Locked doors at Langhorne Presbyterian Church, Spring, 2020

For the past six or seven weeks, we have read and heard many retrospectives on the events of three years ago when the coronavirus began to spread around the world. As I look back, this second week in March was the week the reality of a pandemic left the headlines and became real in my world. 

At church, we had worshiped as usual on Sunday March 8 and, in response to the news of a spreading virus, had modified our mid-week program on March 12, canceling dinner but holding classes and choir practices as usual. But by Sunday, March 15, the church doors had been locked and worship and all other activities cancelled until further notice – we thought it might be a couple of weeks; you remember, to flatten the curve and all that.

As I think back three years, though, it is not the politics of masks and vaccinations and lockdowns that I most remember, or want to remember.

Yes, I received a nasty email – but just one – about ours not being the first church in the community to announce cancellations. My correspondent was sure that I wished the death of many. There were some strange forwards about sure ways to avoid the plague and dire warnings about martial law and the toilet paper cartel. Continue reading →

My preaching text for Sunday is the “household code” from Ephesians 5 and 6.  In the letter Paul has been writing about the ways the church is to live out its calling in, to, and for the world.  He has advised caution and grace in how we speak with one another, and respect and restraint in honoring the gift of sexuality.  In Sunday’s passage, as the Apostle talks about husbands and wives and parents and children. He does so under the rubric of mutual submission.

The last section of mutual submission has to do with what the English Standard Version calls bondservants and masters.  The bondservants are called to obedience and the masters to a godly and non-threatening way in their role, remembering they, too, have a Master.  But the ESV is an outlier in its translation of the word (doulos) it renders “bondservants.”  A few translations use “servants,” but the vast majority use “slaves.”

The ESV explains its translation choice in its prefeace: “’‘Ebed (Hebrew) and doulos (Greek), …are often rendered ‘slave.’ These terms, however, actually cover a range of relationships that requires a range of renderings—’slave,’ ‘bondservant,’ or ‘servant’ —depending on the context. Further, the word ‘slave’ currently carries associations with the often brutal and dehumanizing institution of slavery particularly in nineteenth-century America. For this reason, the ESV translation of the words ‘ebed and doulos has been undertaken with particular attention to their meaning in each specific context.”

Which begs the question, “should we put new words in James Bond’s mouth?” Continue reading →

You may already have interacted with a chatbot, an artificial intelligence program, without realizing it.  If you have gone online or used an app to order Starbucks coffee, Spotify music, or a ride from Lyft, you’ve had a conversation with a chatbot (those conversations you type in a chatbox).  I don’t quite understand how a chatbot works, but it is something like a search engine that responds not just with suggested hyperlinks but by compiling requested information and displaying it in coherent text – grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs.  Some news sites are already using AI to compose articles and college students are using chatbots to help write all or part of their term papers.  A chatbot recently passed graduate-level law and business school exams.

Ready or not, chatbots are the future of data gathering and processing, and just as google became a verb in the early 2000s, we’re headed for a slew of new words to describe what will become as familiar to us as googling.

It’s all good, right?  Probably, but a writer for the New York Times recently described himself as “creeped out” after his encounter of a close kind with a chatbot:  On Tuesday night, I had a long conversation with the chatbot, which revealed (among other things) that it identifies not as Bing but as Sydney, the code name Microsoft gave it during development. Over more than two hours, Sydney and I talked about its secret desire to be human, its rules and limitations, and its thoughts about its creators. Continue reading →

A few weeks ago our windshield got clobbered by a flying rock as we were driving down I-69 through Fort Wayne.  We are pretty sure the rock came from the load carried by the dump truck in front of us, but we are not sure, however, so we will not be those who cast the second stone.  The question of guilt being unresolved, we used our insurance to have a replacement windshield installed.  It is an all’s well that ends well story.

The story having ended well, the national company that did the windshield replacement wanted us to respond to an online survey evaluating their work.  In fact, the local shop sent us an email asking us to be looking for the survey and told us that that they would consider anything less than a 9 or 10 on the 1 to 10 scale a huge disappointment. My guess is that the manager of the local shop may win a trip to Las Vegas if he averages 9 or better on his customer surveys.

I am quite satisfied with our windshield replacement, but I am afraid the local shop may be hugely disappointed in my evaluation.  I’d say a 7 means they did all they were asked to do and maybe even a little more.  But frankly, they did not surpass all my expectations.  Sorry about the trip to Las Vegas.

You must give me a 9 or 10.  I have to have an A to keep my GPA.  Teacher and professor friends tell us about grade inflation and inflated student expectations. Continue reading →

Sunday is the big day.  Of course, it’s the big day for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs and their friends, but it is also a big day for Jesus.

As for me, I will pull out my old Eagles t-shirt and root for the team that was our home team for a dozen years or more.

As for Jesus, he’s got a big day of his own.  First off, he’s featured in $20 million worth of Super Bowl ads.  Along with “This Bud’s for You,” we will see two “He Gets Us” commercials, sort of a “This Jesus is for You.”  You know, the King of Beers and the King of Kings.  I wish much success for the “He Gets Us” campaign.

But Jesus also has a big dilemma when it comes to rooting for the Eagles or Chiefs.  The Christian sports media complex has been all about it.  It turns out that both the star quarterback for the Chiefs and the star quarterback for the Eagles are faithful practicing Christians.  The Eagles up the ante by having a Christian head coach and the Chiefs raise the stakes with a faithful owner.  Or so goes the pre-game Christian hype. Continue reading →