By Robert Clements
Last week I had to make different groups of people in a class I was teaching to enact small plays, and feeling lazy, I decided to use ChatGPT instead of writing them. Well they turned out to be exceptionally good skits, and like I said, all done using ChatGPT! As the performances began, I watched the actors working on their dialogues and noticed their lines were all geared towards solving addiction problems. ChatGPT had done an excellent job of giving solutions through clever discourse and rational thought, but as I continued watching, I noticed one major ingredient missing, and this made me literally scratch my head, as I wondered what it was and slowly the realization came to my mind as to what the missing ingredient was. It was something ChatGPT or any other software would have found impossible to duplicate or replicate.
I’m sure you’re all wondering what I’m speaking about, and the only way I can explain this is through an incident.
Over two thousand years ago, while Jesus was in the middle of his ministry here on earth, he delayed a visit to a close friend who was dying. He knew that Lazarus was sick. He knew that Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus, expected him to rush to their house and save their brother, but he did not go. The sisters even sent word to Jesus that Lazarus, “he whom thou lovest,” is ill. But Jesus told his followers: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s son may be glorified through it.”
Unknown to his disciples, there was a reason for his delay. There was a strategy at work!
It was done on purpose, which was to reach the residence of the sisters and work a great miracle, so that many would see the power of God. And that was exactly what he did. He waited, or as the old English word says, he tarried, and then made his way to the home of his friend, and I am sure in his mind, he knew already that his friend was dead. But still made his way there.
When he reached Bethany where Lazarus lived, he knew from the sounds of mourning and maybe from the fact that there were even lesser sounds than when a man had just died, that Lazarus had passed on, and had passed away a few days before. As was expected the sisters ran out to him, to tell him their brother was dead. They cried in deep agony, saying if the Lord had come earlier, Lazarus could have been healed.
Jesus knew what was going to happen. He knew soon there would be laughter and rejoicing as the dead man walked out of his grave. Yet, on seeing the grief of those around, Jesus wept.
In the Holy Scriptures, it is the shortest verse, but I think the most revealing and powerful!
A powerful healer, though he would soon see a man resurrected, still allowed himself to become vulnerable to feel with his heart the emotions of sorrow around him.
That heart of compassion, that slipping from clever speech and Chanakya strategy, was not there in those scripts.
ChatGPT I noticed was clever, but could not move from perfection to humanness!
Many years back my late dad and I went to a newly built theatre. My dad was an artist and interior designer. We reached the new theatre. They had called us, as they wanted us to do a small interior designing job for them, and entering the gates, I was awed by the decorative fittings of the theatre and other extravagant features that the owners had decorated the theatre with, including the magnificent marble. I turned to my dad and whispered, “Dad, look at the beautiful marble they’ve used!”
My dad looked at the marble, then looked at me and smiled, “That’s not real marble Bob,” he said simply, “That’s imitation marble! Real marble has faults which run through it!”
I nodded as I understood what he was trying to tell me; that those so-called faults actually revealed perfection!
What we see in our country today is the use of Chanakya strategies by most everyone, especially in politics. We even have poll strategists who work out winning poll formulas.
Think deeply dear reader, are we playing a game of chess using people as pawns? Remember, in the middle of one of Christ’s greatest miracles he broke down, feeling the sorrow around, and in that breaking down, in those tears, in that weeping, revealed the character of God; a God who could show compassion even before strategizing a miracle.
But here in our country, it’s not too late for change. There’s a chance today for our own political leadership to throw out ChatGPT and Chanakya thinking.
Yes, there is!
Everyday we’ve been seeing pictures of young girls like your daughter or mine, on the front pages of our papers or appearing right in our living rooms through our TV screens: Young girl wrestlers weeping over being molested and sexually assaulted by a powerful man. It’s so sad that they are described all the time as ‘wrestlers’ that we forget they are the same young age, as the teenager next door, or maybe my daughter or yours. There they are on a mat in Delhi, day and night asking the nation for justice!
Now, if our Prime-Minister could one morning, without cameramen or journalists, just walk over and stretch out his arms to these poor girls, and assure them that his heart feels for them, what a glorious moment that would be for India!
It would speak louder than all the gold medals the girls have won. It would be close to what that Biblical verse says, in what a weeping Jesus did.
Can he do it? Can he reach out to them? Because today, our country needs huge doses of Compassion, not Chanakya strategies or ChatGPT formulas..!