With All Wisdom
With All Wisdom
Episode #143: Pastoral Reflections on A.I., Part 1
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In this first of a two-episode series, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss how to define artificial intelligence while considering the promise and peril of this new technology.
Welcome to the With All Wisdom Podcast, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown. I'm here today with Cliff McManus. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we want to take some time to talk about AI, artificial intelligence, and all that it means for us in our lives, in our work, in all its various entailments. We want to talk about challenges, we want to talk about advantages. We want to talk about as much as we can, and then hopefully be able to apply that to the Christian's life, to the pastor's life, and say a few practical things there. But before we get to our topic, I want to encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org if you've never done that before. That's where we are uh hosting our podcast. We also host it at Spotify as well. You can find it in both places, but we also host our books there. You can get all of our books for free. You can uh download a free pod uh PDF there, and you can also read all of our articles. We have articles, videos, uh podcasts, uh, all sorts of resources there to help you uh grow spiritually and to help you grow in discernment, help you grow in your knowledge of the Word of God. That's all at withallwisdom.org. So let's get to our topic, Cliff. Huge topic, obviously. Uh artificial intelligence, or as it's otherwise known, AI, is huge right now. Uh companies are spending billions upon billions of dollars to uh strengthen their either their position in AI, to build AI infrastructure, to be creating data centers, to be creating AI platforms, uh AI uh depending on what kind of uh thing you're using, whatever, maybe it's a computer, maybe it's some sort of resource, maybe it's some sort of service. It seems as though AI is just about in everything now. When you're on a website and you want to get some help, you have an AI assistant. It's just right there. And that wasn't the case just a couple of years ago. It seems like all of a sudden we are a neck deep in in AI, and and some of it's been very helpful, I would say. I've used it, experienced it, and and it's been helpful for me in some cases, not always. But we uh we haven't just seen people enthralled with AI, we've also seen people raise some some caution flags, even some some panic and saying that this has gone too far and we've kind of uh outstretched our ethical reflections on the use of AI and whether or not it's good and helpful. And and so we want to to take up those questions and and help our listeners uh sift through this issue. It's a challenging issue, it really is, because it's growing so fast. And I do think there is some truth to the to the idea that we are kind of moving too fast for our ethical reflections. We're not keeping up uh with our uh ethical reflections on this particular topic. So we do want to try to do that. And we have a number of people in our congregation who are working directly to develop AI. We want to uh talk about it for their sake. We have people who are using AI and benefiting from it, and we also have people who I think are uh slightly uh worried about it, maybe more or less worried uh about it, and so we want to try to address all those issues. So, Cliff, as we open up, uh probably you mentioned this before we got going, probably good to start with a definition of AI to help people know what we're talking about. And even talk about the usefulness of a definition and and what the the language of artificial intelligence really means. So, Cliff, why don't you take it away from there? We'll talk a little bit about definitions.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have a couple uh to start with. AI. Um would you agree though that Derek that AI is here to stay? It's here to stay. It is. Yeah. Some would even say AI is the future. Um There's certainly no reversing it.
SPEAKER_01That's no that's true.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's embedded in just about everything in life, much of which we weren't even aware of. A lot of people who are opposed to AI are actually using AI. Right. And they didn't even realize it. That's true. That's true. So uh as far as defining it, it's hard to define, but there are some baseline definitions that have been offered by I'll just read a couple. Um this one is by uh our friend uh Dr. Peter Gaiman, who's a professor of the Old Testament and theology. I think he does some theology at Shepherd Seminary in North Carolina. He's got some podcasts on it, several. He's he's written a little booklet on it, it was helpful. Uh and he his little booklet is the idea is uh a biblical view of AI. Oh which sounds good to me and you. Yeah. Or um a theology of AI. I'm all for it. He must have been trained at the Master Seminary under the influence of John MacArthur who taught me that you can have a theology of anything and everything.
SPEAKER_01And you should, that's right.
SPEAKER_00Um so I've got Peter Gaiman's practical definition, and his caveat is he's not a technical scientific AI specialist, but he's doing this from a biblical perspective and just a practical functional user of AI. And a lot of study he's done on this, his definition is AI is a human-made tool. And a human-made tool is advanced computer programming. So it's a human-made tool that mimics human abilities and approximates human learning or approximates what a human would want or want to do in a given situation. Um a mimic of human reason and human production. But his emphasis there is he sees AI uh at the bottom as a tool. Therefore, it can be used for good or for bad. Yeah. Like a hammer. Um so that's his functional practical layman's definition. For a more technical definition. I asked AI for definition of AI here. Here's what AI said. How interesting. Yeah, here's what AI said. This is a quote. AI said that AI is a branch of computer science. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna go with it so far. Focused on building systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks include learning, reasoning, problem solving, understanding language, and recognizing patterns. So AI's definition of AI uh it's a branch of computer science that again kind of mimics human intelligence. But that last sentence is very specific. Uh these tasks that AI performs include learning. I I had a I had a red flag about that. Do computers really learn? Uh and then so AI is tasked to on learning. Reasoning? Does do computers really reason? That's the question. Problem solving, understanding language. Do do computers really understand? That's the question. And recognizing patterns. Do computers really recognize So I'm kinda I took issue with these four words. Learning, reasoning, understanding, and recognizing. Because and I guess that's just my definition of those words. Because to learn and reason, understand and recognize, I think you need a mind. And I would say computers don't have a mind. So that's where I'm gonna take issue.
SPEAKER_01Those are all inherently tasks or capacities that require a mind.
SPEAKER_00Human capacities. Yeah. Uh but that's AI's definition. I've got one more. This is from Abner Chow, president of the Master's Seminary. Actually, I guess the college and the seminary. Uh do you know Abner Chow? I do. Did you go to seminary with him? I mean, did you go to college with him? Yeah. At the Masters University. Yeah. Yeah. So Abner wrote an article on Good Guy. Yeah, he is. Uh he wrote an article basically on biblical theology of AI, Derek. Whoa. Where was that published? This was in the Mathema Journal. Uh uh. The Mathema Institute of the Masters University. Ty, Dr. Ty Dinay Bradley, uh, that's her journal, scientific journal. Anyway, so I think he wrote this in 2024, 2025, not long ago. He has a definition. Uh, and he makes, in his definition, he wants to make a distinction between real intelligence versus artificial intelligence. So he in a paragraph he defines real intelligence and then he defines artificial intelligence. But I thought his uh definition of real intelligence was interesting because he says one dictionary definition for intelligence is quote, the ability to acquire and apply knowledge, end quote. And that's from the Oxford dictionary. The ability to acquire and apply knowledge. Other dictionaries include the ability to learn, the ability to reason, the ability to think about and plan, uh, the ability to solve and to process. Sometimes people make a distinction between intelligence and instinct. Animals have instinct, for instance. Animals operate based on force of pattern and they do things automatically without thought. Those who have intelligence, however, do not necessarily base their actions on the force of pattern or instinct, but they are able to put together many different factors to reach a decision or a plan. The contrast mentioned above are a good start in describing intelligence, but they are missing biblical labels. Anyway, and he goes on another paragraph to talk about his definition of real intelligence. And uh it was good, but I thought it was he was missing a key element in his definition of real intelligence. And what he didn't say in his definition uh that's missing, he's only talking about the process of or the function or the verbs involved in intelligence. Whereas I thought, well, you also need to talk about what's behind that, and that's uh so I put uh his definition is missing a key and element, key element, and that is intelligence is the innate ability or act of an intelligent being or a person. That would be part of my definition. True real intelligence comes from a a real being, which I would say is a person is defined by the Bible, which first and foremost would be God and then human beings who he made in his image. Uh as opposed to artificial intelligence is that which is I I would say that's processing from uh machines. Yeah. Where they get input from a processor, which would be a person. Uh so my definition, as I've thought about it, Eric, uh, whether you agree, we haven't even talked about this, but I am of the opinion that um artificial intelligence, you know what you mentioned early on the fears that people have about Christians have fears. People who aren't Christians have fears about artificial intelligence because for probably two main reasons or concerns. Christians, for the most part, have problems with our fears about artificial intelligence because of the ethics potentially involved that we're confronted with. And then most people have fears about AI, I think, regarding its future implications. Where is this going? Right. Are is artificial intelligence gonna make human beings superfluous or obsolete or take over the world? Or was it Will Smith and iRobot? Did you ever see that movie? I did. Yeah. That was AI, man. Yeah, it was. They developed these robots and eventually they became sentient beings and they kind of just started doing their own thing. That's right. And they went beyond the input of the programming that was put into them.
SPEAKER_01Right. Um before that was Skynet with Terminator. Yes.
SPEAKER_00So Terminator back in the day, uh maybe before you were born, was War Games. I don't know if you ever. I saw it with Matthew Broderick. Yes. Oh, you good memory. Same thing. Yeah. So it's been around uh in terms of the implications. Where is this going? Uh and is this gonna reach a level of what we call being a sentient being, a self-reflective, self-aware being that can think on its own. And I think no, it's uh it's uh scientific programming, and that requires somebody to give input. Yeah. Data input.
SPEAKER_01I really think this is where uh Christians need to tether themselves to scripture into biblical categories, or we will be quickly confused. Yep. So to your point, it's uh your earlier definitions, what you're doing is you're basically saying intelligence by definition must be something that you're you're you're going from from God to human, and that's how you're defining intelligence, that it must have a mind behind it by definition. And if that's the case, then you must always qualify whatever's coming out of a machine, however complex it is, as artificial intelligence. You have to qualify it somehow because it's different and distinct. And I think Christians have to keep that category of the image of God and our our uniqueness as image bearers. Uh, we have to keep that clear and sharp, always in our minds, and to be able to recognize that there is a clear difference between what a machine can do, and there will always be a difference between what a machine can do and what a human can do, even if the machine can at various levels replicate, it seems, what humans can do. And why is that? Well, because we're made in the image of God uniquely, especially, and what we have made can never replace us. And so the I don't want to jump too far ahead, we'll come back to this. But in terms of humans being replaced by machines, I would argue that Christians have no fear, should have no fear of that whatsoever. Um and we'll talk more uh more about that as we go on.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, no, your phrase are so key about um not confusing certain categories or being biblically informed on certain categories. Um and for us, those are theological categories. Uh you refer to Genesis. Well, that what's that category is that? Well, that's the category of biblical anthropology. What does the Bible say about human beings, where they came from, how they're created, what's their destiny, what are their limits, uh, what's their telic purpose or goal from God's point of view, according to the Bible, which will never change, regardless of the advancements of technology. That's right, exactly. So you're evaluating AI from a biblical point of view in the category of what is a biblical anthropology, because that answers a lot of questions. Um and all the other theological categories actually play into this. Yeah. For sure. Or God, who is God? Um so that's theology proper. Intelligence. Well, now we're in the category of either epistemology or truth or wisdom, or uh, and I would say, yeah, the theology of knowledge and knowing, which is a biblical epistemology. The Bible's clear about that. That's right. Um so you can alleviate all these needless fears uh by having a sound theology, which actually I was gonna say, Derek, what business do you and I have to talk authoritatively, dogmatically, confidently about AI? I mean, I'm not a scientist.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and neither am I. I mean, I'm just a simple user of AI, and I've done research to find out what I think what AI tools best suit my work, but I'm I'm not an expert. I'm not a computer programmer. Um I just this is way beyond me in terms of how these things work and and the work that goes into creating them. And so yeah, I'm not I'm not anywhere near that.
SPEAKER_00And you know me, I can hardly turn on a computer. That's true because I'm often banging on your door. Derek, can you help me with my computer? Anyway. True story. But we can talk authoritatively about this uh from a biblical point of view. Right. The theology of AI.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00Which really addresses probably the most important questions and the ultimate questions that people are asking.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00People in our church are asking us questions about AI. What does the Bible have to say about this? What are the implications of this? Uh our robots going to take over the world, Pastor Cliff. Uh no, of course not. The Bible clearly addresses that. So uh that's why we can talk about this because we're looking at it from a biblical worldview. Our presuppositions are rooted in Scripture and our belief in God and um as revealed in Scripture. So, in light of that, let me read this article that uh I as I turned on my phone first thing. I always got Yahoo News pops up first thing. I don't want Yahoo News, but it throws it in my face. Yeah. And here's one of the main headlines. This was from a month ago. August 26th, 2026. Taken from Fortune magazine, but it was on a headline in Yahoo News. And the title is Elon Musk says Saving for Retirement is irrelevant. Now you just wrote a book on wise financial planning and stewardship.
SPEAKER_01A little booklet, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Great little booklet, and I think you said the exact opposite of what this guy said. Elon Musk says, Saving for retirement is irrelevant. Now, m a lot of people would say that Elon Musk is a smart guy and has a lot of intelligence. Yeah. Like in the unique category, but this is an interview of Elon Musk. So I wonder if he says intelligent things. Well, let's read it, and I think we'll find out otherwise. Okay. Uh Elon Musk says saving for retirement is irrelevant because AI, artificial intelligence, is going to create a world of abundance. And he says, quote, it won't matter, end quote. Saving. Um saving for retirement. The article goes on. Saving for retirement is pointless. Thanks to the impending, quote, supersonic tsunami of AI and robotics, which will bring about a world of zero scarcity. I think that means poverty will be eradicated.
SPEAKER_01Zero scarcity.
SPEAKER_00Zero scarcity in the future, according to Elon Musk. While the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, admitted he's quote more optimistic than most, he insisted, he insisted people shouldn't stress over building a nest egg for the distant future.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_00You don't need to save. Contrary to the state advice of nearly all other financial professionals and Derek's most recent book. Quote, don't worry about squirreling money away for retirement in ten or twenty years, end quote. Don't worry about squirreling away. Don't worry about saving money for retirement in ten or twenty years. End quote. Said the world's richest man on this podcast. Just think about it, people take him seriously. I know. Quote, because he said it won't matter. It won't matter. I mean, I'm that's what I I'm thinking, okay, I've got two sons, they're in their twenties, and one's an accountant, one's in a financial advisor, and far to tell them, uh don't worry about it. As a matter of fact, you should quit your job, your financial advisor. Get a new job, go work at a car washer. Part of Musk's controversial take is based on his vision of a world transformed by rapidly improving AI, robotics, and energy technology. By 2030, AI will surpass, quote, the intelligence of all humans combined, end quote, Elon Musk predicted.
SPEAKER_01There there you go with that definition of intelligence.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Twenty thirty. That's uh in less than four years. He also claimed eventually there will be more humanoid robots than humans on Earth. Slowly the traditional job, slowly the traditional job will be replaced as well, with white collar positions first on the list. Quote, anything short of shaping atoms, AI can do probably half or more of those jobs right now, end quote, Musk said. The advances could lead to such big productivity increases, he said, that they will surpass, quote, what people possibly could think of as abundance, end quote. Rather than a universal income, everyone will enjoy a universal you can have whatever you want income in the future, Musk claimed. In this world that Musk foresees, the link between individual wages savings and living standards will no longer make sense. Within five years, oh um even without savings, AI will help people obtain better medical care than what is currently available. It will also remove any limit on the availability of goods, services, or educational opportunities. Musk's comments build on his earlier claims that AI and humanoid robots will make work optional. There it is. Musk's comments build on his earlier claims that AI and the humanoid robot will make work optional within 10 to 20 years and render money itself irrelevant. Money will be irrelevant. Musk previously compared the future of work to leisure activities like playing sports or video games rather than a survival necessity. You won't be it'll be like gardening. You don't have to gar garden because you just go to the market. Yeah, you just do it for leisure. Uh if you want to work, uh it's the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables, Musk said during uh anyway, this is back in November. So there you go. Work will be superfluous, uh optional. You don't need to save money. Poverty will be eradicated. Uh money will become irrelevant to currency. Um smartest man in the world. Most intelligent one of the most intelligent men on in the world, Derek.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Boy is he wrong. And not only is he wrong, but just imagine the implications of those who take him seriously. Uh not saving for retirement. I mean, there's already concern that people aren't saving enough for retirement already. That was before even this article came out. Yeah. And he's saying, well, don't worry about it. And imagine if people don't worry about it. And then actually it turns out that he's he's wrong, which I am confident he is. Yep. Uh boy, it's gonna be devastating. And uh it's quite uh quite the uh the statement to make. Uh I mean it's just I think it's audacious. It's audacious.
SPEAKER_00Um it's misleading. It's actually gonna be destructive in terms of what it reaches like people, young people who do find him influential and take his advice. Oh, he's a megabillionaire, almost a trillionaire, he knows what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_01It's almost kind of a secular health, wealth, and prosperity gospel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like just by just by the way he's talking, you're like, no, this guy's a snake oil salesman. He's a charlatan.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Making these kinds of promises, and people are gonna buy into it. Yeah. And then be devastated, and then he's gonna leave town. I mean, this has just happened throughout history. Yeah, and it reads the exact same way. Yeah. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00And every one of his ridiculously false notions jumps off the page because we know what the Bible says to the contrary. Right. Uh that work will be superfluous. Well, we know from the Bible that's not true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it can't be, right?
SPEAKER_00It's an inherent mandate from the time of the beginning of creation. Right. Uh that poverty be what's the first thing that comes to your mind when he says poverty will be eradicated?
SPEAKER_01Well, Jesus made it clear that we'll always have the poor among us.
SPEAKER_00So the Gospel of John Jesus said, the poor you will always have with you.
SPEAKER_01There will always be scarcity.
SPEAKER_00Jesus the God man said, the poor you will always have with you. That's just a fact. Right. And it doesn't matter if there's plenty of uh productivity and availability of resources, uh, human beings aren't gonna change in terms of their selfishness, self-centeredness, and sinfulness. That's right. And there will always be one group who will withhold from another group. That's right. Or others who will have a weird false religion that says, I can't eat a cow even though it's sitting right in front of me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, AI is not gonna change any of that. Nope. Uh and so I don't doubt that there is going to be some level of prosperity due to AI that um that will occur. And, you know, we did see with the the dawn of free markets that it was helpful for uh society as a whole in terms of wealth and wealth generation and so on. And so I don't doubt that yes, it's gonna be helpful in in generating wealth, but this kind of these kinds of promises are just outlandish and need to be rejected. Yeah. Just on their face. And and I'm just surprised how how much he does, how how silly he sounds if you really think about it. That this these are kinds of these are kinds of promises that people in the in the charlatans in the past have made. So yeah, so as as believers, as Christians, we know from God's revelation in Scripture that work is inherent to who we are, who how we're made, and and no matter how AI improves life and and defrays some defrays some of the things that we used to have to do and now we don't need to do, and make some things more efficient, and so on, we will always have a desire to work and always have a need to work. And it's interesting because uh I was just I'm preparing for a a theology of work class that we're gonna be holding here at the church. And so I was watching a video. It's not a video done by a Christian organization, it's more of a uh conservative, uh uh politically conservative group that sees the value and importance of work and making sure to incentivize and not decentivize work through government programs. But the one of the main points of this video is that the work makes people happy. And if you don't work, you're not gonna be happy. And that's not to say every job is great and every person's happy in their job, but the the other point, the the main point is like if you don't work, if you don't produce, if you don't they don't use this language, I'm gonna put the biblical category in, if you don't exercise dominion over the space that God has given you and and do what you've been made to do, namely work, then you're not gonna you're in other words, you're not gonna be his the the future he describes that wouldn't make me happy. Like I don't want to be lounging around and recreating all the time. As much as I enjoy uh you know taking time off and and hitting the outdoors, I don't want to do that a hundred percent of the time. I want to work, I want to produce, I want to serve, I want, I want to build something for the glory of God. And and uh humans have been made in God's image, whether they're Christians or not, they've been made in God's image to want to work and produce, and so even this promise of coming to a point where we wouldn't we could just kind of spend the majority of our time in leisure, people aren't gonna go for that. Yeah, well, how can I know that? So for certainty, well, because we know what scripture says about being made in God's image.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But the unbelieving secular world that's appealing because what they, for the most part, they are everybody's working for the weekend. Say the song. Right. I just want to party, I want to go on vacation, I don't want to work, I want to relax, I want to retire when I'm 30. That is a secular, unbelieving, non-biblical worldview. Yeah. So that's appealing to them. It is so this idea that oh, you want to have to work. Oh, awesome. Whereas for the Christian, that goes against the grain of everything we believe and know that scripture teaches because, like you said, it's it's rooted in creation of who we are as humans. God created us to work, to be productive. Uh that's part of what being human is. Yeah. Not in just this life, uh, but even if you believe in a literal millennium, we will be working, we will be serving, it will be arduous, it will be fulfilling. Um, and it'll be the highest potential level without sin as a glorified human, yeah. Serving, working alongside Christ for Christ, and then even into the eternal state, serving God, working for all eternity. That's something that's a part of our being, that will always be true. Yeah. Uh so that's uh again a part of the Christian ethics. So this uh so obviously this just exposes or reveals his completely unbiblical worldview of his attitude towards work.
SPEAKER_01Which I don't think is sustainable. I honestly think that you see even today with um with studies that are being done on people in retirement and what they think about retirement, and men and women wanting to go back to work even in retirement, and finding that retirement was not all it was cracked up to be, and uh, people realizing that they need to be working working and even in even unbelievers that they're gonna realize that this is this that they're that Musk's view and idea of of this uh utopia of not having to work, it's gonna turn back on itself because people are gonna bump up against reality, namely that we're made in God's image, and even if you can't articulate it that way and you don't understand uh that we are made in God's image, you have this desire to work and you realize, man, I'm I'm not as happy as I thought I would be here just spending the last 20 years of my life on the golf course. And so I think even in time, this this viewpoint uh terminates on itself, it turns back on itself, and and people, regardless of their religious convictions, realize like, oh no, I I think I want to go back to work. I want to do something productive and useful.
SPEAKER_00Even if you're not a Christian and you don't even know anything about the Bible, there are plenty of workaholics who aren't Christians because it's inherent to them to just be productive, yeah, to work with their hands, to be creative, to produce. That's right. Where inherently they find fulfillment in being a producer. That's right. And they don't even know anything about the Bible. That's right, because it's inescapably a part of our very being, the fiber of being human, made in God's image, who is a worker. God is. Um, so that's there's so much in this little article and things that he said that just exposes it for what it is, like you said, utter foolishness. Or the other comment that um money will become within ten to twenty years, money will become irrelevant. And I just immediately might I'm thinking of eschatology, the category of eschatology, the book of Revelation, other places, even in Matthew 24. At the end of the age, when Christ comes again, uh and especially and explicitly in the book of Revelation, at the end of the age, uh people are buying and selling. That's right. That's literally what it says. That's right. People are engaged in commerce. That's right. And this could be two thousand years from now, for all we know. Um so having a a a biblical knowledge from Genesis to Revelation and a balanced uh scripturally informed worldview just can really put you at ease from all these needless fears of very influential, ignorant, foolish people like Elon Musk, who God is gifted with many gifts, naturally speaking, and yet he doesn't know God.
SPEAKER_01Right. And therefore he's just clueless on this particular issue. And Christians can be pretty firm and dogmatic about this. There's we we can look at this and say, oh no, no, there will money will still be relevant, and there will always be scarcity and in poverty, and people will always be working and wanting to work, uh, by and large, even though there's people who may want to indulge their leisure for uh as much as they possibly can. But so we just do encourage our our listeners that the scripture is is sufficient and we need to boy, it's it's I think it's challenging just the simple discipline of of tethering yourself to scripture at all times. The that we can't think clearly. Let me just make it clear to our listeners, we can't think clearly about the world without revelation from God.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. It's about revelation and not intelligence. Um because I mean, even artificial intelligence, intelligence has to be defined. Because the the Bible doesn't really speak much of intelligence in the New Testament, I think. Uh the word for intelligence is only used four times. Um one of them is in the Prover uh the words of Jesus himself in Luke 10. It's actually one of your favorite sermons that you've preached a couple of times, where he sends out the 70. Oh, yeah, and then they come back and they're excited because they were doing miracles, casting out demons. And Jesus said, Don't be excited you're casting out demons and have all this authority, but rejoice that your names are written in the book, that you're saved. Rejoice in that. And then Jesus says a prayer to the Father, thank you, Father, that you have hidden these things. And he says, From the intelligent. Wow. And revealed them. You said revelation, yeah, apocalypto. Yeah. You have re you've hidden these things from the intelligent in the world, and yet you have revealed them to babes or infants. Yeah, yeah. Revelation. Yeah. So Jesus' use of the word intelligence is not positive there. That's true. And he's talking about those who are perceived as intelligent in the world, who are educated in the upper class, they think they know everything. They're depending upon human wisdom and not God's revelation. And then the other significant use of only four usages of that word, intelligence, is 1 Corinthians 1 19, where uh Paul's talking about the wisdom and power of the gospel, which is revelation. Yep, yep. Contrary to human wisdom. Um, and God makes a promise from Isaiah that's quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 19 and following, where God says, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna destroy human wisdom. And I am going to, and those who are clever, I am going to put their cleverness to shame. And that word for clever there in 1 Corinthians 1, I think it's the New American Standard Bible, the word for clever is actually intelligence. The same word that Jesus used. Um that's what God thinks of human intelligence. Uh just because somebody can be called intelligent, and usually what that means is they're highly educated, or they're academic, or we say they're a genius or an original thinker, or brilliant. And many times these highly intelligent people are actually foolish. And John Musk would be wise, yeah. And that's biblical language. Yeah. Uh if you're not a Christian, uh your understanding has been darkened by your own sin and by Satan and by the deception of the world, and as a result, your thinking is foolish. One of the Greek words used by Paul is moronic. Um so that's how ironic that the most highly educated Cambridge fellow or wherever you went in an Ivy League school, you can have all this academic training, experience, and wealth, and yet you can be a fool and not wise or have truth. Right. So Christians, the category we should be speaking with is not uh the category of intelligence, but what is truth. What is God's wisdom and what is truth, not what is perceived to be intelligent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's excellent. And even Paul's point in in Romans 1 that they profess to be wise. And and yet we know objectively from God's revelation, not because I'm smarter than anyone else, but because from God's revelation we're told, no, actually, when it comes to things of the greatest import, they are fools. And we're not we're not poking fun at anybody, we're not uh uh calling people names. That's not what that's about. It's when it comes to knowing God, knowing reality, knowing the most important things of life, they're fools. And um and we in we would pray that they would turn to Christ and turn to the revelation of Scripture, which just I just you know it's I I realize it more every day how in desperate need I am of revelation from God. That I just I do not have uh within me the ability to discern this life, this world, apart from God's revelation. Well, we've I think we've kind of opened a quite the topic here, and we need to come back and continue to discuss it, Cliff. So thank you for this great introduction. We hope this has been helpful for you. Check out withallwisdom.org for more articles on a variety of topics, videos, and so on. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord as well.