Recently, a clip featuring John Piper went viral. In his discourse, he admitted that AI indeed has better sentence structures and prayers than we do. It offers better answers from the Bible than we ever could. Unlike us, it doesn’t have to think long and hard about where a specific Bible verse is. It wouldn’t be hard for AI to determine to whom a quote belongs or what period of church history it originated from. However, despite all that knowledge, it still pales in comparison to what God has endowed us with. A heart! Unlike AI, human beings have hearts filled with affections. Machines will be clearer, more articulate, and accurate than we will ever be. However, no matter how many affections a man tries to code into them, they will never be as intricate or nuanced as ours are.
It’s possible to compare how human beings have made machines with how God made us. However, it is also true that nothing we do could ever compare to how intricately God wove a human being. However, even in the grandeur of how God created us, we can still stoop to being no more than machines. How do we get here? By being so puffed up with head-knowledge, yet with unmoved affections. Piper quotes Isaiah 29:13 to illustrate how easy it is to become like a machine. We will focus on how to avoid this trap in the paragraphs that follow.
We Must Know God Truly
It’s necessary to understand the importance of truly knowing God, not just knowing about him. Arrogance or ignorance of anything to do with God is obviously detrimental to the soul. As Isaiah said, being indifferent to know or comprehend God leads to spiritual blindness and drunkenness. Isaiah said these words when the Hebrews had chosen to be indifferent to the God who saved them (Isaiah 29:1-8). He understood that they had gone so far off that, by human strength or wisdom, it would be impossible to bring them back. That judgment seemed to be the only logical conclusion of their rebellion. They became a people who couldn’t see or think. Their prophets and seers, people tasked with proclaiming God’s word to them, became the foremost contributors to their blindness (Isaiah 30:9-11).
How far off were they? Isaiah 29:11-12 explains that they had become so indifferent that, to them, God’s vision was like a sealed book. It wouldn’t matter how learned they were, as no one can read a sealed book unless the seal is removed. There was a deliberate lethargy here. They could have easily unsealed the book to read it, but they chose not to. They could have learned how to read, but they opted not to.
Dear Saint, seek to know Christ and the power of his resurrection in all your days. Seek to share in his sufferings because of your knowledge of him. For the reward that awaits you isn’t only eternity with him but also a crown of righteousness (Philippians 3:10-11, 2 Timothy 4:7-8). Don’t look to people or things that will make you more thirsty. Quench your thirst by drinking from the well that never runs dry (Isaiah 58:11).
Necessity of the Right Heart Posture
It should be our greatest joy to know God. However, without rightly ordered affections, knowing God is merely an academic exercise. You don’t have to know everything about God to be a good Christian. However, you must have the correct heart posture to be one. The Hebrews were those who didn’t desire to know God. Hence why God, speaking in Isaiah 29:13, essentially called them machines. They had become a people who, while having no actual intention to know God, still offered him empty praise. Isaiah highlighted this dichotomy in Isaiah 1:11-15 by mentioning that God had hidden his face from them. Although they had head knowledge, as God said, their hearts were far from him.
This goes to show how man never changes. The sin issues God’s people faced then are the same issues we face now. Just like today’s machines, we have no desire to know God, even though we follow all the intricacies that lead us to believe that we know God. Our country, in particular, is rife with this matter. We are a country plagued by nominalism. Many will claim to believe in and know God, yet have affections that don’t prove their allegiance in any way. It is all mechanical faith. If this is you, examine yourself, since there is a high chance you’re not a Christian. However, fret not. There is a pathway to deliverance.
Only God Can Save Us from Mechanical Faith
This is the path that God himself has paved. Just like a machine can’t make itself human, neither can a man without God declare himself a man of God. It is only by God’s help that we can have rightly ordered affections; hearts that are close to him. This is because God gives new hearts. How then does AI become sentient? Despite all of our human ingenuity, it remains impossible because nothing man creates can ever transcend God’s creative hand (for more on that, click here). The God who intricately wove us is indeed capable of the impossible (Luke 18:27).
He saves us from disordered hearts through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ. Through him we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is through his work that we get rightly ordered hearts, for by his Spirit, he makes us the righteousness of God in him (Romans 8:9-10, 2 Corinthians 5:21). By the Spirit of God we are brought from death to life (Romans 8:11). It is only then that we will accord God the true honor that he deserves. We rid ourselves of spiritual blindness and deafness by coming to him in faith (Isaiah 29:18).
If you haven’t entrusted yourself to Christ, please do so, so long as it is called today. Don’t assume you have time because you don’t know how long you have here. Don’t be like the Jews in Isaiah 29:14, who continued to rely on their wisdom and so-called discernment. Instead, be the fool who realizes that he can’t do without God.
Learn to Fear God from God
Once you do, you will realize that the only place you can learn how to have a rightly ordered heart is in God. A reason the Jews had disordered hearts and lacked sincerity is that, as Isaiah put it, they learnt to fear God from men (Isaiah 29:13). We fail when we think we can teach ourselves only what God can. The reason we do good works is because we have been made new in Christ Jesus. We also do good works because God laid them out for us beforehand (Ephesians 2:10).
Therefore, it is only through him that we learn how to give him the reverence he deserves. As stated earlier, humans can try, but they can never turn a machine into a human. In the same way, we can’t learn to have rightly ordered affections by ourselves. It is only through God, who gives them to us, that we can learn to have a right fear of him.
Therefore, the call here is to a wholehearted devotion to pray and know God through his word. Not by following the commandments of men (Matthew 15:1-20). It is by realizing that only God can stop us from having mechanical faith. It is he only who turns our machine-like worship, as mentioned in Isaiah 29:13, into one that is filled with sincere awe for him (Isaiah 29:23). An awe that results in rightly ordered affections and actions (Isaiah 29:24). As we worship, may we seek to draw near to God with both our lips and hearts.