be a thing, and they can tell you the moment it happened, the article they read, the video they watched that made them a believer in the power of this tool. And there are also various different eschatologies that are attached to AI — different visions of the end times, positive, less positive, very, very dark. And there are different competing — just like Christianity — competing visions of the end times. There is also, she said, a very deep moral seriousness that the workers take in their jobs, and not just only a utilitarian impulse, but also a sanctification impulse. They come to this work with such a deep desire, especially at her company apparently, to make sure that it is ethically done, and they are constantly rubbing up against questions of deep, profound ethical concern. And she said, despite all those similarities, almost nobody seems existentially consoled by this work. Something is doing the work religion does sociologically, but failing to do the work that religion does personally.
In other words, you could say that they are attempting to fill that longing — and we all do that. Work is one of the prime examples, but there are many other ways we do that. You could think of them for yourself. Christians, we tend to do this often by fabricating an experience of the Spirit, whether that's performative worship experiences, or being in a prayer group and feeling like we have to say certain things in a certain way, and we try to manipulate the spiritual world. I think that's an even more horrific example — the false prophecies that have been made over the years, and how that does damage to the name of Christ.
C. S. Lewis, in one of his letters, talked about this, and he said, "You know, we have no power to make ourselves love God. The only way is absolute obedience to him, total surrender. He will give us the feeling if he pleases. But both when he does it and when he does not, we shall gradually learn that feeling is not the important thing. There's something in us deeper than feeling, deeper even than conscious will. It is rather being. When we are quieted, empty of self, then we shall be filled with him."
The thing that we should grasp from these early disciples is that they have no cards to play. They are at the end of themselves, and all they can do is wait for power from on high. And that's the posture that we should all have when it comes to our dealings with the Holy Spirit. We cannot fabricate his presence. We cannot pretend to be full. We cannot fill the longing in our hearts for his consolation in any other way than for him, actually, to come.
But the power of a church is also seen in that posture. I mean, it is incredible what the Spirit does when they're all there waiting together, and the whole church is launched for the first time. And so, questions to ask ourselves as we reflect: What are we trying to fill ourselves with? What are we trying to fill that longing in ourselves with other than the Spirit's presence? Why are we so impatient, trying to find it in another way? And what are you using to fabricate that presence — that feeling in your life that you're so desperately seeking?
The next thing that we see is a community that nobody could manufacture. "Nobody can maintain the covenant of grace except through the imputation of grace." The Romans were the most successful up to that point of creating a multicultural world. I mean, they had the Pax Romana — the Roman peace. They had the most extensive network of roads the world had ever seen. They were the most connected point in history up to that point. And yet even they were very surprised and could not imagine the coming together of all this diversity. You have racial and ethnic diversity — it says in verse 5 that there are people from all over the world. You have class diversity.
[Note: The remainder of the transcript appears to contain significant recording interference — crosstalk, background conversation, and unrelated audio — and cannot be reliably reconstructed for publication.]