Our Prophets reading program takes us into Joel today. It’s a short book comparing a recent invasion of locusts to a future “Day of the Lord.” Eugene Peterson writes:

When disaster strikes, understanding of God is at risk. Unexpected illness or death, national catastrophe, social disruption, personal loss, plague or epidemic, devastation by flood or drought, turn men and women who haven’t given God a thought in years into instant theologians. Rumors fly: “God is absent” … “God is angry” … “God is playing favorites, and I’m not the favorite” … “God is ineffectual” … “God is holding a grudge from a long time ago, and now we’re paying for it” …

It is the task of the prophet to stand up at such moments of catastrophe and clarify who God is and how he acts. If the prophet is good—that is, accurate and true—the disaster becomes a lever for prying people’s lives loose from their sins and setting them free for God…

The event that Joel used as his text was a terrible locust plague that was devastating the crops of Israel, creating an agricultural disaster of major proportions. He compared it to a massive military invasion...

There is a sense in which catastrophe doesn’t introduce anything new into our lives. It simply exposes the moral or spiritual reality that already exists but was hidden beneath an overlay of routine, self-preoccupation, and business as usual. Then suddenly, there it is before us: a moral universe in which our accumulated decisions—on what we say and do, on how we treat others, on whether or not we will obey God’s commands—are set in the stark light of God’s judgment.

In our everyday experience, right and wrong and the decisions we make about them seldom come to us neatly packaged and precisely defined. Joel’s prophetic words continue to reverberate down through the generations, making the ultimate connection between anything, small or large, that disrupts our daily routine, and God, giving us fresh opportunity to reorient our lives in faithful obedience. Joel gives us opportunity for “deathbed repentance” before we die, while there is still time and space for a lot of good living to the glory of God. – from Introduction to Joel, The Message Bible

The book opens with the locusts:

The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. (Joel 1.1 – 4, ESV)

The result?

Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white. (Joel 1.5 – 7, ESV)

There’s more. Stay tuned.

As we wrap up Hosea today, it’s the “usual” condemnation for forgetting God:

But I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought; but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me. So I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs… (Hosea 13.4 – 8, ESV)

“When they became full…they forgot me.”

Moses warned them:

“And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 6.10 – 15, ESV)

Hosea ends with a call for repentance…

Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, “Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy.” (Hosea 14.1 – 3, ESV)

…and Hosea’s last word is a reminder to discern God’s ways and “walk in them:”

Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the LORD are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them. (Hosea 14.9, ESV)

I’ve already written on my latest misgivings with AI in the form of ChatGPT. It’s entirely too chatty! Since then I’ve talked with four friends, two of whom are pastors, who use AI to help them in their work, and I’ve read more articles than I can count (since that’s all that’s in the news or on the OpEds these days). This blog will refer to some of those articles and lay out my position on AI, for what it’s worth. As you’ll see, I’m making observations and conclusions for myself. I’ll NOT be telling you what you should do. I hope this is my last blog on the subject, at least for a while.

Stuff I’ve read contains three basic messages:

• Apocalyptic: AI will destroy humanity; even AI insiders believe that, so we’re told.
• Praise: look at all the good it’s done already.
• Caution: it’s not human, but it pretends to be. Avoid it!

I’ve reached the conclusion that I’m not going to worry about or put much stock in the apopcalyptic predictions. First, there’s nothing I can do about it if it’s true. Second, it reminds me too much of stuff “they” have been feeding us for years. Overpopulation , global warming, for example. There’s always a group who wants to keep us in a “state of fear.” See The Purpose Behind the Panic. And often those who deploy a technology first want to write rules to keep others out. See AI and the Dangers of Electricity.

With respect to those who praise the technology, again, as Seth Godin pointed out, what I think doesn’t matter. The Amazing Things AI Is Already Doing for Humanity captures the point of view that AI is not causing the harm that was predicted AND it’s facilitated real progress in many fields.

On the problem that AI pretends to be human, I finally found some essays that share my concern. In Pygmalion’s Passion, Paul Kingsnorth shares an essay by Andrew Caspersen arguing that AI’s very nature is wrong:

Are there certain features or applications of AI that are inherently wrong? Yes! Marc Barnes uses natural law to show why conversing with a chatbot is a corruption of inter-personal communion. D.C. Schindler explains the essential duplicity of AI, which tricks the subconscious into accepting its personhood.¹

…

What I’m presenting is a very simple Christian argument against AI:

1. The human intellect was made in the divine image
2. AI seeks to replace at least part of our intellect in practice
3. Therefore, using AI would be a rejection of part of our divine image
4. A partial rejection of the divine image is a partial rejection of God Himself, one small act at a time.

There are two sources in the first paragraph above. Marc Barnes writes:

The nebulousness of the thing—ought we use the infinite-use machine?—forces me to consider a narrower case, a specific “use” of AI: generative AI in its form as the chatbot. 

It is obvious to me that it is immoral to speak with a chatbot—that you’d be doing a bad thing to type up a back and forth with Grok or Meta or ChatGPT or Truthly or Whoever, and that repeating this bad act of conversing with a fake person makes for a bad habit which will ultimately make you a bad person. 

…

Still, whatever category of wickedness we place the thing in—and I am prone to think of it as a form of “superstition”—here is where I stand: conversation with non-intelligence as if it were intelligence is disordered, a deliberate frustration of the natural end of the human act of conversation, which is for the sake of loving communion with another intelligence.  

This is the problem I recognized in my ChatGPT blog. The other source, D.C. Shindler, points out something I had also observed:

My rather simple contention is that AI is essentially duplicitous. In one sense, this is so obviously true it may seem hardly worth drawing attention to. But if the thesis is obvious, its significance is perhaps less so, and warrants more consideration and contemplation than we have been giving it. The reason it has such importance is that this new technology introduces duplicity more profoundly into the human soul than perhaps any other technology that the human spirit has yet devised.

I recommend you read all three essays in their entirety, Kingsnorth (Caspersen), Barnes, and Schindler.

So where are we?

• With respect to doom and gloom, we don’t know.
• With respect to net positive/net negative, we don’t know.
• None of us can escape certain applications of AI. It’s everywhere.
• The only thing I have control of is how and how much do I use it for myself. E.g., ChatGPT, Claude (Anthropic), etc.
  • Avoid it altogether (Caspersen’s, Barnes’, and Schindler’s position)
  • Use it with caution (my position)
  • Play with it “joyously” (Seth Godin’s position)

Does that make using an AI chatbot a “disputable” matter? I think it does. If so, does Paul’s counsel apply?

Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. (Romans 14.13, 14, ESV)

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor…So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10.23, 24, 31, ESV)

PS This essay needs a lot more work, but I’m tired of wrestling with issues that are mostly “above my pay grade.”

Yes, it’s October 4, so what? Regular blog readers might remember that I always recognize October 4…1957. I was 10 years old, and in the sixth grade on October 4, 1957, the day the world’s first earth-orbiting satellite was launched by the Soviet Union. It was called, simply, Sputnik, the Russian word for satellite.

Less than twelve years later, July 20, 1969, the United States put a man on the moon. Thirteen years after Sputnik’s launch, I was tracking Sputnik’s successors from a radar site in Turkey. Today, we carry in our hand a device that picks up signals from a constellation of satellites and tells us exactly where we are and how to get to where we want to go.

King Solomon was a very wise man, and he was right about a lot of things. I don’t think he was right about this one:

That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us. (Ecclesiastes 1.9, 10, NKJV)

Smart people continue God’s work of creation, and in many ways we are better for it. Let’s celebrate technology today. Another day we can bemoan some of the problems.

Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth… (Isaiah 43.18, NKJV)

_{This blog reprises most of what I wrote in 2025.}

I wrote yesterday about the Biblical David’s encounter with Goliath, a day which started with him delivering the cheese.

Being an airline pilot is largely a routine job describable as “hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” It’s a routine job until it’s not. By now you’ve no doubt seen the amazing story of the Indian pilot Smit Machchhar who was attacked by his co-pilot while on a Flydubai flight to Israel.

I’m sure when Smit went to work that morning, he was envisioning yet another routine day. We take off, we fly to our destination, we land. Although not all his flights had gone that way. The Wall Street Journal piece published October 2 starts this way…

As an aviator, Smit Machchhar had piloted through an in-flight birth, turbulent monsoon skies and a high-wire landing in Greece that stretched his skills to the limit.

…and continues:

On Wednesday, the 38-year-old Indian pilot faced a midair incident of a completely different sort: a violent stabbing attack from within the cockpit.

Captain Machchhar fought off his attacker while in charge of a FlyDubai Boeing 737 MAX 8 passenger jet to Tel Aviv, apparently managing to alert air-traffic control, open the cockpit door and allow passengers and crew to rescue the plane from a petrifying plunge.

A fellow pilot praised his character and assessed his actions:

Captain Teena Goswami, who worked with Machchhar at SpiceJet, first met him in 2019 and remembered him as a calm, humble captain who treated junior pilots with respect.

Pilots are trained to handle pressure, she said, but in an extreme situation people can freeze or surrender. Machchhar, despite being attacked and dealing with an aircraft that was losing altitude, had the presence of mind to open the cockpit door, make an announcement over the public-address system and call for help, she said.

“What he did was…I think that saved everything,” Goswami said. She described him as “very coolheaded, very calm” and said colleagues generally looked forward to flying with him.

There was a time Machchhar didn’t know if he would survive. He directed the pilot who had taken over the plane to land as soon as possible.

As he lay bleeding in the MAX 8’s galley, Machchhar spoke about his children and asked the dentist by his side if he could save him...[the dentist] told him, ‘God is with you, pray. Everything will be OK. We are with you.’”

The captain was just “delivering the cheese” until he was called upon to save his own life and the lives of 170 passengers.

Some went out on the sea in ships; they were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the LORD, his wonderful deeds in the deep. For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths; in their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunkards; they were at their wits’ end.

Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. (Psalm 107.23 – 31, ESV)

I go to Facebook only when I get a notification that one of my friends has posted something. While there, I scroll down “a little,” and every now and then find something interesting. The other day I saw a post by “Farmer Girl” that’s too good not to share. I don’t know who she is, but you can look her up on Facebook for yourself if you want.

Here is the point she made from the story of David and Goliath. I’m embarrassed I haven’t seen this for myself, nor have I heard it mentioned in a sermon. (You can read the whole story for yourself in 1 Samuel 17.)

She starts this way:

I feel like we have done David and Goliath a slight disservice by leaving out one extremely important detail when we tell this story.

The cheese.

Because David did not wake up that morning, stretch, look toward the horizon, and think, “Seems like a good day to fight a giant.” He was not marching off to war with dramatic music playing in the background. He was not even technically part of Saul’s army. David was tending his father’s sheep, and his dad gave him what was basically an ancient grocery delivery assignment. “Take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain, and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp to your brothers. Also take these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand.” That is 1 Samuel 17:17–18 in the ESV. Ten cheeses. One of the most famous giant-slaying stories in human history begins because Jesse apparently needed someone to deliver dairy products.

I just need us to appreciate this properly. David leaves home carrying grain, bread, and cheese. His assignment is essentially: Feed your brothers, give the commander his cheese, find out how everyone is doing, and come home. Seems straightforward. There is absolutely nothing in those instructions about engaging in single combat with an enormous Philistine warrior who has spent forty days terrifying the Israelite army. There is no “and while you’re there, could you deal with Goliath?” Jesse did not hand David ten cheeses, five stones, and a permission slip for giant removal. David was simply doing what his father asked him to do.

She tells the story with the usual lessons about God being bigger than Goliath and ends this way:

…we love looking backward at stories like this. We know David becomes king. We know Goliath falls. We know David becomes one of the biggest names in the Bible. David walking toward Goliath feels like a huge, defining moment because we already know the rest of the story.

But David didn’t know the rest of the story when he left home that morning.

As far as he knew, he was delivering cheese.

That gets me.

We spend so much time looking for the enormous thing God wants us to do that sometimes we underestimate the ordinary thing He has already put in front of us. We want the calling written across the sky. We want God to explain where this road is going before we agree to walk it. We want to know why we are at this job, why we met this person, why plans changed, why we are being asked to do something that seems completely insignificant, and how any of it could possibly matter.

Meanwhile, sometimes God just says, take the cheese.

Do the ordinary thing in front of you. Be faithful where you are. Show up. Take care of what He has already given you. You may have absolutely no idea what God is positioning you for while you are doing it.

David didn’t leave home looking for Goliath.

He left home carrying ten cheeses.

The giant was waiting at the end of an ordinary act of obedience.

And maybe that is something we need to remember when life feels painfully ordinary. You do not have to see the battlefield from where you are standing. You do not have to understand why this particular assignment matters. You do not have to know what God is doing three steps from now.

You just have to be faithful with the step He put in front of you.

Sometimes that step looks like facing a giant.

And sometimes it looks like carrying the cheese.

But the same God is already at the end of both.

That’s a good word. “Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress…” when he was called (Judges 6.11, 12). Elisha was plowing a field (1 Kings 19.19 – 21). The shepherds were just tending sheep as they always did when the angel appeared to them (Luke 2). Simon Peter was fishing (Luke 5.2 – 11). We never know when God will call us or use us…

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” (John 6.8, 9, ESV)

I wrote recently that with respect to eschatology (the study of the end times), there’s a lot we just don’t know.

One reason prophecy is sometimes hard to figure out is that the prophet (sometimes unknowingly) refers to two or more things at once. For example, have you read this in Matthew’s gospel about the child Jesus going to Egypt and returning?

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2.13 – 15, ESV)

What prophet said, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”? And in what context?

Answer, Hosea!

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. (Hosea 11.1, ESV)

And in Hosea, the text couldn’t be clearer that God was talking about the literal nation Israel and their exodus from slavery:

The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.(Hosea 11.2 – 4, ESV)

So Hosea 11.1, “out of Egypt I called my son,” has a double meaning – past and future. Who would know? And how do we know what other prophetic texts are referring to? How many events? Past to us but future to the prophet? Etc., etc.

Let’s be obedient to what we know…

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29.29, ESV)

Hosea challenges Israel with a farming metaphor, beginning with the positive:

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. (Hosea 10.12, ESV)

“Sow righteousness…” And you can’t sow (I’m told) without breaking up the ground first. “Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD.” Repentance, anyone?

But if you don’t?

You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors, therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed… (Hosea 10.13, 14, ESV)

Instead of sowing righteousness and reaping love, Israel sowed iniquity and reaped injustice. Their trust was “in their own way” AND in their military might.

Sound familiar? And there’s a “therefore:”

“…the tumult of war…and all your fortresses shall be destroyed…”

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Galatians 6.7, 8, ESV)

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. (Psalm 20.7, ESV)

On September 19, I published ChatGPT on my assessment of my experience with that expression of AI. I concluded:

Bottom Line: use AIs with care.

Since then, I’ve read multiple articles, some positive, some apocalyptic, some cautioning the same issue that gave me pause: ChatGPT is pretending to be human. I’ve talked with people who use the technology productively. I intend to write something more comprehensive next week, but I’m still sorting it all out.

In the meantime, here’s something from Hosea that may apply. What do you think?

For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God...For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind… (Hosea 8.5 – 7, ESV)

Are we sowing the wind with AI, and will we reap the whirlwind?

My friend Pastor James Conley from Delta, Colorado, retired in July from First Baptist Church after more than 30 years of ministry there. At the Rocky Mountain American Baptist Gathering a few weeks ago, he shared some lessons learned.

First, one of his seminary professors shared with him early in his ministry five things the professor would have done differently:

1. Spend more time with my family.

2. Develop a deeper prayer life much earlier.

3. Study and prepare better messages.

4. I would not take myself so seriously.

5. I would be more understanding and patient with the church the Lord placed in my care.

A good list. James added “Four things that will sideline your serve:”

#1 SLOTH (laziness) Proverbs 19:15, 26:14; 2 Thessalonians. 3:11-12.

#2 SILVER (money) Ecclesiastes 5:10; 1 Timothy 6:10.

#3 SEX (Porn/adultery) 1 Corinthians 6:18-20; Ephesians. 5:3; 1 Peter 2:11.

#4 SELF (flesh) 2 Timothy 3:1-4; Galatians 5:13.

Another good list, which is remarkably the same (3 out of 4) that my friend Pastor Aaron Dorman in Estes Park shared with me in August:

1. Money
2. Sex
3. Pride
4. Distraction (that is, stick with the gospel, not politics)

Thank you, my brothers for your instruction AND your example.

So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. – Paul, Acts 24.16, ESV

PS “Retired” James is off to North Platte, Nebraska, to be interim pastor of a church there.