Sometimes the lyrics of a song capture the cry of your heart better than you possibly could articulate it yourself...and Downhere has done a fantastic job of expressing both the hope, confusion, redemptive power, and overwhelming sense of inadequacy and insufficiency that are a part of the incredible privilege of walking with Jesus Christ. This song, "Here I Am," has blessed me so much during the past year:

Sometimes Your calling comes in dreams,
Sometimes it comes in the Spirit's breeze.
You reach for the deepest hope in me,
And call out for the things of eternity.

But I'm a man of dust and stains,
You move in me, so I can say:

Here I am. Lord, send me.
All of my life, I make an offering.
Here I am. Lord, send me.
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan,
Here I am.

When setbacks and failures, and upset plans
Test my faith and leave me with empty hands,
Are You not the closest when it's hardest to stand?
I know that You will finish what You began.

And these broken parts You will redeem
Become the song that I can sing:

Here I am. Lord, send me.
All of my life, I make an offering.
Here I am. Lord, send me.
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan,
Here I am.

Overwhelmed by the thought of my weakness
And the fear that I'll fail You in the end...
In this mess, I'm just one of the pieces,
I can't put this together—but You can.

So here I am. Lord, send me!
All of my life, I make an offering.
Here I am. Lord, send me.
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan...
Here I am.

Here I Am, all my life an offering to You, to You...
Somehow my story is a part of Your plan—
Here I am.

The crash of a single wave upon the shores of an ocean is caused not by a solitary drop of water flying in solo from a haunted location out in the middle of the sea, but by the combined force of millions of droplets joining together, writhing and swelling and growing ever larger as they rush furiously inland to spend themselves upon a surface which is both indifferent and unforgiving—one which will send them remorselessly back to the obscure watery world from whence they came.

At times, the contents of the mind are something akin to the waters of an ocean, and ideas may be birthed not from a single thought, but from a succession of thoughts which come from entirely different perspectives, all converging upon a single central point at which they comingle and thereafter continue boiling along furiously in the same direction…

Something of that sort occurred Saturday: there were a number of separate events which—like individual water droplets—seemed completely unrelated at the time they came to be, and yet all of which fit together somehow in the theoretical realm to form an idea—a wave, metaphorically speaking—and one which continues to churn the metaphorical krill in my own private ocean.

To begin, as I was driving to town Saturday morning, I overheard a fascinating conversation between a radio talk-show host and his guest as they discussed the evolution of the modern robot—how recent technology allows robots to sense and respond to emotion, to meet and hold a human gaze, to remember an individual’s name, to carry on basic conversation, and to care for the needs and wants of an assigned master, or series of masters. Incredible! In an eerie sort of way.

Do we need to care? I thought, scratching my head as I tried to determine whether there were any significant long-term implications to this bit of information. Turns out, there are.

According to the radio’s guest speaker, one of the reasons that people form relationships with pets or other humans is that they recognize and respond to the presence of a unique personality or “personhood” present in the other party. However, recent advances in technology have given us the ability to create an aura of “personhood” in an inanimate object—in short, to create a robot endowed with quasi-human emotional intelligence.

The implications of this are frightening. Why? Because it is a miniscule step from the point where we stand today to the point where we are creating inanimate objects to meet emotional needs—we want to produce technology that is capable of reaching out, touching us, responding to our feelings—in short, we want to produce a mechanical companion that is capable of taking the place of another human being: a machine which could give us a sense of being loved without the reality, a mechanism which creates the idea of companionship and camaraderie without requiring the sacrifice and selflessness necessary to build true community and maintain genuine fellowship, a contraption which has no true personality, but gives a convincing enough performance to lead people into forming emotional attachments to the “person” inside the robot—the one who doesn’t actually exist.



Would raising a robot family be easier than dealing with the human version of the family that God originally gave us? Probably. But the end result would be a generation of individuals devoid of Godly character and plagued by a devastating epidemic of isolation and loneliness on a scale never before experienced—and that is a horrific thought. We are called to be in relationships with people—not robots, not cell phones, not computers, Ipods, or television sets.

That was my visceral reaction to the story at the time, after which the thought dropped into the back corner of my mind to rest there with the dust bunnies until it had had time to ripen a little further.

Several hours later, as I walking through the woods with three fantastic young men whom I’m privileged to claim as my brothers, the comments of the talk show host and his guest came back to me again. As I listened to the animated conversation of three bright young masculine minds engaged in a verbal sparring match, I smiled.

“You can’t replace this. Ever. No matter how good the technology gets,” I thought, looking around at my brothers, “because relationships are made of what goes into them—blood, sweat, tears, shared memories, sacrificial love—these are the foundation of every solid friendship, of every healthy family tie.”

Somehow, the next thing that popped into my head was Facebook, and its accompanying rash of quasi-friendships: the kind where the school loser has 800 virtual “friends” and not a single person who will actually speak to him when they meet face-to-face.

“Is there such a big gap separating virtual friends from robotic friends?” I wondered quietly, watching as the boys pelted the nearest white birch with snowballs and then broke into cheers of “Hooray! I can hit the broad side of a barn!!”

When we got back from the woods, everyone dispersed, apparently drawn to separate parts of the house by some sort of undetectable osmotic pressure gradient. I settled on the couch to flip through the latest WORLD magazine in an attempt to acquaint myself with some of the foremost global news stories of the day.

One particularly thought-provoking article caught my attention—a well-written piece by Janie B. Cheaney entitled “Boastful Dunces: Post-literate college students reveal a ‘resentful incapacity.” It described modern college students’ shift to “post-literacy,” and painted a picture of students who, in the words of Cheaney, “display some characteristics of oral culture,” but “lack the mental disciplines of an oral culture,” leaving us with men and women “[whose] test-taking training in high school taught them to take note of dates, but not to make sense of how to use them.”

Cheaney says, “Though saturated with movies and TV, [such students] lack a basic notion of cause-and-effect and logical consequences basic to stories.

And they are impervious to correction, as if it never occurred to them that some of their ideas are wrong…a study conducted by researchers at UC-Irvine reveals a growing conviction among young adults that simply showing up in class and reading the assigned texts should earn a B at least, no matter what they actually remembered and learned…this may seem like too much self-confidence, but it’s just the opposite: Their confidence is not in self, but in outward criteria. A lower-than-expected grade is not a wake-up call for diligence but an alarm that their fragile self-esteem has been breached.

Another characteristic of oral cultures is an incomplete sense of self. At the dawn of the Middle Ages, Augustine of Hippo pioneered a new type of literature…his Confessions is the anatomy of a human soul that lost, then found, its way. Perhaps for that very reason, it is incomprehensible to [students]. Subject to an education system—and a parental style—that flatters their esteem but neglects their souls, they don’t have the capacity for honest soul-searching. Encouraged to be self-absorbed, they are anything but self-aware.

The task of the intellect…is to sharpen the ‘perceptual blur of reality.’ Blurry selves can only reflect a blurry world, and [some professors fear] that the future of most…students will be driven by gimmicks, devices, and fads rather than enduring principles.”

I finished reading, and thought, “Oh, this is great. We’re headed towards a generation of illiterate, indifferent individuals who think they’re entitled to everything they could possibly want just by virtue of the fact that they have graced the earth with their presence—a nation of individuals who may or may not be in love with robots, have no clue how to relate to each other, and frankly, don’t really give a rip, because they’re just waiting for the next Beanie Babies craze or worried about getting in on the latest fashion trends…sounds like something straight out of George Orwell’s ‘1984.’”

Hours later, I was sorting through paperwork up in my room while watching Kingdom of Heaven, a relatively recent (i.e. last seven years) film release which is set in the 12th century A.D. and portrays one man’s role in the Crusades which ravaged the Holy Lands. I don’t agree with all of the values and ideas put forth by the film, certainly, but one thing that very clearly stood out to me as I watched was the concept of purpose. Here were masses of men who had no clear-cut, individual plan or purpose, marching blindly into a war which they did not understand, willing to follow orders of any kind, free from any notion of conscience or moral principles that might have required them to think critically and act with conscientious deliberation. These men served as the foils for those who chose to act according to a higher law, regardless of the consequences.

As I watched this playing out on the screen, the idea that persistently came to me was that it was this—this visionary, purposeful, principled pursuit of what is Godly, of what is righteous, of what is truly good—it was this that we lack today. It is impossible to live for the moment and be swept away by every passing fad if we are choosing to purposefully view ourselves as part of a Divinely choreographed future in which we are destined to play a meaningful part.

However, from the little that I have seen of culture, and fashion, and trends, I would be inclined to say that the vast majority of people today have a severely limited or nonexistent concept of what it is to live with purpose, what it is to have vision for the future, and what it is to be so set on a single, God-ordained life goal that you become impervious to the shifting winds of societal change.

Somehow, then, each of these issues—the creation and possible societal integration of automated machines with human-like emotional intelligence, the production of an entire generation of self-absorbed, willfully-incompetent, belligerent young people, and an over-arching lack of vision, purpose, and principles—come together to form different sides of the same theoretical puzzle. It seems to me that perhaps the third problem lies at the root of the first and the second.

The harsh reality that we face, then, is that at some point in the not-so-distant future, key positions of leadership will be handed over to members of what today is the younger generation. God forbid that when that transition takes place, we be found incapable of reasoning intelligently, indifferent to and unaware of our own flaws and weaknesses, unable to maintain genuine community with our fellow human beings, and unwilling to step past our own selfish desires and passions enough to forego instant gratification of our whims in order to invest in the future of the next generation.

Now more than ever, Christian young people of this generation—and that means me, my friends, and our peers on a global scale—must bear living testimony to the fact that life has purpose beyond chasing the latest fad or finding new ways to gratify our desires: that we are here to serve an incredible, all-powerful living God wholeheartedly for the purpose of bringing Him greater glory. May we be found faithful!

Overheard from the Kitchen Sink, Take 2...

I was standing beside the breakfast table yesterday, taking a few moments to chat with my younger brothers before heading off to work, when Josiah, my pudgy-faced youngest brother, took it upon himself to offer a professional critique of my accessorizing:

Josiah: “Thea, those earrings that you have on look kind of like fish.”

Mom: “Yeah? But they’re definitely Christian fish.”

Me: “Yeah, Siah, I call these guys “Icky,” short for Ichthus, so they’re definitely Christian.”

Josiah pondered this thoughtfully for a moment, ruminating philosophically on a mouthful of toast. He blinked, stuck out his chin, and offered us this interesting bit of information:

“I have three goldfish. Two of them are Christians.”

Me: “Siah, that’s impossible. If you had fish, they’d be dead, fo shuah.”

Josiah: *horrified gasp* “How can you say that?!! You mean they’re lukewarm in the faith?!!”

The conversation went downhill from there...

Overheard from the Kitchen Sink

As I was washing up a few dishes after supper last night, I overheard Josiah talking to Mom out in the porch:
"Wow, the dog had really bad breath tonight! Yuck! But don't worry--I knocked him out with mine."

Yeah, well, thanks, bro. I'm totally getting you a bottle of mouthwash for Christmas.

Thursday morning, I was in a bit of a rush as I hurriedly rustled around the kitchen, throwing together a portable lunch to carry along to work.

Thea, I muttered to myself as I sawed off a slice of bread, you desperately need to work on this whole ‘scheduling-my-life’ thing...your scheduling, at this point, is pretty pathetic, as demonstrated by current time crunch...

I zipped over to the cupboard to find a plastic bag for the sandwich I had constructed. It wasn’t a work of art, by any stretch, but it would have to do. As I pulled the bag out of the cupboard, however, some writing on the front of it caught my eye. In big, black letters, scrawled boldly in permanent marker across the front, it read “Frankenstein’s Brain.”

I laughed.

There is only one explanation for this sort of thing at our house: Josiah.

Life would be so much less interesting without little brothers.

As I packed everything into the car and drove off into the sunrise, with my youngest brother’s fancy piece of artwork on the seat beside me, I was suddenly struck by a new side of the equation—one which I hadn’t really considered in the initial encounter.

My sandwich was, as far as I could tell, a simple combination of bread, cheese, and cold turkey. However, according to the bag, it was something entirely different. In fact, it was a bona fide specimen of cerebral tissue from the cranium of Frankenstein himself.

Such an incredible amount of power in labels! I mused, flicking my fingers thoughtfully against the steering wheel.

Just then, a massively overweight cat appeared on the right side of the road up ahead. He blinked intelligently at me, shook his whiskers slightly, and then hoisted his heavy self up out of the ditch with a prodigious effort.

You know, he’s kind of cute...for an obese critter. I cocked my head to match his, and grinned slightly.

I guess the grin scared him, because the next instant, that massively overweight cat was gallumping across the road right in front of my car as if he could feel the breath of Jack the Ripper on the fully erect hair that covered his ugly tail.

What a retarded animal! I found myself thinking, as I instinctively slammed on the brakes.

And then I laughed. “Speaking of the power in labels...there goes a case in point.”

Was the cat stupid? Possibly. But did my calling him stupid make him so? Most likely not. (And I don’t think he heard me, anyway.)

Did the magic marker on my bag transform my sandwich into Frankenstein’s brain? I’d like to think it didn’t...because I ate it.

But the bigger point that I was left to ponder during the next forty-five minutes of my drive was this:

As humans, we’re quick to slap labels on everything, and often, we construct neat categories into which we can put the people we meet.

“Oh,” someone will say knowingly, “I know why he’s like that! He’s from New York.” And we smile, and nod understandingly, because we all know how those New Yorkers are—they raise such strange breeds out on the East Coast!

“He’s Indian? And he’s a student? Ah, yes. Probably going for his doctorate. Those Indians are such a brilliant group!”

“She was the youngest child? Little wonder she’s spoiled. Probably explains the buck teeth, too.”

“Ah. A Methodist. Well, then, we really can’t be friends. I don’t work well with Methodists.”

“You’re reformed? And post-trib? You must be a Piperite!”

The list is truly endless, and the effects of labeling are as multitudinous as the labels themselves.

Too often, however, I fear that it is the act of categorizing itself which blinds us to the truly unique and significant aspects of the people who may cross our path. When I get hung up on the fact that my friend is of a different faith than I am, I allow a label to get in the way of relationship, and perhaps I rob both of us of the blessing that God intended for our friendship to bring. When I dismissively walk past the bum who is puffing on his filthy cigarette outside a rundown bicycle shop, I am missing the fact that here is a human being—a special creation made in the image of God—with deep emotional, spiritual, and physical needs.

As I parked the car and headed inside, my brain continued to turn over this concept of creative labeling.

“I need to give my labeling tendencies to God for revision,” I mumbled, twisting the key in the lock of the store’s front door.

After all, someone could look at me and think, ‘Wow, there goes a blonde...one who apparently eats Frankensteinian brains for lunch! That explains a lot.’

And they might be right. It probably does explain a lot. But it doesn’t explain everything. Because within every monster-brain consuming blonde, as well as every other individual on the planet, there is a uniquely designed human being created by an all-loving, all-powerful heavenly Father. And it’s that unique human being that we can’t afford to gloss over lightly.

The key clicked in the lock with a dull-sounding thud just then, and the door swung open. My day had begun. But as I crossed the threshold, and was greeted by the lovely smell of cinnamon, and lilacs, and newly-made paper, I offered up a silent prayer asking for the grace and wisdom to see the real person in each customer who would follow me through those doors.

And then I went to put Frankenstein’s brain in the refrigerator for safe keeping. Just because.