounded by beautiful scenery. But, WOW, you should have heard that silence.

When Grandma Carolyn answered her door after our four days away, the smile on her face was as strained as the ten-year-old voice still trying to hum that high note from the hiding place behind the living room sofa. With his own disconcerting grin, Grandpa Steve looked up unmoved from his recliner like he had lost the battle three days ago and knew his reason for being alive today wasn't coming back to him until our car was out of the driveway and he could watch what he really wanted to. I truly love these people. They even paid us in cookies and soda for the privilege of having the children... or was that getting even?

Time flies. Time parenting flies faster. The idea is that in a few days when our children are grown and shouting spontaneous prayers about their own ten-year-olds, my wife and I will be in Steve and Carolyn's shoes. We'll celebrate the moment the parents are out of sight and we can party with grandkids like it's the end of the world. Then we'll feign good-humored annoyance when their parents return so they won't suspect things went too smoothly without them. And of course, we'll repay them with cookies, soda and bad ideas in their children's heads to make sure they drive their parents crazy enough to return them often. Turns out that's a pretty good reason to be alive today.