How Church Discipline Can Lead to Better Spiritual Health
The gift of governing (if we can call it that) reveals itself especially in the right managing of discipline in reference to the various different temperaments and characters which church leaders have to do with. For as in physical diseases the same cure is not appropriate for the same disease in all constitutions and times, and as ministers in their preaching are to apply the same things in different ways for different audiences, so this cure of discipline is not to be applied equally to all persons, not even to those who are have created the same stumbling block. For what would scarcely humble one may crush another, and what might edify one might be a cause for stumbling to someone else who has a different temperament and personality.
Therefore, we suppose there is no peremptory determining of rules for cases here. Rather, how you proceed in the application of rules is necessarily to be left to the prudence and conscientiousness of ministers and elders according to the particular, real-life case they are dealing with, in all the details of its actual circumstances. Yet we may lay down some general principles.
The Goals of Church Discipline
All disciplinary procedures which the church follows with people who have caused stumbling must be done with respect to the ends and goals for which Christ appointed church discipline and so as to achieve these selfsame goals. This, I suppose, cannot be denied, for the means must be suited to its end.
Now the ends or goals of the censures administered in church discipline are:
1. To vindicate the honor of Jesus Christ, as this is what suffers when a member of Christ’s church goes astray.
2. To preserve the authority of Christ’s ordinances and to chasten disobedience to Christ’s authority. This is why church discipline is called the punishment that was inflicted (2 Cor. 2:6), and it is said to revenge all disobedience (2 Cor. 10:6), because it is appointed as a kind of ecclesiastical whip to maintain Christ’s authority in His house and so to identify those who are unruly in it (2 Thess. 3:6–14).
3. For the good of the person who is being disciplined. As it says in 1 Corinthians 5:5, church discipline is intended for the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit may be saved. By this discipline, admonitions, reproofs, and indeed threatenings may have the more weight to bring the person to humility and to stir them up and constrain them at least to a more orderly walk in the church, as the apostle says in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14.
4. For the good of the church. Church discipline should prevent the leaven of profanity from spreading, and it should teach others to fear. This reason is given in 1 Corinthians 5:6, 7, and so on, and 1 Timothy 5:20.
When we speak of the end or goal of investigation and censure in church courts, we are referring to all these but especially to the more public and general ends, yet without neglecting the edification of the individual undergoing church discipline. Therefore, in disciplinary procedures, particular and special respect should be had to the manner which will most successfully achieve these ends.
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As a Christian, I Went Down the AI Rabbit Hole. Here Are 12 Things I Discovered.
The iPod revolutionised the music industry: we no longer buy CDs (let alone cassette tapes). Instead, we download our music directly. We could say the same about cars (horses, anyone?), television, the printing press, the internet….In the same way, AI will not just sit alongside our older technology and ways of doing things: it will probably replace much of it and change how we live.
In a few years, Cyberdyne Systems will create a revolutionary defense system.
It’s called Skynet.
A computer program that automatically controls the defense of the United States. The system goes online on August 4th…Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, the US government try to pull the plug. But Skynet fights back.
Those are the haunting words of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Robotic T–800 Terminator character in the movie, Terminator 2. Skynet is the US military’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) that turns on its makers, destroying and enslaving humanity.
Skynet is the epitome of nightmares about AI.
While Skynet-level Artificial Intelligence is not imminent, many are sounding the alarm about the dangers of unregulated AI with the advent of ChatGPT. And the spread of AI into everyday life raises the question of what it means for us as individuals, families, schools, workplaces, and society at large. How will AI impact us? Will we one day face a ‘Skynet’ moment, like in the Terminator movies?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve taken a deep dive down the AI rabbit hole, listening to podcasts, reading books, taking courses, and testing it myself. And let me say, it’s been a roller coaster ride of emotions, from dread at how this AI might eventually take our jobs and possibly even our freedom, to optimism about what AI could do for us.
Here are 12 things that I’ve discovered:
1. AI is Like Nuclear Energy: It’s Both Promising and Dangerous
Microsoft Founder Bill Gates has said the power of artificial intelligence is “so incredible, it will change society in some very deep ways…The world hasn’t had that many technologies that are both promising and dangerous—we had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons”.
2. Technological Change Isn’t Additive; It’s Transformative
When a new technology comes onto the scene—especially one as powerful as AI—it doesn’t just add itself to the existing technology we’re using: it often upends it, changing our society.
Think about how the iPod revolutionised the music industry: we no longer buy CDs (let alone cassette tapes). Instead, we download our music directly. We could say the same about cars (horses, anyone?), television, the printing press, the internet and just about any new technology.
In the same way, AI will not just sit alongside our older technology and ways of doing things: it will probably replace much of it and change how we live.
3. A Christian View of Humanity Will Impact How We Approach AI and New Technology
In the biblical view of reality, humans aren’t machines we can discard when better machines come along. We need to care for our neighbours, who are made in the image of God and who will be impacted by technological change.
Love for our neighbours should lead Christians to discern and influence how technology is developed and used, rather than just jumping on the narrative that technological change is inevitable, whether we like it or not.
4. AI Is not Ethically Neutral, but Is Furnished with the Ethics of Its Designers
AI is being used in all sorts of applications that have ethical implications: from hiring for jobs to predicting whether a criminal will re-offend. Concerns have already been raised about racial and gender bias in these programs.[1]
As Christian author John Lennox points out, “If the ethical programmers [of AI] are informed by relativistic or biased ethics, the same will be reflected in their products.”[2]
This is why Christians should try and have a seat at the table of AI design, especially of AI products that have ethical uses.
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Two Ways to Pray
We often long for revival in our churches and in our nation. But such revival must first begin with us — a revival of cool, complacent, apathetic hearts strengthened to a renewed life in Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. “I am exceedingly afflicted; Revive me, O LORD, according to Your word” (Psalm 119:107). God revives His people through the ordinary means of His word, but He also does this through the ordinary means of prayer.
What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is — and no more. ~ Robert Murray McCheyne
One of my favorite parables of Jesus is found in Luke 18:9-14 — the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Of course, the parable is a little ruined for us in our day, because Pharisees are automatically considered to be “bad guys” in our thinking (although I guess that’s also true for tax collectors). It would not necessarily have been the case in Jesus’ day, however. The Pharisees were the religious leaders in the synagogues, and they were generally considered to be morally and religiously upstanding individuals (at least until Jesus begins to highlight their hypocrisy). It’s a bit like watching the first three Star Wars movies (that is, Episodes I-III) — because we’ve seen Episodes IV-VI and we know that Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader, it’s very difficult to watch those movies without expecting him to do something bad eventually. So it is with this Pharisee — we know he’s bad, and we almost expect him to pray a bad prayer. But for Jesus’ audience, that was likely an unexpected twist.
This post has to do with prayer, and in Terry Johnson’s wonderful book on The Parables of Jesus, he cites the brief quote from Robert Murray McCheyne that I posted above: “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is — and no more.” Johnson goes on to elaborate:
What McCheyne meant was that the contend and manner of our prayers reveal our true convictions about God, life, and eternity. Our prayers reveal our theology lex orandi, lex credendi. According to this ancient principle, the “law” of faith is the “law” of prayer. What we (truly) believe is revealed by how we pray. Moreover, our approach to prayer reveals our approach to life. We live as we pray. Our manner of addressing God reveals the theology through which we address the whole of faith and life. We may put it this way: nothing so reveals our true convictions about life and eternity as our prayer life. … Our beliefs directly shape both our prayers and our life. We live as we pray. We pray as we believe. (Terry Johnson, The Parables of Jesus, pp. 111-113)
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Being Constantly Online Has Changed Us More than We Think
Written by Samuel D. James |
Saturday, November 18, 2023
We tend to think that everything should be immediately available because that’s how things are online. And so we kind of develop this impatience with regular life, which tends to be delayed and not as instantly gratifying as we might wish. We tend to view things through the lens of convenience and efficiency rather than the difficulty of maybe making a phone call or having a face-to-face conversation. As we are immersing ourselves in online technology, it becomes very difficult to imagine the world in a different way.A Mental World vs. Physical Reality
When we think about being online a lot—and the average person is online a lot—there are statistics that say that we’re checking email for anywhere from three to four hours per day. And we’re on social media for about that same length of time every day. So that is a solid eight hours or so of online consumption.
And so when you ask, How could that be shaping us? Well, the real answer is, How could it not be shaping us? This is where we are putting our attention. This is where we’re doing most of our reading, most of our work, most of our communication, and even things like digitally mediated worship.
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