Irresponsibility

Since ChatGPT appeared the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on learning has been widely debated. Are they handy tools or gateways to academic dishonesty?

Most importantly, there has been concern that using AI will lead to a widespread “dumbing down,” or decline in the ability to think critically. If students use AI tools too early, the argument goes, they may not develop basic skills for critical thinking and problem-solving.

Is that really the case? According to a recent study by scientists from MIT, it appears so. Using ChatGPT to help write essays, the researchers say, can lead to “cognitive debt” and a “likely decrease in learning skills.”

The MIT team asked 54 adults to write a series of three essays using either AI (ChatGPT), a search engine, or their own brains (“brain-only” group). Analysis showed that the cognitive engagement of those who used AI was significantly lower than the other two groups. This group also had a harder time recalling quotes from their essays and felt a lower sense of ownership over them.

The authors claim this demonstrates how prolonged use of AI led to participants accumulating “cognitive debt.” When they finally had the opportunity to use their brains, they were unable to replicate the engagement or perform as well as the other two groups.

To understand the current situation with AI, we can look back to what happened when calculators first became available.

When calculators arrived in the 1970s, educators raised the difficulty of exams. This ensured that students continued to engage deeply with the material. In contrast, with the use of AI, educators often maintain the same standards as before AI became widely accessible. As a result, students risk offloading critical thinking to AI, leading to “metacognitive laziness.”

Possible Preaching Angle: Just as students should use AI as a tool to enhance—not replace—their thinking, so the Bible calls believers to seek wisdom actively without shortcuts.

In an article in Esquire, Denzel Washington discussed his past drinking problems:

Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden. And part of it was we built this big house in 1999 with a ten-thousand-bottle wine cellar, and I learned to drink the best. So, I’m gonna drink my ’61s and my ’82s and whatever we had. Wine was my thing, and now I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left.

I never drank while I was working or preparing. I would clean up, go back to work—I could do both. However, many months of shooting, bang, it’s time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work.

I’m sure at first it was easy because I was younger. Two months off and let’s go. But drinking was a fifteen-year pattern… I never got strung out on heroin. Never got strung out on coke. Never got strung out on hard drugs.

I wasn’t drinking when we filmed Flight, I know that, but I’m sure I did as soon as I finished. That was getting toward the end of the drinking, but I knew a lot about waking up and looking around, not knowing what happened… I’ve done a lot of damage to the body. We’ll see. I’ve been clean. (It will) be ten years this December. I stopped at sixty and I haven’t had a thimble’s worth since.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible repeatedly warns that excessive alcohol use leads to sorrow, physical ailments, impaired judgment, addiction, and social or spiritual decline. While moderate use is not universally condemned, the scriptural emphasis is clear: alcohol, especially in excess, is hard on the human body and soul.

Every year, 2.8 million people around the globe die from alcohol abuse or misuse. The alcohol industry racks up an annual revenue of $1.5 trillion. Alcohol is also the leading cause of death globally for people age 15–49. It causes more than half of the 1.35 million traffic fatalities every year and is involved in the majority of homicides and cases of domestic violence.

Furthermore, despite the widespread belief that moderate alcohol consumption is good for your health, the only amount of alcohol consumption that doesn’t carry significant risk to your overall health is none.

Certain words that many companies use in their annual reports—words like ethical, integrity and responsibility—are meant to convey trustworthiness. But research suggests that companies that use such words in annual filings known are often hiding their untrustworthiness.

The study found that use of “trust” words in annual statements was linked with a decreased interest in the stock of the company in question. Basing their findings on 21 words that seek to evoke a sense of trustworthiness, the authors also found that companies whose annual filings included the words tended to pay about $100,000 more in auditing fees than firms without the words.

Companies using trust words were also about 15% more likely to receive a comment letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission asking them to clarify information on their annual report than companies that didn’t use trust words.

One of the researchers wrote, “Companies likely use trust words to project a positive image and better manage information within the annual report, but it seems that no one is really fooled.”

One of the zany experiments staged by the "Mythbusters" television show nearly turned into a suburban tragedy in Dublin, California when the crew fired a homemade cannon toward huge containers of water at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb disposal range.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m. There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all, only awakening because of plaster dust.

The ball wasn't done bouncing. It exited the house, leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed six-lane Tassajara Road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into the Gill family's beige Toyota Sienna minivan in a driveway on Springvale Drive.

That's where Jasbir Gill, who had pulled up 10 minutes earlier with his 13-year-old son, found the ball on the floorboards, with glass everywhere and an obliterated dashboard. "It's shocking - anything could have happened," Gill said after the van had been taken away as evidence, along with the cannonball.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy," said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. "You wouldn't think it was possible." He said the television crew was incredibly unlucky that the cannonball flew through Dublin, but "tremendously lucky that it didn't seriously injure or kill somebody."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Youl can use this to set up a sermon on the power of sin or hurtful words to inflict much more damage than we ever imagined. Just as the local police sergeant said, "Crazy, crazy, crazy. You wouldn't think it was possible." That's what we all say when we see the impact of our hurtful words or sins against others.

The Paralympic Games is a celebration of athletic achievement for those with physical disabilities. It has been marred by a growing concern: “classification doping,” (which borrows language used to describe performance enhancing substance abuse). Athletes are misrepresenting the extent of their disabilities to gain an unfair advantage over competitors.

Double amputee Oksana Masters, a prominent Paralympic athlete, believes officials are more interested in maintaining a positive image than addressing the issue. "They want to keep the warm and fuzzy narrative going," she said. "If they knew what's really going on behind closed doors, they'd be shocked."

The Paralympic classification system is designed to place athletes into competitions with others who have similar impairments. While some disabilities are easy to categorize, others are more ambiguous, relying on the judgment of medical classifiers and the integrity of the athletes themselves.

The most infamous Paralympic cheating scandal came at the 2000 Sydney Games, where Spain’s intellectual disability men’s basketball team won the gold medal despite fielding a roster with 10 players who did not have disabilities.

Physician Kevin Kopera, a volunteer in the Paralympic classification system, is cautious about dismissing the issue. "I don't believe anyone can say to what degree misrepresentation exists in parasports," he said. "Any statement in this regard would be speculative. Certainly, to say it doesn't exist would not be realistic. The stakes are too high."

A growing number of high-profile tragedies are leading to prosecutions of parents not for their actions, but for their failures to act. One such case involves Elizabeth Puleo-Tague, whose teenager’s fondness for fast, erratic driving led to a crash that killed a passenger in his car. The mother of the boy who was killed wants her prosecuted for parental neglect.

Kiernan Tague, 17, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his friend Flynn MacKrell after his vehicle, a BMW X3, lost control at 105 miles per hour and collided with a tree. Flynn's mother, Anne Vanker, believes that Puleo-Tague should be held responsible for her son's actions due to her negligence.

“To say this is a living hell is an understatement," said Flynn's mom, Anne Vanker, in an interview. “My life has been ruined. No one should ever, ever have to lose a child like this ... I still can’t believe my son — my big calm son — is gone.”

Vanker says that Kiernan’s mother, Elizabeth Puleo-Tague, should be held legally liable for Flynn’s death. An investigation by the local prosecuting attorney revealed a history of Puleo-Tague pleading with Kiernan to slow down. Despite her repeated warnings and the use of a safety app, Kiernan continued to engage in dangerous driving.

Months before the crash, Puleo-Tague had been receiving notifications from a safety app called Life360, informing her of Kiernan’s aggressive driving. Kiernan had even taken a photo of his Audi’s speedometer exceeding 140 miles per hour.

Texts show that Puleo-Tague repeatedly begged her son to change his ways, but he refused. But not only did she fail to stop her son from continuing in his reckless ways, she bought an even faster car—the BMW—and left the keys at home during a trip to Canada.

In her request for charges, Vanker compared Puleo-Tague to James and Jennifer Crumbley, who are serving 10-year sentences in prison because they failed to take a rifle away from their son Ethan Crumbley, who eventually took the lives of several people at his school.

"She was sitting on a ticking time bomb. She knows he's out of control, yet she basically gets him a weapon," Vanker said. "It's like she handed him an AR-15."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Regardless of the outcome of the case, the tragedy serves as a stark reminder of the importance of addressing reckless behavior in young people, and of the potential consequences of parental neglect.

According to court documents, Sean Higgins had been working from home when he fielded an upsetting call with his mother about a personal matter. But he’d also been drinking, which according to his wife, had become a pattern as of late. So clearly there were many issues that contributed to the sense of chaos and discord in his life. But none were more destructive than his choice to get behind the wheel of his Jeep and drive, while talking on the phone, with an open container of alcohol in the car.

Later that evening, Higgins was driving down a rural road when the two vehicles in front of him slowed and veered to the left to avoid two bicyclists in the roadway. But Higgins was impatient, so he instead accelerated and tried to pass those vehicles on the right. Higgins didn’t see the two cyclists until it was too late. He drove his vehicle into them, and both cyclists were killed.

This instance of vehicular death would be a tragedy under any set of circumstances, but it just so happened that those men were Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. Johnny played hockey for the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League, and he and his brother Matthew were scheduled to be groomsmen for their sister’s wedding in Philadelphia the next day. Johnny and Matt were both married; Johnny had two children and Matt’s wife was pregnant at the time of the crash.

“Johnny and Matt were incredible hockey players and students, but even more amazing human beings,” said Gloucester principal Thomas Iacovone Jr. in a statement. “Their loss will be felt forever by the entire Gloucester Catholic community and by me personally. I will continue to pray for them and their families during this unimaginable tragedy.”

Sean Higgins served in the United States Army as a second lieutenant for four years, and had earned a Bronze Star during a 15-month tour of duty in Iraq. He also served as a major in the New Jersey National Guard. During a recorded phone call from jail, Higgins admitted that he had a problem with aggressive driving.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Given Higgins’ domestic conflicts and propensity for drinking, it’s obvious he had issues adjusting to civilian life. If only he’d had the humility to ask for help sooner, he might have developed a set of healthier coping habits that could have prevented this tragedy.

Authorities say that, due to a clerical error, a suspected murderer was released from county jail, but he’s now safely back behind bars.

A warrant for arrest was issued for 22-year-old Amarion Sanders who’d previously been held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on $1 million bail. Sanders was facing aggravated murder charges in connection with a shooting in September of 2023.

Sanders was released on June 24, because another defendant in an otherwise unrelated case had his charges dismissed, and one of the court personnel incorrectly entered that case number into the database for dismissal. The next day, the second arrest warrant was issued, and Sanders was re-arrested without incident.

County, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, helped search for Sanders.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a great story to teach the lesson that small mistakes can have big consequences. It is important to maintain a system of checks and balances and to take immediate action when an error is discovered.

Tim Hogan is the founder and CEO SaferStreet Solutions, a development firm focusing on improving traffic safety and reducing pedestrian deaths. For years, he and his team were looking at ways to prevent the phenomenon known as distracted driving, which is statistically comparable to drunk driving as a culprit for traffic-related fatalities.

Inspired by the signs that offer real-time feedback to speeding drivers, Hogan and his team invented the SmartSign. The signs are designed to identify motorists who hold their phones while driving, and display a message warning them to stop: “PHONE DOWN.”

Matt Gregory is a reporter in Washington DC. When the SmartSign was implemented in his city, he was somewhat skeptical of the sign’s efficacy. Matt said, “So, I went for a drive with my phone in my hand. And sure enough, ‘Phone Down’!”

Hogan says the device works by using sensors to identify the unique combination of heat signatures that result from a human holding a phone. If the phone is cradled or resting elsewhere, the sign doesn’t light up.

Rick Birt from the DC Highway Safety Office says the goal is to introduce the signs to the public as a form of behavior intervention. “Last year nationally, 3,500 people died from distracted driving-related crashes. The goal of these signs is to provide instantaneous feedback to motorists so that they have that opportunity to make a better choice.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is faithful to remind us when we are veering off of the path given for us, but it’s up to each of us to respond in obedience.

A Sydney police officer was recently sentenced to a two-year good behavior bond and a conviction stemming from an incident where he threatened to shoot someone. (A good behavior bond requires the offender to show good behavior for a set period under a probation officer’s supervision along with counseling.)

In this case, Constable Dominic Gaynor was sentenced for his threats to another officer while working behind the counter at the police station in Sydney’s central business district. According to court documents, officer Morgan Royston was working with Gaynor, and had just seen the Tom Cruise blockbuster film Top Gun: Maverick. In casual conversation, Royston said to Gaynor, “I’ll spoil it for you.”

Gaynor responded by telling Royston not to spoil the film, and according to witnesses, threatened to shoot Royston on the spot. According to the court document, “He pointed his firearm at the vicinity of the complainant and held it stationary for five seconds. The offender's finger was on the receiver and not the trigger. The offender was laughing throughout this incident.”

Gaynor was eventually suspended without pay, and as part of the good behavior bond, was required to perform 100 hours of community service. During sentencing, Magistrate Maher noted the “power imbalance” between the defendant and his more junior colleague, saying that a police officer was entitled to carry a firearm but that doing so was “a great responsibility.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Working in service of others requires us to always be in control of our behavior. We must allow common sense to avoid dangerous and foolish actions.

Despite the presence of several acclaimed breweries, restaurants, and the last remaining Blockbuster video rental store in America, the town of Bend, Oregon features another illustrious tourist attraction garnering local attention – a giant rock.

The large rock, which locals refer to as the Big, Obvious Boulder (or BOB for short), is roughly three feet tall and three feet wide. It sits near the entrance to a parking lot, and gets attention when oblivious drivers collide with it and their vehicles require rescuing. Bob’s claim to fame is that it is a magnet for cars, which end up high-centered on the boulder and need to be rescued.

Not only is Bob itself often affixed with stickers and signs warning drivers, but it’s become something of a local phenomenon, with its own Facebook group. Former Bend resident Terry Heiser, claims to have had the first run-in with Bob back in 2002. He said:

It was about 9 p.m. on a weekday and I was heading downtown to meet some friends. I decided to stop in at 7-11 and I took the turn into the parking lot as I had done dozens of times. I wasn’t driving crazy or fast. It was just an innocuous turn and next thing you know chaos happens and my truck ended up on its side.

I had to climb out of the passenger window to get out. I immediately called my buddies and they came down with an even bigger truck to help get me off of Bob. It was such a stupid but hilarious accident that I haven’t lived down to this day.

You can view the famous boulder here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Christ, life of; Stumbling; Stumbling blocks - In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ was also a stumbling stone. People overlooked his significance and stumbled to their harm. 2) Attention; Carelessness - As we go through the routine activities of life, it is important to stay focused on what lies directly before us. When we become distracted by more trivial affairs, we are more likely to experience trouble, misfortune, and/or heartbreak.

Gospel singer Bobbi Storm would seem to be aptly named, for her latest actions created a firestorm of controversy, testing the axiom that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In Storm’s case, she might wish she had done things differently.

Storm is part of the Grammy-nominated praise-and-worship group Maverick City Music, which was recently nominated for two Grammy awards. In her excitement over the nominations, Storm stood up during the middle of a recent flight on Delta Airlines in order to make an unsolicited performance for the people in the cabin.

In a video posted to her Instagram Live account, Storm is heard saying, “I sing for the Lord … I'm doing what the Lord is telling me to do.” After a flight attendant insisted she sit down, she sang a portion of her new song, “We Can’t Forget Him,” at a lower volume, while seated.

Since it went public on Instagram, the video garnered a variety of comments, many of them negative. Storms actions were deemed by commenters as “wildly out of pocket,” and “one of the most egotistical things I’ve ever seen.”

One user summarized the criticism by saying: "Imagine the entitlement of thinking you are the only one with something that can bless folks and it happens to be in an airplane where they have no choice but to hear you because they can’t go anywhere?!?”

Possible Preaching Angle:

While it's important to be bold in our faith, that boldness should be clothed in humility and kindness, truly seeking the best for those around us.

Of all the helping professions, police work seems the most suited to a dark, sardonic disposition often referred to as gallows humor. It’s the byproduct of being subject to crime, degradation, and violence on a day-to-day basis. Still, the case of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer should help officers reflect on the consequences of their words, especially when they’re caught on camera.

Auderer’s bodycam footage recorded him joking with another officer while discussing the death of a pedestrian. SPD officer Kevin Dave had been driving over 70 miles per hour in his police vehicle while responding to an overdose call when his car struck and killed 26-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk. Auderer had been summoned to evaluate whether Dave had been impaired at the time of the accident. Auderer was recorded saying that the city should “just write a check,” and implied that eleven thousand dollars would suffice, because, “she was 26, anyway … she had limited value.”

Auderer later wrote in a statement to the city’s Office of Police Accountability, "I intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers. I laughed at the ridiculousness of how these incidents are litigated and the ridiculousness of how I watched these incidents play out as two parties bargain over a tragedy."

Auderer admitted that anyone listening to his side of the conversation alone "would rightfully believe I was being insensitive to the loss of human life." The comment was "not made with malice or a hard heart," he said, but "quite the opposite." Still, police watchdog groups were not satisfied with the explanation, and several demanded Auderer be suspended without pay.

At the time of her death, Kandula was a student enrolled in the information systems program at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus. After her death, her uncle Ashok Mandula arranged to send her body to her mother in India. Mandula said, "The family has nothing to say. Except I wonder if these men's daughters or granddaughters have value. A life is a life."

After he died attempting to cross a collapsed bridge in his vehicle, the family of a local man is suing Google because its Maps app directed him to do so.

Philip Paxson was using Google Maps to navigate while driving home from his daughter’s ninth birthday party when the app directed him across a bridge that had collapsed nearly a decade prior, but lacked any kind of warning of the danger. Paxson family attorney Robert Zimmerman said:

For years before this tragedy, Hickory residents asked for the road to be fixed or properly barricaded before someone was hurt or killed. Their demands went unanswered. We’ve discovered that Google Maps misdirected motorists like Mr. Paxson onto this collapsed road for years, despite receiving complaints from the public demanding that Google fix its map and directions to mark the road as closed.

In addition to Google (and its parent company, Alphabet), the Paxson family is also suing two local companies who it claims were responsible for maintaining the bridge and failed to put up any warning signage or safety barricades.

Paxson said, “I still can’t understand how those responsible for the GPS directions, and the bridge, could have acted with so little regard for human life. No one should ever lose a loved one this way.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Consequences; Irresponsibility - When we put off or refuse to do the right thing when given a chance, the Lord will sometimes allow calamitous circumstances to unfold as the natural consequence of imprudent inaction; 2) Danger; Direction; Destruction – Ultimately, we must each take responsibility for the “road” we choose and not depend on others to make that choice for us (Prov. 16:25; Matt. 7:13)

A burst of recent editorials have criticized AI tools like ChatGPT as a threat to educational goals over concerns that students would abuse the technology. However, educators are beginning to come around to the value of artificial intelligence – not for students, but for the teachers themselves.

Kansas high school teacher Mike Harris said that normally, designing a 16-week drama class that adheres to state standards would take him at least a full workday. He asked ChatGPT to engage the task, however, and he said he had a workable outline in a few minutes. He also used it to break down the class into daily lesson plans. The 10-year veteran drama teacher said, “To me, that’s the wonder of the tool. This is one of those once-in-a-millennia technology changes.”

Experts recommend using caution when applying AI tools to complex tasks, particularly in the field of education, because the technology is still prone to making errors. Still, many educators would rather use their time rigorously fact-checking the output of an AI rather than starting from scratch.

Sarah Alvick is a social studies teacher who says AI is also helpful for teachers having difficulty engaging students with the task of writing. She said, “You’ll have a kid who sits for a whole week, saying, ‘I don’t know what to write about.’” With AI, she tells students to use it “to assist you, not to do it for you.” She is concerned about the loss of critical thinking, but seems to feel that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Technology constantly brings changes to the way we do things. We need to wisely put it to use as a tool, without it becoming a crutch or a way to avoid hard work.

The following was taken from a newsletter for a medical group, not a Christian organization:

Do you indulge in a glass of wine every now and then? You are not alone. More than 85% of adults report drinking alcohol at some point. In 2020, alcohol consumption in the U.S. spiked, with heavy drinking increasing by 41% among women.

Alcohol affects your body quickly. It is absorbed through the lining of your stomach into your bloodstream. Once there, it spreads into tissues throughout your body. Alcohol reaches your brain in only five minutes and starts to affect you within 10 minutes.

After 20 minutes, your liver starts processing alcohol. On average, the liver can metabolize 1 ounce of alcohol every hour. A blood alcohol level of 0.08, the legal limit for drinking, takes around five and a half hours to leave your system. Alcohol will stay in urine for up to 80 hours and in hair follicles for up to three months. Drivers with a BAC of 0.08 or more are 11 times more likely to be killed in a single-vehicle crash than non-drinking drivers.

When Tanner Cook approached Alan Colie in the food court of the Dulles Town Center mall, he was hoping to obtain prank footage for his YouTube channel. Instead, he got shot.

Security footage from the incident shows Cook approaching and following Colie for a little over a minute. After repeatedly asking Cook to go away, Colie pulled out a firearm and shot Cook in the abdomen. For the shooting Colie was charged with aggravated malicious wounding, using a firearm while committing a felony, and discharging a firearm in a building. Loudoun County attorney Buta Biberaj said,“There is nothing that would suggest, based on information we have to date, that what Cook did warranted this response.”

However, the Loudoun County attorney has not ruled out the possibility that Cook will face charges for his role in the altercation, especially if evidence showed that Cook threatened or touched Colie. She said, “You don’t know the recipient of this type of prank, where they are, or what their trauma might be — they may receive it as being a threat.” When asked if such evidence exists, she simply responded, “the collection of evidence continues.”

Jeramy Cook, Tanner’s father, thinks any potential charges would set a troublesome precedent for entertainers who specialize in public interaction. He said, “If you’re going to bring charges against my son, go bring charges against TV celebrities in prank shows. And everybody else — all the videos of people getting punked on social media — let’s make it so no one can do that anymore.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Immature and reckless behavior often results in unintended consequences. Young people need to be instructed toward mature thinking and should be taught the consequences of their actions at an early age.

When people experience the unexpected death of a friend, neighbor, or family member, it’s natural to search for answers. And sometimes the answers aren’t very satisfying.

Such has been the case for friends and neighbors of the Daub family. On January 25th, police responded to their home for a wellness check and discovered the bodies of Morgan Daub, 26, and her parents, 59-year-old Deborah and 62-year-old James, all dead from gunshot wounds.

Evidence at the scene included handwritten notes by all three individuals. These convinced lead detective Timothy Fink that the daughter’s struggles with mental illness led her to take her life, and the parents joined her in a suicide pact because they didn’t want to live without her.

Detective Fink said, “Deborah wrote that she didn’t want her daughter to pass on alone, so she had decided to end her life with her. The letter written by James indicated that they had told him their plan, and he decided that he didn’t want to live without them.”

Members of the surrounding community were shocked by the discovery. One neighbor told reporters that the family had grown isolated over the years, and had withdrawn altogether during the COVID-19 pandemic. Another neighbor across the street, Mike Landis, had pleasant memories of the Daubs, claiming that the couple had been traveling missionaries, and had offered spiritual counseling during a health crisis.

The news was especially shocking for Paula Wolfe, who was a youth coordinator at the local bowling alley where Morgan excelled as a teenager. Wolfe said, “Everybody’s just really sad about it, and just doesn’t know what to make of it. I don’t know that you could ever imagine this. But, yeah, a family that you’d never ever think that anything like this would happen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Being isolated, in pain, and cut off from community can distort one’s thinking and warp perception. Someone who feels hopeless and isolated is in danger of hurting themselves and others.

Federal law enforcement officers were dispatched to the Gold Coast Airport in Queensland, Australia after a drunk, disorderly woman refused to follow the crew’s instructions. Jetstar Airlines explained the situation in a brief statement afterward. “The safety of our customers and crew is our number one priority and we have zero tolerance for disruptive behavior.”

The woman, who one TikTok user referred to as a “drunk Karen,” clearly wore out her welcome among the nearby passengers who had to endure her belligerent behavior. On the posted TikTok video, police can be seen entering the plane and forcibly removing her from the aircraft, while onlookers began chanting the chorus to a 1969 hit from the band Steam. “Na na nahhh na, na na nahh na, hey hey hey … goodbye.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the words of the ancient African American proverb: “God don't like ugly.” While we're not to seek vengeance because it belongs to God, it's natural to be relieved when wrongdoers experience the consequences of their actions.