Concern

You know how it is. Saturday is a blissful day. You get some exercise. Do chores around the house. Spend time with family, friends, and/or pets. You go out Saturday night. And then, it’s Sunday morning. And you know that Sunday leads inevitably to Monday. And on Monday that to-do list will rear its head again. Suddenly, you want to bury your head under your pillow and hope it all goes away.

The cloud of dread hanging over you on Sunday evening; the wave of anxious anticipation you feel ahead of a new week; the cold sweat you get thinking about Monday. These feelings have a name: the “Sunday scaries.” From worry to being overwhelmed to straight-up sadness, these feelings are depressingly common. Several factors are thought to cause the Sunday scaries such as economic uncertainty, burnout, fear of losing a job, and reflection on whether working so hard at a job is worthwhile.

LinkedIn surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers and found that 75% experience Sunday scaries. And while it may seem like workers have long-dreaded the end of the weekend, LinkedIn’s research suggests that the extent to which workers currently experience the Sunday scaries is on the rise.

Two days after the attempted assassination of former President Trump, The Wall Street Journal ran an article with the following title:

“‘I’m Tired. I’m Done.’ Nation Faces Exhaustion and Division After Trump Assassination Attempt, Americans express dismay about the state of the country: ‘The world has gone to Hades in a handbasket.’”

They spoke to four dozen Americans across the country and gave the following summary:

Nearly to a person, they expressed a sense of dread, saying there seems to be no good news on the horizon. Their list of concerns is endless: The lingering effects of a socially isolating pandemic; violent protests over disagreements about war; three election cycles of increasing polarization; and decades of escalating gun violence. That is not to mention economic turmoil and inflation. And unlike other times of crisis, after 9/11 or Sandy Hook or George Floyd, this event left few Americans hopeful that any good might come out of tragedy.

Towards the end of the article, they quoted Clement Villaseñor a 32-year-old electrical maintenance, who said, “There’s a hole in the country, and this is a part of that. We’re not sticking together,” he said. “There’s so much separation, it makes me feel far apart from people.”

Gerrit De Vynck wrote a story in The Washington Post about how artificial intelligences respond to the errors they make.

Citing a recent MIT research paper, De Vynck reported that a group of scientists loaded up two iterations of Open AI’s ChatGPT, and asked each one a simple question about the geographical origin of one of MIT’s professors. One gave an incorrect answer, the other a correct one.

Researchers then asked the two bots to debate until they could agree on an answer. Eventually, the incorrect bot apologized and agreed with the correct one. The researchers’ leading theory is that allowing chatbots to debate one another will create more factually correct outcomes in their interactions with people.

One of the researchers said, “Language models are trained to predict the next word. They are not trained to tell people they don’t know what they’re doing.” De Vynck adds, “The result is bots that act like precocious people-pleasers. [They’re] making up answers instead of admitting they simply don’t know.”

AIs like ChatGPT are not trained to discern truth from falsehood, which means that false information gets included along with truth. Chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard have demonstrated a major fatal flaw: They make stuff up all the time. These falsehoods, or digital hallucinations as they are being called, are a serious concern because they limit the effectiveness of the AI as a tool for fact-finding.

What’s worse, scientists are beginning to see evidence that AIs pick up on societal fears around robots gaining sentience and turning against humanity, and mimic the behavior they see depicted in science fiction. According to this theory, if an artificial intelligence actually kills a human being, it might be because it learned from HAL, the murderous robot from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google said, “No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problem. All models do have this as an issue.” When asked if or when this will change, Pichai was less than optimistic. “[It’s] a matter of intense debate,” he said.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In our pursuit of technology, we must never give up our human responsibility to seeking or telling the truth.

In Major League Baseball, it’s common for umpires to eject players or team personnel whose behavior is deemed out of line. But rarely does those ejected include the grounds crew. MLB umpire crew chief Terry Timmons later denied ejecting them, per se, but that’s what he appeared to do during a mid-September game between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees.

The Orioles had a one-run lead when storm clouds were gathering overhead and it appeared as though rain was imminent. As is their duty, the grounds crew stood beyond the first base line holding their massive tarp, ready to spread it over the field to protect it from rainfall. That is, until Timmons emphatically waved them off of the field. It was the ninth inning, and Timmons wanted to finish the game. After the game Timmons texted the Associated Press, "I didn't 'eject' the grounds crew. I just didn't want all of them behind the tarp, especially with the infield in.''

Timmons’ unspoken but understandable concern was with avoiding an unnecessary delay to the game. It takes time for the grounds crew to either cover or uncover the field, and that doesn’t even include whatever delay the rain itself might incur. With the game so close to its conclusion, Timmons’ desire echoed that of many American workers; after a long day of work, he just wanted to go home.

A few minutes after the grounds crew was ushered away, Yankees batter Brett Gardner ended up hitting a two-run single to win the game.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we serve the Lord, we must have sound judgment. Wisdom isn't just mindlessly applying the same standard to every situation, but assessing the time and situation to continually discern the most prudent course of action.

Lacking the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, modern society is looking for new, innovative ways to help make people more empathetic. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, whose company sells the Oculus VR headset, said of virtual reality (VR): “One of the most powerful features of VR is empathy. By cultivating empathy, VR can raise awareness and help us see what’s happening in different parts of the world.”

The hope and promise of VR is that one day everyone will call it an “empathy machine”:

By creating an immersive and interactive virtual environment, a VR headset can quite literally put you in someone else’s shoes. Text, image, or video offers only partial views of a person’s life. With VR, you can get inside their head. And this high-fidelity simulation, the argument goes, will make us better people by heightening our sensitivity to the suffering of others. It will make us “more compassionate,” “more connected,” and ultimately “more human,” in the words of the VR artist Chris Milk. ... By lending you the eyes and ears of someone suffering, tech helps you to develop a greater sense of responsibility for them. You feel compelled to act. This is connectivity not merely as a technical concept, but a moral one.

This expectation is partially explored in the movie Ready Player Two, released in November, 2020. More advanced VR--actually placed inside the brains of most of the world’s population--has rid the world of crime, disease, addiction, and all forms of prejudice. As one of the film’s characters says: “For the first time in human history, we have technology that gives us the ability to live in someone else’s skin for a little while.”

The Kudzu vine was introduced into the US from Japan in 1876 as part of an ornamental plant exhibition in Philadelphia. The Kudzu vine was subsequently promoted by the Federal government during the Great Depression, as a useful way to slow soil erosion. It has since got completely out of hand.

Its roots can grow up to 20 feet long and 5 inches in diameter. Unless the root is killed the plant survives. It can grow 16 inches in a day and as much as 100 feet in a year It spreads so fast that you can actually watch it grow. The vine now covers an estimated two to seven million acres in 13 Southeastern states.

Dr. Jack Tinga, at the University of Georgia, is a leading authority on the kudzu. He has even received calls from Hollywood producers keen to make a horror movie about the vine. Tinga says, “It's no joking matter. If you come across a kudzu, simply drop it and run.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus said spoke people who hear His word, but then become choked by the cares of life (Luke 8:14). Beware. These cares are more sinister than the Kudzu!

Victoria Price was working as a reporter for her local NBC affiliate station when she received an urgent suggestion to seek her doctor. But the idea didn’t come from a coworker or a supervisor; rather, it came from a viewer.

"Hi, I just saw your news report,” began the email in her inbox. “What concerned me is the lump on your neck. Please have your thyroid checked.” By itself, those words might be generally concerning, but it was the next bit that propelled Price into action. "Reminds me of my neck. Mine turned out to be cancer. Take care of yourself."

Price did consult her doctor, and it turned out--that eagle-eyed viewer was right. The lump was cancerous, and she eventually scheduled a surgery to get it removed.

Price expressed her gratitude on a subsequent Instagram post. Price said, "Had I never received that email, I never would have called my doctor. The cancer would have continued to spread. It's a scary and humbling thought. I will forever be grateful to the woman who went out of her way to email me, a total stranger. She had zero obligation to, but she did anyway."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Life is full of surprises, so it behooves us as Christians to be humble enough to listen to prudent counsel.

Author Elizabeth L. Silver wrote the very personal memoir The Tincture of Time. It is about her then baby daughter’s stroke at six weeks and the trauma and uncertainty for a full year before she recovered.

Silver spoke to many people about the pandemic crisis and found their biggest concern was fear--not of illness, financial loss ,or death, but living with uncertainty. She also interviewed many people living with various diseases--living with medical uncertainty.

She learned that:

How we approach uncertainty in our health is a litmus test for how we approach life. Uncertainty is living outside of life and within it. It is the baseline of experience, of joy, of energy, of possibility, of fear. And uncertainty—especially in a pandemic—reflects how we as a society and we as individuals are.

Silver contrasts how most people deal with a medical crisis compared to doctors and nurses. Talking to non-medical people she “asked each person for the first word that came to mind when they hear the phrase ‘uncertainty in medicine.’ The overwhelming response was ‘fear’ or ‘blindness’ or ‘powerlessness.’”

Yet when she asked scientists and health care professionals the same question, their first response was “challenge” or “reality.” The difference was that they understood and expected this uncertainty; it is part of their professional worldview, and it is no different now. Health professionals and experts know that we don’t know much about this novel coronavirus. “The difficulty now lies in convincing the rest of us that uncertainty is something we can and must live with.”

On October 25, 2010, a massive earthquake set off a tsunami that struck some Indonesian Islands. The tsunamis leveled whole villages, leaving hundreds dead or missing. According to the survivors, the deaths could have been avoided, or at least minimized. Unfortunately, the tsunami warning system—two buoys off the island—weren't working properly. As a result, they didn't alert the islanders to the coming danger.

Since 2004, experts have improved the tsunami detection network. The DART buoys (as they are called) measure wave height. If a buoy measures an unusual wave, it transmits that information to the shore. This system often provides the only warning signal for islanders to prepare for the oncoming danger. Unfortunately, according to the report, the buoys "have become detached and drifted away. Sensors have failed. As many as 30 percent have been inoperable at any one time." As a result, the buoys often fail to awaken people to the reality of future tragedy.

As followers of Christ, we not only have the privilege of sharing Christ's love; we also have the responsibility to gently confront sin and warn people of judgment. If, like the buoys, we "have become detached or drifted away," and if our love has grown cold or apathetic, we may leave others unprepared for the consequences of sin or of life apart from Christ.

Every three years InterVarsity Christian Fellowship sponsors the Urbana Conference, a gathering that challenges university students to get involved in world evangelization. About 16,000 students from around the world attended the 2009 conference.

After the main session each evening, students would leave the larger conference auditorium to meet in smaller groups for prayer and reflection. In one of the banquet halls, there was a small group comprised of Chinese students, another group of Taiwanese students, and another group of students from Hong Kong. Large dividers stood between the three. These walls were important, because historically these three peoples have "harbored bitterness and animosity toward one another." They felt it was best to pray and worship each with their own people.

But as the Chinese students were praying one night, they told their leader they wanted to invite the other countries to join them. When the Taiwanese students received the invitation, they prayed and sang a little while, and then they opened up the wall divider. It wasn't too much longer before the students from Hong Kong pulled back their divider, and some 80 students mingled together.

"In Christ, we are all one family," said one leader. "And [Christ] breaks down political boundaries. In Christ, we have the desire to make the first steps to connect."

The Taiwanese students asked the students from China and Hong Kong to lead them in worship. The next night, they invited the Korean and Japanese groups to join them, nations which also had experienced fierce animosity. The leader told them, "We are living out what we have learned this week in John: This is 'God with us.'" One girl from China said, "It was a really moving time. This kind of thing would not happen in another situation."

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

—G.K. Chesterton, English writer (1874-1936)

In Western Colorado there is a road called the Million Dollar Highway. My guess is that both tourists and even most of the people who live on the western slope don't know how this road got its name.

They probably assume it got its name because it was expensive to build. That's not correct—although it probably was expensive to build because it runs through very difficult terrain and at a high altitude. The real reason it's called the Million Dollar Highway is because waste material from the ore in gold mines was used as the bed for that highway, and not all the gold dust and nuggets were removed by the mining processes available at the time. As a result, there is a partial roadbed of gold that is probably worth a lot more than a million dollars.

It isn't the cost that gave it its name, but rather what is inside it.

The same is true for the royal law of love ("Love your neighbor as yourself"). Sure it's costly, but what gives it the name is what it is made of: it is made up of God, the God who is love."

R. C. Sproul shares the story of a college student he once taught who had cerebral palsy. You know what that looks like—spastic movements and garbled speech. But as is often the case, this student was very bright and capable. Sproul writes:

One day he came to me vexed with a problem and asked me to pray for him. In the course of the prayer, I said something routine, with words like, "Oh, God, please help this man as he wrestles with this problem." When I opened my eyes, the student was quietly weeping.

I asked him what was wrong and he stammered his reply, "You called me a man. No one has ever called me a man before."

The Bible says of Jesus the Messiah, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." To understand an idea like this, sometimes we need to see its opposite. What does Jesus not do?

In May of 2009, on the Haizhu bridge in Guangzhou, China, a disturbed man in deep financial debt was poised on the edge of the bridge contemplating suicide. Because of him police had closed the bridge, disrupting traffic for five hours. People stood watching at police cordons to see what he would do. Suddenly a 66-year-old man pushed his way through the police cordons and walked up to the man considering suicide. He reached out and shook the hand of the troubled man. Then he pushed him off the bridge.

Later he explained why: "I pushed him off because jumpers like [him] are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest. They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals."

Fortunately, the police had spread an inflatable emergency cushion beneath the bridge, and as a result the suicidal man was injured but not killed.

Jesus does not push troubled people off bridges. A bruised reed he will not break. A smoldering wick he will not snuff out. He is patient and merciful.

Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier write in “Living Gently in a Violent World”:

Once when I was at the University of Notre Dame we had an extraordinary snowstorm. They get a lot of snow in South Bend because it's on the wrong side of the lake—every time a wind blows across Lake Michigan, the moisture gets dumped on South Bend. We were used to snow in the winter. But this particular time, we got thirty-six inches in twelve hours. It literally shut the city down. We couldn't do anything. Now, when Notre Dame was first established, it was made up of ethnic Catholics who didn't have any money. So the students did most of the work on campus. But as the students became better off and didn't want to do any work, the university increasingly hired contractors. However, this thirty-six-inch snow was so wet and heavy the workers couldn't move it with their machinery. So somebody thought it would be a good idea to ask the students to come out of the dorms and clean the sidewalks. They announced over the student radio station, "Come to the student union and help us clean the sidewalks." Only they forgot the students would need shovels. People started looking around and discovered there were only five snow shovels in all of Notre Dame's campus. We had used mechanical snow removers for so long, we couldn't just go back to the old way.

I remember thinking, When technology replaces community, you ain't got community to fall back on when you're in a crisis. That seems to me to be an image of how speed has produced technology, which then undercuts the viability of community.

In his book Stories for the Journey, William R. White shares the story of Hans, a European seminary professor devastated by the death of his wife, Enid. Hans was so overcome with sorrow that he lost his appetite and didn't want to leave the house. Out of concern, the seminary president, along with three other professors, paid Hans a visit.

The grieving professor confessed that he was struggling with doubt. "I am no longer able to pray to God," he admitted to his colleagues. "In fact, I am not certain I believe in God any more."

After a moment of silence, the seminary president said, "Then we will believe for you. We will pray for you." The four men continued to meet daily for prayer, asking God to restore the gift of faith to their friend.

Some months later, as the four friends gathered for prayer with Hans, Hans smiled and said, "It is no longer necessary for you to pray for me. Today I would like you to pray with me."

When Johntell Franklin's mother lost her battle with cancer on February 7, 2009, no one was surprised to hear that Franklin, a senior forward for the Milwaukee Madison High School basketball team (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), was not going to play in his team's game that day against DeKalb High School (DeKalb, Illinois).

But then he showed up.

Midway through the second quarter, Franklin walked into the gym, ready to play. The only problem was that his name hadn't been entered into the scorebook. That meant that if Franklin took the floor, his team would be assessed a technical—two free throws for the DeKalb team. Aaron Womack Jr., coach of Milwaukee Madison, and Dave Rohlman, coach of DeKalb, both met with the game's referee, begging the referee to make an exception to the rules. Though the referee was sympathetic to the situation, he stressed that the rules had to be followed, regardless of the extenuating circumstances. That's when something truly special happened. When the referee would not budge, DeKalb's Darius McNeal volunteered to shoot the two free throws. When he turned to make his way to the line, Coach Rohlman called out, "You realize you're going to miss, right?" McNeal nodded.

McNeal went to the line, the referee handed him the basketball, and he set his feet to take the shot. But instead of a perfectly executed free throw, McNeal shot the ball just two feet in front of him, and the ball slowly bounced out of bounds. The referee picked the ball up, handed it back to McNeal, and McNeal did the same thing for the second shot. The crowd responded with a standing ovation. Later, in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, McNeal said, "I did it for the guy who lost his mom. It was the right thing to do."

Moved by the gesture of the DeKalb team, Coach Womack wrote a letter to the DeKalb Daily Chronicle, saying, "You should all feel immense pride for the remarkable job that the coaching staff is doing in not only coaching these young men, but teaching them how to be leaders." He added—tongue in cheek—"I'd like to recognize Darius who stepped up to miss the shot on purpose. … I hope Coach Rohlman doesn't make him run [laps]."

Most who champion on-line chat rooms and message boards argue that such technology encourages community. The question, however, is just how healthy on-line community really is. Emboldened by anonymity, people often say things to others that they would never say face-to-face. Armed with a certain sense that "this isn't really the real world," people have little concern for the consequences of their actions or words. To put it simply: pseudo-, virtual community can often bring out the worst in us.

Consider the devastating story of Abraham Biggs.

The message board section of Biggs' favorite site, BodyBuilding.com, was his source of community—even family. The 19-year-old college student posted at least 2,300 messages, many of them chronicling his personal struggles. On November 19, 2008, after several messages that hinted at his desire to commit suicide, Biggs posted one final note, swallowed a medley of pills, and directed his on-line community to watch his death on a live video website.

What is especially horrifying is what investigators discovered after the suicide. Many in Biggs' on-line family had actually encouraged him to take his life. In fact when officers finally found where Biggs was located, 181 people were watching the video, many of whom were typing "LOL"—"laugh out loud"—on the screen.

In an interview with the New York Times about Biggs' death, Jeffrey Cole, a professor who studies technology's effects on society at the University of Southern California, said, "[Online communities] are like the crowd outside the building with the guy on the ledge. Sometimes there is someone who gets involved and tries to talk him down. Often the crowd chants, 'Jump, jump.' They can enable suicide or help prevent it." In the same interview, he later adds: "The anonymous nature of these communities only emboldens the meanness or callousness of the people on these sites. Rarely does it bring out greater compassion or consideration."

When The Associated Press spoke to Biggs' father about the tragedy, he said, "As a human being, you don't watch someone in trouble and sit back and just watch."