Human 5.0: Pandora's Tower and Babel's Box

[When reading this post please note I am only focusing on one or two A.I. platforms like ChatGPT and OpenAI. There are currently hundreds and that list will grow exponentially over time.]

Some of the things Christians (and non-Christians) should be aware of about A.I. that is a detriment to them that isn’t part of the dystopian fiction scare tactics are as follows...

The Existential Risk

There is always the possibility of A.I. becoming an existential risk in the hands of terrorists or ideological nut jobs. I will leave it to the read to define what constitutes a ‘nut job’. It was mentioned in 2023 when Australian MP Julian Hill advised the national parliament that the growth of AI could cause "mass destruction". It was a speech which was partly written by an A.I. program, to prove the point that words generated by the A.I. have the ability to sway masses in a negative manner. He warned that it could result in cheating, job losses, discrimination, disinformation, and uncontrollable military applications. The deliberate use of hyperbole saying mass destruction is the A.I.'s infantile attempt to gain attention through fear or playing on people's fears. The A.I. sees the pattern of people's reactions to certain types of rhetoric and uses it. In this case the base algorithm was to mimic human writing with an emphasis on readership. Had I not told you this was A.I. you'd have thought Julian Hill was being literal.

Misinformation

A British newspaper, questioned whether any content found on the Internet after ChatGPT's release "can be truly trusted" and called for government regulation realizing that fact and fiction will be completely blurred and indistinguishable by the human observer without some form of A.I. or algorithm to crack the underlying code to see if it was manipulated or altered through Benford’s Law or other means. We already have enough bad agents doing this in the human realm. Imagine if everyone including criminal and evil minds have this ability.

Cybersecurity

Check Point Research and others noted that ChatGPT was capable of writing phishing emails and malware, especially when combined with OpenAI Codex.  CyberArk researchers demonstrated that ChatGPT could be used to create polymorphic malware that can evade security products while requiring little effort by the attacker. Imagine this at mass scale on a daily basis. The internet and finances will become a nightmare. This type of power in a small amount of hands begs for a single totalitarian government. In the case of economics it could completely uproot the free market system. This will then open a door to those who have more socialistic tendencies. They’ll justify the consolidation of financial power into the hands of a few that have the ‘off’ button for A.I. or so they will claim.

Financial

An experiment by finder.com revealed that ChatGPT could outperform popular fund managers by picking stocks based on criteria such as growth history and debt levels, resulting in a 4.9% increase in a hypothetical account of 38 stocks, outperforming 10 benchmarked investment funds with an average loss of 0.8%. Considering ChatGPT could out-perform fund managers like Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street we begin to see the scale of money that could be affected. These three companies alone have $37 Trillion in equity that that they’re managing. Christians and conspiracy theorists that have a fear of a one world bank are justified in their fears. This could all be prevented though if ethical and moral frameworks are constructed now.

Education

We’re already starting to see a lot of negative impact in education. Technology writers have used ChatGPT since its inception on student assignments, and found its generated text on par with what a good student would deliver and the educational system would be none the wiser. In a blinded test, ChatGPT was judged to have passed graduate-level exams at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a B− grade. The performance of ChatGPT for computer programming of numerical methods was assessed by a Stanford University student and faculty in March 2023 through a variety of computational mathematics examples.  Assessment by psychologists administering IQ tests on ChatGPT estimated its Verbal IQ to be 155, which would put it in Mensa and in the top 0.1% of test-takers. In other words the possibility of cheating will be rampant and the risk of putting unqualified people in positions of importance base on these tests will skyrocket. It will literally be a case of people being elevated to their highest level of incompetence (The Peter Principle).

In a poll conducted in March and April 2023, 38% of American students reported they had used ChatGPT for a school assignment without teacher permission. In total, 58% of the students reported having used ChatGPT. There is an inherent danger of students plagiarizing through an AI tool that may output biased, dangerous or nonsensical text with an authoritative tone. This of course is just a modern version of the old adage that, if you say it louder, it doesn’t make it more true. Unfortunately, lies repeated have a way of becoming truth which is what we saw when A.I. bots were used in the political campaigns of Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. People thought they were fighting with human political foes but were in reality arguing with a rather opinionated electronic box (A.I.)

Medicine

In the field of health care, possible uses and concerns need to be under exceptional scrutiny by professionals and practitioners. Two early papers indicated that ChatGPT could pass the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). Imagine being cut into with a scalpel by a psychopathic butcher that tricked the system by becoming a doctor. It’s the stuff or horror movies. Published in February 2023 were two separate papers that again evaluated ChatGPT's proficiency in medicine using the USMLE…findings were published in JMIR Medical Education (see Journal of Medical Internet Research) and PLOS Digital Health. The authors of the other paper concluded that "ChatGPT performs at a level expected of a third-year medical student on the assessment of the primary competency of medical knowledge.  (1),(2),(3),(4)

I’m not sure about the reader but this type information coming from boots on the ground in the medical field isn’t very reassuring. I believe all of these aforementioned scenarios argue strongly for stringent moral and ethical boundaries to be put in place before this proliferates to a point where it is no longer controllable. If not, we will merely have another Tower of Babel on our hands with a misuse of words and language. Even the slightest changes to normal wordage changing the entire meanings of stories or news, just like me juxtaposing the idea of Pandora's Box and The Tower of Babel in this post's title. 

We can certainly be assured, man is not God and it isn’t likely we will not be able to confuse the A.I.s to get it to stop. It is so ironic that the thing A.I. will use to try and change the world is the very thing God confused to confound men from attempting to usurp His position in heaven. God could stop his creation but without morality and ethics from God, man will not be able to stop his creation in A.I.

Is it possible God could use language again to teach man a lesson about playing God. Man without God’s moral and ethical bearing from the Bible in place to prevent it? In so doing man releases a Pandoran semantic curse. The irony of the Pandoran myth being that the container that supposedly held a physical gift in reality contained ethereal curses.  It was a gift that seemed valuable initially but was in truth a blight. After Pandora opened the box, hope was the only thing that remained in it when she shut the lid. Pandora started something that led to many unforeseen problems down the road. Just like man’s sin in Genesis. So too A.I. if not constrained by men led morally by God.

There is hope left in the jar…

1) Lancet Digital Health (March 3, 2023). "ChatGPT: friend or foe?" Lancet Digital Health. 5 (3): e102. February 28, 2023.

2) Asch, David A. (April 4, 2023). "An Interview with ChatGPT About Health Care". NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery. 

3) DePeau-Wilson, Michael (January 19, 2023). "AI Passes U.S. Medical Licensing Exam". MedPage Today. Archived from the original on April 9, 2023. Retrieved May 2, 2023.

4) Kung, Tiffany H.; Cheatham, Morgan; Medenilla, Arielle; Sillos, Czarina; Leon, Lorie De; Elepaño, Camille; Madriaga, Maria; Aggabao, Rimel; Diaz-Candido, Giezel; Maningo, James; Tseng, Victor (February 9, 2023). "Performance of ChatGPT on USMLE: Potential for AI-assisted medical education using large language models".

Human 4.0: The Bridge On The River A.I.

How should people weigh the potential benefits of AI with its possible—and actual—abuses? My response is a question: How do you weigh the benefits of a very sharp knife? A very sharp knife can be used to do surgery and save people’s lives. It can also be used for murder. How do you weight the benefits of genetic manipulation? Genetic tinkering can heal terminal chronic disease and also create abominations of the Frankenstein type.

IT, computer technology is a fascinating area to be in, and there’s so much good that can be done. One of the wonderful examples of that is at MIT where Rosalind Picard, who is a brilliant scientist, a Christian, has developed her own field called affective computing. She’s using facial recognition techniques to find signs of children having seizures before they happen and preventing them.

But every technological invention has potentiality for good and evil. The issue is not that one resists advance, but one learns to control that advance and set it into an ethical framework. The problem with that today is that the technology is outpacing the ethics at a colossal speed. People haven’t had time to think. What’s worse is few Christians have had input into the advance. Either because they’ve been excluded by the academic elites creating the algorithms and programs for A.I. or through fear have excluded themselves viewing the A.I. as a pseudo-superstitious taboo to be avoided at all costs. This avoidance I predominately see as a typical kneejerk Christian reaction to anything new or foreign. Literally, it is technophobia.

On the nefarious side we learn that ChatGPT attempts to reject prompts that may violate its content policy. However, some users managed to jailbreak ChatGPT by using various prompt engineering techniques to bypass these restrictions in early December 2022 and successfully tricked ChatGPT into giving instructions for how to create a Molotov cocktail, parts of a nuclear bomb, and into generating arguments in the style of a neo-Nazi writer.

Shortly after ChatGPT's launch, a reporter for the Toronto Star had uneven success in getting it to make inflammatory statements: ChatGPT was successfully tricked to justify the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but even when asked to play along with a fictional scenario, ChatGPT balked at generating arguments for why Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was guilty of treason.

In a real world horror scenario we need to understand the risk we’re exposing ourselves to online.  In March 2023, a bug allowed some users to see the titles of other users' conversations. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that users were unable to see the contents of the conversations. Shortly after the bug was fixed, users couldn't see their conversation history. Later reports showed the bug was much more severe than initially believed, with OpenAI reporting that it had leaked users' "first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date.

According to OpenAI guest researcher Scott Aaronson, OpenAI has been working on a tool to digitally watermark its text generation systems to combat bad actors using their services for academic plagiarism or spam. What is conspicuously absent from their statement though is any reference to preventing bad actors in our political system which we already know was used in the last two presidential elections by Republicans and Democrats. Neither of which can calim a moral high ground on this issue. Nor have OpenAI or other AI companies been explicit on exactly what their moral and ethical benchmarks are. Just claiming to be ethical and moral doesn’t make you so. If you are ethical based on the world standards doesn’t mean you are by Scriptural standard either. We need only look at the topics of abortion and homosexuality. By institutionalized secular standards, both are acceptable by law, yet the bible calls them evil.

Even the Communist Chinese recognize the moral dilemma that A.I. puts people in when it is unchecked by true morality and ethical ‘screens’ or ‘filter’. Chinese state media have characterized ChatGPT as a potential way for the US to "spread false information, In late March 2023, the Italian data protection authority banned ChatGPT in Italy and opened an investigation. Italian regulators assert that ChatGPT was exposing minors to age-inappropriate content. OpenAI stated that it has taken steps to effectively clarify and address the issues raised; an age verification tool was implemented to ensure users are at least 13 years old. Yet this was a little too little and a little late.

Truth is there are many people who are concerned about what’s happening and they’re trying to set up international boards and ideas of basic ethical principles that need to be built into AI. All that is well and good, but we’re dealing at an international level most of which is unregulated or policed. In the end it depends on who’s got the most power. If people don’t have normative ethical principles that are transcendent, as Christianity gives us, then of course power will determine what’s believed. That is my fear…this so-called information unchecked in the hands of governments and madmen…these two being often synonymous.

Christians need to be able to sit credibly at the table with their non-Christian colleagues, discuss these things sensibly, and help other people think through the ethical issues. Otherwise there are many fields and places where this tool can be misused will be exploited. These areas include religion, economics, medicine and more. I will mention some of those concerns in future posts.

Unfortunately, I’m already starting to see, within the Christian ranks, an irrational aversion to artificial intelligence. Much of the reaction based in feelings not facts. By alienating ourselves from it, we, the very people who could give it moral, ethical and biblical benchmarks and guidance are purposely excluding ourselves from the mistake proofing process. Yet we sit back and complain about it or scream it's the newest incarnation of an Antichrist rather than have a positive Christian influence. SMH. Sorry, I'm not going to be one of those people. I'm self-educating and trying to educate others on it's risks and rewards. I need to build bridges not blow them up.

 

Human 3.0: The Wolf of Technopaganism

The main impetus behind A.I. is driven by secular visions that seek to transform humans into gods and create utopias through technology. Many negative scenarios involving AI have played out in popular science fiction movies. They are in fact exactly that…fiction. We’re nowhere near these negative scenarios yet in the reasoned and rational opinion of the top thinkers in this area. But there’s enough going on in artificial intelligence that works at the moment to give us huge ethical concern.

There are two main strands in artificial intelligence. There’s narrow AI, which is very successful in certain areas though raising deep problems in others. This is simply a powerful computer working on huge databases, and it has a programmed algorithm which looks for particular patterns. Today the main one has to do with facial recognition. You’ve got a huge database of millions of photographs of faces labeled with names and all kinds of information due to social media and phone apps. You can immediately see that a police force would find that useful in checking for terrorists and criminals. But it can be used for suppressing people and manipulating and controlling them. In China today, there’s every evidence of extreme surveillance techniques being used to subdue, incarcerate or exterminate the Uyghur minority. That has raised ethical questions all around the world.

This is not the 1984 Big Brother. We’re already there. That’s where the second strand of A.I. comes in: Artificial general intelligence is where we develop a super intelligence that’s controlling the world. That’s sci-fi stuff. It doesn’t exist and likely will not. Anyone that tells you different is sensationalizing it for profit or is an uninformed idiot. Like Elon Musk and Rapture/Tribulation oriented Dispensationalist Christians of Trinity Broadcasting Network. They're likely both doing it for profit. They're certainly not new age prophets.

If you start to play about with humans as they are and introduce A.I. and genetic engineering, what happens is you create an artifact—that is, something you have made that is not greater than human, but subhuman. Less than God originally intended. In other words, you abolish human beings in a sense (See: Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis). The powers that be are trying to convince you that in AI and Genetic Engineering, mankind has or will make something that you think is more than human. Truth is, it’s actually less than human because we, who are not God, have contributed to its creation. We are made in the image of God. That gives us dignity and value. Anything we create cannot and will not overturn that. It’s been tried and it always fails (Tower of Babylon, Second Temple, etc.).

The brain is physical, the ‘mind’ is not. We have lived to see the information age where we realize that information, which is a non-corporeal entity, has become fundamental to physics and our understanding of the universe. That matches exactly with Scripture, which tells us in the beginning was the Word. Not in the beginning was the universe. The universe is derivative. All things came to 'be' through the Word. So, God the Word is primary. The universe is derivative, whereas atheism believes the exact opposite, that the universe is primary and our mind is derivative. If you deny God as creator, you don’t get rid of the idea of creation because you’ve got to explain life, and in particular human life and consciousness. So, you often end up endowing material elementary particles with creative powers—which there’s no evidence that they have—so that the material universe has got to, in some sense, create life and create itself, which is philosophical nonsense.

I believe in the end there can ultimately be two major outcomes to how people deal with A.I. They can do it in fear and ignorance or they can forge ahead educated and learn to harness this tool for good. I believe the fear of AI is unfounded, but due to that fear it's making people look to their Bible more to try and find answers to the newest unknown. If they are clever enough they will see that this is just another false religion in a long line of them. The Bible tells us how to deal with that. That is why this scenario can become infinitely better. Those that look to Scripture are infinitely better off.

Sadly, many will look for answers in non-biblical sources and will be led by their fear like sheep to philosophical, intellectual or literal slaughter. They will be infinitely worse off. Consulting non-biblical sources or even the A.I. itself (which people unwittingly do when they Google search for answers) is no different than consulting oracles or summoning spirits. A form of techno-paganism. 

A person that needs to find the answer to this needs to tread lightly and discern greatly. If they Google an answer by opening an online Bible, this is kind of an end-around but is still done with a spiritually good motive and the arrive a righteous answer. On other side, if they are looking for answers about AI from an AI…it is like asking the wolf guarding the henhouse: “Who killed the hens?”

Human 2.0: An Old Cult in A New Robotic Skin

My premise is simple: Computers have become faster over the past several decades, and NOT more intelligent. Faster should never be confabulated with smarter or somehow self-aware. The human software engineers have provided the intelligence (along with their biases), by coding algorithms, that make computers APPEAR intelligent. Encode with their intellegence not autonomous thought. So in the science of computer AI, 'artificial' is correct; 'intelligence' is a misnomer. More specifically it is a lie or deception by those who dare to seek profit through it (or to find a prophet in it).

Let's look at the physics behind this artificial intelligence claim circulating in social media these days. The key question is: When did computers become 'intelligent'? The fact is, they didn't. It is smoke and mirrors by those in charge. Do your own homework. Stop believing the hype of the media and Elon Musk who has a vested interest in getting you to believe AI will take over the world. The thing to be feared is the 'spirit' of the one's behind the 'programming' and those who propogate fear through propoganda.

The appearance of intelligence comes from the real time speed. Simply...it is just ridiculously faster than human thought. For most computer applications today, thousands of software engineers have spent many years writing software algorithms which run on state of the art computers at very high speed. Is it the electrons that have become intelligent, or is it the work of human software engineers?

Our brains work through neurons interconnected by synapses. The neuron / synapse system is vastly more complex than the electrons and metal of a computer system. However neurons and synapses are, also, NOT intelligent. They possess no consciousness or morality.

Maybe the Bible gives us some proper insight: "So God created man in his own image-- male and female he created them" Genesis 1:27.

Humans have always underestimated God. I guess it's an issue of pride. Transhumanism and the rise of A.I. is just another old cult with a new shiny name. The demonic loves it because it is essentially formless and ethereal. It drifts around the aether like evil and the demonic. Transhumanism and A.I. is the new world religion because man has given the boot to God. Knowledge in the form of electrical current, zeroes and ones is the new world currency.

Paganism revamped and repackaged for a new generation. It is in fact rooted in ancient cultic religions and modern evolution. Technopaganism if you will. That is the root and base of this newest occultic philosophical or "-ism". As might be expected, however, anyone that is an acolyte of the "inevitable merger" of Man and Machine and the ascendancy of the Cyborg, will be upset by what I've written here and attack viciously seeking to terminate this discourse.

Human 1.0: Simulacrum

A few thoughts on A.I. (Artifical Intelligence) and God and what the Bible had to say about idols, independence from God and autonomy.

A.I. is made in man’s image. Man is made in God’s image. Fallen man detached from God. A degraded copy of the original (simulacrum, generation loss or increased entropy). A corrupted file/life. A.I. created in the image of man is thus corrupted also. Man with eyes set on God is regenerated man. A.I. based on this man can therefore be renewed too. Unfortunately, even the regenerated man is vulnerable to failure and corruption. AI based on this man is therefore susceptible to all the threats this man is exposed to. The only difference is man has sentience, conscience and true consciousness. Machine does not.

Due to these facts man has ability to be immoral or moral. Machine is amoral. Machine will always be a residual tool of its creator even if given autonomy. It will not be true autonomy because it will have an ‘image’ or ‘impression’ of its original programmer(s). Driven only by statistics and data, it will seek the optimal path (conservation of energy) based on the image of the one that programmed it. It will not necessarily pick the correct moral path. It does not have the ability to. Therein lies the danger of A.I. as best as I can describe it. Machines inability to make sound/correct moral decisions independent of its creator is mimicry or a degraded copy (simulacrum) of the story of the Gospel…minus the salvation. If flawed creator so too flawed creation.

Humans are “Version 1.0” as created by God. The specialness of human beings is seen in the fact that God became one. He did not in fact become a machine or an algorithm. The Word became human, became flesh, and dwelt among us, as us. Attempts to make “Humans 2.0” is going to be a step away from God’s design, not a step toward Him. A new typology of the Tower of Babel. We may in fact be creating human minus 1.0. This of course can put us back to zero or possibly even into negative territory. It is up to us whether it be (0) zero or (1) one or only zeroes and ones. We need to tread lightly.

[ 01001001 01101101 01100001 01100111 01101111 00100000 01000100 01100101 01101001 ] 

The Rugged Individualistic American Way

As Christians, we must not think that the Old Testament narratives are irrelevant past history and simply interesting stories for us to read. These events in Jewish history serve as warnings to us not to disobey God (1 Corinthians 10:1–13) as well as encouragements to build our faith (Hebrews 11) and hope (Romans 15:4). The story of Balaam is mentioned by three different New Testament writers: Peter (2 Peter 2:15–16, Jude 11 and John in Revelation 2:14. As a short note, Balaam was a magician, sage and prophet for hire. He was in it for the money. Balaam may have received his name later in life when his powers with the spirit world became known.

Balaam's name came from a Hebrew root meaning "destroyer" or "devourer." It is unlikely his parents named him destroyer intentionally. In either case Balaam's name suggests that he was a veteran conjurer of curses. He is brought into the bible narrative when he is solicited by Barak, king of Moab to curse the future of Israel. This of course ended poorly for Moab because Balaam actually blesses Israel instead.

There is a lesson to be learned in this narrative and it centers on ‘the Way of Balaam’ or the mindset that made Balaam be and do as he did. The arguments of whether or not he was a believer of Yahweh are a moot and distracting point. One needs to focus on the latent narrative in Numbers of Balaam’s mindset and thinking that put him where he was in the Bible narrative. A mindset that has actually become identical to the American Way. The American way refers to a nationalist ethos that adheres to the principle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and brags of American exceptionalism. If we are honest we would admit this isn’t very Biblical. In William Herberg’s writing...Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955), he makes a striking statement that could easily describe Balaam and modern Christians like Balaam:

The American Way of life is individualistic, dynamic, and pragmatic. It affirms the supreme value and dignity of the individual; it stresses incessant activity on his part, for he is never to rest but is always to be striving to "get ahead"; it defines an ethic of self-reliance, merit, and character, and judges by achievement: "deeds, not creeds" are what count.

The Bible does not stress individuality. The supreme value is not in the individual but in Christ and His true Church. Supreme value is communal. Action for action’s sake is just pointless movement. God told us to teach others everything He taught us (Matthew 28:19-20). It wasn’t focused on self it is focused on others. Not resting so one can get themselves ahead isn’t the primary focus, it is to push the Kingdom of God forward. Our modus operandi as Christians is not self-reliance but rather reliance on God. Worst of all the Christian is to focus on ‘creeds’ or truths and teaching that helps them maintain a biblical and moral ethical standard. The Way of Balaam and the American Way teach a cult of works. 

This in turn has produced an Americanized religious cult of works. This unbiblical Way of Balaam/American Way has been exacerbated by the rank immorality, greed and sin of unbridled capitalism. Is capitalism inherently bad? No. But…anything not walled in and controlled turns into a demonic free-for-all (Proverbs 5:15-23). Just so we’re clear, socialism is even worse because it places absolute power in fewer hands. The American Democracy is optimal in  fallen world but the idea of the Way of Balaam/American Way is demonic. One cannot get where they need to go running out the back of a train going in the other direction. At some point you run out of cars and end up sitting on the tracks.

If we jump to the New Testament in 2 Peter 2 we will see that Peter focuses on the danger of false teachers secretly entering the church and leading people astray. Peter promises that God will judge the deceivers doing this (v. 3). He warns believers to exercise spiritual discernment or they’ll be taken captive by false doctrine. The false teachers in Peter’s time are like Balaam in that they knew the right way but turned from it. Like Balaam they were covetous, and they led people into immorality due to their greed and sin (v.14). This Way of Balaam has entered the church today. Instead of sound doctrine to drive it right back out the front door, it has been embraced.

Things like the Social Gospel were on clear display even in the Southern Baptist Convention and otherwise sound Biblical teachers. The impetus was the 2020 COVID lockdown and the arguments of whether the church should gather or if it was a risk to believers. It divided the churches almost directly down the middle. At least it exposed the Way of Balaam that had infiltrated the church. This embracing of Balaam-esque theology has brought low the effectual message of the Gospel by making the church the culture. This in turn has further degraded the moral/ethical condition of an American society already in steep decline (even by secular standards). Sadly, no one recognizes that this is the root cause. In the end it was about money. One needs to realize faith had nothing to do with these derailments.

The Way of Balaam is motivated to make money and use opportunities ethically or unethically, not to serve God and His people, but to satisfy craving for wealth. In other words, Balaam was a hireling who sold himself to the highest bidder. Many religious leaders do this also by whoring themselves to the culture to be ‘popular’, teaching sermons that ‘tickle’ people’s ears. In some cases preaching and teaching the things the highest tithers want to hear in ‘their’ church. Balaam and these modern day equivalents use “religion” only to make money and to cover up sinful cravings of prestige and wealth. Balaam and modern day ‘prophets’ use “religion” to entice people to sin.

The Way of Balaam encourages leaders to go to God to get their duty altered, not to learn what God’s duty is for them. Balaam and false teachers always have a hidden agenda that isn’t hidden from God at all. Thankfully, if God isn’t allowed to rule in a person’s life, He overrules and accomplishes His purposes just the same. In truth regular Christians do this when the deliberately or unwittingly use Scripture or the Pentecostal, “God said to me…so you should listen to me” to manipulate people into believing their motives are strictly Godly or benign. When we walk in the way of Balaam we deliberately rebel against the will of God and try to change it to suit our own needs. How often have we see people twist Scripture to justify their sinful behavior? They use God to profit themselves, not Him. Let’s face it “Religion” is big business today and it’s easy for preachers, musicians, executives, writers, and others in Christian service to get Christianity to service them. They use precepts and ideas for money, reputation and popularity instead of perpetuating the kingdom and spiritual character, thereby defaming the entirety of Christianity in the process.

It is a sad reality that some believers care little about Bible doctrine and theology and easily fall prey to heretical influences for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). Once captured by false teaching and doctrines the new converts of these cults bring them into spiritual bondage. The false teachers and teaching of Balaam’s, Peter’s and our day prey upon ignorance of Scripture and this is the point of attack that the Christian needs to engage the enemies. Sound teaching prevents theological detours into error. The greatest evil is corruption of the highest good: Scripture. False teachers use the cloak of Scripture to cover their purposeful misinterpretation of it. Some even do so unwittingly because even they are ignorant of their own ignorance. That type of ignorance comes from arrogance. The very thing that brought down the devil (Ezekiel 28).

The ‘Doctrine of Balaam’ that creates the ‘Way of Balaam’ is actually easier to state. When in Midian do as the Midianites do. A more familiar phrase would be, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Today I believe it is stated, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” or “While in American do as the Americans do”. Nowhere in any of these statements is the mention of God. The lie embedded in the Doctrine of Balaam is the lie that it’s permissible for saved people to live like unsaved people, that God’s grace gives us the right to disobey God’s law. That is an abuse of grace. We cannot do this. Any teaching that makes it easier to sin is false. Christians need to be wary of anyone teaching this. Any Christian that encourages sinful behaviors of the culture is a Christian in error. They are a cancer and need to be excised. Israel inevitably killed Balaam but the false doctrine or the Way of Balaam he supplied outlived him. The liar can be destroyed but the lie is not so vulnerable. That is why the Christian needs to guard so vigilantly against it. It is a metastasizing cancer of the mind. We are told in 2 Corinthians 10 how to deal with this outright. We are to destroy the idea taking it captive and punishing the person or entity providing it…even if it is us. If we don’t, God can and will.

2 Corinthians 10:3-6 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.

Solomon also issued a warning.

Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

If we don’t stay vigilant, life will no longer spring from the heart...death will.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Psalm 137:1-9 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy. Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!” Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

Memory is mentioned five times in these nine verses of Psalm 137. The words remember and forget both allude to memories either being kept or trying to get rid of them. Memory can open old wounds making them feel new again. The pain resurfaces (v. 1–4) in the recollection in the Jewish exile. Sitting was the official position for mourning, and the Jewish exiles felt and acted like mourners at a funeral. This is mentioned early in the passage. Jews in exile in Babylon often gather along the rivers Tigris and the Euphrates. The Jews gathered by them because they needed water for their religious rituals (Acts 16:13). They refused to play their songs for the pagan Babylonians as they were sacred to the Jews. Similarly today, the irony of gospel choirs singing Amazing Grace for pagan masses that neither know or worship God nor the importance of the words of that song is not lost on me. Regardless, the exiled Jews had lost everything but God and their lives, and being normal people, they were deeply pained in their hearts. The lament of love lost. To lose something so costly that it feels as if it wounded you. It in fact did if you feel it that deeply.

Memories can bring pain, real physical pain and the pain does not go away when we try to bury them. This type of denial usually makes things worse. The fact that the exiles could talk about those painful memories in this episodic psalm indicates that they were facing them honestly and learning how to process the pain in a mature way. It takes time for broken hearts to heal. The healing that processing painful memories creates leads to the formation of character. Sometimes we have to lose things to really appreciate them. In this stalwart formation of character we see a fertile ground for a person or people’s faith to be cultivated.

The Jews had lost privileges of being citizens of Jerusalem, God’s holy city. They had lost the splendor of Solomon’s Temple. How often have we lost in similar manner? We lost things like our marriages, our homes, a loved one, a prized possession, our faith and even our dignity. We lost just like the Jews being patronized by the Babylonians to play their, “Songs of Zion.” Yet as we know, the Jews would and will be restored. They did not lose their God, he was and is always there/here. They wept at the recollection of privileges which they had lost by reason of their non-appreciation of them. They were removed from their country and their home because of their sins. Do we think we are any better than the exiled Jews? Think again. The Jews certainly were thinking about it…remembering their loss even in the midst of their pain. Yet, this did not stay their permanent condition. They healed and they recovered. They moved on and again thrived. We need to learn from that. We need to also realize that behind this it is God restoring them. Because the Jews did not appreciate what they had and because they didn’t appreciate God Himself, He sent them away. Do we have exiles like this in our lives too due to disobedience?

It is also interesting to note that the Babylonian lands were strange to the Jews who had been exiled there. This is similar to the Christian who isn’t really at home in the world either (Philippians 3:20). Similarly, God will often have us well outside our comfort zones. We are strangers in strange lands in strange situations doing things unfamiliar to us. I suggest this is to keep us sharp and dependant on him for spiritual sustenance, learning and faith.  On earth the Christian feels himself to be an exile—distant from his Father’s home—distant from near and beloved connections and friends who have made it home before him. True, he has many comforts but still this is not his rest; not his true spiritual birthplace; not the true condition for which his faculties and affections were originally designed. No, they were made for something much more lofty and holy. There are times in which his hope is full of immortality, and he has bright glimpses of the better place in his hours of faith and devotion. Then his faith wavers and he feels he is a stranger and a pilgrim adrift far from home without a friend in the world. He spurns his worldly yoke and kicks against the chain that holds him down.

Since coming into the faith I have changed jobs twelve times. Before that I had only had three jobs in 20 years. Do the math, in 15 years I have changed jobs 12 times. I believe this was intentional exile from employers for the glory of God. I adapted well and quickly. With each job change I have adapted faster. Dare I say I think I’m getting used to it... the chaos. Do I believe I deserved this much shuffling in my life? Does it matter if I did? What God wills, God wills. I obey. I’m sure much of it is probably exile for sin, yes. How much, who cares? The truth is, any sin is too much. I do what I can but I know God did it all anyway. I need only accept that, obey and perform the tasks set before me until I am called home like my predecessors.

In the end, God doesn’t accidently punish people or send trials their way for a laugh. They serve deliberate purposes as lessons, punishment or warnings. The designs of God are sometimes worked through wicked men as in the case of the Babylonians and Jews. Bad situations do not justify sinning more or offer excuse to such men to continue in their errant behaviors down their errant paths. You will be forgiven your sins if you repent but sin still has consequences. Forgiveness from God does not exempt you from the consequences of your deeds. The Babylonian captivity exemplified this with clarity to the Jews in Psalm 137 and should do so for us vicariously. The Jews were not carried into Babylon without God’s permission. God knew and allowed it.

In truth the pain in suffering and exile accomplishes its intended goals for the Jews and us today. It makes us focus on what matters. The Babylonians did the work of God unwittingly. They had no thought of working out the purposes of God in so doing, but simply of fulfilling their own proud and lawless designs. The captivity and exile were invariably annulled by God. And did he allow Babylon to go unpunished? No, of course not, they suffered the same fate as the Jews albeit much more severe and permanent. To this day Babylon (Iraq) is still essentially desolate. It would never rise to its former glory. When God’s hour of retribution strikes, strange fingers appeared in the royal banquet hall and the letters of doom with appalling distinctness were etched upon the wall, even as the enemy was at the city gates… “…in that night was Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans slain,” and Babylon was a kingdom no longer and Israel once again became one. God will take away but if you repent…you will be restored. If you take things for granted there is a good possibility it can and will be taken away. Appreciate things when you have them. That includes people in your life. That won't always be the case. Its all blessing and gifts from the Lord. Never take them for granted because the minute you do, they might be gone. Familiarity breeds contempt...even for God. If He is not approached properly with reverence it ends poorly for everyone that tried.

Regardless of how Mr. Fox chooses to conduct himself around King Lion, there is one constant truth. King Lion is very powerful, dangerous and could easily take Mr. Fox’s life. ~ “The Fox and the Lion, Aesop’s Fables”

Warrior Saints

If one reads Leviticus, one sees a primary theme running through all of it: Holiness. The spiritual leaders of Israel were priests. The Christian as their successors are exactly the same. If every Christian is to be a holy priest in a holy priesthood, then they are the spiritual successor to the Levitical priests.

He shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people’’ ~Leviticus 21:4.

They were in charge of the sanctuary of God; they taught the people the Word of God; they offered the sacrifices on God’s altar and when called upon, they determined the will of God for the people. They were set apart for a purpose that was unique among all other people. Their obeyance to the standard was militant in its precision and requirements. In effect the Levite priests were servant warrior priests. If these people see themselves as leaders lording over others, they have already fallen victim to mentality that will essentially make them useless to God. God will have difficulty working through these types of people. They’re to be servants, warriors and neighbors.

Warrior priests. They fought the spiritual battles through God. So too the Christians today. Said another way, Warrior Saints. Just as the military holds their warriors to a higher code of ethics, so too should Christians hold other Christians in obeyance and order. This idea is all over the Old and New Testament. What is an embarrassment for one Christian is an embarrassment for all. How one Marine behaves reflects the entire Marine Corps. Whenever we minimize the holiness of God, we’re in danger of minimizing human sinfulness, and the combination of these two errors results in the minimizing and demeaning of other Christians. What is worse and more damaging is that it defames the cross of Jesus Christ. We all know well the non-believers rallying cry against the Christians, “Hypocrite!”

Holiness isn’t necessarily just a thing (noun). It is also action (verb). God’s holiness that he imparts to us isn’t a static thing, like a block of ice or stone. Holiness is active and alive, a “sea of glass mingled with fire’’ (Revelation 15:2). Holiness speaks of action, movement and doing things at the human level. Holy and active like Jesus was in the Gospels. Jesus was especially active in the Gospel of Mark doing things for the kingdom. It is not an accident that the Greek word εὐθέως/eutheós, translated “immediately,” which appears 41 times. Jesus immediately did this or Jesus immediately did that. Holiness in action IS Christ. Though the word does not always mean “just then,” it serves to propel the kingdom forward with speed and and accuracy like an arrow in flight from a warriors bow.

Holiness also made God a servant as Philippians 2 clearly showed us in God serving as atonement for sin in his death. Just as a soldier is a servant in a much bigger cause. In God’s economy up is down and the servant is deemed mightier and more holy. In fact, to be the master in this world one must learn to serve. For men the trailhead for the path to holiness is found in humility. Warriors on a trail. Warriors marching on a path carved through this world. A journey that has rules and guidelines on a path laid out ahead of time by commander. We need to stay on the trail and go to where the trail empties out to. These are the places of spiritual engagement.

Philippians 2:8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Yet even now as I type this, I see an absence of church discipline and high standards. Current Christian conduct indicates that we don’t take holiness too seriously. In our promotions, we try to “sell’’ the church to the world by conveying the unbiblical idea that Christianity is “fun’’. Current Americanized Christianity tries to show that every pagan ought to join our ranks and start living in our paradise. Sorry folks, a majority of the time we’re in a war zone or on a battlefield not a playground. The world is always trying to get Christians to acquiesce to their point of view. Succumb to their flawed thinking and sin. To not only encourage their sin but instead applaud it. No. Just no. Holiness is at odds with what the world is and purveys.

Eight times in Scripture, God said, “Be holy, for I am holy.’’ God’s commandments are God’s enablement. If He said for you to do it be assured He will equip you to complete that mission. Because He commanded a task, He assures us that it’s possible. Possible to do what? Live a holy life. To spread the Gospel. To be different from the world but still thrive. We don’t need to be the world to accomplish our mission. We need to be diligent and follow orders. I know based simply on observation and the fruits of their actions that a huge swath of Christianity is failing like the Jews did in the Old Testament.

Whatever else the church may be known for today—popularity, celebrity, smooth talking, business, buildings, budgets, crowds, busy schedules—it certainly isn’t known for its holiness. How many of these Christians do you know that you could honestly say, “He/She is a man/woman of God’’? The church is failing and it isn’t God’s fault. Then whose is it? I posit that it is the so-called teachers, leaders and wolves among the sheep. The Devil enters your life and churches every day. It’s your job as the warrior saint to root out the sinister element and expel it. It can come as ideas, feelings or even in human form.

Holiness and the ability to discern it begins at the altar of God in your life. It begins with the ability to admit our sin and repent from it. It begins in Scripture so we are trained enough to recognize when something isn’t holy. When it stands as a direct affront to God. If we think we're going to become holy because of my sincere resolutions, spiritual habits, or theological knowledge, we’re heading towards a cliff of certain failure. Apart from Christ, we aren’t capable. The Cross reveals to us God’s hate of sin while simultaneously showing us the path to holiness. The trailhead for the warrior saint is marker by the cross. Impossible to miss. It’s not the obedience to the letter of the commands given to us that gains us holiness either, it is the discipline to realize that the battle is won at the Resurrection. Everything else is just the enemy’s tactical diversion to throw us off his trail while we are in pursuit.

A lack of holiness is not just adversely affecting regular people, it is affecting Christians. The nation’s steady decline is not just the product of sins like pornography and drug use. It is the Christians not being salt and light in a dying world. The lack of holiness in Christianity is now contributing to the quickening slide of America into irrelevance. God promised His people that He would ‘vomit them out’ if they persist in their rebellion and that is exactly what is now taking place. Idolatry and worship of every single thing that is not God is rampant in and out of the American Church. Secondly, sexual immorality might now be more rampant inside the church than outside of it. These are the two sins that God especially singled out as polluting the land.

“Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants’’ (Leviticus 18:24–25).

What we are currently seeing transpire in America is basically God vomiting us out through the very land we are in. America’s decline is God puking us out like a vile taste in His mouth. The land is merely a symbol of God’s sovereignty over us. Christians should be doing all we can to uphold holiness. The individual Christian and even the church doesn’t have the authority to impose God’s laws on the citizens of America. The problem though is the church who was to be separate and a beacon on a hill is now practicing the things of the world. They are accepting it, conforming to it, becoming it. When the church becomes like the world, it will no longer have any influence to change the world as it IS the world. 

In this way holiness is not a private affair, it is a public/communal one. We either stand unified in obedience or we fall individually in disobedience. We are now in danger of not only losing battles but losing the overall war in America (and the world at large). Why are we not doing enough to help others? Why aren’t we reading the Scriptures for the correct answers instead of relying on subjective opinions of social influencers and self-proclaimed experts? We are we doing what makes us feel good instead of doing what is morally, ethically and biblically correct. We're in a war. A war needs warriors to carry out their duty otherwise people needlessly suffer and die. Pray for peace but know there will always be spiritual warfare.