If you’ve never seen Olympic athletes compete in gymnastics, here’s the next best thing: watching preachers twist and turn around the words of Jesus to make it sound like the poor carpenter’s son thinks rich people are awesome. The best one I ever heard was when a minister explained Jesus’ words about how it would be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. The pastor said there’s a gate in Jerusalem called the Needle’s Eye and while a camel can fit through it, a rich man would first have to remove his possessions from the camel’s back; then after the camel went through the gate, the rich man could carry his possessions through. Yes, that’s what Jesus meant: a rich man can get into heaven; he just has to carry his own possessions with him and not rely on his camel to help. Olympic judges would undoubtedly reward that preacher with scores of 10s.
While some ministers today are like modern-day prospectors, panning the gospels for gold rather than for the Golden Rule, Jesus supported the poor, not the rich. In Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor…But woe to you who are rich.” In Matthew, Jesus describes what it’ll be like when the Son of Man returns. Those who help the poor will be rewarded; those who don’t will be punished. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me,” Jesus says.
As a chaplain who champions the separation of Church and State, I don’t expect our new governor, Rick Snyder, to follow biblical principles. And I like his idea of “shared sacrifice” to fix Michigan’s fiscal troubles. But like Jesus might be, I’m a little confused. The poor are supposed to give up their Earned Income Tax Credit and the middle class are expected to pay taxes on their pensions, but where’s the shared sacrifice from the rich? I doubt that even a blind man, whose sight was reportedly restored by the man from Nazareth, could see it.
While I’m not an accountant (or a nerd), here’s a proposal to balance Michigan’s budget, inspired by Jesus’ concern for “the least of these.” Our state has a flat income tax rate of 4.35%. Why not lower the rate to 2.35% for those making less than $10,000 a year; leave the rate at 4.35% for those making $10,000 to $100,000 annually; and raise the rate to 6.35% for those making more than $100,000 per year? A graduated income tax rate is good enough for America, so why not for Michigan?
Rather than balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the middle class, this proposal would balance it, metaphorically speaking, by taking a few possessions from the backs of the camels of the rich.
Monday, February 28, 2011
What humans have that computers don't
If you’re like me, you spend way too much time on the computer: checking email, updating your Facebook page, looking up that actor you saw on TV last night (wasn’t he in that movie from a couple years ago, the one with Jack Nicholson?). Unless I check the Internet every few hours, I feel cut off from the world. That’s odd, considering I come from a time before every Tom, Dick and Harriet had a computer.
I graduated from high school in (gasp) 1972. (Really? Am I that old? Oy vey!) I had a conversation with a classmate back then. It was our last day of school. He proudly showed me a thick stack of wide, folded paper. He said this was a “computer program” he’d made in one of his classes. I tried to act interested. “Very nice,” I said, walking away thinking: Where’s the future in that? Of course, today I imagine my long-ago classmate is someplace in Silicon Valley making a billion dollars a year. (Trust me when I tell you, I’m making considerably less.)
Okay, I’m not a very good predictor of the future when it comes to computers, but let me try again: Computers will never completely replace human beings, because we have something that computers don’t. I make that prediction after seeing that IBM’s Watson computer is taking on a couple of past “Jeopardy!” champions on the TV game show. I have no doubt that Watson will one day win; if not in this contest, then in a future one. I remember many years ago another IBM computer eventually beat a world chess champion.
Computers can store tons of information and spit it out on command. Humans can do the same thing; you know, as long as we don’t have a “brain freeze” or a “senior moment.” (I wonder if computers also think of just the right comeback in an argument at 3 in the morning.) But human beings are more than just our minds. We have what psychologists might call a “personality” and what the religious might call a “spirit.” It’s that spark, that human spirit, that makes us human beings, which I don’t believe IBM or Microsoft or even Apple could ever duplicate in a computer.
To take an obviously silly example, I suppose IBM could program a computer to say, “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior,” but I imagine that even people who believe that’s all it takes to be a Christian wouldn’t count that computer as a member of their church, even if the computer were baptized. (A word of warning: I spilled a little tea on a computer keyboard once and it didn’t work right for a couple days; so if IBM is thinking of having a computer baptized, I wouldn’t recommend full immersion.) To become a Christian, a computer would at least have to live with Jesus in its non-existent human spirit (or heart), not to mention doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God, as described by the prophet Micah.
On the bright side for computers, except for HAL, the evil computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” computers can’t sin; they don’t know right from wrong. So computers can’t go to hell, if it exists. Unfortunately for computers, if heaven exists, they can’t go there either. Which is too bad, because if heaven exists, and through some miracle my human spirit makes it there, how will I check my email?
I graduated from high school in (gasp) 1972. (Really? Am I that old? Oy vey!) I had a conversation with a classmate back then. It was our last day of school. He proudly showed me a thick stack of wide, folded paper. He said this was a “computer program” he’d made in one of his classes. I tried to act interested. “Very nice,” I said, walking away thinking: Where’s the future in that? Of course, today I imagine my long-ago classmate is someplace in Silicon Valley making a billion dollars a year. (Trust me when I tell you, I’m making considerably less.)
Okay, I’m not a very good predictor of the future when it comes to computers, but let me try again: Computers will never completely replace human beings, because we have something that computers don’t. I make that prediction after seeing that IBM’s Watson computer is taking on a couple of past “Jeopardy!” champions on the TV game show. I have no doubt that Watson will one day win; if not in this contest, then in a future one. I remember many years ago another IBM computer eventually beat a world chess champion.
Computers can store tons of information and spit it out on command. Humans can do the same thing; you know, as long as we don’t have a “brain freeze” or a “senior moment.” (I wonder if computers also think of just the right comeback in an argument at 3 in the morning.) But human beings are more than just our minds. We have what psychologists might call a “personality” and what the religious might call a “spirit.” It’s that spark, that human spirit, that makes us human beings, which I don’t believe IBM or Microsoft or even Apple could ever duplicate in a computer.
To take an obviously silly example, I suppose IBM could program a computer to say, “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior,” but I imagine that even people who believe that’s all it takes to be a Christian wouldn’t count that computer as a member of their church, even if the computer were baptized. (A word of warning: I spilled a little tea on a computer keyboard once and it didn’t work right for a couple days; so if IBM is thinking of having a computer baptized, I wouldn’t recommend full immersion.) To become a Christian, a computer would at least have to live with Jesus in its non-existent human spirit (or heart), not to mention doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God, as described by the prophet Micah.
On the bright side for computers, except for HAL, the evil computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” computers can’t sin; they don’t know right from wrong. So computers can’t go to hell, if it exists. Unfortunately for computers, if heaven exists, they can’t go there either. Which is too bad, because if heaven exists, and through some miracle my human spirit makes it there, how will I check my email?
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