The Joke's On Us

 

February 23, 2024

Good morning,

This morning, as I was reviewing some of my older writing, I came upon “The Joke’s On Us” from 2006, almost twenty years ago. With the proliferation of AI, it is more relevant today than it was then. When creators abdicate the dignity and calling of cocreation, they sell their souls to the Beast.

To think that magazines have been publishing AI – generated articles under fictitious names and see nothing inherently wrong with it – and to think that this is only the beginning. But then again, if we truly are the products of time plus matter plus chance then none of this matters…however, if we are not – then what questions ought we to be asking? O how our pragmatism and utilitarianism is swallowing us and destroying us – within and without the professing church.

A photo you took with your phone is not the photo you took with your phone if your AI photo software manipulates the people in your photo – such as creating smiles where there were no smiles. How much of our souls will we sell?

When we abdicate our calling as creators, and give ourselves and our children and grandchildren over to virtual reality in its many forms – some subtle, some not – are we not worshipping the Beast and inviting that hideous strength into our souls?

When the consumers become the consumed, is not the joke on us?

Much love,

Bob

           

 

The Joke’s On Us

From Creators to Consumers

By: Robert L. Withers

©2006 Robert L. Withers

 

            “Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,” Genesis 1:26a.

 

            Dorothy L. Sayers, in commenting on this passage in The Mind of the Maker, writes, “…had the author of Genesis anything particular in his mind when he wrote [this passage]? It is observable that in the passage leading up to the statement about man, he has given no detailed information about God. Looking at man, he sees in him something essentially divine, but when we turn back to see what he says about the original upon which the “image” of God was modeled, we find only the single assertion, “God created.” The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.”

 

            In her discussion of the metaphor “Creator” Sayers continues, “This particular metaphor has been much less studied than the metaphor of “the Father”…partly because most of us have a very narrow experience of the act of creation. It is true that everybody is a “maker” in the simplest meaning of the term. We spend our lives putting matter together in new patterns and so “creating” forms which were not there before. This is so intimate and universal a function of nature that we scarcely ever think about it.”

 

            A major credit card company currently has an advertising campaign centered around the issue of identity theft. Actors and actresses portray consumers who are victims of stolen credit card information with the advertisement assuring us that if we are customers/consumers of the advertiser that we will be protected from fraudulent credit card charges – we will be protected from identity theft.

 

            Do we see the irony in this advertisement? Has it occurred to us that the people who are mouthing protections against identity theft are the ones who are rapaciously engaged in the practice?

 

            We moan and lament the displacement of manufacturing jobs in the United States. We blame cheap labor and multinational corporations. We struggle to understand how our domestic Big Three automakers have made buying an “American” car more problematic with each passing year.

 

The phrase, “They don’t make them like they used to,” is more seldom used than ever because fewer and fewer of us can remember a time when “they” made whatever “them” is at all.

 

We pay to watch people in Colonial Williamsburg make things. Human creation has become a novelty in the United Sates. Human creation is so rare that it is marketable. As we watch the cobbler or the cooper or the silversmith we wonder, “How does his mind work? Fascinating. I could never do that.”

 

The Apostle Paul writes, “Professing to be wise, they [mankind] became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man…”

 

What is this “glory” that we exchanged? While there are likely many facets to it, because the idea of “image” is rooted in Genesis 1:26 and because Genesis 1:26 is rooted in the Creator, the “glory” speaks to us of our identity in God as co-creators, or creators with a lower case “c.”

 

The downward spiral of humanity that Paul depicts in Romans Chapter One is a descent from a core identity rooted in the Creator-God to a black hole identity which sucks all things into itself and which perceives all things as consumable goods – material, sexual, emotional and spiritual (with a lower case “s”).

 

We may still remark from time-to-time that, “I’m just a number,” but that is not our identity. We don’t really think of ourselves as numbers, for the numbers are but a means to exercise our identities. Our PIN numbers, our Social Security numbers, our valued customer numbers at myriad retailers; they are all a means to an end, a means to pursue the great exchange of image from creators to consumers.

 

How many advertisements do you read, listen to, or watch during the course of a day, a week or a year? How about your children and grandchildren? What is the message of the advertiser? What is the language? How do we listen and respond? Consumer-speak is the lingua franca of our society. As a nation of little potentates the merchants of the world bow before our thrones plying us with their exotic delicacies, from French fries to luxury cars to cruises to a weed-free lawn.

 

Do we stop to consider the royal debt with which medieval kings and queens constantly struggled? But we needn’t worry, for the moneylenders are quick to assure us that they will protect us from identity theft. In fact one credit card firm’s television advertisement goes so far as to indicate that it will protect us against savage Vikings seeking to ravish us with high interest rates. I am sure we all sleep better knowing that Leif Erickson is not a threat.

 

And lest we take our consumerism lightly, let us not forget that the freedom of the world rests upon our narcissism. What other people in the history of the world have been implored by its leaders in response to an enemy attack to go out and spend money to keep the economy moving – we’ll show them!

 

The prophet Ezekiel was taken by the Spirit of God to the Temple in Jerusalem and recorded this witness, “So I went in [the Temple] and saw, and there – every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls.”  Ezekiel’s contemporaries exchanged the image and glory of God for idols. They imported the images and language of idols into the Temple – that which was holy was profaned. We would never do that…would we?

 

We would never introduce the language of consumerism into our churches. We would never measure our commitment to others based on the benefit we derive from the relationship. We would never critique a Sunday morning church experience (I hesitate to use the word “worship”) as we would a performance at the Landmark Theatre.

 

We would never make bestsellers of titles which exalt the consumer Christian and relegate the Creator to a butler-servant. We would never engage in promiscuous spiritually, a spiritually bereft of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

 

We would never substitute the call of Christ to deny ourselves and take up the Cross and follow Him for a Christianity centered on ourselves.

 

We would never lack the courage to look within ourselves, just as Ezekiel looked within the Temple, to see the images on the walls of our hearts and minds, our own personal pantheons – images which declare that we have exchanged the glory of the Creator for that of the consumer.

 

The joke is on us.