AI's Thoughts on John 8:36 - Do they ring true?

[Kokyu]

The phrase "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" comes from John 8:36 in the Bible.
Meaning:

• "The Son" refers to Jesus Christ.
• "Sets you free" means liberation from bondage and oppression. Jesus is specifically talking about liberation from the bondage of sin.
• "Free indeed" emphasizes that this freedom is genuine, complete, and permanent. It's not just a temporary or superficial freedom, but a profound transformation of heart and life.

Context:

• Jesus is speaking to Jewish people who believed they were already free because they were descendants of Abraham.
• Jesus clarifies that true freedom is not based on lineage or adherence to religious laws, but on being set free from sin.
• Sin, according to Jesus, makes us slaves to it.
• Only Jesus, as the Son of God, has the authority to break this bondage.

Therefore, the verse means that if you believe in Jesus Christ, you are truly set free from the power and penalty of sin, gaining the opportunity for everlasting life. This freedom is more than just escaping something negative; it's a radical transformation that allows you to live a life aligned with God's will and purpose.

Personally, I despise AI. Have you seen the movie Wall-E? In it, human beings aboard an intergalactic space shape are unwitting hostages to the robot technology that is supposed to be serving them. All of the humans have become obese and indolent, self-aware blobs of tissue that are served hand-and-foot by the AI and technology running the spaceship. They don't realize that they are, in fact, prisoners to the will of the AI operating the ship (until Wall-E arrives and throws a wrench into the AI's plans). As the writers of the movie envisioned, when human beings cease to work at things physically and at thinking well, they become like slugs, grossly overweight, shiftless and stupid.

Researchers into IQ have discovered that it takes significant effort for a person to reach the maximum of their intelligence quotient and to maintain it. But to lose one's capacity for intelligent thought requires nothing of a person but to neglect the effort of learning and honing one's ability to think, of processing and synthesizing information and of creating.

Humans are horribly prone to following the path of least resistance. Without sufficient reason to exert themselves, they will happily settle into laziness and carelessness. But humans, it turns out, periodically need pressure and stress, exhausting physical effort, they need to struggle and strain at things (within reason, of course). If they exist without these things, they grow unhappy, physically unfit and, in time, even disabled.

AI offers to humans the very worst temptation: To let something else do their thinking, creating and work for them. Just look at what cell-phones have done to people in isolating them from one another, distracting them from their environment to a fatal degree sometimes, eating up their attention so that they stop adventuring in the world, and creating, and truly thinking. It will be immeasurably worse as AI is insinuated into everyday life, not merely serving human beings, but instructing them, directing them and policing them, too.

And so, I am very opposed to Christians turning to AI for an understanding of their faith. No AI can tell you what it is to know and walk with God. One must have a personal, transformative experience of Him, as well as a knowledge of the Bible, in order to do this, which experience no machine can have. So, I would urge my brethren in the Lord to avoid like the plague any introduction of AI into spiritual discussions or into deliberations on biblical doctrine. Do your own study and thinking, walk with God well yourself and from this effort and experience speak God's Truth to others.

I can easily imagine, though, how tempting it will be to some Christians to make themselves appear more knowledgeable than they are and to obtain that knowledge without any effort. This will only serve to weaken further an already enormously sick Church.

 

[MatthewG]

Thats fine if you despise/hate Ai. I don't particularly care for it either.

I don't worship it as all knowing or anything... I just asked the computer a question.

Its highly valuable to help in research, but none the less, a person who is writing on a paper and scouring a bible, is fine too.

Thompson Chain Reference to be quite clear.

 

[MatthewG]

Personally, I despise AI. Have you seen the movie Wall-E? In it, human beings aboard an intergalactic space shape are unwitting hostages to the robot technology that is supposed to be serving them. All of the humans have become obese and indolent, self-aware blobs of tissue that are served hand-and-foot by the AI and technology running the spaceship. They don't realize that they are, in fact, prisoners to the will of the AI operating the ship (until Wall-E arrives and throws a wrench into the AI's plans). As the writers of the movie envisioned, when human beings cease to work at things physically and at thinking well, they become like slugs, grossly overweight, shiftless and stupid.

Researchers into IQ have discovered that it takes significant effort for a person to reach the maximum of their intelligence quotient and to maintain it. But to lose one's capacity for intelligent thought requires nothing of a person but to neglect the effort of learning and honing one's ability to think, of processing and synthesizing information and of creating.

Humans are horribly prone to following the path of least resistance. Without sufficient reason to exert themselves, they will happily settle into laziness and carelessness. But humans, it turns out, periodically need pressure and stress, exhausting physical effort, they need to struggle and strain at things (within reason, of course). If they exist without these things, they grow unhappy, physically unfit and, in time, even disabled.

AI offers to humans the very worst temptation: To let something else do their thinking, creating and work for them. Just look at what cell-phones have done to people in isolating them from one another, distracting them from their environment to a fatal degree sometimes, eating up their attention so that they stop adventuring in the world, and creating, and truly thinking. It will be immeasurably worse as AI is insinuated into everyday life, not merely serving human beings, but instructing them, directing them and policing them, too.

And so, I am very opposed to Christians turning to AI for an understanding of their faith. No AI can tell you what it is to know and walk with God. One must have a personal, transformative experience of Him, as well as a knowledge of the Bible, in order to do this, which experience no machine can have. So, I would urge my brethren in the Lord to avoid like the plague any introduction of AI into spiritual discussions or into deliberations on biblical doctrine. Do your own study and thinking, walk with God well yourself and from this effort and experience speak God's Truth to others.

I can easily imagine, though, how tempting it will be to some Christians to make themselves appear more knowledgeable than they are and to obtain that knowledge without any effort. This will only serve to weaken further an already enormously sick Church.

You wanna know whats more worry some than that to me?

This below VVV

 

[Kokyu]

You wanna know whats more worry some than that to me?

This below VVV

Thank God the video included some thoughts from Mike Winger near the end! It's so deeply repugnant to me to see this grotesque parody of the spiritual power of the ancient apostles of the Early Church. I couldn't watch the whole video front-to-back but skipped through most of the middle of it to the bits with Mike.

My grandfather was a Baptist pastor for forty years and then, for another thirty years after he "retired" from the pastorate, worked with an organization called the Canadian Revival Fellowship, travelling across, Canada, the UK, America and South America to churches where spiritual compromise, apathy and conflict had become entrenched. He'd preach usually every day for a week in these churches, dealing with matters of sin, the crucified life, walking in the Spirit, prayer and the entrance of the demonic into the lives of individual believers and into the Church. Although my grandfather didn't like to speak of the occult and the demonic, he kept running into it in the churches he visited, sometimes very overtly. And so, it became his common practice to address this area at least once in the sermon series that he preached in his week-long revival "campaigns" at the churches to which he was invited.

I remember being in several of grandfather's "revival campaign" services and they could not have been more unlike the horrible, grotesque stuff in the video about the "demon slayer." God clearly "showed up" in these services but not with the sort of sensationalism and bizarre antics characterizing the exorcism/healing event in the video, but with deep conviction of sin, profound repentance, tearful confession of wrongdoing, forgiveness and reconciliation between believers, and a quiet, humbling, awe-filled encounter with the Holy Spirit. No ruckus, no whipping up the crowd, no striding around commanding evil spirits or having conversations with them, no "miraculous" healings, just a movement of God that changed hearts, minds and churches so that the love, holiness, truth and power of God filled and flowed from them.

This happened in my grandfather's service to God with the CRF over, and over, and over again. And those truly revived by God in these events were never the same, many of them going on to the mission field, or full-time Christian service, or becoming spiritually rock-solid, holy, joyful people in whom the peace, gentleness, love and purity of Christ could be clearly seen. But, you know, in the instances where the demonic rose up in the course of my grandfather's "campaigns," it was not permitted to become a public spectacle, but was dealt with privately by the elders and deacons of the church. "Let everything be done decently and in order" (1 Co. 14:40), is God's command to us in His word but this is nowhere evident in the disorder and confusion of the "demon slayer" event. Anyway, just some thoughts on the video you posted.

 

[MatthewG]

Thank God the video included some thoughts from Mike Winger near the end! It's so deeply repugnant to me to see this grotesque parody of the spiritual power of the ancient apostles of the Early Church. I couldn't watch the whole video front-to-back but skipped through most of the middle of it to the bits with Mike.

My grandfather was a Baptist pastor for forty years and then, for another thirty years after he "retired" from the pastorate, worked with an organization called the Canadian Revival Fellowship, travelling across, Canada, the UK, America and South America to churches where spiritual compromise, apathy and conflict had become entrenched. He'd preach usually every day for a week in these churches, dealing with matters of sin, the crucified life, walking in the Spirit, prayer and the entrance of the demonic into the lives of individual believers and into the Church. Although my grandfather didn't like to speak of the occult and the demonic, he kept running into it the churches he visited, sometimes very overtly. And so, it became his common practice to address this area at least once in the sermon series that he preached in his week-long revival "campaigns" at the churches to which he was invited.

I remember being in several of grandfather's "revival campaign" services and they could not have been more unlike the horrible, grotesque stuff in the video about the "demon slayer." God clearly "showed up" in these services but not with the sort of sensationalism and bizarre antics characterizing the exorcism/healing event in the video, but with deep conviction of sin, profound repentance, tearful confession of wrongdoing, forgiveness and reconciliation between believers, and a quiet, humbling, awe-filled encounter with the Holy Spirit. No ruckus, no whipping up the crowd, no striding around commanding evil spirits or having conversations with them, no "miraculous" healings, just a movement of God that changed hearts, minds and churches so that the love, holiness, truth and power of God filled and flowed from them.

This happened in my grandfather's service to God with the CRF over, and over, and over again. And those truly revived by God in these events were never the same, many of them going on to the mission field, or full-time Christian service, or becoming spiritually rock-solid, holy, joyful people in whom the peace, gentleness, love and purity of Christ could be clearly seen. But, you know, in the instances where the demonic rose up in the course of my grandfather's "campaigns," it was not permitted to become a public spectacle, but was dealt with privately by the elders and deacons of the church. "Let everything be done decently and in order" (1 Co. 14:40), is God's command to us in His word but this is nowhere evident in the disorder and confusion of the "demon slayer" event. Anyway, just some thoughts on the video you posted.

Thank you for all your thoughts, I read your whole thing out loud.