📖 Are you anti-Jesus?

I. It is impossible to be neutral toward Jesus, no matter what we say. If you don’t believe Jesus is Lord and do not submit your life to him, it means you are against him; at least according to Jesus himself.

“Anyone who is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters.” (Luke 11:23)

Anyone can say Jesus was a good moral teacher, or that they have no issues with Jesus, and then think that while they don’t think he is the Son of God, they’ve got no problem with him.

But the standard of Jesus is, “You're either for me (by trusting me with your life and living out my commands), or you’re against me.”

For Jesus, you don’t have to actively be denigrating him or trying to pull people away from following him. If you are not following him yourself, then you are against him.

Why such strong language from Jesus? Perhaps so there is no ambiguity. Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). The Scriptures tell us there is salvation found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which people must be saved (Acts 4:12).

You can either be for Jesus or against Jesus. Jesus leaves no neutral third option. And if you are not actively for Jesus, you are against him.

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II. It is impossible to live out God’s will for your life if you do not believe and trust in Jesus.

In John 6, Jesus feeds the 5,000 and the next day explains to the crowd what that miracle was meant to point to (that Jesus is the eternal bread of life). He then says this in John 6:40:

“For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

It is literally God’s will for your life that you believe in Jesus.

Meaning, you can make the best decision in every scenario you ever face in your entire life, including what job to take, where to live, where to invest your money, and how to discipline your kids, and still be explicitly living outside the will of God.

It is God’s will that you believe in Jesus and follow him.

Are you living God’s will for your life?

Cornelius Van Till with a biting critique of our hyper-individualistic age:

“The absolute authority of the Creator-Redeemer God speaking directly to man through the words of Scripture has virtually been replaced by the self-sufficient, autonomous man putting his own ideal self on a pedestal and bowing down before it.”

This week’s question: Should all Christians speak in tongues?

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If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies by Yudkowsky & Soares

A book about AI and their fear that if anyone anywhere creates artificial superintelligence, it will ultimately kill all of humanity.

This book is hard to give a brief review of because I have many thoughts. The book was certainly interesting and educational. It was hard at times to track with some of the language, examples, and terminology, but the authors are trying to simplify complex concepts and ideas, so I can’t fault them too much for this.

I clearly have a different worldview from these authors. Sometimes I felt their logic was just weird. For example, after giving a fictitious example of how superintelligence would wipe out humanity, they were concerned because it would then one day also wipe out any living aliens on far-off planets.

It was just a side comment from them, but not only would humanity be no more, but their concern was also that these aliens would no longer be able to appreciate the beauty of life, and the authors assumed these aliens would be “good.”

I point all of that out to say that it was just kind of weird. They are adamant that superintelligence will wipe out all humanity if created, and also seemed quite convinced aliens exist and that they have a morality like humanity.

Why does this matter? I think these authors are sincere in their concern, but I am ultimately unmoved for two reasons.

1) Throughout written human history, time and again it was assumed that a new technology or advancement would spell the end of humanity, and every single time those predictions were not only wrong, they couldn’t have been further from the truth. This book felt a little like that.

2) While human inventions can hurt and even devastate other humans, we will never completely wipe ourselves out. Time as we know it will end with the triumphant return of Jesus. He, not AI or anything else, will be the end of history as we know it.

It is hard to rate this book as I did learn from it, but found it boring at times and disagreeable at others. So I’ll give it a number that balances those two things.

6.5/10

This week on Thinking Biblically, I discuss 4 Biblical Truths About Parenting. I even talk about spanking. 😳

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P.S. Who else can relate to Barbara?