Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Galatians 5:1, 13-25

I had the chance to talk with my friend Mandy this week, who is the pastor at the Manassas Church of the Brethren right down the road. I’d heard a little about what’s going on at Manassas – actually, when I wrote on Substack a few weeks ago that I was craving someone else’s drama, my friend Kim dutifully called me to give me the recently public details of it – and Mandy told me a bit more.

If you’ve been to the Manassas church, you know that it’s situated just outside the downtown area of Manassas, a little ways down route 28. The congregation moved to its current location decades ago, when the area was transitioning from all farmland to suburban housing developments. In the years since, the neighborhood has shifted away from, well, “neighborhood” and become quite industrial. When I lived in the parsonage there a decade ago, one of the challenges was not having neighbors. In the last couple of years, the already industrial area has become even more so, as data centers have moved in with gusto to Prince William County – now vying with its neighbor, Loudon, for the place with Most Data Centers in the World. Driving through town recently, it was difficult for me to recognize the place I used to live.

This year, a realtor approached the Manassas CoB with an offer to buy their seven acre property, which is now situated between a data center and an expanding tech company property. The offer is a big one, both in terms of money and in terms of decision-making. I love the Manassas congregation, and I trust their discernment wholeheartedly, and I have no doubt that they will explore all options and cover all their bases as they begin this (slow! Nothing is happening anytime soon!) process of deciding whether or not to sell their property and relocate.

Data centers, you probably know, are gigantic compounds filled with computer processors that run 24/7 to meet the needs of our ever-expanding dependence on technology. In Prince William County, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are among the dozens of companies who operate data centers. Recently, more folks are becoming aware of the impact of these facilities – and the real-world economic and environmental implications of how often we use cloud computing, chatbots and AI tools.

I did some work last year training AI – not learning how to use AI, but training the bots and algorithms themselves in how to be more “human.” I learned a lot about AI doing that work, and not much of it was good. I try to keep an open mind, and I do think there are tasks for which artificial intelligence can be really helpful and generative, but I was hired as a writer to help teach AI how to write better, and I have to tell you: this is not one of those things.

AI is growing so fast, so exponentially, and – in America – in such an unregulated and unaccountable way that it makes it hard for us to make many well-considered decisions about how we’re going to interact with it. 

Back in 1987, the writer and environmental activist wrote an essay called “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” Today, nearly four decades later, it reads a bit like an antiquated relic from a very different time. I wrote this sermon on my computer; I am Zooming into this very worship service on that same computer. But Berry’s argument is worth revisiting.

“I do not see,” he writes, “that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.”

Berry goes on to list his 9 rules for technological innovation in his own work. Here they are:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces. (!!!!!!!!!!!)
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body. (!!!!!!!!!)
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I love this list. And it quickly becomes clear that most of the technology I use today doesn’t pass Berry’s litmus test. Rarely is a new piece of technology cheaper than the one it is replacing. I am utterly incapable of repairing any technology I own. And my cell phone alone regularly and consistently disrupts SO MUCH good that already exists.

I’m not sure I could abide by Berry’s rules, but I DO think we could all stand for some kind of criteria in our decision-making these days, and not just around technology.

Paul is writing about exactly this in his letter to the Galatians. The Jesus-followers in Galatia are struggling, it seems, with figuring out how to live faithful lives when they aren’t bound by the laws of their former tradition. Paul keeps telling them that they have the Spirit guiding them, now, that this freedom is not to be feared but to be embraced. But it’s tricky, too: the Spirit works very differently than the law did, even though Paul himself understands that the law was for a long time simply a tool the Spirit used.

I can imagine the Galatians asking Paul in their correspondence: if we’re not subject to the law anymore, bud, how can we know what’s right and what’s wrong? This is unprecedented! How do we know how to act, how to relate, how to live if we’re not living inside the parameters of the law? We’re not sure we trust ourselves to do that!

And Paul replies: of course you can do it! You’ve got the Spirit, who is guiding you. What you need to learn to do is recognize what behavior guided by the Spirit looks like. And you already know this, if you’d slow down and think about it for a bit:

The fruit of the Spirit, Paul tells them, are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity. Faithfulness, too, and gentleness, and self-control. 

Paul is offering the Galatians a litmus test, a rubric, a checklist to help them figure out how to live. 

In the gigantic national spending bill currently before the Senate, there’s a provision that puts a moratorium on any regulation around AI for an entire decade. States who choose to put in guardrails about how AI is built or used would forfeit federal technology funding. 

In the absence of law, how do we know what to do? How can we tell if something is good or bad? Is there any way to know what we should be doing or how we might be doing it?

Wendell Berry has a list of rules. So does Paul.

We can choose to apply them both.

But the thing about living by the Spirit instead of the law is that spiritual discernment takes more time and intention than simply following the rules. If the government decides eventually to regulate AI, the burden of decision-making and implementation falls on them, not on us individuals. If we were first century Jewish people committed to following the religious legal tradition, a lot of our behavior would be prescribed for us.

But we aren’t first century Jews, and our government is choosing to DEREGULATE lots of things, right now. And, honestly, why would we choose to trust this government’s decisions, anyway?

Spiritual discernment means the onus of decision-making falls to us, both as individuals and as small communities. Is AI something that meets Wendell Berry’s rules for technology? Does it meet Paul’s criteria for spirit-led living? Figuring those things out takes time, research, contemplation. 

It’s not just AI that is requiring such time and energy-intensive discernment from us, these days. You know that. Governmental watchdogs, institutional structures, and a whole host of old trustworthy best practices are all being dismantled and defunded. There are fewer and fewer external arbiters of what is good for us, of what is good, period.

So it seems to me that Paul’s list here in Galatians of fruits of the Spirit might be especially helpful in these times. Whatever it is we’re trying to figure out, technology or politics or big life decisions, small choices about how we interact or respond or resist, daily tasks that present options to us, we can always pull up this list of questions, Paul’s rubric for living by the Spirit:

Is it generous?

Is it kind?

Is it gentle?

Is it loving?

Does it employ self-control?

Is it patient?

Is it joyful?

Does it make for peace?

Is it faithful?

I am really curious what my friends at the Manassas Church of the Brethren will do with this real estate offer they’ve been presented. It’s a fascinating choice, with all kinds of tentacles of implication. But I know those people, and I know that they are committed to doing the hard, slow work of spiritual discernment. I know that they already have before them these questions from Paul, that they are, even now, working their way through the answers and imagining how they might use this opportunity to turn some of the “nos” into “yes”es.

I wonder where else we might use Paul’s litmus tests, what other choices are before us right here and right now that need to be subjected to this list of questions. 

Whatever it is, Paul is very reassuring to the Galatians and to us: 

“You were called to freedom, siblings! If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

May it be so. Amen.