Car & Driver, Technology & News Media

In spite of our rapidly advancing and increasingly complex technology, at least one principle has proven correct throughout human history.  We humans, as creators and users of technology, must take the responsibility for how it is used.  This article addresses two crucial elements of our technological society--human stewardship of science and technology, and the importance of accurate media research and reporting.

According to Genesis 1 and 2, God created the universe including planet Earth and its amazingly intricate biosphere.  Then, He created humankind in His image (Genesis 1: 26)—i.e. with personality, rationality, creativity, and all other capabilities necessary to exercise dominion as residents of Earth’s biosphere (Genesis 1: 27).  In Genesis 2: 15, we learn that our dominion is not to be exercised by shear force and disregard for creation.  Rather, as stewards, we are to be caring servants of what rightfully belongs to God.

Our stewardship responsibility includes both wise use of what God has created ex nihilo and wise use of the tools and technology we create from the “resources” of God’s creation.  If technology malfunctions causing harm to an animal, to the biosphere, or to an individual human being, the fault lies with the creator or the operator of the machine—not the machine itself.  Therefore, God judges the quality of our stewardship by the choices we make in how we use the technology; and, how news media research and report on science and technology.

Having laid out these time-honored principles, I invite you to listen to a podcast entitled “Blame Game” which was produced by Malcolm Gladwell.  Gladwell takes visitors to his “Revisionist History” website on a “journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood” events of history.  He believes that, at least for the cases he addresses, “the past deserves a second chance.” 

“Blame Game” which is episode #8 of season 1, contains both a 37-minute podcast and additional video and printed information.  All of these relate to the famous 2009 cases of the “suddenly and uncontrollably accelerating” cars manufactured by Toyota.  This case involving numerous deaths and billions in lawsuits as revisited by Malcolm Gladwell will offer you some surprising analyses and results.  As you listen to the podcast and check out the ancillary resources, please keep the following questions in mind:

1.  Should the blame for the “suddenly and uncontrollably accelerating” cars be aimed at human error(s) within Toyota Motor Corporation or at human error by the drivers of those cars?

2.  What does this “second chance” look at a historical event teach us about human stewardship of technology?  …and, about certain people in the media who claim to be authorities?

Relatively simple technology of car floor mats were suspected.

3.  Considering the relationship between technology, human error, and media research and reporting of the news as I have framed it in this blog article, what lessons can you take home from “Blame Game” that may apply to contemporary issues—e.g. calls to ban some or all firearms, violent computer video games, social media, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), and coal mining?

4.  Can you name events in this evening’s news, or perhaps under-reported news, the coverage of which may have major repercussions for the future?

5.  For those who wish to take this controversy and its implications a step further by reading a critique of Gladwell's "Blame Game," you may wish to read an online article published by Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., entitled "Tipping Point."

Thanks for reading (and listening). I would love to read your comments and questions.  Please use the “Comment” box below, or e-mail me at silviusj@gmail.com

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My thanks to our son, Bradley Silvius, who referred me to Revisionist History podcasts.  I dedicate this article to him in hopes that he will receive a double blessing—first, the blessing of knowing that we now share in the enjoyment of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcasts; and second, knowing that his dad can occasionally write a much shorter blog article without taking away from its value (I hope).

Valentines and a Better Love

Valentine’s Day is upon us.  Are you ready?

I believe I am.  My valentine, Abby, will be in Florida with her sister over Valentine’s Day, so I’ve already written and sent a card which will be followed by a special gift to encourage her for the holiday.

But, before you think I must be a great husband, you should know two things.  First, this year will mark the 51^st Valentine’s Day I have celebrated with Abby.  Yet I’ve never been noted for being very creative and generous on Valentine’s Day and other special occasions.  Second, I hope we all realize that even the most thoughtful and generous monetary expressions are only a small part of the ongoing expressions of our love that are so important to our spouses and significant others.  (You can ask Abby how well I do in between holidays.)

Expressions of human love are measured in a “currency” much above dollars and cents.  As an indication of how hard it is to maintain good marriages and keep wedding vows, consider the annual monetary expenditures in the “divorce industry” which is estimated at $28 billion.  Interestingly, according to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend an estimated $19.6 billion on Valentine’s Day, in 2018.  Thankfully, true love builds an enduring “capital” and stability into relationships.  Love is based on a “currency” that is freely and generously given without thought of return.  This is unconditional love, or (in Greek) agape love.   

The word “love” in English can mean many things. The Greek language at the time of Christ was included at least six words that are now translated “love” in modern English. The three most common are phileo (love between friends), eros (erotic or sensual love), and agape as we have defined it above.  All of these are gifts of God and all are essential elements that sustain God’s gift of marriage.  Of the three, agape love is the foundation upon which the others depend.   

As we approach Valentine’s Day, 1 Corinthians 13 has been challenging me as a husband.  For example, I can possess great stores of knowledge but if I am arrogant (v. 4), easily upset, rude, insisting on my rights, and remembering all the wrongs that my beloved commits against me (v. 5), then I’m not agape loving her.  Furthermore, I can have great faith (v. 2), but if I lose hope and stop believing in the person I love (v. 7), then I’m not showing God’s love.  I can even give all my possessions to feed the poor, and deliver my body to be burned (v. 3), but if I am jealous or distrustful of her; or, if I focus on her bad qualities and consider giving up on the one whom I say that I love, then I am surely not showing God’s unconditional love.

When a man and a woman exchange wedding vows, they enter a special relationship God has ordained from the beginning, one that will not reach its potential unless they both continually rely on the bread of God’s Word and His love poured into their hearts by His Holy Spirit (Romans 5: 5).  One Christian leader has said that in creating marriage, God created a relationship which is clearly beyond man’s ability to achieve unless they both respect and heed His loving authority.  When a man and woman cleave to one another and become one flesh in marriage (Genesis 2: 24), they become one in spirit when each one reaches for God’s love, “the glue” for the marriage.

God’s manual for married lovers on Valentine’s Day and throughout the year continues in 1 John 4 where we learn that our ultimate source of agape love is from God (v. 7).  Indeed, God is love (v. 8) and God shows His love to us in that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him (v. 9).  Therefore, the wellspring of my love for my wife must be replenished continually by my willingness to abide in God’s love through the Spirit and the Word (v. 12, 16).  In turn, when I love my wife, His love is perfected in me (v. 12).

When God’s love is active and being perfected in me (1 John 4: 12), then I can experience another truth from John’s “love manual;” namely, there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.

When the faith and love of one spouse falters, does this free the Christ-following spouse to react in kind?  No!  Instead, when trouble comes, the real uniqueness of a Christian marriage ought to show.  When one or more of the loveless works of the flesh we just noted show up from one or both spouses, each spouse can either react in kind or obey the Scripture.  Obedience for the husband means love your wife as Christ loves the church (Eph. 5: 25) and love her …even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband (Eph. 5: 33).

Christ’s amazing love for us can overcome the loveless works of the flesh that often doom marriages that once were strong.  Specifically, the power of agape love described in 1 Corinthians 13 can help revive troubled marriages when it along with other fruit of the Spirit begins to open the door to good communication between spouses.    Agape love is patient, kind, self-effacing, gracious, doesn’t insist on one’s rights, forgiving and forgetful, enduring, trusting, and truthful.  These love-related traits can bring calmness where there was tension and strife.

Good communication may also require the more spiritually mature spouse to remain silent, even in the face of hurtful, untrue accusations.  In 1 Peter 3, the inspired writer exhorts husbands to live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker (v. 7), not returning evil for evil or insult for insult (v. 9), for …even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed (v. 14).

The wife or husband who expresses patient, enduring, unconditional love toward his or her spouse when greeted with unwarranted, unloving or disrespectful words or even abuse may suffer in silence with seemingly no one to turn to for comfort.  But we do have One to Whom we can cling; namely, Jesus Who died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God (1 Peter 3: 18).

From the beginning of His ministry, Jesus was falsely accused, maligned, and abused.  Referring to reports of the virgin birth of Christ, the unbelieving Jewish leaders scoffed, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father: God" (John 8: 41).  When Jesus professed to be God, His accusers responded, "You have heard the blasphemy…” And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death. Some began to spit at Him, and to blindfold Him, and to beat Him with their fists… (Mark 14: 64-65).   Then, in perhaps the greatest expression of agape love, Jesus Christ allowed Himself to be nailed to a Roman cross to be a spectacle for the world to see.  Yet, He did not open His mouth other than to defend His deity (Isaiah 53: 7).

He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
                                                               -- Isaiah 53: 3b-5 (NLT)

In the world’s greatest misunderstanding, He Who had no sin, became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5: 21); but, His accusers thought He was only getting His just punishment.  Although we are not sinless as Jesus was, He calls us to show His love through sacrifices, too.  Do I love my wife or a significant other person enough to remain silent when love demands it of me--even when my silence may cause others to find fault in me?

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.  Are you prepared to celebrate the wonder of love for those who are precious to you?  I’m ready to show my love for Abby.  She may have a surprise for me, but I know for sure that she’s made preparation to show our love to our family.  But, when the holiday is over, the love that binds us in our relationships will not depend on our material gifts, physical health, intelligence, or feelings.  It will depend on our faith relationship with the risen Christ.  He gave His very life because He loves us so much.  Then, He ascended to heaven so He could send us His Spirit to enable husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5: 25); and, to enable wives to respect their husbands out of  the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God (1 Peter 3: 4).   This Valentine’s Day, may our great love for the “Great Lover” of our souls move us to love our spouses and others after the example of Christ.

"EPILOGUE"
Now, it's Valentine's Day, and I will add these additional words from a writer of a much higher caliber.  There seems to be no other explanation for me finding these this morning  than God directing my hands as I leafed through A. W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy.  He seems to have guided my fingers to Chapter 20, "The Love of God."  As I read this chapter, it was as if God was saying,  "It's not about you, as if you are the source of love, or the source of wisdom on the subject of loving relationships.  Rather, it is about My great love for you, My friend, and how much I desire to have your first love in return.  Here are Tozer's closing words to "The Love of God," offered in a forceful prayer of praise to God:

"Thy love is uncaused and undeserved. Thou art Thyself the reason for the love wherewith we are loved. Help us to believe the intensity, the eternity of the love that has found us. Then love will cast out fear; and our troubled hearts will be at peace, trusting not in what we are but in what Thou has declared Thyself to be. Amen"

Where Are You God? -- “I AM”

Sixty years ago, the era of television arrived in our home.  This magic box introduced us to larger-than-life personalities like Wyatt Earp, Matt Dillon, Walter Cronkite, and Fulton J. Sheen.  I was especially impacted by “Deacon Earp” whose deadly aim wounded the bad guys but didn’t kill them.  If that were not enough, Earp’s choice of beverage was milk.

Our TV antenna was supported on a metal tower anchored to our chimney.  When our TV produced a snowy picture, we knew the problem was in our reception, not the broadcast signal from Cleveland.  The problem usually cleared up when we rotated the antenna in the right direction or adjusted the TV.

Broadcast and receiver must work together, hand-in-glove.  The same is true of communication between our modern TV’s.  Each has an internal receiver that is responsive to an accompanying “remote.”  Therefore, both the TV broadcast station and the remote send out signals to the TV, but unless the TV receiver detects these signals, there will be no response.

The relationship between a broadcast signal and a receiver illustrates the relationship between our Creator God and us as His creatures.  Why is it that some men and women, or boys and girls, have a relationship with God, and seek to please Him according to His Word given in the Bible; whereas, others are not responsive to God?  According to the Scriptures, a person can only have a living, dynamic relationship with their Creator if their spirit is attuned to God’s Spirit.  When we yield our will to God through faith in Christ, God’s Spirit assumes residence in our lives and gives us the ability to respond to the “broadcast signal” from God’s Word or from other people.  Also, through God’s Spirit, we can commune with God though prayer and with others of like faith.

In Genesis (meaning “origin”), the first book of the Bible, we have the account of God’s creation of Adam, and the intimate relationship that God established with Adam:

Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground.  He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living person (NLT). – Genesis 2: 7

The Bible gives no record of the first conversation between God and the human He created according to His own image (Genesis 1: 26).  Instead, we learn that God breathed His very own “breath of life” into Adam’s nostrils.  The man’s first “life breath” through his nostrils was through an inspiration—that is, an entry of air into Adam’s lungs--“God-breathed” air from the very breath of God—“and the man became a living person(Genesis 2: 7).”  Although many generations separate us from our father Adam, we should be in awe of the fact God gives us every breath.  In so doing, God sustains each minute of our very lives. 

Can you imagine? God’s Spirit is as near to you as your next breath.  You and I are unique from all other air-breathing animals.  Only humans as God’s image-bearers received the very life-breath of God when He created them.  Imagine that for awhile.  Indeed, the ability to imagine and perform other kinds of abstract thinking and creativity are all expressions of the fact that we bear God’s image.

Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers considers God’s creative work as recorded in Genesis, Chapter 2 as an expression of His wisdom and love:  Here [God] forms, and builds, and plants, and breathes into His work, and [He] is the companion and friend of the creature He has made. It thus sets before us the love and tenderness of Jehovah, who provides for man a home, fashions for him a wife to be his partner and helpmate, rejoices in…[the] intellect [of man, His image-bearer, and then shows honor and respect to Adam’s intellect by bringing]…the lower world to him to see what he will call them….

Adam was given richly and abundantly all that he would need to live and flourish. On top of that, he was commanded to exercise dominion over creation by caring for creation as a steward of all God created and possessed as Owner.

Because we cannot see God, we wonder at times if He is really REAL. To Adam and Eve, there was no doubt.  Genesis 3: 8 records that Adam and Eve were familiar with the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  They evidently enjoyed regular opportunities to “walk with God” in the Garden of Eden.  We have no record of their conversation before Eve was tempted by Satan.  However, I would like to suggest one early conversation that Adam might have had with God (in some language other than English):

ADAM: “God, what is Your Name?”
GOD:  “I AM”
ADAM: “I know you exist, but what is Your Name?”
GOD:   “I AM WHO I AM”
ADAM: “I am Adam.”
GOD:   “Indeed, you are.  And notice, you used a similar action word (a verb), “I am” with your name.  Adam, you live and you exist; but, unlike Me, you need a point of reference.  I AM that reference.   When you say “I am Adam,” it means you exist only because I AM created you.”
ADAM: “Do you mean that ‘I am’ because of You, the ultimate ‘I AM?’”
GOD:   “Yes, it is as you say.  You exist because of Me—only in reference to Me.  But, I AM the God Who is.”  I AM Who I AM without any reference to any other--or to time or space.  My Name is an action word (verb) because I AM eternally “being” and “acting” sustaining My creation from the tiniest atom to the expanse of My heavens; allowing your every breath and beat of your heart; and before a word is on your tongue, I know it.”
ADAM: “My soul is warmed within me as I walk with You.  I am filled with Joy when I commune with You.”
GOD:   “That is as it should be.  I love you, Adam, with an everlasting love.  I AM love, joy, and peace.  These are yours when you walk with Me.  And My Spirit communes with the spirit I formed within you.”
ADAM:   “Bless You, I AM!   Bless You, Lord O my soul, and all that is within me, bless Your Holy Name.”

My soul is inspired by composing this conversation as it might have been had I been walking with God.  But, unlike Adam and Eve, I have never walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day.  What’s more, I am a corrupted son of Adam.

According to Genesis 3, Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation of Satan based on the cunning serpent’s distortion of God’s character.  As a son of Adam, …I was born a sinner--yes, from the moment my mother conceived me (Psalm 51: 5 NLT).  But, I am saved through faith in Christ the Great High Priest Who can “sympathize with our weaknesses” because He has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.  Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4: 15-16).

As a sinner, saved by God’s grace, I can now have fellowship with my Heavenly Father through God’s Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised to send to us just before He was betrayed and crucified.  When His disciples were fearful and confused, Jesus spoke these calming words:

These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.  Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. – John 14: 25-27

My access to daily fellowship with God’s Holy Spirit is made possible as I read and meditate upon God’s Word, the Scriptures.  Just as God breathed into Adam the breath of Life, so the Scriptures say that All Scripture is inspired (God-breathed) and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3: 16-17).

So, I must ask myself; and ask you as well.  How receptive am I to the broadcast of God’s love and truth through His Holy Spirit to my “signal receiver”—my spirit.  If you have never surrendered to the claims of Christ and asked Him to forgive you and be your Savior, I refer you to Steps to Peace with God which will explain how you can become a Christ-follower.  Without Christ, you are dead in sin and are facing eternal separation from God.  Romans 8: 6-7 states that without making peace with God, you remain hostile toward God [and your mind is not "tuned" to the Spirit of God].  In fact, according to Romans 8: 7-8, you are not even able to do so...  

Maybe you have received Christ but your spirit (your "receiver" or "antenna") needs to be tuned again to the voice of God's Spirit speaking to you through His Word, or friends, or circumstances.  Just as I used to turn our old antenna to get a TV signal, perhaps you need to turn again to Christ for forgiveness and cleansing (1 John 1: 9).  Then, as a Christ-follower, when you open your Bible and read, God’s Spirit will go to work to make your spirit and mind receptive to the Scriptures, and to give you understanding of the truth you are reading.  Then, as you are receptive to that truth, God’s Spirit empowers you to respond to the Scripture for reproof, for correction, [and] for training in righteousness.  

How is your spiritual receiver?  Are you receptive to God’s presence through His Holy Spirit who loves you and wants to commune with you each day along your challenging path of life?  If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.  Just post a “Comment” below or e-mail me at silviusj@cedarville.edu