There’s a lot of talk on AI and excitement about possibilities and worries of people losing jobs or false information being generated with no way to stop it.

I look at industrial machinery which always has a big red emergency stop button.

There’s been talk that this could be used for Christian teaching.

I had a play with Midjourney, an AI tool which can be used to generate pictures based on a brief entered by the user.

I asked it to show Jesus out with his disciples fishing, wanting to get a glimpse of the sense of brotherhood that would of happened in these days. With the picture set to high quality, this was generated in 90 seconds or so.

Wow! I was amazed how superb the quality is, the textures and colours are vibrant and clear!!

This isn’t the Sea of Galilee, as its too narrow. This looks more like Norway from the shape of scenery.

I did my most recent bucket list item of visiting Mount Tabor in Israel in 2022 seeing what’s thought to be the very place of the Transfiguration of Jesus. Again, I’m shocked how sharp and eye catching this is!

But, at the top of Tabor instead of the Greek Orthodox church and the Catholic church, there’s what looks like the Dome of the Rock mosque that’s in Jerusalem. Tabor is in the Galilee a long way away.

AI can’t determine faith in the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob versus other faiths.

This place looks lush and green which could be correct in the February to April part of the season where there is rain.

With current war and recent terrible tragedies in Israel and Gaza, I’ve seen pictures generated showing those kidnapped being released before this actually happened.

So I think AI can have some use given carefully stewarded. We can use it to show something not too ambiguous but there will always be a need for human intervention to check before making public. A watermark with what it was generated should always be added.

You have probably seen it as well as me.   In most workplaces, you probably have someone who is shocked or upset and use swear words – or, call out the name of the well known religious leader as a curse word.

I went to a computer show at the Excel exhibition in London which I have done for the last few years as I used to work doing computer maintenance for schools.    This booth here was to promote that common buzzword “diversity” more in workplaces.

So I asked her.   “Excuse me, madam, can I ask a controversial question…. “  “Go on..”

“Why does no one stub their toe and say “Oh Buddha, Krishna or Mohammed”   isn’t this not right in the spirit of diversity and tolerance? why insult only one religious leader”      She didn’t know.   I asked if she could suggest this to her bosses.

So why did this happen?   You know what, at some point, I’d like to figure out what did this slur enter common speech.   For now, I think I found out in the bible why this is:-

Galatians 3:12-14
12 The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Actually using the word Jesus as a swear word has also been done by one of my Orthodox Jewish colleagues, which I poke a bit of fun with them, which they thankfully stopped doing it.

For me, our Lord and saviour became a curse for us when he took the punishment for us.

Once I heard people are confused about Jesus’ words on hate, consider this.

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, even their own life–such a person cannot be my disciple. (NIV) 

hate?  Jesus?   The Ten Commandments tell us to Honour your Mother and Father, right?

Therefore I can see that religious themed bloggers who are atheists, or from another religion are likely to pull this ‘hate’ word out in a debate.

It seems common bible translations including the King James also state this; compare them here https://biblehub.com/luke/14-26.htm

Why is this?  It seems like this is a bad translation from the Greek to English.  This isn’t a problem with the scholars who re-jigged the scriptures to English.

I learned this from doing a bit of Hebrew whilst in Israel, or French a really long time ago at school.

Some words in certain contexts in certain languages are actually really hard to find the right equivalent word that fits.

Let’s look up the original Greek.   Its this word “μισέω” which is Miseo.

https://biblehub.com/greek/3404.htm 

“to renounce one choice in favour of another” – yes this is a better fit.

Jesus is telling his followers to re-prioritise their choices onto following him then their own family.

I really like the Strong’s concordance.   You can easily look tricky words up in the Hebrew or Greek on the www.biblehub.com or get the actual book.