First Chinese Baptist Church, San Francisco
March 22, 2025
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
What is real?
One group call real news “fake news,” then comes up with “Truth Social” making the assumption that calling something “truth” makes it true.
When we were growing up, we might say, “Get real!” to suggest that we be honest and truthful.
To compete with Pepsi, Coke calls itself “The Real Thing.” Who likes Pepsi? Who prefers Coke? Is there a real cola?
Gifted with 5 senses, we often filter things through our senses. If we can’t sense it, then it might be not real.
To revive SF, it’s trying to be the AI center of research and innovation. Will AI save San Francisco?
I saw on PBS recently, that dogs might be able to communicate by pushing buttons, each associated with a particular answer. If dogs can really communicate, I wonder what might they say to us?!
We heard today that AI means
Human-like reasoning and capabilities, such as autonomous decision-making through absorbing vast amounts of data. AI can recognize speech, spot patterns, and trends, proactively solve problems and predict future events.
AI is “artificial” intelligence to mean that it’s not real. It’s interesting to see that for Apple users, AI can also mean “Apple Intelligence.”
And if you like science fiction (not real) like I do, you would have seen many movies about robots attaining “sentience.” Sentience is the “capacity to experience feelings, sensations, and subjective states, encompassing the ability to perceive and react to stimuli, and is often considered a basis for moral consideration, particularly in ethics and animal welfare.” That was an AI definition from Google.
Here’s another definition: Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations, and to have affective consciousness. It can also refer to the capacity to have experiences that feel good or bad to the subject. Sentience is a multidimensional subjective phenomenon that refers to the depth of awareness an individual possesses about themselves and others. Another AI definition!
While AI is here for us to figure out what might be our relationship with it, AI is not sentience. As human beings, we have consciousness, multidimensional subjectivity, awareness of ourselves and others, and a moral compass of right from wrong. Our moral ethics distinguishes us from AI.
In Isaiah 55:8-9, the Lord said to the people, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
The point here is that as God’s creatures with sentience, we see and know this. We know God and know that we are God’s people. This is awareness of ourselves and others with a moral consciousness which makes us real.
So, when Jesus said to Thomas in John 14:6-7, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you know me, you will know my father also, from now on you do know him and have seen him.”
What is real?
Jesus is the real thing. When God created us “a little lower than God/angels, and crowned us with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5), we are not artificial, we are the real thing. We are sentience to know right from wrong. And wherever AI might be going in the future, we can believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Let us pray.
Lord, while you are omniscience, all-knowing, and became real to us in Jesus Christ, as real as we are to each other today, we thank you for giving us the ability to think for ourselves and with a moral conscience to make this world which you created to have more peace and love. Enable us as a community of disciples to resist falsehood, but to work toward truth in life and in you. Amen.