Social media can control our lives, forming our minds and our actions without our even knowing that it’s happening. While there is great benefit to social media, we must also recognize it’s dangers and develop a plan to live differently. Otherwise, we will end up looking like we aren’t part of God’s kingdom.
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Bad Robots
• Dan Kent
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This series, entitled Interfaces, is about developing the spiritual posture in order to handle the dangers and pitfalls of social media. If we do not foster this spiritual posture, we become soft robots. That is, we operate according to patterns that are handed to us by social media and thereby we lose control of our actions. We end up doing what we do not want to do.
In this sermon, Dan identifies three issues specifically related to social media and offers three strategies for addressing them.
- We are automated selves. We are designed as machines that can handle incredible amounts of information. Our bodies are quite incredible, and as a result there are aspects of our lives that are automated. We walk, breathe, see and act without thinking. In addition, there are aspects of the way that we think and talk that are automatic. They are developed to the point that they are simply part of their operating system of life.
In response, we must recognize that spiritual warfare is in large part the act of taking back control of our operating system. We must examine our lives and our ways of thinking and see how how we are automatically living in ways that do not reflect God’s desires for us. This requires intentional living so that the world does not program our machines.
- We tend to become de-centered. It is quite easy to live for the sake of appearances, especially in our online interaction. As a result, we end up living to impress instead of living out of the truth of the center of our souls. In online communication, we are not living in communicating, we are addressing an audience. We were made to live from the inside out, but this focus on the audience causes us to live from the outside in.
To address this, we must intentionally focus on the center of who God has made us to be. As we cultivate out identity as we truly are, then we can live out of our identity as God’s children and resist the pull of trying to impress the audience. One way to do this is to focus on the fact that Jesus is present with us right here, right now.
- We tend to become un-attended selves. We give our attention to things with external stimuli, allowing whatever arises through social media to take over our minds. As a result, we become numb brains receiving whatever comes at us through social media.
A helpful strategy of response is to develop an attention plan, identifying the things that are worthy of your focus.
God does not want us to be soft robots, being controlled by external stimuli and going along for the ride of social media. He has invited us to live counter-culturally, giving our attention to the ways of the kingdom so that we can be formed to live differently.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Culture, Discipleship, Spiritual Warfare, Transformation
Sermon Series: Interfaces
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Focus Scripture:
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Romans 7:15
For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing.
2 thoughts on “Bad Robots”
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"I am a podrishioner that just wanted to say thanks for sharing Woodland Hills through podcasts and videos. This is my place to get a spiritual refill, and it’s where I get most of my teaching from. Since I've starting following you four years ago, my view on God, myself and other people has radically been changed. Thanks so much, and keep sharing the Kingdom!"
– Knut-Inge, from Norway
Think you so much Dan. Great Sermon!
What stuck out for me was strategy 1:
1. We are automated selves. We are designed as machines that can handle incredible amounts of information. Our bodies are quite incredible, and as a result there are aspects of our lives that are automated. We walk, breathe, see and act without thinking. In addition, there are aspects of the way that we think and talk that are automatic. They are developed to the point that they are simply part of their operating system of life.
In response, we must recognize that spiritual warfare is in large part the act of taking back control of our operating system. We must examine our lives and our ways of thinking and see how we are automatically living in ways that do not reflect God’s desires for us. This requires intentional living so that the world does not program our machines.
This subconscious system, the elephant, processes information ten times faster than our conscious rider. See: http://whchurch.org/sermon/bad-elephant/#!
From the discovery of the Higgs Boson It appears that the enter universe is a tri-unity right down to three quarks in every proton or neutron, the only matter .00001% in the universe the other 99.99999% intelligent energy. (spiritual realms of power).
Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
The flesh and blood we see might be stated as a holographic reality only in the world of senses/feeling that our spirit perceives. (NOT our operating system)
We are projecting our reality first, and then perceiving it coming back to us.
Example a Bird:
1. The bird first arrives in our brain as wave frequencies downloaded from an energy Field.
2. The brain then translates those wave frequencies into a hologram of the bird
by collapsing the wave function.
3. We then project the hologram “out there” so that the bird appears to be “real”.
4. And then the bird “comes back to us” through our physical perceptions. A
projector that only our spirit sees.
Our subconscious robot operating system uses the wave frequencies before they get processed. The machine does not need a translation.
If we are mindless our operating system emotions high jack us before we can fully translate the image in our visual cortex. Instead the image we project is primarily from our operating system history. We fill in/overlay (add/subtract) the current external world of incoming reality with our robot system based on how this system is working.
If we hold our thoughts captive we project the image clearly 2 Corinthians 10:5
Have you ever not been able to find something? For me it’s my glasses. I can get real upset doing worst case. I look everywhere. Then it starts, you know, how am I going to drive, get to the store all that stuff. When I finally come to my end I pray “Oh dear God, PLEASE help me find my glasses!” Then I finally calm down and there on my computer desk, where I looked three times, they are finally there.
Where did they go? What picture were my emotions painting?
Consider the Essences thought we live in three worlds. (Space time continuums)
1. Upper – Godly – neocortical – spirit – wisdom Father – mind/thoughts
2. Middle – Worldly – reptilian- body – wisdom Jesus – gut/feelings/senesces
3. Lower – Emotional –mammalian – soul – wisdom Holy Spirit – heart/emotions
Demonic when a portion is lost – realm of Satan = realm of perversity –
(perversion of truth)
Process theologian John Cobb would understand the three worlds as three different poles of God. One he calls the primordial nature, which is that part of God that is constant and the same. The second pole is called the consequent nature, the part of God that dwells in the world, sharing and experiencing the ongoing process of existence. In each moment each pole has a function.
The primordial nature of God discloses to the creatures their future possibilities, luring the creature to respond toward God’s desired aim.
And the consequent nature of God takes up what has become history (from our actual choices- conscious/subconscious) and redeems it as it is brought to the divine life. God lures the world, inside and out, in the next moment towards the most beautiful, true, good, adventurous and zesty possibility.
The third pole sanctifies it. The rules of being brought to divine life depends on how well we follow Jesus in “as I have loved you (while you were yet sinners) you must love another while they are yet sinners”. The soul is our operating systems of beliefs which we use to make decisions that end in the path we follow.
Romans 12 -2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Jesus sowed a perfect pattern into the field/spiritual realm the body of Christ.
SO: Prov.3 5 – 6 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding (operating system). In all thy ways acknowledge him (perfect pattern), and he shall direct thy paths.
So work with the three poles, Triune God, to deal with the realms of perversity in the operation system, (acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like) so as to restore them to truth, (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), so that we might better be in alignment with Gods lure and create a more accurate projector for our spirit to see.
When we do this the field (the body of Christ) becomes stronger and chaos loses control. When we don’t chaos (the patterns of this world) gain more power. In a way we are the Satan or at least what gives him more strength.
John Ortberg tells a story about an old man who is the keeper of the streams that run through a town. The town decides to get rid of the old man and so the springs go unattended. The streams gathered twigs and branches. Soon there is lots of mud and silt. Fish died, swans flew elsewhere and people got sick. The life of the village depended on the stream. The life of the stream depended on the keeper. So the village hired back the keeper and over time things returned back to normal. The life of the village depended on the health of the stream. The stream in your soul and you are the keeper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPLChf_FK-w&list=PLjI1DS3_WCS6Sd25BIrTC6qjoL0Zmz8hi&index=3
This was recently on Reknew.org. Does God Read My Thoughts? (podcast)
https://reknew.org/2020/05/does-god-read-my-thoughts-podcast/
I believe what Greg is saying is we are creatures of unconscious habit with only some degree of consciousness some of the time and we need to learn to hold our thoughts captive.
This explains the science part well: Dr. Bruce Lipton (10 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyuAz3zmCvw
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