The Day the Conversation Died

 In memory of Charlie Kirk

Of course, a conversation only dies when the participants stop talking. That has not happened. Now everybody’s talking. The motivator died, but the motivation became amplified. The initiator is gone, but the gut-wrenched souls, once they caught their collective breath, began to speak with no muddled voices. The detractors spoke up too, and some of them must regret their rush to blabber because it cost them their jobs. Mixed feelings about free speech and all that? Me too. But if opinion can end a man’s life, perhaps the setback of a career is not so terrible. They can learn a lesson in civility and move on.

It's not the first conversation to take a hit. And it’s not the first celebratory response to an assassination. People who resist the establishment and stir up the public are always met with cheers and jeers. When I was a child, a great American voice was extinguished by evil. The months that followed brought riots, blame, hate, political unrest, the deployment of the national guard, another assassination, great upheaval, and eventually, necessary steps in the direction of change. But in the first moments of darkness, some people who didn’t approve of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mission shouted for joy. And that was, and is, disgraceful.

You may say that I should not dare compare that man to this one, and I’m not. But MLK’s infamous speech is one of my favorite writings of all time. It still speaks loudly to me and to anyone who listens. And so, for me, comparison is instinctual. A man died for a cause and the world took notice. As for the words of Charlie Kirk, I didn’t follow his interactions with college students closely. But I do now. I’ve never read any of his books. But I will now. The conversation lives on.

I understand that some of his quotes, taken out of context, may provoke some people who live angry lives to speak angry words. Again, the conversation lives on. Whether or not everything he ever said was clearly understood, whether or not his ideology was acceptable, ending his life was wrong. The killer said that some hate can't be negotiated out. End of conversation. Nothing left to do but silence the voice in the most heinous way possible. That. Is. Wrong. Can't we just agree on this one point? 

I think I heard Charlie say something once that I didn’t like, but I don’t remember what it was. He didn’t speak perfectly and I don’t listen perfectly. He did address our culture, the indoctrination of young minds, the role of government, the responsibility of parents, and other issues that many, many of us care about. 

Above all else, he followed Christ. He carried the Gospel to the stage of the world. I can only accept the challenge of this man’s example and continue to proclaim the truth.

 No Charlie Kirk quote here, only this…

“If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”                                                                               –Martin Luther King, Jr.

The conversation must live on. Evil snuffed out the flame of one voice, but watch out, there’s a fire burning. 

Yes King

 

In response to recent protests, I heard that our president said, “I’m not a king. If I were a king, I’d have a lot less trouble.”

I don’t know about that. What I do know is that a new bitter root has sprung up to grow another hearty weed. It’s no garden-gracing bloom. It has no substance. No fruit. It won’t become a mighty oak. For now, it’s a bit of color on the rocky ground. It does have a good bit of fertilizer to sustain it. It’s being watered by the same spigot that brought us a few other weeds in recent years. But it will get mowed down. By a king? By an authoritarian ruler? More likely it will be taken out by whatever source of dark money crimps the garden hose. I could take a guess about that, but I’d rather address this demand for no kings.

Didn’t we do that already? Didn’t the founders of our country say no to the king of the country they abandoned for the new world? Have we ever, in our nearly two-hundred fifty years of sovereignty, been threatened with the forceful installment of a king? We live in a land of no kings. We don’t have a king. We don’t want a king. We don’t need a king. But thank you for protesting the obvious.

I say no to kings. If I saw one coming, I’d… Wait, I do see one coming. And I say, yes King. In photos of the protests over the weekend, one stood out. Among the homemade and professionally created placards that left little impression on my sense of reason, one sign caught my attention. It was a picture of Jesus, not as King, or Savior, but appearing as a fighter. Not the all-consuming force he will be when he comes, but a street fighter. The portrait was not impressive as he didn’t really look much like King Jesus, but the words got me. NO KINGS EXCEPT THIS 1.

YES KING! This is the King the world needs. Not that the world understands. But the church should understand. Christians have parted along battle lines in a world that is not our home. This should not be. Some friends and associates of mine declare that a real Christian would never support our current POTUS. Others insist a true follower of Christ couldn’t possibly stand for the cultural mindset of the disgruntled attention grabbers.

I’m not challenging opinions. Christians are individuals who view the world from various perspectives. So be it. But our King is coming, and we should not be so brazenly divided by politics, or the mind-bending media, or the culture clash of the lost. The lost need to know the truth.

The truth is God appoints rulers, be it kings or presidents. The truth is the church should pray for our leaders. The truth is that sin is still sin and Jesus still saves. The truth is the battles we try to fight are only flashpoints in a spiritual war that will not end until the one true King ends it.

I don’t believe I can change too many minds. But I do believe Jesus changes everything. I will pray and obey as best I can. I won’t build my own kingdom. I will seek God’s truth and display it. Because the truth is, time is short. Use it wisely.

 

They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.

Revelation 17:14

Ants, Men, and the Machine

 Since I wrote this in 2017, one of the men I mention has died. The other man is now in a position of weighty power and influence. And the world has accelerated its evolution into strangeness. 

If you haven’t noticed, the world has gotten stranger lately. I can’t be accused of trying to hold on to normalcy since I wrote a weird story about a futuristic man. If you want to become a human like the one I wrote about, just hold on a few years and you might get the chance. In my fiction, an inept government fails to establish a new and improved human race. But more than that, it’s the hand of God that keeps the government from achieving the goal completely. 

I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject of Artificial Intelligence, but I've done some research in order to make the fiction more real. I certainly don’t pretend to know the mind of God, but I study and pray to acknowledge His everlasting holiness and discern His will as best as I can in my fallen human condition. And this is how I know the world is getting stranger, and that the human race is becoming more aggressive in its quest for power, and that God is patient.

In a recent article, physicist Stephen Hawking gives warning about the coming age of A.I. and how it might take over and possibly destroy us. Not on purpose, but simply by unwaveringly efficient design. Hawking said:

“You're probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you're in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there's an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let's not place humanity in the position of those ants.”

When reading this, I had to wonder if Hawking knows the book of Proverbs extols the ants for their wise and efficient toil for self-preservation. Hopefully, we’re at least as smart as ants.

This statement also appears in the article: Tesla CEO Elon Musk shares a similar viewpoint, having recently warned that humans are in danger of becoming irrelevant.

Hawking’s answer to the problem? A world government coming together for the purpose of protecting us from technology. From our own developments? From all that we cleverly invent to make our lives better? Are the computers really going to take over?  

In one regard, it’s good that the great minds of our time recognize we’re headed into unprecedented circumstance. But they aren’t suggesting we take a step back. They simply believe there is no other possibility and we must be prepared for the future reshaping of our world.

In my novels, I point out the similarities between the coming cyber world and the Tower of Babel. The need for power and the requirement of dominance once brought about something that now seems mundane: the building of a city with a great tower. Not so dangerous, but at the time God saw fit to end it. The endeavor itself was not unreasonable, it was the pursuit of power that needed to be tamed. But that fire inside us has been allowed to remain through the ages. Now our city is an artificial territory one may enter from any place at any time, and the tower we’re building is an all-powerful machine. And then, as God noted in the book of Genesis, nothing we plan will be impossible for us. Except perhaps preserving our own existence. A tower was attempted in the first book of the Bible. Could the events of the last book bring a virtual tower and a new world order to rule its exploits?

The rise of mankind to reach the heavens is nothing new. The desire to rule the world is rooted in our deeply aggressive nature not by, as Hawking states, the hard-wiring of Darwinian evolution, but because of the Fall. We exist by the grace of God and we continue to exist because of His will. We will not end ourselves by building a fierce monster of a machine. God is bigger and fiercer than anything we can come up with. He’s also loving and merciful, and He will be the One to reshape this world. But are we taking a strange step toward our own annihilation as God carries out His plan? As one redeemed, I will resist the machine and rely on the power of Christ. He’s coming to my rescue.