Culture – Jason W. Triplett

September 8, 2025

Subtly Not Human

My wife was gone for a week long conference a few weeks ago. I was flying solo with the three youngest, the nine-year old, three-year old and the nine-month old. The older four are either grown and gone or at college. The baby is growing up quickly. Baby food and bottles are giving way to bits of the meals we are all having. Yet, he is still on the verge of popping those first teeth. In this particular landscape of child development, there seems to be a great deal of fluid involved. With all seven of our children, I’ve always been amazed what teething does to babies. Nasty diapers, ear infections, extreme drooling, irritability, chest congestion and sleeplessness are all on the menu. Well, after three relatively sleepless nights, I decided he might be developing an ear infection. Upon conferring with my wife, it was my job to contact the doctor and get an appointment for the little guy.

I decided to get ahead of the phone-call rush family practice staff members usually have as soon as their offices open. Information I had because my wife has worked in a doctor’s office in her own nursing career. I reached out to the number on Google and called around 6am. As expected, I got the call center and not the office. I would get a message in with my number on record and hopefully be in the queue for a call-back as my own morning was developing. I navigated through the prompts until finally the phone rang through and someone answered. At least I thought it was a someone.

I’ve had my share of jobs dealing with the public on the phone and I am pretty good at customer service. The courtesy, responsiveness and tact of the receiver of my call was perfect. Absolutely flawless. For the first two thirds of the call, I was trying to figure out what was happening. Was this a person? Why were the answers so generic and scripted? It could’ve been a person, there were keyboard clacks in the background. But there was something subtly not human about the voice on the other end, something unreal about the consistency and regularity of the keystrokes I was hearing.

No sighs, no stutters, no click of gum being chewed or background office noise, no sniffles or sign of impediment. And then I realized the exact problem. There was no sign of impediment. No struggle or difficulty in the receiver of my call, no taking a beat to think while making sense of an office schedule. There were no points where the voice and I went to talk at the same time and accidentally talked over the other. The program on the other end was doing it’s job flawlessly, and worse, I was following along the whole time, wanting to return the politeness and respond as expected.

I had heard that AI operators were beholden to tell you their system ID and function when asked, “Are you AI?” But I couldn’t do that. The risk of being wrong was too great. Two things. First, if it wasn’t AI and this was a person who’d worked really hard to just be a great operator, I would be embarrassed and maybe offend the potential person on the other end. Second, what’s the big deal, right? It’s just another system in place to make life easier and save the health care system money. Why couldn’t I just use the system, get in line for a call back and go on my way? I’ve now been thinking for weeks why the whole interaction bothered me.

The efficiency and capability of AI in general along with employed AI systems are predicted to do one of two things. The final stage of AI development has the possibility of becoming gods over us. Or, AI’s growth will not outgrow the bounds human beings have placed around it and in the end AI will help us in our quest to become gods ourselves. According to the Bible, human beings desire to supplant God while being unable to match Almighty God in any way. We are like Him, for sure, as we are made in His image. But only in the same way that a statue of my dog is not really my dog. We are statues that long to be the model from which our design is taken. I wonder if AI will be the same. Will a fully self-aware AI then decide to overthrow the image bearers who made it? Or will AI give more glory to a creature who’s pursuit of glory tends to know no boundary itself?

In the end, the AI operator I encountered caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting it, was initially taken in by it and felt shaken by my indecision to confront the possibility while on the phone. I guess I like my human interaction, well, human. It’s unnerving to me that a machine can pose as human more perfectly than a human can.

March 3, 2023July 5, 2023

The Creators of the World

person holding world globe facing mountain

“My own mind is my own church.”
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

The Scientific Revolution of the 1500’s and 1600’s gave birth to the “Age of Enlightenment” in the mid 1600’s to the late 1700’s. During the Enlightenment the masses began using the scientific method, the way of reason and rationality, as tools of cultural formation. The United States was born because of enlightenment thinking. The Declaration of Independence and US Constitution emerged from the minds of people who wholly believed in reason over magic and superstition. Some of the founders even held rationality and logic as superior to religious faith.

The Enlightenment age led to the Romantic Era (Mid/Late 1800’s to Early 1900’s) which gave way to the Modern Era (1900’s to Mid/Late 1900’s) and then post-Modernism (Late 1900’s to Now). Each era contains remnants of the ones that came before. Over time, major ideas of the former eras die-off while some are kept. We find that today’s thinking has become an “ala carte” venture with smatterings of past thought intermixed with current cultural experience.

The above quote by Thomas Paine is a great example. As people in the new millennium dive deeper into their lived experiences for meaning and identity, we see Paine’s point playing out. We see people worshipping at a “church” of their own mind. They fall in love with, or perhaps despise, their own thoughts, seeking to express, and be affirmed for what flows from their mental altars. At the same time, reason and logic are tossed aside as they arrive at “authentic selves” which often do not match up with facts and reason. Paine’s rejection of God is present in today’s minds while magic and superstition remain; all wrapped in a tight cloak of rationalization over rationalism. They might quote “science” while using none of the scientific method. They might mention evolution while ignoring the engines of Darwin’s theory. For a rational person, it looks like madness. But it’s the grim result of lives spent untethered from concrete meaning which has led to our own 21st Century self-determination. Our fellow human beings truly believe they are creating their own worlds.

We know that culture has largely left enlightenment thinking when our publicly elected officials begin not only affirming these created identities but promoting them as moral, legislating in their favor and enforcing the subsequent laws against detractors. The Enlightenment promised eyes opened and awakened minds to the rational truths surrounding all people. Now that the Enlightenment tenets of reason and logic are dying in American culture, we watch as the blind lead the blind from their corrupted minds to ruinous ends for all who follow them.

What’s a Christian to do?

Christianity has survived every emergence of philosophy and debate since Christ ascended. Belief in the Lord God advanced century to century before the birth of Jesus as the Israelites faced kings, kingdoms, war, exile, and devastation. This is due to what each generation of human beings has come to believe as the foundation of real salvation under God. The endurance of the Christian view of the world begins in one place. There is one God. This God is Lord. This God is Savior. What spans human history, age to age, is the knowledge of and belief in the God of the Bible. Following the fault line of faith in the one true God through the years, we find believers in each generation not just a part of philosophy, art, music, science, medicine, and education, but as pioneers in all disciplines.

The culture will sway proclaiming brave new boundaries broken and “new selves” revealed to the rest of the world. We must remember the human struggle is age old and has not changed. It’s always been the opposite of a staring contest between God and people. He’s desperate to catch our gaze, while we repeatedly look away. God has revealed Himself in each generation of recorded history to the creatures He’s made. But these creatures have decided they’d rather be Him than serve and worship Him. We’d rather be the creators of worlds than subject to the one who’s created the world.

The statements of liberation and independence we hear in culture are nothing new, therefore as human thinking allegedly progresses, we find ourselves still limited, still stuck in what we are. We try to define ourselves by what we do or how we are, yet we find that we are nothing more than we’ve always been, God’s wayward children that He’s calling home. And God, He’s still God, He’s still in control and He’s reaching for all in every era through Jesus Christ.

August 3, 2022March 6, 2023

The Powerful Heart Of Christian Leaders Who Remain Silent

Ever heard something like this?

“Christian preachers need to wake up! The Church is being persecuted in America.”

“Our Christian leaders are failing us! Where are the voices for justice?”

“The Church needs to stand up and fight. Where are the pastors?”

I’ve read and heard many things like these in the last two years from podcasts, social media, and the news. Christian leaders who’ve remained largely silent in this current cultural moment are being accused by other Christians of denying Christ and their calling. I disagree. Here’s what real Christian leaders, tenured shepherds of people, truly know.

In the insanity and pain of recent years, the mayhem and aftermath of a polarized election and widespread radicalization based on worldview, American Christians, with faith totally shaken, have begun to lose their resolve in the true Gospel of Christ.

Why? Because they live mainly on the internet.

Sorry if that feels too harsh. But I wonder if that verbal stab feels familiar? This type of raw commentary is the online standard. I too have been guilty of it. I’ve since decided that I love rhetoric, but only if it’s rhetorical. What’s being said about Church leaders by the Church and members of the media isn’t rhetoric, it’s an accusation of foolishness. (Note: Matthew 5:22)

Christian leaders are asking, “What’s the American Church really worried about?”

This is our current American Christian moment. We get pinched and think we’ve been punched, we get shoved and think we’ve been in a fight.

Consider this. In the three centuries following Christ’s ascension, the exponentially expanding Church experienced the vilest persecution she’s ever seen. For preaching or teaching Christ and living out Jesus’ commandments, a Christian could be burned at the stake, buried alive, sewn into the abdomen of a dead donkey (Seriously, look it up), and don’t forget, crucified in the public square. The Romans were merciless and had no conscience against those who denied Caesar.

Now is not the time for Christian civil disobedience in America. I can say that because we aren’t being persecuted specifically for the Gospel. I can still say anything I want to whomever I want, and I might only have social consequences for saying it. I have not been hindered one bit in preaching the Gospel or living out the commandments of Christ in this world.

Yes, Christians have descended in American culture. Yet, no revolution is now needed, save one. We stand firm in the radical mission Christ began of preaching the Gospel, making disciples, baptizing believers, and teaching them to obey Him. For this world, that will always be radical and rebellious enough. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Look at Acts chapter 5. As the persecution of the Church gained steam in 1st Century Jerusalem, the Apostles were arrested by the Jewish leaders and warned not to spread the message of Jesus Christ. Peter and the Apostles responded, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) For that response the Jewish leaders wanted to kill them, yet the Church kept chugging along. Two chapters later, after they’ve stayed the course of Gospel ministry, we see bloodshed in the murder of Stephen (Acts 7). After that, mass persecution broke out. What did the Church do? Did they fight? Nope. Did they organize, arm themselves and begin a civil war? Nope. Did they stand in the public square, citing articles of Jewish or Roman law and demand rights? Nope. Many Christians left, the Apostles stayed and preached the Gospel. And the Church flourished!

You may be thinking… But the Church in America has been told at times not to gather. Isn’t that persecution? No it isn’t. Persecution isn’t being told to not meet. Words are not persecutory. It’s being arrested, tried, jailed, tortured and/or executed for meeting. In America, we still have a choice to meet and in large part no local, state or federal law enforcement, no judges, are going to stand in the way.

Christian leaders are remaining silent on cultural issues for the spread of the Gospel itself.

The Gospel of Christ is for everyone. Say it aloud… EVERYONE! The calls for equity or the calls for liberty being made by Christians seem only to stem from a cultural worldview and not the Biblical understanding of the word, “all”. For example, here are two poles of this discussion. Extreme conservatives, if they pay attention to religion at all, have commandeered Jesus, wrapped Him in the flag and deemed that Christ views all societal problems the way they do. Extreme liberals, if they call themselves Christian, have reduced Jesus to the all-around good guy, adorned Him progressive tropes and determined Him to be the affirmer and accepter of all humanistic perspectives. Neither of these poles are close to Biblical. Mainly because they eliminate the concept of “all”.

True Christianity, the true Christ, does not reside in or emerge from individual worldviews. Christ isn’t Lord because people believe He is. He’s Lord whether individuals believe in Him or not. Reading the Bible first, then listening to podcasters, bloggers, social media and the news second (or better not at all) will lead us to an understanding and burden of the Gospel being for “all”. Red and Blue, Right and Left, Republican and Democrat, gay and straight, trans and cis, brown and white, socialist and capitalist, the Gospel is for ALL.

Every Christian leader has friends they pray for daily. Maybe they’ve met with these folks weekly for a coffee over a course of years. They’ve listened, they’ve commiserated, they’ve cried with these friends all the while speaking of and modeling Jesus Christ for them. They’ve done this in hope. It’s hope that these friends may come to know the Christ we know, the Lord and Savior, our King of Kings. All the while, they live down the dull actions and statements of Christians whose faith exists inside a culturally determined worldview.

These leaders would rather die than close the door on those friends because they differ in opinion politically, socially, or culturally. They’d rather risk being called weak, woke or unjust because the eternal destiny of their friend matters deeply to them. When we espouse the current cultural dissensions, fight for things Christ cared nothing about or behave in ways He never would, it ends conversations that could lead to the eternal salvation of lives. As we step back and consider the Biblical revelation of the Gospel, we understand that all souls matter deeply to God no matter who they voted for.

Yes, pressure on Christians is greater this year than last year.

Yes, we are moving toward the appropriate end of days the Bible describes.

And yes, we must speak in defense of those with little to no standing in the culture.

But do not lose the Biblical concept of “all”.

Hear the counsel of the writer of Hebrews.

“Consider (Jesus) who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Hebrews 12:3-4 (ESV)

When we say that American Christians are being persecuted, I think of our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Coptic Christians who live every day in the possibility of their houses being burned to the ground or their children killed for practicing Christianity. When we come to believe that unkind things said about Christians is persecution, I frankly get embarrassed. When did we stop being able to hold our own in the public conversation?

We cannot say the current American culture is persecutory to Christians. Real persecution is unmistakable when we see it or hear of it. I’ve learned we need to be careful what we say because the eternal lives of our friends and neighbors can rest on the in-roads we maintain to speak Christ into their lives. Christian leaders who live for the spread of the Gospel to all people know the difference and therefore speak or remain silent.