How Twitter is Like Prayer

The following is a re-post from about two years ago. I thought I'd re-post it after a discussion I had today with one of my intelligent friends, who mentioned that though the "like" button on Facebook doesn't create real community, it evidences the desire for true genuine human friendship. So, enjoy this re-post.

So I caved to the Twitter craze. I love the "connection" it brings to other people. I love the fact that I can sync it with my cell phone and with Facebook, and thus kill many birds with the one stone.

But Twitter can bring a false connection. If I spent all of my time on Twitter telling people what I'm doing, well then I wouldn't be doing anything, would I? And, if I spent all of my time on the internet, I wouldn't really have friends, would I? That's the irony of social networking: sometimes the more we're networked electronically, the less we are networked in real life. Real friendships suffer. But with that said, since being on Twitter for 2 days, I had an epiphany: Twitter is like prayer.

Think about it: I constantly hope for more people to follow me. Maybe they'll think I'm important. Maybe they'll actually care what I'm doing. I must admit that in the last few days I have tweeted in the hopes that somebody out there was seeing it. Maybe somebody out there cares. And that's the essence of Twitter, human beings want to be known. And not just known, but known deeply. We want to know that there is a place for us to be accepted, loved, and wanted. That's why we crave for relationship. And it's even why we crave for followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook.

That universal desire is a lot like prayer. Gallup and other poll organizations regularly report that around 90% of Americans pray. Forget that many of those people are not Christians and do not claim to believe in a personal God. People still pray.

Neither atheism, nor new age, nor Islam, nor many other religions believe in a personal God. People who subscribe to those worldviews may still maintain prayer in some fashion, but ultimately prayer cannot be interactive in those worldviews in the sense that a personal God will not interact back with the person who prays. And even still, peoply pray.

To be known deeply, to offer a picture into our lives, to have someone else listen in our despair-- these are universal human desires. The personal God that establishes Christianity does know, does pay attention, and does listen to us. Twitter is imperfect, but Jesus is perfect. Thank God!



UK: Fire, Neighborhoods, and G.K. Chesterton

People are rioting in London and lighting things on fire. This is not good.

This is not a post on economics or the nature of class warfare. For that, go here.

This also isn't really a post about the hope we can have as Christians in the midst of such turmoil. For that, go here.

This is a post about home, and our rightful wonder of the places where we reside.

During these London riots, I couldn't help but turn my mind to G.K. Chesterton's first bit of fiction, titled The Napoleon of Notting Hill. In this classic, Chesterton tells a tale not of cosmic proportions, but of local flavor. This narrative brings us into a post-unified world no longer riddled with war. Kings are chosen at random, and the latest king decides he'd spice up the empire a bit and incite games and competitions in local London neighborhoods just to overcome the boredom that he and everyone in London bathe in.

But, one of the young men in this neighborhood (for whom the title suggests), takes these games seriously. He takes them so seriously that eventually a war breaks out among the neighborhoods. It isn't class warfare, but warfare of location. Notting Hill takes all comers.They take all comers because Notting Hill is worth fighting and dying for. Home matters that much.

The hilarity of the events is coupled with the seriousness of it. The whimsical nature of the king is contrasted to the devoted stoutness of the napoleon. This is classic Chesterton, where home is the place where the real things of life take place, even as they are enjoyed with others. Neither main character quite captures the full essence of Chesterton's message.

And neither do the rioters in London today. Chesterton continues his motif in his non-fiction work, Orthodoxy, by saying that the Christian is in the unique place of loving and hating the world simultaneously. We are in the unique position of both laughing at the world and fighting for our neighborhood. We love the world because it is filled with so much wonder and amazement, and because it is ours. Our neighborhood is the best depiction of what is ours, and looking at our own home from an atypical angle helps us to wonder at things we see everyday. But, the Christian must also hate the world because we see it's imperfections, and we want it to change. To condemn it to stay the same wouldn't really be loving it either.

The rioters are set only to destroy. Only to hate the world. They don't really love their neighborhoods or anyone else's. Therefore, they don't properly hate the world either because they don't seek a better end, but only a destructive one.

In London, the very city of Chesterton's tragic comedy, Chesterton would be disappointed.

God's Geopolitics and Osama Bin Laden

How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice?  Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

The prophet Habakkuk (NIV)

This guy with a funny name, back a little before 586 BC, cried out to his God. Why? Because he had seen the oppression and violence all around him. It was the oppression and violence by his own people against his own people, the Jews. Habakkuk cried out for justice, and justice was forthcoming. God responded:

“Look at the nations and watch— and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor... "

This was not quite the expected response of Habakkuk. Habakkuk saw the misery and corruption in his own land and cried out for justice, and God was telling Habbakuk that he will bring justice, just not in the way Habakkuk expects. God will bring an even more wicked nation to destroy the nation of Judah, in order to bring them to justice. A people even more ruthless than the Jews were coming for recompense. God will bring justice geopolitically, even if that is through other humans, albeit wicked ones.

Some American Christians think God works geopolitically, but usually have a misunderstanding of that application as it relates to the modern nation-state of Israel. I think most other American Christians- very individualized in their faith- forget that God works geopolitically at all. Non-Christians, except Muslims, probably don't even accept the premise that God works geopolitically. But if there is truly a personal God and he created this whole universe, then it makes sense that he also governs it, and governs it completely. Christians call this God's sovereignty. He is sovereign over something so small as me and something so big as the killing of a terroris who murdered thousands of civilians.

So today is not merely a day of American victory. Indeed, America, just like any other nation that no longer exists (wherefore hath Babylon gone, after all, but to the grave?), will someday no longer exist. But God has and is still working his plan, and he will accomplish his ends in whatever way he seems fit. It is just that this day, he has chosen to use an imperfect country, one I love, to bring an end to someone who killed innocent Americans. Today God's geopolitics seems just.

But God was just as in control on September 11, 2001. What I am not saying is that God punished America for some reason, like some televangelists proclaimed. What I am not saying is that God is somehow pleased with innocent folks dying. He isn't. But, at that moment nearly 10 years ago, God's geopolitics did not seem just, if indeed he is in control.

So hear me clearly, since my premise is small: my point is not that I know why God does things or allows things as he does on a geopolitical scale. I am not a prophet, and I am not Habakkuk. I just know that God controls and allows things on a geopolitical scale. The worship of that God should increase our awe and worship of Him.

Furthermore, let us not allow our nationalistic feelings or our fervent, patriotic self-righteousness to cloud the fact that God has wrought what he has wrought, and we don't always know why. In the end, Christians affirm that all evil will be brought to justice, and not just the obvious evil done by Bin Laden or Hilter. In other words, we might be surprised what God might say to us, who at this moment feel so vindicated and self-righteous.

There is none righteous. Nope, not one of us.

A.I. and the Nature of the Human Person

There are two things you need to do this week: read Time's cover story on Artificial Intelligence and watch Jeopardy tonight. But let's start with Jeopardy, who has a computer named Watson competing against the two greatest champions in Jeopardy history. Last night's episode was round 1 of the Jeopardy competition. Watch the first couple of minutes to get a feel for why Watson is a trivia force to be reckoned with.

After watching last night, my human sensibilities were sparked. In other words, I found myself rooting for Ken Jennings (who won a record 52 consecutive times) really hard, since he was climbing an uphill battle and representing the best of the human species. It was man vs. machine, and we all know from The Matrix and I, Robot that the humans are the good guys. Go Ken! But this amusing trivia competition leads us to ask deeper questions, the kinds about the nature of humanity and true rationality and intelligence. And that leads us to the Time article.

The Time article, by Lev Grossman, traces what is called the "Singularity Movement," which calculates the moment in history when computers will be able to run themselves and think for themselves (which leading "Singulatarians" believe will be in about 35 years). Let me trace some of the more significant quotes in the article and respond to them as it relates to our discussion here.

The real question is whether computers can actually be real intelligence.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

Does that spook you yet? Well then consider what this kind of intelligence may mean to human life:

After artificial intelligence, the most talked-about topic at the 2010 summit was life extension. Biological boundaries that most people think of as permanent and inevitable Singularitarians see as merely intractable but solvable problems. Death is one of them. Old age is an illness like any other, and what do you do with illnesses? You cure them...[Leading Singulatarian Aubrey de Grey says] "People have begun to realize that the view of aging being something immutable — rather like the heat death of the universe — is simply ridiculous," he says. "It's just childish. The human body is a machine that has a bunch of functions, and it accumulates various types of damage as a side effect of the normal function of the machine. Therefore in principal that damage can be repaired periodically..."

But is it really possible? Far from being bound by religious beliefs, is it really actually possible? Notice what the major assumption of De Gray is here: that human bodies are merely a machine. Here there is no view that the body and some immaterial part of the body (ie mind or soul) are uniquely tied together. Humans are a machine in this philosophy, and therefore they can be fixed and operate as a machine and potentially live forever. This philosophy informs the view of the possible; a view that is not shaped by facts alone. The article does well to point out some of these philosophical difficulties:

Underlying the practical challenges are a host of philosophical ones. Suppose we did create a computer that talked and acted in a way that was indistinguishable from a human being — in other words, a computer that could pass the Turing test. (Very loosely speaking, such a computer would be able to pass as human in a blind test.) Would that mean that the computer was sentient, the way a human being is? Or would it just be an extremely sophisticated but essentially mechanical automaton without the mysterious spark of consciousness — a machine with no ghost in it? And how would we know?

And then, consider the fervent "evangelical" belief that many in this movement hold. They first "prophesy" into the future about when the moment of computers trumping humans will happen. Then in the article we read things like this: [Leading Singulatarian Raymond Kurzweil] "hopes to bring his dead father back to life," and the belief that human intelligence will "re-engineer and saturate all matter in the universe, Kurzweil believes, [is] our destiny as a species" [emphasis mine].

Behind every fact is a belief indeed. What might appear possible might be impossible; it's just that these scientists believe that it is. They believe human bodies are meat machines. They believe there is no fundamental ethical distinction between potential really smart machines and humans. What I'm trying to get the reader to see is that there is a philosophy underpinning their interpreted version of the facts. And we all have a philosophy.

And so let me tell you about the Christian view of these issues: the human person is a mix of material and immaterial linked in one body. The Christian view of eternity is that such a body and spirit will be together forever, either in heaven or hell. Christians believe in the resurrection of the body, just like Jesus did. Contrary to eastern religions, we do not merely subscribe to the immortality of the soul, since the body is linked with the soul forever. Unlike naturalistic views such as in this article, we also reject the machine view of the body. We applaud the works of science that make improvements to human life, but we also know that all humans will die, and that some will be raised to life. We are not worried about potentialities of artificial intelligence, because we believe humanity is different in kind, and not just degrees from other forms of intelligence (in the animal or robotic kingdoms). We are different.

TSA and the Human Heart

In the last week, the TSA's new procedures have become the topic of hot national debate. I've read three articles in opposition to these new policies. Charles Krauthammer's column got a lot of attention because of the column's title (Don't Touch My Junk). George Will's column is more measured, but equally vitriolic (The T. S. of A). And lastly, on a popular Christian researcher's website, Ed Stetzer wrote Four Reasons Why You Should Resist the New Procedures.

In a representative democracy, the age old tension goes between the level of freedom and the level of security. The more security, the less freedom (think 1984). The more freedom, the less security (think Tale of Two Cities or any other book about the French Revolution). Somewhere in powerful democracies, the tension must be managed. 

The interesting aspect about this is that none of us are ever really guaranteed security and freedom. Despite the most just laws this planet has ever known, the US federal government cannot completely guarantee our safety (though it can make sure that itself won't be the cause of preventing freedom-- that's why I'm a conservative). The federal government cannot stop anyone from putting a bomb in a major urban area in a backpack and killing a few people. Israel is the most secure country on the planet and yet it endures small bombings like this regularly.

The only way we really have a safe society is by having safe citizens. The Bill of Rights protects me from no one except the government, in actuality. The Bill of Rights does not make sure that my roadway is safe from a suicide bomber tomorrow. The only real guarantee of safety I have is that if just law is embedded in people's hearts. If the first amendment is so ingrained into the American people, we'll demand a fair hearing no matter where we go. Law must be in the heart, for us to know real peace and freedom. 

And embedded deeply in the American heart is the Bill of Rights. Our citizens live it and breathe it. We have a free press, the most (though not always) fair trials in all the world, and the right to resist illegal searches and seizures. We have the right to not be punished cruelly and unusually. Take note of these laws: they are basically on the American heart.

And then go read Shari'a law. It is in direct opposition to our Bill of Rights. Cruel and unusual punishment is commanded. Free speech isn't guaranteed. There is no guarantee of freedom or security in a society that is ruled by Shari'a law- law that would be in the hearts of most. Law must be on the heart for real freedom and security to exist.

In other words, TSA could take naked pictures of us and it won't make much of a difference.