Becky and I are planning a return trip to Brazil this spring and we are thrilled to be able to be a part of the thirtieth anniversary celebration at Igreja Presbiteriana no Jardim América! But the getting-there part of the trip can be a bit of a downside. Even with good connections, a flight from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, is 22 hours, 13 of those hours sitting on a plane – 10 hours overnight from Atlanta to São Paulo. I suppose we could be flying to New Zealand, but by any count, 10 hours is a long time on an airplane squeezed into an economy class seat. Well worth it, however. So I found a good itinerary at a decent price and booked our seats.

A couple of weeks after confirming our reservations, the airline began to tempt us with upgrades to premium economy and even first class. At first the price of the upgrades was ridiculously high and even the thought of being comfortable for those 13 hours was not enough to click “buy.”

But then it appeared. An upgrade to first class that was cheaper than the upgrade to premium economy. I checked the travel blogs and on a per hour or per mile basis, the price was deemed exceptionally good. I booked it and began to dream about that glass of champagne as we boarded our flight and ten hours in a lie-flat seat.

It was too good to be true. Though the reservation and seat assignments appeared on my airline app, after a couple of days, the airline let me know that the new price was too good to be true. It was a system error and the upgrade never cleared. Sure enough, the charge on my credit card was still listed as “pending,” and I had not received a confirmation of the upgrade. The customer servant agent (while on live chat, still a human being) was helpful and apologetic. And she was correct. The upgrade had not been confirmed, the price was not charged to my card. Just a system error to shatter my dreams.

As I settled back into my economy-class reality, the agent ended our conversation by telling me, “It was a pleasure messaging with you today. Please reach out to us again if you need assistance with your upcoming travel. Have a great day, and thank you for being the best part of XXXX Air Lines!”

At least I am the best part of XXXX Airlines.

Too good to be true. The get rich quick scheme. The miracle cure. 28 Days to a New You –  (the Chrisian version is more difficult, 50 Days to a New You in Christ, but don’t worry, you can do it in as little as ten minutes a day.)

We learn early on that some things are too good to be true. But still, some deals are so tempting. What is P.T. Barnum is credited as saying? “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And W.C. Fields cautions us, “never give a sucker an even break.”

Yes, some things are too good to be true. But while it may be foolishness to the Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23), the gospel is too true not to be good news to all who believe (John 3:16). Let them call us foolish, but we are not suckers.

By the way, the airline kept on tempting me and I found another deal, not quite as good. I’ve received confirmation of the upgrade. I guess that’s what they do for you when you’re the best part of their airline. I’ll let you know if the champagne was any good.

Our friends are concerned about raising their young children in the digital world, particularly the world of artificial intelligence. Yes, we know that AI is going to make all of us rich and heal every disease, but what if there is a downside? What if artificial intelligence, fake knowledge, makes us less human? What if it obscures the image of God inherent in our creation?

Since talking with our friends about AI a couple of months ago, it seems like I see an AI-related news story or commentary almost every day.

My curiosity was piqued, then, when I saw this Wall Street Journal headline earlier this week: Meet the One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI Morals

The column begins by telling us that the one woman “knew from the age of 14 that she wanted to teach philosophy. What she didn’t know then was that her only pupil would be an artificial-intelligence chatbot named Claude.

“As the resident philosopher of the tech company Anthropic, (she) spends her days learning Claude’s reasoning patterns and talking to the AI model, building its personality and addressing its misfires with prompts that can run longer than 100 pages. The aim is to endow Claude with a sense of morality—a digital soul that guides the millions of conversations it has with people every week.”

There is no such thing as a digital soul and there cannot be such a thing. Continue reading →

I have just finished reading a new book by Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth. The subtitle is “J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm. 1933-1945.” It is a good book and I recommend it, though this will not be a book review.

As Loconte points out in a recent interview, for a generation of readers Lewis and Tolkien are not just authors. They are teachers and mentors. We remember when and where and why we first read The Chronicles of Narnia or Mere Christianity. We recall the thrill and the fear brought to mind by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The works of Tolkien and Lewis have helped countless Christians make sense of our world. We hear the call to go “further up and further in” as we come to our “real country” (The Last Battle). When tragedy or trial crash into our lives, we join Frodo as he laments the ring having come to him. Gandalf’s wise words answer our fear and anxiety as they answered Frodo, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” (The Fellowship of the Ring). Continue reading →

As for many of you, this past week in Auburn, Indiana, has been filled with wind and snow and very cold temperatures. And lots of snow shoveling. At least for me. My neighbors might be correct to assume that I have some sort of snow removal obsession disorder. Not long after the last flake floats to the ground (or sometimes a little bit before it makes its final landing), I am out to clear the driveway and sidewalks of the wicked white stuff. Heaven forbid if I have to leave the garage while there’s still snow on the driveway. Those nasty ice tracks become deadly slip traps for the next many days. So, yeah, I am sometimes obsessed with ridding our hard surfaces of that frozen menace.

We have lived in the real snow country of the mountains of California and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where to let the falling snow get too far ahead of you is to never catch up.  I come by my compulsive behavior honestly.

Not all our neighbors share my obsession, however, as their sidewalks and driveways become obstacle courses of icy ruts and slippery concrete. Whether it is good for them to slip slide away on their way to work every morning is theirs to decide, however. Their inattention to the fine art of snow removal is not good for me, that is for sure. Filled with disdain and self-righteousness, I find myself judging my neighbor. Continue reading →

but I’m not a national champion

You may have heard that the Hoosiers of Indiana University are the national champions of college football. They beat Miami 27-21 on Monday night. In and of itself, the win should make any resident of Indiana proud. But it’s not just that. It was not the Ohio State Buckeyes or the University of Michigan Wolverines winning the national championship. It was the Indiana University Hoosiers. There are various ways of summing it up. ESPN puts it succinctly. Since records have been kept, IU had suffered “715 losses, which was the most recorded by any team in the 156 years of college football.”

The college with the worst record of all time is now the national champion. Way to go, Hoosiers!

And what or who are Hoosiers and how did they come to be called Hoosiers? No one knows where the appellation comes from, but in its nearly 200 years of use, it has come to mean someone from Indiana. Becky and I have been nomads, having lived in six different states, so our Hoosier identity may not be deep, but, indeed, we are Hoosiers, and Monday’s game adds just a little bit of polish to the name. Continue reading →