When is it appropriate to use AI? 🤖 (A bare minimum litmus test) ✨

I have lots of thoughts about AI, some of which are fairly clear, some less so.

But here are two principles I was thinking of recently that I think are non-negotiable when it comes to using AI, whatever your philosophical views of AI are.

1) Would you think it was OK in principle to delegate the task to another human being?

 

Here's a few examples:

 

Write a political speech. Write a best man speech. Data entry. Write a love letter. Write a social media post. Design your logo. Write a YouTube comment. Ghostwrite a book. Illustrate a book you wrote. Design stickers for you to sell on Etsy. Summarise the minutes of a meeting you were chairing. Write the captions of a video. Summarise an email from a friend. Book-keeping. Research your project. Write alt-text for images on your website...

 

Also, with each of these tasks, would you distinguish between a) delegating a rough draft (which you then take as a starting point and make your own), or b) delegating the entire task?

 

Different people will have different answers to each of these. What I'm asking, is what do YOU think is appropriate to delegate?

• If you'd be willing to delgate to another human, it may be appropriate to delegate to AI (other factors may of course mean it is not).
• BUT if you'd not delegate to a human, what makes it OK to delegate to AI?

We need to think about these things.

 

Would you delegate an illustration to brighten up a text-heavy blog post to AI? I just did. Not sure how I feel about that :-)

2) In a specifically Christian context, assuming your answer to my first question was yes, would it be something you were OK in principle with delegating to a nonbeliever? 

(I'm of course assuming a sympathetic non-believer who will do the task to the best of thier ability, not an anti-Christian troll!)

A few examples: 

 

Write a sermon. Write a prayer. Give you spiritual guidance. Design sermon visuals. Design church publicity. Write a Bible story book. Illustrate a Bible story book you have written. Advise you on the best candidate for a church job. Write a hymn. Write a tune for a hymn you have written. Plan a Sunday School lesson. Draw visuals for a Sunday School lesson you have written. Plan a church rota. Summarise the theological scholarship on a topic. Plus many of the examples in the first section...

Again, different people will have different answers to these. My question is what do YOU think is appropriate to delegate to a non-believer?

• If you'd be willing to delgate to a non-believer, it may be appropriate to delegate to AI (other factors may of course mean it is not).
• BUT if you'd not delegate to a non-believer, what on earth makes it OK to delegate to AI?

We really need to think about these things. 

Oh, and finally, if you have a chatbot that pretends to be Jesus, that is idolatry and blasphemy.

Who is my neighbour?

Came across this on Facebook the other day.

John 1 Sunday School lesson

 I have just finished a PowerPoint for teaching John chapter 1 (v1-18) to kids. I actually taught this a couple of years ago, and I thought it might be helpful to someone.

Notes:

• These were 5-7 year olds, familiar with the Bible.
• I only read a few verses. I covered more of the content in paraphrase, but didn’t include everything in the passage. Better to explain a few things well, than overwhelm them with what is a very abstract passage for this agegroup.
• I used verse 1 from the NIV, as that was the translation we learned our memory verse in. The other verses we read from our class Bible, which was the NIrV - it’s much easier for kids, as you don’t need to explain every second word!

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What I used for visuals

• Two acetate circles , one with ‘God’ on it at the top, and one with ‘Word’ at the bottom.
  I used stick on foam letters because I had some, and got a bit carried away decorating with gold paint sticks, but you could also just write with permanent markers. (If you don’t have acetate, cut up a plastic pocket)
• Sellotape to attach circles to the whiteboard – bluetack wouldn’t hold them.
• A small globe
• A baby doll in a manger
• An action man made to look like adult Jesus (beard painted on, and a bit of cloth for clothes)

Craft materials

• Large roll of paper
• Bible verses about God in giant print, which I had cut apart in advance. (here is a selection you can use)
• Glue sticks
• Glitter (star stickers would have been as fun and less chaotic J)

Other resources

A phone and speaker, with Awesome cutlery’s Party sketch and God doesn’t have a Birthday song.

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Lesson

[Note: All questions were genuine questions, not rhetorical. I let the kids answer, and then carried on.]

 

Who have we been learning about?
[Recapped previous teaching series - very briefly]

Today, we’re going way back before that, to the beginning of the world.

Who made everything?

GOD was there before the world –
God has always been there, no matter how many years you go back: a hundred… a thousand… a million… a billion… a trillion.... Right back to infinity.
He never had a beginning.

Do you know a Bible verse that talks about the beginning? [This was a verse we had learned a week ago in Junior Church - otherwise I would just have read it here]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1v1

Someone was with God – who?
The WORD

 What else does it say about the WORD?
He was God.

 (overlapped acetate circles)

He was with God AND he was God. 

God is not like humans.
I’m with you – I can’t be you!
God is so amazing we can’t understand him!

He made everything – do you know how?
“God said” (point to WORD)

He gives Life
He is the Light. 

[Read first part of v14]

“The Word became a human being. He made his home with us.”

What did the WORD do?
Do you know who the WORD is?
JESUS. He is with God (he’s God’s Son)
and he IS God. 

When did Jesus become a human being?

He’s different from us - we didn’t exist before we were in our mum’s tummy. Jesus did.
The great big God [spread out hands high and wide] became a tiny little baby [cup hands together].

He came to the world he had made, to show what God is like.
He looked ordinary (he was a normal human being), but he was God – with God’s love & power.

 

Did everyone accept/welcome him?

• Some did
• Some killed him.

Does everyone today accept/welcome him?

• Some do.
• Some don’t believe.
• Some hate him.

[Read v 12]

“Some people did accept him and did believe in his name. He gave them the right to become children of God.”

The Bible says that those who believe in him become God’s children.
It’s not about if your family believe, or you go to church. What matters is that YOU believe.

Craft

[Showed printed out Bible verses.] The Bible says lots of things about God – lots of words.
Jesus is God – what the Bible says about God is true of Jesus.

Drew round the tallest child on a large piece of paper. Let the kids stick the verses on. Added glitter. Wrote “The Word became a human being” beneath it.

Trinity explanation

As we had a bit of spare time I very simply explained the Trinity using a triangle. This could be heresy but I don’t think it is, as I explain here. ymmv.

Listen

And finally, to wind down, we listened to Party by Awesome Cutlery.
Followed by God doesn’t have a Birthday.

 

Acknowledgements: the circle idea is loosely adapted from an idea in the Mustard Seeds materials. “The great big God became a tiny little baby” is from a Go Teach lesson in, I think 2005.

Good Friday

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls."

~ 1 Peter 2v24-25

Easter stickers

I'm not very good at updating this blog with my actual art 🤦

I've recently got easter stickers printed.

First, some brand NEW designs, aimed at younger children, or new contacts who know very little about Jesus. Still the focus on Jesus' death and - especially - resurrection. Nice and cheerful and Eastery. Lots of eggs! But avoiding the wall-to-wall pastels and fluffiness that is characteristic of lots of Easter stuff.

 I also reissued my classic Easter designs as paper stickers. Aimed at primary school children. More depth on why Jesus died and rose - probably best for church kids who know the basics. Leaning into the sometimes ghoulish tastes of small boys💀!

 

 

I have other Easter stickers still available while stocks last. Find them all here.

Merry Christmas!

 I've been enjoying this song.

Last Words

Words and music by Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive

Analogies are not (necessarily) heresy

Wrote this aaaages ago - finally got round to finishing and posting.

From time to time, people claim that this analogy or that analogy of the Trinity gives the wrong idea of God, or is even heretical. I'm sure that's sometimes true. But sometimes I think it's just that the people criticising it are trying to make an analogy do more than it's meant to.

For example, take the triangle. People say it's a bad way to explain the Trinity because each member of the Trinity is fully God, whereas each side of a triangle is not a triangle. But, I don't think it's bad, just - like all analogies - incomplete. It would only be a bad analogy if you were saying that a triangle says everything that's to be said about how the Trinity relates - and that's not how analogies work.

Craft we made, based on these instructions.

 

I have used the triangle analogy in Sunday school. I'm teaching people who may not yet even know that Jesus is God. So all the analogy is meant to say is that:

• The trinity is a thing.
• There is one God, made of three people, (who are all God).
• They are the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.

It's true in what it intends to teach - it's not the last word on the subject.

Actually, it's the same with the analogies of Jesus which are used in the Bible. He is variously described as our father, future husband, brother, master, shepherd, a lamb, a vine, a gate, bread, water, light... If you took any of those to extremes you could easily make a heresy. And some of them are mutually contradictory.

 

But the point is that Jesus - who is far more than we could ever understand - is a little bit like all those things (and the context usually makes it clear in what way).

Here's a quote:

We have to think about Christ using ideas and images, but if we put our trust in these symbols, rather than in the One they symbolize, we will be making a big mistake. [...] By using more than one image for God, we remind ourselves that any image we use is only temporary; it must be corrected and relieved by other images. These images serve our minds; they do not save our souls. A fork is not food.

~Michael Ward, The Narnia Code

A good reminder

"Nothing is wasted

Nothing is wasted

In the hands of our redeemer

Nothing is wasted"

~Jason Gray

Great song title!

 

[Edit: just realised the title is barely visible. It's Jesus loves you (and I'm trying)]

All-day sun

Doesn't seem quite the right weather for Good Friday:

 

"Well might the sun in darkness hide

and shut his glories in

when God, the incarnate maker, died

for man, his creature's, sin"

~Isaac Watts

Happy New(ish) Year

 Here's a good song to start the year:

Something I need to keep reminding myself.

Caveat: I don't like the line about 'make of your troubles swiftly an end' - he might, but he might not. Though I probably tend to err on the side of assuming he won't.

Good Friday music

 This is good (It's an hour long)

The difference

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - CS Lewis

"His name unfortunately was Eustace Scrubb, but he wasn't a bad sort."

The Silver Chair - CS Lewis

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!"

2 Corinthians 5v17

I still don't have enough S's

The magnetic letters I have been using for Sunday School are the ones I had when I was wee.

I bought some extras recently, but it's still not enough!

 Well, it'll amuse the children.

The odd things I notice

I have not seen the new TV series The Chosen, although I've heard good things about it.

I have seen a few clips, though, and one thing I noticed that pleased me - you can see Jesus' knees!

I don't think I've ever seen that. But he's a first-century working class man - he wouldn't be swanning about in impractical long robes. They were for important (or would-be important) people.

The weight of the world

I'm liking this song just now.

Truth

Just sorting through Sunday School photos for our virtual prizegiving. These two crafts, done earlier in the year, seem particularly relevant now...

Rainbow crosses

People are putting rainbows in their windows to symbolise hope. So here are some crosses that our Sunday School kids made to remind us that our true hope comes from Jesus.

All done in an appropriately socially-distant manner: They made them at home, photographed them, and WhatsApped them to me. I printed them at church, cut them out and stuck them up.

I love how different they all turned out.

Take, eat

This is beautiful