BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR: This Saturday, September 12, from 10  am to 2 pm,I’ll be at the New Berlin Ale House Book Fair, 16000 W. Cleveland Avenue, New Berlin, Wisconsin. Stop and see me. I’ll have plenty of copies of my books, The Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold! I’ll be happy to sell you one, or more than one, complete with the author’s signature! Two exciting historical novels—one more for adults and one more for children. With Christmas coming up, they’re great gifts for friends and family members. See you there! Now, on with the show:

CHICAGO NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST SIDNEY J. HARRIS, followed by millions in 200 papers during the 1960s and ’70s, would loose upon the public, from time to time, a column that was just a series of unconnected observations—not a whole, structured, 350-word essay, like his typical column. 

Harris had two standard slug lines for such divertissements: “Thoughts At Large” and “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other things.” Both categories were usually interesting and worth a read. What I have for you today is more in the former vein than the latter.

Hence, forthwith, “A Few Random Thoughts”:

Artificial Intelligence? Don’t make me laugh.

The thing is an oxymoron. Artifice is a result of intelligence, not a source of intelligence.

God alone has knowledge. People and animals have intelligence. Computers and other machines have routine operations. 

Humans, using intelligence, invented the routines used by the machines. Even if those programs can generate further programs with no further human input, the derivative programs and their output are still not intelligence. They are merely routines. 

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This is a good place to consider mortality. I tend to reject it, but that won’t avail in the end. 

I may just sit here dissolving and slowly melt into the landscape. But it’s not likely to happen that way. Something is apt to go wrong, and wdespite what doctors may do, and things will likely get worse. I hope it’s not too painful. 

Is this morbid? Where’s the line between morbidity and mortality? Actuaries can tell you, but I’m not sure I want to know.

One can’t help thinking about such things. It’s good the world offers other topics to the mind: Grandchildren. Writing projects. A lawn to mow. Good friends, good dogs, good liquor.

My wife grows old along with me, so it’s anybody’s guess who’ll go last. I hope, for my sake, that she survives me. I’m not sure I could live without her. You could file that under torrure. 

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What is the goal of theology? I mean the main goal, the top goal, the overriding goal, the only real goal, to which any other goals must be subordinate?

Is it to be a Christian?

To have my sins forgiven?

To praise God?

To be saved?

To prepare for death?

To realize Heaven on Earth before I die?

To gain a full(er) understanding of the Bible?

All of these are plausible and perhaps worthy goals, but all of them strike me as resting on a partial or incomplete picture of this “God-Man Reality” in which we live.

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I think a more robust overall goal in my Christian walk is simply to acknowledge the sovereignty of God and my own status as a child of God. I think this is, at bottom, what the Book of Job is all about. It’s worth a read, even though it is long and bewildering.

I place great reliance on the immortality of the soul. I believe we are not bodies who have souls but, rather, souls who have bodies. The body is mortal; it dies and decays. The soul persists in God’s universe, and that soul is in God’s care. So the prospect of going to Heaven when I die is not terribly urgent in my mind, trusting as I do that I—my soul—will of course go where the all-sovereign, almighty God assigns it. And that will be right. I will, in a very real sense, go home.

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Everywhere, venom goes about as virtue, umbrage parades as honor, and grievance goes robed in the garb of righteousness. But when rage is our proudest possession, we are bankrupt.

Anger and strife are the path to doom; love is the way of life.

God is love, and love is hope. 

Love is the way out of our angst and despair.

God’s love is the great truth and the only hope. Those who embrace it live out their lives in joy and blessedness.

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To my anguished friends—

Your shouting goes amiss. Please lower your voices.

We remain vastly skeptical of our impending doom.

Thank you for your input. Should new insights bloom, feel free to jot them on a postcard.

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Gentle Reader: The notions above were written down at various times and have been residing on my laptop computer until now. 

That does mean they are ephemeral. I thought them when I wrote them down, and I still think them now. They are part of my permanent mental landscape.

Keep them or let them go, as you see fit.

Next week, back to something important.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer