1. Bear with me, especially all of my besties in NYC, as I start with my own little act of abreaction. It’s been a weird few days in ol’ San Antone. During Wednesday’s Game 4 of the NBA Championship series, the Knicks’ shocking comeback was a gift of unmerited grace. Wink. Let’s hope the Spurs were just getting sanctified ahead of Game 5. Okay, thanks for that — on to the rest of the interwebs!
2. It’s been a while since our dispatch has mentioned Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, so let’s start with some of the Aussie maestro’s thoughts on shame, specifically the shame that arises from recalling past moral failures. Responding to questions from as far flung as Iceland, Georgia, and Mexico, Cave describes shame as a kind of misalignment, a discordant space between who we believe ourselves to be and who we actually are.
I recognise that many of my regrets stem from a time in my life that was reckless, irresponsible and chaotic, perhaps even dangerous. However, despite these wrongdoings, in many ways I am glad I lived those years outside normal societal constraints. That period gave me a great deal, precisely through the raw experience itself. I don’t say this in defiance, but because I believe there is a certain richness to life that can emerge even from its transgressions. … I am grateful for the time when I had the audacity to make bad decisions, to crash about, doing the next wrong thing, to be young and messed-up and free to live regrettably.
When I look back now, though, from this greater distance, the remorse no longer burns with the same intensity it once did. Instead, it is tempered by a kind of nostalgia — a shame that smiles back at me. I am not saying I have stopped feeling shame, but I don’t feel it so sharply when I look back on the bad old days, Ronnie.
He names shame as a “course-corrector” possessing a “redemptive electricity” (2 Cor 7:8–12). Anyone who has lived a little can relate to this sentiment — when the failures, pains, and embarrassments of our past don’t only inspire remorse but also gratitude. He’s very clear that he is not romanticizing wrongdoing but naming the capacity for a wound to become a source of wisdom.
3. Speaking of remorse that leads to repentance, Peter Wehner thinks that faithful Americans “can still repair the wreckage they have wrought.” American evangelicals, he says, have embraced a model of public faithfulness motivated by dominance and the desire for a strongman who will defeat their enemies. Though he worries that their embrace of “warriors” over servants has been catastrophically damaging to the church’s witness. If history is any indication, the church is all too prone to trade humility for humiliation and charity for victory.
For much of the past half century, evangelical engagement with the world has instead been shaped largely by fear — a fear of losing cultural and political influence, and with it a whole way of life. Those fears are not entirely unfounded, and in some cases they are rooted in a longing to protect children and deeply held values. But this siege mentality breeds suspicion of outsiders and a defensiveness toward the world. Many Christians seek to keep a hostile world at bay by discouraging inquiry and critical thinking, by empowering theological enforcers, and by drawing narrow doctrinal boundaries.
Nothing is beyond the possibility of repair. The antidote to the wreckage: an embrace of Christian humanism (one of the animating ideas behind the recent Understory Festival in Washington, DC).
The ancient tradition of Christian humanism has, in times past, helped Christianity recover its bearings. The framework rests on the claim that the deepest affirmation of what it means to be human is found in the incarnation; in the belief that every person is made in the image of God, which is the grounding of human dignity; and in the conviction that learning, scholarship, and the cultivation of the arts and the imagination can themselves be expressions of faith and acts of devotion.
It’s good to sit with the questions about why the church is where it is right now. Why might people want a strongman? Because they are afraid. Why do people seek certainty, even if it’s peddled to them as lies? Because they feel vulnerable. Why do people become obsessed with power? Because they are powerless. And this is why ancient Christian humanism is good news.
At the very core of Christian humanism is a belief in the inherent dignity and worth of all human beings, who are made in the image of God, and in the pursuit of a society that respects and values the intrinsic and equal worth of the individual, regardless of social status. […]
But other Christians exhibit a confidence and calm assurance in Christ that allows them to engage with the world with less fear and defensiveness. They believe Jesus is Lord of all; that truth and beauty, wherever they are found, help us see God better; and that in the end, all shall be well. This puts them, and those around them, at ease. […]
There’s a gaping need for a Christianity whose posture toward the world is more irenic and charitable, far less anxious and fear-driven — one that cultivates curiosity, including toward those outside the faith, and fosters a deep longing for knowledge and understanding. There’s a need for Christians to take beauty seriously as a theological category and to hold the doctrine of human depravity in its proper place: as a truth that never diminishes the human dignity it assumes. The best ambassadors of the Christian faith are people who, because of their faith, find ways to re-enchant the world.
We’d like to think that these are the animating ideas behind our work at Mockingbird, where a full-throated embrace of the gospel doesn’t exclude joyful revelry in things unseen and seen. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”
For the past few years, I’ve been troubled by a word, and that word is sin. I keep reaching for it, because it seems to be the only term strong enough to describe the new forms of dehumanization that artificial intelligence has introduced — even though calling something a sin sounds embarrassing to me […]
The problem is, I don’t know what else to call it when companies market digital girlfriends to the heartsick and young. Or when they hawk robot companions to the lonely and old. Or when a billionaire explains that he intends to sell intelligence — trained on humanity’s stolen intellectual property — back to us as a utility, like electricity or water. These developments are not just wrong. They feel to me like something deeper and darker. […]
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, then, that the critics, living and dead, who capture my unease about the AI revolution — who discuss it with appropriate moral gravity — are or were Christians. They are or were people comfortable using words like sin.
Pope Leo’s first major encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, names AI as the defining moral challenge of our moment. Rather than calling for technical regulation, Leo invites us to return to a more simple question: What is it about humans that cannot be automated? If bots can create images, mimic conversation, get us to fall in love with them, and pass tests, what makes humans so special?
Pope Leo’s surprisingly countercultural answer: Our minds are not essentially our souls, and intelligence is not the defining human characteristic. Our dignity lies elsewhere.
Like Wehner, Harper suggests that Christian humanism may offer a balm to cure AI’s impending wounds.
Christianity has a clear “anthropological vision,” asserting that the purpose of the human species is to exist in the image of its creator, to love God and one another, and to spread life on Earth and steward its creatures. […]
If what makes humanity special is not our capabilities — automatable or not — but the notion that we spring from a transcendent source, then what the robots can or cannot do is in some sense irrelevant. ChatGPT was not made in the image of God, no matter how impressive its facsimile becomes. A secular humanism that cannot find a similarly deep line of reasoning is one that may not be adequate to defend human dignity in the AI era.
If this sounds true to you — that our value lies beyond and apart from our capabilities or how those measure up to AI — I hope you can feel a deep sense of relief. But if you’re like me, maybe you feel a bit double-minded? Pope Leo’s encyclical calls to mind all of the ways we seek to justify ourselves. Be reminded that we are more than what we do, think, and accomplish. We are limited and dependent, and we are loved.
P.S. News to me, but apparently one can seek a religious exemption from using AI at work.
5. New to Christianity herself, Freya India wonders whether the Christian revival happening among Gen Z-ers (like her) is real. She suggests that there is no doubt a real curiosity about Christianity among young people who grew up without faith, but she worries that this revival — like so many experiences — is primarily mediated through social media. In other words, she wonders if Gen Z are actually meeting God, or is it more likely that they are being fed content about God without an incarnational encounter.
There is a lot of Christian content online. Learning about the faith feels easier than ever: Follow Christian influencers, listen to Christian podcasts, scroll through Christian hashtags; the Bible is bite-size now! Of course, this has been happening for a long time, Christianity being made easier and more convenient. […]
The problem with religious apps is the same problem we have with Instagram communities or with online porn: We encounter the virtual version of everything first, before the real thing. And so that becomes our standard. Supplements become substitutes. For us, faith is the livestreams and prayer apps and podcasts. “Connect with God in a New Way,” we’re told. But what if this is our first way, the only way we have ever known, through apps and algorithms?
There seems to be this paradox in modern life: We make things so convenient, we assume they will happen more and more, but it’s almost as if they become too available. We start wondering what’s the point; we can’t be bothered. There’s always an easier way. There’s an Alpha course near my house, but there’s also one on the App Store. I tell myself I’m watching the Sunday livestream to get used to the idea of going to church, and then I’ll actually go. But this is the trap, and trust me on this, if you are trying to reach a generation that has spent more time on screens than face-to-face with other human beings, do not make it any easier to do things inside.
For many young converts who came to know the gospel through their smartphone, the concern is that they will never move past that into church. Church = livestream. Community becomes a platform of followers who reward your faithfulness with their views and comments. Because of the gamification built into these apps, prayer becomes a streak to maintain. Older believers may be nostalgic for simpler times, but we know that there’s no retreating, no going back. We would be wise to ask why so many young people have found God on the apps in the first place. Religious institutions are less credible than they once were. Families have broken apart over differences in opinion. For better or worse, young people experience everything online.
It’s helpful to remember that Christianity may be one of the few things that can’t be experienced in its fullness as a consumer. Take that course and the product will always be faulty. It is — in its trinitarian essence — all about participation. God’s grace, while available for everyone and everywhere, is often found when weird little groups of people, who have no obvious reason to love each other, get together for awkward fellowship, for confession and absolution. It’s so much harder than scrolling.
6. I’m tired of talking about technology while I use technology, so let’s look for some laughs, starting with this New Yorker piece on Knicks fans’ crazy superstitions, including one couple’s belief that their bunny, “Potter, is a lucky rabbit — we let him poop throughout the game in front of the TV. He has his own jersey, too!”
Sure, “I’ll take this Costco sample, but only so I can make an informed purchasing decision.” Heaven forbid you think I’m taking advantage of this free perk I pay for. 😉
On the Day of Pentecost, the apostles were imbued with power from on high that manifested as gifts of prophecy, tongues, and more. But which gifts are the coolest? The Babylon Bee interviewed top theologians to get the following definitive list.
7. When asked recently why she was “still a church person,” the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber replied, “because I am in need of help.” Aren’t we all. In her usual confessional tone, this recent sermon moves between exhaustion, vulnerability, and theological reflection. It is a statement of need that invites the congregation to make their needs known, too.
And that — that sweet thing that happens when the Scripture is read out loud, when the Psalms and hymns are sung, when the Gospel is spoken over us, when we confess how limited we are and hear how limitless God is, when we open empty hands for a piece of bread and a blessing —
What shall we call this, but help.
And needing help, needing forgiveness, needing consolation, hope and healing because you cannot muster these up in sufficient quantity for yourself…is not a failure in the Christian life. It is a factory installed feature of the Christian life — it’s actually the whole design […]
Which means that while some will try and tell you that to be in “right relationship with God” is to make yourself so well that you are never in need of healing waters. But the right relationship between God, the giver of all good things, the font of every blessing and us — is for God to offer provision and for us to be the receivers of God’s gifts and mercies.
“I need help” is not a statement of deficiency, weakness, or faithlessness but a chance for the God of the Universe to meet you in the particularity of your singular experience. For all that has been and all that will be to meet your imperfect fragility in an act of unconditional love.
So Many Strays You Can Make a Braid
+ Our pal Andy Squyres’ new album Praise Songs is available TODAY!
+ A dating app is giving away free gas to convince people to get out of the house.
+ Disclosure Day pits aliens against religion. But faith leaders are ready to believe.
+ Critics say the process we use to identify bright kids is flawed and insular. But what if giftedness itself is a lie? Cut to “The Mirage of the Gifted Kid” in the New Yorker.
+ Linni Kral doesn’t just think astrology is untrue; she thinks its stereotyping is unjust.
+ We can enhance athletic performance, lose weight with a pill, and even take psychedelics to alter consciousness. At what point does all this self-optimization become self-obsession? Better Sex, Better Hair, Better Sleep: ‘Humanmaxxing’ Is Here.
+ What Backrooms and Obsession Reveal About Gen Z Fears in the Economist
+ Mockingbird contributor Tony Robinson on the mysterious power of fiction to sustain us when the world feels fractured. Fantastic read.
