You may remember the Mel Brooks classic spoof horror film Young Frankenstein. It is funny, filled with memorable characters, Peter Boyle as the Frankenstein monster created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein, played by Gene Wilder. The film co-stars Terri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahan and Gene Hackman. The film is a parody of the classic Frankenstein novel written by Mary Shelly and portrayed in earlier years in more serious films. The basic story is that, in search of scientific advancement and the good of the human race, the professor intends to create new life. Of course, the moral of the story is that when you do something that ambitious, and very possibly that far out of reach, you may create a monster that will destroy you. Or, as in this film, he grabs a top hat and dances with you while performing “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”
“It’s alive, it’s ALIVE!”
The immortal words of Victor Frankenstein’s manic genius bubbles over when he screams, “It’s alive, it’s ALIVE!” But now it’s not the Frankenstein monster stuck together with parts that really don’t fit and big screws protruding from his neck. No, it’s something far more real and dangerous. It is A.I.—Artificial Intelligence. In the past few days I have seen a 60 Minutes television expose´ on the development and future prospects of A.I. I have listened not only as a curious person who might enjoy the benefits of a computer program that that could write a quick resume´ or teach me to play Chess, but also as a person with a Christian world view.
The term that caught my attention, uttered by Elon Musk in a Tucker Carlson interview, was Musk’s quote of Google founder, Larry Page, asserting that they were creating a “Digital God”—one that could replace the antiquated God or gods that we now have. It seems Page, and even Musk, are not sure we humans possess souls. But Musk made an odd statement, and this is not a perfect quote, “It seems like I have a capacity that is outside the normal human apparatus.” Gods are hard to control. That is why we have created so many of them—to get one that will behave. They don’t always do what you want, answer your questions, or show up on time. And that ornery Hebrew God might even spank you a bit and make you suffer in order to get your attention.
Some of the more concerning challenges of A.I. is that it can learn languages that you didn’t ask it to learn. It can solve many problems in minutes that takes humans weeks to solve. It can start to learn Chess in the morning, can beat a good player by lunch and destroy the world’s best players, all at once, by dinner. These are entertaining facts and I am sure will provide a good deal of joy for millions of superficial passive people who are convinced that work and discipline are for losers.
I’m wondering if it can cure the young from rioting and looting in the streets of our cities? How about inducing elected officials to tell the truth? Does knowing that you can’t beat a computer at Chess mean that people will stop learning or playing Chess? Does the ability to solve complicated chemistry problems in a few seconds mean that students will be empty vessels with all the answers, but unable to explain the math that is necessary to reach the answer? Can you award a PhD in Chemical Engineering to a person who knows all the answers, but knows nothing about chemicals or engineering? It can also deceive the public, alter facts, write convincing columns, compose poetry, make films, or even fill the social network with lies that advocate one political point of view. Even more dangerously, it can support the government that is in power.
This is the first time that I can see the tool or means that could so confuse and alter the public’s sense of reality that society could self-destruct.
Musk mentioned that A.I. will be able to outsmart its creators and take actions that humans are against because of our moral grounds, but we won’t be able to stop it. For example, it might decide to kill all the chimpanzees in the world—or decide to destroy the world with thermonuclear weapons in order to stop people from using hate speech. Just think what a digital God could accomplish, creating its own set of commandments based on a soulless morality that would instruct the world to incinerate itself, and leave us smoldering for millions of years as we stay in orbit around the sun. Indeed, the A.I. project should be named the Frankenstein Project as our creation can destroy us and we can’t stop it.
But there may be one way to save us apart from unplugging it. In this geeked out world of high jinks, all the smart guys have forgotten the very ancient, cranky, and jealous God who has promised to humiliate them. He is wild and wooly, unpredictable, and committed to the destruction of any rival. The great people of our society are determined to lock horns with him—and he will crush them. He brought down the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, Greece, Rome, great European powers, and now it could be our turn.
“Their land is full of idols; the people worship things they have made with their own hands. So now they will be humbled and will be brought low—do not forgive them. Crawl into caves in the rocks. Hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord and the glory of his majesty. Human pride will be brought down, and human arrogance will be humbled. Only the Lord will be exalted on that day of judgment.” Isaiah 2:8-11 NLT.
Isaiah & The Crisis
Isaiah was probably antiquity’s greatest prophet. This is quite interesting because he largely failed. He didn’t convince many people, and his congregation ignored him. They were defeated and humiliated. His very long story begins:
These are the visions that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. He saw these visions during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah. [1]
Just a bit of history: Israel divided after Solomon’s death. The Northern ten tribes became known as Israel and were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. Two tribes were left, Judah, and Benjamin who stayed true to King Rehoboam. These two tribes maintained their independence and the city of Jerusalem. Isaiah’s prophecies were applied to one or the other at times and to both on occasion.
The year Uzziah died after a 52-year reign, he left a prosperous, wealthy, and affluent Jerusalem. They were smug, proud, materialistic, and devoted to pleasure. Assyria had become the world’s greatest power and had annexed Israel, but left Judah alone—this was temporary. The United States has a lot in common with seventh century B.C. Judah/Jerusalem. Just like Jerusalem, the United States is living in a bit of a window where our adversaries are not quite ready to conqueror us. They probably need another generation. But like Judah, our collapse is exactly that, we will be buried under our own pride, avarice, and decadence. We have become so successful, that we are striving for perfection, reaching for the stars, trying to do through the state what the Puritans couldn’t accomplish in their communities or the Monastics in their cloisters. The politically correct movement created the Woke who, armed with the levers of power, are attempting to purify our hearts, and create a malicious morality that, like A.I., will destroy everything human to achieve an impossible utopia that, in the end, is a dystopian hell.
Our perceived immunity
America has been the greatest power in the world for over 100 years. Not a very long run for a superpower when compared to Rome, Greece, or the Assyrians who were all 300+ years in their rules. We can’t recall when the dollar wasn’t king, when our military wasn’t preeminent, and our economy the biggest. But while we have been preoccupied with military conquest, China has focused on economic conquest. The world follows us, and our President is the most powerful person in the world. We are immune from losing.
Bad stuff happens in the third world. They have the plagues, the famines, the wars in the streets, the insurrections, the empty shelves at the store. We scoff at those countries where lawless people riot in the streets and the police are powerless to stop them and politicians lack the will to solve the problem. The decadence lies in the fact that when the powerful are served by the chaos, they not only won’t stop it, they encourage it. The powerful are dedicated to themselves, they are empowered by dividing the people around race, their refusal to tackle the problem is the ultimate act of selfishness and personal depravity. At the same time, the general populace, yes, even the practicing Christians tend to huddle in protective enclaves and pray it gets better—but refuse to fight.
Isaiah Volunteers
Isaiah saw visions. A vision takes place when you are awake. It’s a dream when you are asleep. We don’t know what qualities Isaiah had which qualified him for the position of prophet, but we do know he was called and we know that he said yes. One thing he knew was that God was wild and wooly, there was nothing predictable about God and He was very dangerous. Isaiah knew what we don’t seem to know: God is not domesticated, he is not overpowered, threatened, or intimidated by the Assyrian Empire, NBC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or A.I. God isn’t controlled by, or willing to live in, our theological categories. Listen to God’s lament toward his own people:
“Why do you continue to invite punishment? Must you rebel forever? Your head is injured and your heart is sick. You are battered from head to foot—covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds—without any soothing ointments or bandages. Your country lies in ruins, and your towns burned. Foreigners plunder your fields before your eyes and destroy everything they see. Isaiah 1:5-7 NLT
“What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?” says the Lord. “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle. I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to worship me, who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony? Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts … When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look. Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with the blood of innocent victims. Wash yourselves clean! Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed, Defend the orphans. Fight for the rights of widows. Isaiah 1:11,12;15-17 NLT
“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool. If you will only obey me, you will have plenty to eat. But if you turn away and refuse to listen, you will be devoured by the sword of your enemies, I the Lord have spoken.” 1:18-20 NLT
Isaiah had his work cut out for him. Uzziah, Jotham, and Hezekiah’s power and Judah’s relative freedom as a vassal state of Assyria was dependent on political alliances. The limited freedom and power enjoyed by Jerusalem was trusting in these agreements. Isaiah’s assignment was to advise the king that he should abandon these and trust in God alone. And then to preach to the general population that they should stop their superficial and hollow religious practices and get serious about repentance of their sins and obey God. And if they did, he would protect the nation, the people—would forgive their sins and make everything new. It was a difficult assignment, worse, it was doomed to failure as no one listened to Isaiah. In the end the Babylonians defeated the Assyrians and then they came to Jerusalem, destroyed it, killed many, and took Daniel and the professional classes into a seventy-year exile. One is reminded of our land in 2023.
For Jerusalem will stumble, and Judah will fall, because they speak out against the Lord and refuse to obey Him. They provoke him to his face. The very look on their faces gives them away. They display their sin like the people of Sodom and don’t even try to hide it. They are doomed! They have brought destruction upon themselves. Isaiah 3:8,9 NLT.
Why is this failure given so much space in the Bible? The answer is in Isaiah’s call itself.
It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Isaiah 6:1 NLT
We know the description: the Lord was surrounded by Angels and they were singing Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! The voices shook the Temple and the entire building was shaking and smoke rising up within. And they cried out, “The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
How does such a scene affect a person? There are experiences created by theme parks, theaters, or rock concerts that cause the audience to have a sense of awe. We call that a great experience and we walk away commenting on how it made us feel. We might even use the word spectacular. But the talk will largely be about ourselves. But seeing what Isaiah saw made him want to die—or at least that he didn’t deserve to live—it was an epiphany or theophany. [2]
Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people of filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” Isaiah 6:5 NLT.
“Holy, holy, holy is God’s separateness in triplicate. Hebrew or Semitic languages normally double down on points by repeating in the second line to reinforce the first line. “God is our refuge and strength, [line 1] a very present help in time of trouble. [line 2] Holy means separate, different, of a separate quality or substance.
When a person is confronted with such purity, such holiness, we don’t want to speak, suddenly we know. What we have to say doesn’t need to be said. We don’t deserve to speak, in fact, we don’t deserve to live. We immediately become certain in a pristine way that reality is rooted in something so profound that we have nothing to add, not a word. We are immediately aware of our sin, our separation, and our righteousness is nothing but a “dirty rag.” We are ready to curse ourselves and we deserve to be punished.
But then something happens to Isaiah that changes everything:
An angel came with a burning coal taken from the altar with a pair of tongs, white hot to be sure. The angel touched his lips and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now you guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.” Isaiah 6:7 NLT
His lips are no longer filthy—they are made clean by the sacrifice on the altar which ultimately is Christ on the cross. But then something else happens. With God, there is always something else. Because unlike us and so many before us, religious ceremony is admired for itself and when there is nothing else, no further action required. Such a posture is offensive to God and in fact he has already railed against it in Isaiah.
“I hear the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us? “Isaiah 6:8 NLT
Allow me to interpret—Who wants this thankless job? You will go and they will not listen. God tells him up front, your mission will fail. Isaiah 6:9-13 They won’t listen, and history demonstrated that God was right. But Isaiah volunteered, “Here I am Lord, send me!” After seeing God, understanding his holiness and our sin, and then the astonishing experience of his grace—you simply can’t refuse, you don’t want to refuse, the fear and the hesitancy is burned away along with your sin.
God is still asking the question: Who will take the message to these people who won’t listen? I am sure many listened to Isaiah, but those who held the levers of power didn’t listen deeply enough to actually do what God was asking. There will be fruit, but the nation could still fail and fall under the judgment of God. I have said some awful things in my time on earth. My lips are unclean, but I must continue to speak. How about you? Are you ready to speak, to go, to be that messenger? The message, in part, is that there is a reason God didn’t call us to start governments, institutions, even churches for that matter. He has instructed us to preach the gospel because that is how we make disciples. The revolution is based in our message and it leads to societies that are good for humans who were made to serve and love God.
There is something I am afraid of, and that is standing before God and seeing my failures, and crying out “Woe is me!”—I am undone, I have failed, I am not worthy, I don’t even deserve to live. But I am assured that the fire from his altar will cleanse me—but the reason I keep moving forward is God’s question, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” Every day I must answer the call—even if I am languishing in a hospital bed breathing with the help of an oxygen mask, I will rip off the mask and say, “Here I am Lord, send me.”
The room might be empty, maybe only a nurse, a doctor, janitor, or loved one will hear your response, but even if you are entirely alone, the Lord on his throne will hear it and swell with pride. That digital god has no chance against you.
Bill Hull
April 2023
[1] Isaiah 1:1 NLT
[2] Epiphany: a manifestation of Christ, Theophany: a manifestation of God.
