spiphywarfare

Category: Commentary

  • You Need to Unplug

    You need to unplug sometimes. Unplug from the internet once in a while to do yourself some good. Negativity reigns there and constant soaking in the negativity of protests, political idiocy and humans offing each other in various wars will taint your views and your health.

    Unplug from Russia v Ukraine. Unplug from Israel v Iran. Unplug from “No Kings.” Unplug from calls about the end of Western Civilization. While you’re consuming “fear porn,” the birds are singing, rabbits are nibbling on someone’s vegetable garden, and the earth continues as it always has.

    I appreciated a thing that seems to have gone away. I used to see “timeline cleanse” posts occasionally that featured someone’s pet or kid doing something cute or funny. You don’t see them so much anymore. But those things still happen. And if you don’t unplug, you may find yourself being manipulated by algorithms seeking to keep you stressed and tensed. Not a good constant state to be in.

    Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

    Phillipians 4:6-7

  • AI Content Statement

    AI seems to be everywhere now. I’ve expressed my thoughts on it to people as, “AI will be the end of new knowledge.” All AI can do is reorder and reorganize knowledge it draws on from existing information. Over-reliance on AI will result in humans forgetting how to think creatively. Already it wants to make your blog post titles for you, suggest edits for you, and tell you when the best time to publish is etc. While I think it has limited use value, I think it should be declared when used.

    As such, I will place the following images at the top of articles from this day forward if a page has AI generated or edited content. The images and their meanings are below:

    This image indicates this page has video which contains AI content.

    This image will indicate a video on the page has AI generated content.

    This image indicates this page has text which contains AI content.

    This image indicates there is AI generated or manipulates textual content.

    This image indicates this page still image(s) which contains AI content.

    This image indicates there is at least one still image on the page that has been generated or edited using AI.

  • It’s so Tiresome

    It’s so Tiresome

    Digital Wasteland

    It seems, to me, that most social media is becoming a wasteland where you have to filter through trash ads, political takes disconnected from reality, and the delusions of the continuously online. To be honest, I probably spend more time than I should online, but I work to ground myself by doing simple things. Standing quietly and looking at a tree for a bit reminds me of what reality is. People watching works for me too.

    Disunity in Faith

    Lately, it’s gotten worse though. Most, not all, of my social media interaction is based either on family, friends, and my faith. The faith-based interactions have taken a troubling turn over the past year or so. There’s a conflict raging between two loose groups. Group one defines itself by labelling the other side Christian Nationalist, woke right, or other names. The other side defines itself by laughing at group one and then going about their business. It’s much deeper and far more complex than that but my intention isn’t to delve into the complexities that led to this point.

    No, my goal here is to express my disappointment in the first group. Largely, I would identify with much of what they hold to be true. Hitler was bad. It’s okay to be an ally with Israel. An inter-racial marriage isn’t sinful. So, it’s not their values that disappoint, I don’t think. Maybe as time goes on it will turn out to be that their values are in conflict with mine. It’s their apparent lack of ability to think rightly and see the world correctly. Something skews their perception and for the life of me, I don’t get it.

    A group of younger men are gaining influence simply by stating their positions unapologetically, and PhD holding men with long-time ministries spend their time crying and calling those young men childish, neo-Nazis, racist, etc. Somehow, these older men, who should know better, think their name calling is okay. They don’t get how foolish it makes them look. Their non-stop caterwauling is every bit as annoying as the cat that shows up every night at midnight to yeowl all night long outside your window. Enough already.

    Suggestion

    Maybe, rather than crying and whinging on about it, sit back and try to understand what is happening. Maybe take your supposed belief that God is sovereign over everything and contemplate that He is allowing or even causing this. Then maybe ponder Gamaliel’s warning to the Sanhedrin. I mean, that’s in the Bible. Is there any other stuff in God’s Word that might help?

    If only God had given us guidance here. Can Christians be different and have different roles? Can they be one while still being like, I don’t know, a human body? Maybe some are like the eyes and provide information to help navigate the body while others are like the feet and stomp through the mud and dust of culture. Something, like that would have been helpful.

    I write this knowing they’ll probably never see it and if they do, they’ll dismiss it as only so much grumbling from the rabble that don’t have their theological degrees or the proper high-mindedness to be taken seriously. That’s the part that’s most disappointing, they’re old enough (and should be wise enough), to know better. Scolding them isn’t working and in case you haven’t figured it out yet, it won’t work.

    These older Christian men should be able to rise above the noise and find unity in our shared values and service to our Master.