Today’s the day, and I’m publishing early. Surgery to relieve my enlarged prostate is scheduled for today, Thursday, February 27, 10:30a, MST. Please pray for my friend and fellow believer Dr. John Mancini and his team. It’s an out-patient procedure. We report at 9:00a and can go home as soon as I recover from anesthesia.

We finished Book 1 of the Psalms yesterday with Psalm 41, which opens:

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. Blessed is he who considers the poor; The LORD will deliver him in time of trouble. The LORD will preserve him and keep him alive, And he will be blessed on the earth; You will not deliver him to the will of his enemies. The LORD will strengthen him on his bed of illness; You will sustain him on his sickbed. (Psalm 41.0 – 3, NKJV)

“The LORD will strengthen him on his bed of illness…”

Psalm 41 and Psalms, Book 1, ends:

But You, O LORD, be merciful to me, and raise me up, That I may repay them. By this I know that You are well pleased with me, Because my enemy does not triumph over me. As for me, You uphold me in my integrity, And set me before Your face forever.

Blessed be the LORD God of Israel From everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen. (Psalm 41.10 – 13, NKJV)

As we progress through our reading program in the Wisdom (Poetry) section of the Old Testament, we’re nearing the end of Psalms, Book 1. We’ll start Job on Thursday. We’ve already observed there A LOT of prayers for deliverance.

Psalm 40 opens with praise:

I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me, And heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth— Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the LORD. (Psalm 40.1 – 3, NKJV)

As I await tomorrow’s surgery, I’m resonating with this.

Psalm 40 also contains a verse June and I claimed during the early days of our marriage (56+ years ago!):

Many, O LORD my God, are Your wonderful works Which You have done; And Your thoughts toward us Cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them, They are more than can be numbered. (Psalm 40.5, NKJV)

And we have certainly found that verse to be true.

And even though the psalm opens with praise for deliverance, it closes with yet another prayer for deliverance:

Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; O LORD, make haste to help me!…But I am poor and needy; Yet the LORD thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God. (Psalm 40.13, 17, NKJV)

There’s nothing like being sick to remind us of our frailty and mortality. June fell on December 7 and broke several small bones in her pelvis. Right after she turned the corner on January 15, my prostate decided to act up. I’ve been out of commission ever since, now awaiting surgery coming up in a few days.

Psalm 39 is clear. Life is temporary:

LORD, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, And does not know who will gather them. (Psalm 39.4 – 6, NKJV)

James agrees:

For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. (James 4.14, NKJV)

As does Moses in Psalm 90:

For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; We finish our years like a sigh. The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90.9 – 12, NKJV)

As June and I approach 80, we’ve been keenly aware that our warranties ran out at age 70! I pointed this out to Pastor John who called to check on me recently, and he responded: “To be exchanged by a lifetime warranty.” Amen.

As I enter this week, I’m looking forward to surgery on Thursday to alleviate my enlarged prostate problem. Sorry, it’s not a glamourous disease like, say, breast cancer, but millions of us (older) men suffer from it in one degree or another. Maybe even King David!

My wounds are foul and festering Because of my foolishness. I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are full of inflammation, And there is no soundness in my flesh. (Psalm 38.5 – 7, NKJV)

That’s more identification with a psalm than I want!

David ends Psalm 38 with a prayer:

Do not forsake me, O LORD; O my God, be not far from me! Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation! (Psalm 38.21, 22, NKJV)

If you don’t feel a need for such a prayer right now, pray it for me! Thanks.

Yesterday we introduced the excellent essay AI and All Its Splendors by Jeffrey Bilbro where he observes that AI seems to offer “ease and justice” – a utopia by which tech “…will make “everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.”

What’s wrong with that, you say? Bilbro argues that it’s the same temptation Satan offered Jesus: “All this I’ll give you if you fall down and worship me.”

Then Bilbro transitions to how Jesus lived and how we should live, also. Here are the paragraphs that startled me:

It is significant, I think, that Jesus never tells us to love the world. God so loves the world, but Jesus tells us to love our neighbor. And the parable of the Good Samaritan, which he tells to identify our neighbors, reminds us how tempting it is to avoid the personal work of love (Luke 10:25–37). 

The priest and the Levite could rationalize their lack of concern for the wounded man in terms of efficiency and abstract justice. They had more important work to do, work that would make a bigger impact than helping one man. But our obligation isn’t to maximize our efficacy; it is to care for the sufferer who lies before us, just as the Samaritan did. 

When Jesus concluded the parable by telling his hearers to “go and do likewise,” he was commanding us to love our neighbors in the slow, difficult, sacrificial manner of his own earthly ministry.

“Our obligation isn’t to maximize our efficacy; it is to care for the sufferer who lies before us…” Then Bilbro transitions to talking about the 3mph ministry that I have written about before.

Our vocation as Christ followers, then, is to follow the path that Jesus trod, to walk slowly with others, to suffer, and—ultimately—to become capable of embodying God’s presence to others. The means are essential to this calling…

Jesus did good things slowly, and so must we. As the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama writes in Three Mile an Hour God, “God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster.” Jesus didn’t jet around the world; he walked around Judea. He didn’t proclaim his message instantly across continents; he slowly discipled fishermen and tax collectors. As tempting as ease may be, we must refuse technologies that promise to automate our relationships with the world and with one another. 

The essay concludes:

If we follow in Jesus’ steps—if we live slowly, do good things however inefficiently, and share the extravagant grace we’ve been given—the temptations of AI, like all false promises and demonic temptations, will grow dim and unconvincing. 

“…live slowly, do good things…inefficiently…” It’s a good word.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5.16, NKJV)

And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful. (Titus 3.14, NKJV)

You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2.1, 2, NKJV)

I was a huge Star Trek fan back in the day. When I started working from home in the 1990s, the original William Shatner series was broadcast daily at 4p. I saw most episodes at least once. Then they started broadcasting The Next Generation, and I saw most of those episodes at least once. The eschatology (study of end times) of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek was that technology was going to usher in a golden age. All physical needs would be met, and people could use their time exploring and thinking great thoughts.

I was reminded of all this when I read a fantastic essay AI and All Its Splendors by Jeffrey Bilbro. I recommend the (long) article in its entirety or this summary, about a third as long, (ironically) expertly rendered by AI. The essay opens:

Every few weeks, it seems, another AI achievement sets the world abuzz. It speaks! It paints! It digests a whole book and spits out a 10-minute podcast! 

This is generative AI, the large computing models that dazzle and worry us with their humanlike output. We’ve become accustomed to hearing about AI, but have we considered what it really offers us? Most simply: a promise of ease and justice. 

With the proper application of AI, its enthusiasts tell us, we won’t have to work so hard. Our economy will be more equitable, our laws and their enforcement closer to impartial, the slow and faulty human element bypassed altogether. We will achieve a painless and mechanistic fairness. 

Sounds like Star Trek’s vision of the future. Also sounds like promises we’ve read about before. The essay continues:

Here, rather than dwell on any individual technological feat, I want to examine those two tempting offers. Long before generative AI became a reality, these temptations were offered elsewhere: by science fiction villains and by the Devil when he came to Jesus in the wilderness. 

That fiction can be an illuminating warning, and Jesus’ response to temptation—and the manner of his ministry—can help us respond to AI in ways befitting our vocation as creatures made in the image of God.

Do people really believe technology is the answer? Oh yes, they do. Venture capitalist and technology optimist Marc Andreesen does:

“I am here to bring the good news,” Andreessen wrote in downright messianic terms, announcing “that there is no material problem—whether created by nature or by technology—that cannot be solved with more technology.” With enough tech, he insisted, we’ll make “everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.” [Sounds like Star Trek, yes?]

What’s the problem? Bilbro writes:

The vision of humanity behind Andreessen-style paeans to AI…sees humans not as creatures called to participate in God’s restoration of the world but machines to be optimized and regulated by other, better machines. 

Science fiction authors have long warned readers about the risks of the machine world, many sketching its temptations from the same pattern I’ve traced in Andreessen’s manifesto: ease and justice. 

And he analyzes a number of books including Alexandria: A Novel, by Paul Kingsnorh, Brave New World, and A Wrinkle in Time. Please see the essay for detail. He then wraps up this part of the essay with:

All of these stories predate ChatGPT, but the temptations in them are far older than computers or the Industrial Revolution. In fact, they eerily recall the Devil’s temptation of Christ in the wilderness in Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13.

Satan had no app to dangle in front of the Messiah, but he too offered justice without effort or pain. He offered Jesus victory without the Cross. 

There’s more and too much to try to cram into one blog. The lesson so far is beware of shortcuts.

In tomorrow’s blog I’ll share the first paragraph in the essay that really grabbed my attention. We haven’t gotten to it yet, but it starts, “It is significant, I think, that Jesus never tells us to love the world.” Really? Who/what does Jesus tell us to love? Stay tuned.

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4.8, 9, NKJV)

It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. – Attributed to Yogi Berra

Yet that is exactly what Psalm 37 does: predict the future to give us God’s perspective. (All quotes from Psalm 37, NKJV, unless otherwise stated)

A Psalm of David. Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And wither as the green herb. (0, 1, 2)

The future of evildoers? They shall soon be cut down like the grass. The future of the righteous?

Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday. (3 – 6)

It’s “now” that we have problems with. The wicked seem to flourish while the righteous sometimes don’t do so well. But David confidently predicts the future:

A little that a righteous man has Is better than the riches of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, But the LORD upholds the righteous. (16, 17)

But the wicked shall perish; And the enemies of the LORD, Like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish. Into smoke they shall vanish away. (20)

A promise for our daily walk…

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the LORD upholds him with His hand. (23, 24)

A command with a promise…

Depart from evil, and do good; And dwell forevermore. For the LORD loves justice, And does not forsake His saints; They are preserved forever, But the descendants of the wicked shall be cut off. (27, 28)

A characteristic of the righteous…

The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom, And his tongue talks of justice. The law of his God is in his heart; None of his steps shall slide. (30, 31)

Back to the psalm’s theme about the future…

Mark the blameless man, and observe the upright; For the future of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together; The future of the wicked shall be cut off. (37, 38)

Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright it is not the end.
― Sonny Kapoor, Hotel Manager, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Back to the psalms, here are some highlights from Psalm 36.

I memorized this paragraph decades ago:

Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the great mountains; Your judgments are a great deep; O LORD, You preserve man and beast. (Psalm 36.5, 6, NKJV)

It’s a good source of praise. Our late pastor Dave Jordan-Irwin loved this passage in The Message and read it to us from time to time:

God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. (Psalm 36.5, 6, MSG)

Wow: meteoric, astronomic, titanic, oceanic…yet not a man, not a mouse slips through the cracks!

Here’s another highlight:

How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings. They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures. For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. (Psalm 36.7 – 9, NKJV)

“Abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house” – our recently acquired dog, Benji, is a picture of that. A rescue dog, two months in an animal shelter. Now he’s abundantly satisfied with the fullness of this house. I’m a rescue dog, too:

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus… (Ephesians 2.1 – 7, NKJV)

Worse than a rescue dog. Dead. Now alive, sitting with Jesus, just as my dog is sitting with me as I write.

We observed yesterday how liberal Protestantism can kill a church, and I have a related example right from the pages of our local Colorado Springs newspaper, the Gazette. First the setup:

A friend of ours is serving on the pulpit search committee for a small relatively conservative church in a mainline denomination. Our friend is very conservative and was dismayed to find that one of her colleagues on the committee expressed hope that they might find a pastor who was “culturally progressive.” I advised her to ask that person why she wanted their church to get smaller since culturally progressive churches are hemorrhaging members while many Bible believing, Bible teaching churches are growing.

After reading a story in the Gazette, I have a better question: “Which vibrant evangelical church do you think will buy our facilities when we can no longer maintain them?”

First Christian Church of Colorado Springs is one of eight downtown churches established by Colorado Springs’ founder General Palmer, who wanted the city to be “Christian.” They’ve been in a magnificent building since the 1930s.

In the 1990s, they were hosting the men’s chapter of Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). I was part of it and was there every Monday night with hundreds of other men. The church would have had to have conservative leadership to offer their facilities to BSF. The church was doing so well that they were able to invest in a new pipe organ. BSF men were among the volunteers to help unload the parts. But…

Faced with declining membership and financial issues, 93% of First Christian’s members voted to sell the property in October 2023. – Gazette, February 13, 2025

Why? The theme of the article is about changes being made to the facility by the new buyer, Woodmen Valley Chapel, a multi-site mega church in the area. Among the changes was the sale of the pipe organ to a church in Albuquerque since Woodmen’s contemporary worship style had no need for a pipe organ.

The paragraph that grabbed me, however, was this one:

Rainbow banners won’t be on display, as was a focus of First Christian Church, a member of the Disciples of Christ Protestant denomination that since 2013 “affirms and welcomes LGBTQ+ people in all aspects of church life, including leadership roles.”

Can you say, “culturally progressive”? By contrast,

While nondenominational, Woodmen Valley Chapel takes a traditional Christian stance on matters of human sexuality, gender, marriage and clergy.

First Christian Church is now meeting in a small chapel attached to First Methodist Church a few blocks away.

Sad.

Apparently, it’s not a new problem:

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude, verses 3 and 4, NKJV)

There are a lot of ways to do church badly. As I wrote yesterday, even good churches can drop the ball by over-concentrating on the Sunday morning service at the expense of relational disciple-making activities.

Another way is worse: quit preaching the gospel altogether. I was shocked to read a paragraph from a weekly newsletter from Dr. Ryan Danker of the John Wesley Institute. Dr. Danker introduced an essay on the “new birth” by describing his experience teaching it in a liberal Methodist seminary:

[The new birth was] uncharted territory to the vast majority of my students but it struck one of them harder than the rest. She had grown up as a Methodist and was now preparing in a Methodist seminary for ministry in a Methodist denomination and she had never even heard of the new birth. No one had told her that God wants to make her alive in him. And she broke into tears. – Ryan Danker, February 6, 2025

I wrote to Dr. Danker:

As a non-seminary-trained guy, I’m trying to figure out what we do in our seminaries (and who we recruit to our seminaries). Here’s my problem: the doctrine of the new birth is not some deep, esoteric piece of arcane theology. It’s taught quite plainly in the New Testament. John 3, of course, and also 1 Peter 1.23. “No one had told her that God wants to make her alive in him.” That, of course, is clearly presented in Ephesians 2.

What I’m hearing you say is that most of your students had never read the Bible. If seminary students aren’t reading the Bible, it’s no wonder that their parishioners aren’t reading the Bible either. – Bob Ewell to Ryan Danker, February 6, 2025

The good doctor was kind enough to respond:

The problem that you noted is one found amongst progressives in the mainline. My students were raised in mid-Atlantic United Methodism and for many of them the faith was something that comforts, but not something that transforms. They had been taught liberal Protestantism. Transformation was not personal because we are already accepted as we are – all are welcome – and the role of the church was to tell people that they are welcome, not to change them. Any change would be societal or political. 

I taught at the liberal seminary as a token conservative. Another joined the faculty while I was there, but we have now both gone on to other things. 

So the problem you mentioned is a systemic one in which theological educators over many decades trained clergy who didn’t preach the fullness of the gospel. The result is a dead Methodism, particularly in areas of the country in which these seminaries exist. – Ryan Danker, correspondence with Bob Ewell, February 13, 2025

His response needs no further clarification except to point out that “liberal Protestantism” is really a separate religion, at least according to the book Against Liberal Theology by Roger E. Olson. Here’s a portion of the introduction:

[Liberal Christians’] theology is seriously flawed to the extent that true liberal Christianity ought not to be considered authentically Christian. Honesty calls for liberal Christians to admit that they have “cut the cord of continuity” between their religion and historical, classical, orthodox Christianity to the extent that their religion is a different one…My opinion, based on many years of studying liberal Christianity, is that liberal theology is not authentically Christian because it departs so radically from biblical and traditional Christian orthodoxy. — Against Liberal Theology: Putting the Brakes on Progressive Christianity by Roger E. Olson

And the result is “a dead Methodism,” a shame since the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, was a man of the Word who experienced the new birth and taught biblical engagement. I’ve used some of his stuff, especially when working with Methodist churches.

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, ‘These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” (Revelation 3.1, NKJV)

PS Naturally, not all Methodist churches are dead neither are all mainline churches of other denominations. I’ve worked with some good ones over the years. The “remnant” maybe. But many are dead or dying. Stay tuned for a close-to-home example.