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Dear friends,
I was going to have ChatGPT, the tool that can write anything you ask in a believable human tone, write you a little intro to this newsletter to see if it folks liked it better than my normal writing, but the servers are overloaded during this morning time slot where I sit down and think about our weekly newsletter. A couple weeks back, I toyed with ChatGPT for a few minutes -- I had it write an epic poem in iambic pentameter about a recent triumph I had in a trivial argument (don't ask), along with a short Shakespearean-style play about how much I loved my dog.
You can't turn anywhere on the internet right now without commentary on the advent of an age where anything you read or see might have been created by the beta version of our future android overlords. Personally, I'm a word person; I cling to my manuscripts in the pulpit, editing endlessly until forced to stop by the beginning of the service. As a kid, I never took to the abbreviated styles of communication via text. I do literally sit for an hour or more to think about this newsletter, of all things. Emails have always taken me an embarrassingly long time to compose. It's not an intelligence problem, but it is possibly an ego one.
Ego — the self, Latin for "I" — is a complicated thing in Christianity. It is the human self that is both exalted and depraved, a paradox of love and hate, something to be cherished and something to be forsaken, even crucified. John the Baptist says he must become less so that Christ may be greater, and the Psalmist wonders aloud, "Who am I that You are mindful of me?" It must always be both.
What's interesting to me is that every step we take in technological advancement, from writing to labor to art and beyond, seems to focus on individual eradication and not individual dignity. As our society has become hyper-individualized, our tech has increasingly become a way to erase the self. "The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment," wrote Wendell Berry in a 2012 essay I now leave with you all as recommended reading in our new age.
But if we are unable to hold the Christian paradox of ego and are instead hastening to the creation of a collective self — despite Star Trek's repeated warnings! — a word of advice: tell Siri "thank you" now and again.
faithfully,
Amber
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