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This week, Sean and guest co-host Thaddeus Williams discuss:

• : Kanye West, now known as Ye, expressed disillusionment with Jesus in a recent interview, questioning the efficacy of prayer and Christian support. He controversially declared himself as "the God of me," sparking discussions on the nature of faith, idolatry, and self-sovereignty.
• : Using artificial intelligence to "resurrect" the dead through digital simulations. This technology, known as ghost bots or death bots, allows for virtual interactions with deceased loved ones, raising questions about healthy grieving processes and the theological implications of seeking reunion beyond death.
• : The University of Florida announced the closure of its Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and the elimination of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) focused positions, sparking a conversation on the effectiveness and intentions behind DEI programs. Sean & Thaddeus explore the biblical perspective on diversity and unity, questioning whether current DEI initiatives align with Christian values and what a biblical approach to diversity might look like.
• Listener Question: Family planning with a non-Christian spouse.
• Listener Question: Bearing God's image and how perpetuated evil impacts one's humanity.

Episode Transcript

Sean: Kanye West says Jesus did not answer his prayers and calls himself God. Bringing back the dead through artificial intelligence. The University of Florida abandons its DEI office that is diversity, equity and inclusion. These are the stories we'll discuss today and we'll address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, along with special co-host today, Biola Professor and author, Thaddeus Williams. This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 91����. Thadd, it's super fun to have you on. First time, we're gonna have you back assuming you don't drop the ball. (both laughing) Just kidding, you know I'm giving you a hard time. But we got some fascinating stories. You actually sent this one to me as we prep for this week. So, I wanna get to your thoughts, but let me lay out for folks a little bit what happened.

So Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, did an interview just this past week about a new kind of number one hit and musical success that he's had. Basically, as I listened to the whole interview, I don't know any other way to frame it then. It was kind of him giving the middle finger to everybody who questioned and doubted him, called him anti-Semitic, said he had mental health problems, couldn't be successful. He came out swinging. Now within that interview, by the way, folks can go listen to it, but I didn't count. There's probably 200 F-bombs in this, incredibly crude. So you have been warned. But in the middle of it, he said a few things about his faith that are important, because not long ago, he came out as a Jesus follower, did a gospel-based album, and a lot of Christians got excited about this. So here's some of the things that he said in the interview. He said, "I have my issues with Jesus. There's a lot of stuff I went through that I prayed, and I didn't see Jesus show up." He also said, "The main thing I really don't rock with about Christianity and Christians, is it's always just like, I'm going to pray for you, but you can actually physically do something yourself too," he said. Two more comments. He said, "I'm God, and anyone to disagree, I'm the God of me, and you can't tell me who I am. I'm the God of me. I don't know if I'm in heaven already." Now, in fairness, I don't think he's saying he's Yahweh, but I think he's saying he has supernatural powers and is the authority of his life, and no one's going to tell him how he can live his life and what he does. I think that was his point. Last thing I don't want you to weigh in, and there's so much to talk about here, is he says, "Another thing I don't like in Christianity, the fear of God," he says. "If God is love, why should you fear him?" Give me some of your thoughts and impressions on this.

Thad: Yeah, I mean, the first thing that jumps to my mind when I read this story, and I remember when Jesus' King dropped, walking into the halls of Talbot East and hearing from at least three or four different professors' offices, those beats dropping. So many of us were fans. There's some powerful songs on that album where you get a sense, almost like Nebuchadnezzar's realization in the book of Daniel, that trying to be his own sovereign Lord, pretending he was the God of his own little universe, the king of his kingdom, and he goes off the rails into insanity, and then he gets restored with a sense of all dominion is God's dominion. No one can stop his hand, his dominion is everlasting. And so, that's the way that original Jesus is King album landed for many of us is, wow, Kanye, who's got a long history of megalomania, of an over-exaggerated self-image, is finally bowing the knee, and that seems encouraging. So it was a little discouraging to read the headline, but the first passage that comes to mind for me is in Titus 3:8, where Paul, under the spirit's inspiration, says, "This is a trustworthy saying, "and I want you to stress these things "so that those who have trusted in God "may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good." Doing what is good. This is a running theme throughout the Old and New Testaments. Part of what Kanye is putting his finger on is, there can be, and I think we would both, we've witnessed this in the Christian subculture, a tendency to say, "Pray for you, bro," and then that gives me an out from having to lift a finger, where scripture is saying, "It's a both and." Yes, praying continually is a biblical command, not suggestion, but it's followed through with, you know, "Get off your butt and help where you can." So I thought that was a good insight, actually, from Kanye, I understand some of his frustrations there. I think where he goes from there to this, "I am God Declaration," and I agree, I don't think he means it, literally, but that jumps off the page to me because I just, a few months ago had my, "Don't Follow Your Heart" book release, where I argued that that idea of, "I get to be my own sovereign meaning maker. "I get to be king of my own castle, captain of my own soul." It sounds so liberating, it sounds so edgy, but at the end of the day, it is the most old-fashioned, out-of-date lie, literally, in the book. And so I argue, I think you remember from the book, I know you went through it with some of your students, the serpent's original temptation, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil," is ancient Hebrew shorthand for, "You can be your own functional deity." And I think what we see happening in the culture around us, that's taking the serpent up on that offer, like, sadly, Kanye seems to in some of those quotes, "I am God, I'm creating my own reality," the net result of that is, psychological, spiritual devastation, because we weren't ever intended to be our own sovereign lords.

Sean: That's right.

Thad: There's something soul-crushing about putting all that infinite pressure on ourselves, which goes to the final point, when Kanye says he struggles with this concept of the fear of the Lord. What he misses here is it's so freeing to have what the Hebrew Bible would call yerah, fear, reverence, to be awestruck at God. Scripture tells us that's where wisdom starts. Scripture connects yerah, fear of the Lord, with delight, with pleasure, with purpose. And so Kanye seems to just ice a cheat or read into the text, this trembling, cowering kind of a fear, versus in a biblical context, it is this sense of awe-inspiring reverence at the size of God. And when you have that, again, it's one of the most freeing experiences because I'm letting the creator be the creator, and I'm as a creature being authentically who I am as a creature by not pretending I run the universe. Did you have any thoughts that jumped out the page from the Kanye interview for you?

Sean: That's such a good response. So, I called my son, who's a student at Biola, he's 19, and he's a shoe guy, he sold Yeezys in the past, Kanye's shoe he used to have with Adidas, listens to his album. I said, "Buddy, give me your response to this." And he goes, "Dad, I'm just really sad." I said, "Tell me why." He said, "When Kanye became a Christian, it cost him his marriage and it cost him a lot." He goes, "But I don't know if he ever understood or knew the gospel in the first place, that this is often a part of what it means to be a Christian. God doesn't promise he's going to answer all of our prayers in the way we want them answered." And so, this sense of sadness, he goes, "Dad, I don't know if he really knew the gospel." And I thought that's a fair question, of course only God knows. But when he says, "There's a lot of stuff I prayed for Jesus and he didn't show up," some of that is a lament, right? Read the Psalms, read the book of Lamentations. There's a place for people to say, "God, you didn't show up, you're not answering my prayers." That's a kind of prayer that has space within the Judeo-Christian tradition. So that's a very Christian kind of thing to say. But with that said, I don't know what Kanye is praying for. I don't know what he's asking for. I wonder if he has an unbiblical view of the nature of prayer that's often taught so many times in churches. And so Jesus didn't answer the way based on his expectations of bad theology. And so he's upset with Jesus. And yet we're never promised that. That's one question that I would have. I also, in some ways I look at the story and I think it's a commentary on the church. Like I celebrate when he became a Christian, I was like, "Wow, you know, one sense, if God can save Kanye given where he's been through, he can save anybody." But I also think sometimes we just start celebrating and we put him on stage and we hold him up as a hero and we value that more than we do just any non-famous, non-powerful person who converts, who God celebrates just as much, makes me wonder how much we're playing by the script of the world as opposed to the script of scripture, which says leave the 99 for the one. So just yesterday, I was speaking with a former megachurch pastor and he told me, he goes, "I became a Christian at 20, with a broken background. At 24, because I was charismatic, they put me on stage. I was preaching every week to 5,000 people." And I thought, what are we doing? Because someone's charismatic because they can help us build and grow in the way of the world. We are quick to jump on that train. So I wish we could step back and just say, "Kanye, we don't wanna use you for anything. We just wanna love you, disciple you, stand by you, walk through with you." Now, whether that would change things or not, I don't know. But sometimes I just wanna say, let's slow down and let's make sure we're not following the script of the world and we're sticking with scripture. So any last thoughts on this?

Thad: Yeah, let me add one final thought here. You're absolutely right to put your finger on. There is this perverse connection between Christian culture and broader celebrity culture. I've seen plenty of cases that you got a big name, you got saved, there's the microphone.

Sean: Yup.

Thad: And so there's that side of the coin, but if you flip it over, there's also a sense that if you turn from us, if you don't stick to the script, you will become a casualty of the culture war. We will turn on you faster than you can blink. And so I just wanna, to our audience out there, echo some of what you said, to love on him. And if anybody's listening right now, take 30 seconds and lift up the soul of an image bearer of God named Kanye West that the Holy Spirit would do regenerating work in him, that the Holy Spirit would draw him to saving faith in Christ. I think so often we're conditioned by the culture war mindset, that we're trained to see people who maybe leave our troop or leave our side of the battle front as well, now they're the enemy, we gotta get them in our crosshairs. It's like, let's pray for these folks and leave that in the hands of a sovereign God. And then one final, final thought. I thought it was very helpful when you said, man, look at the Psalms, all the struggles with unanswered prayer. Think of where you are, God, Psalm. Psalms like Psalm 88. Darkness is where my closest friend is where the Psalm ends. There's an entire book of the Bible called Lamentations—the whole thing is lament. And so I think if Kanye, and not just him, but many people who have felt that discouragement with God or disappointment with God, had another category to process through that. So it's not either I'm all in and I'm overjoyed and God seems to be answering every prayer exactly how I want it to be answered, or I'm some kind of apostate, I've fallen away, I'm outside of the faith. For people to see it, man, it's not so black and white. There's this biblical gray area in between where I can barely think of a Christian in scripture who didn't have those experiences of disappointment with God is part and parcel of an ongoing relationship with a being whose infinitely smarter and more sovereign than we are.

Sean: Well said, good stuff. Well, let's move to this next story. Interestingly enough, Kanye is a part of it. We did not plan it this way. And in part, I picked this story because Easter's coming up. And here's what the story says. The title in this article is, "Ghostbots is Resurrection of the Dead Through AI, a Healthy or Haunting Experience. Know what the research suggests." Now, here's what's going on. They say, "Resurrection of the dead is now possible through artificial intelligence." Now, they don't mean literally physically bringing back the dead. I teach a class on the resurrection in our apologetics program, and always make a distinction between like revivification, reincarnation, and somebody coming back to this body and dying again. They don't actually mean physical resurrection like we see in the scripture. What they mean is this is referred to as ghostbots, deathbots, griefbots, et cetera. And the idea is that you take words from somebody, a short video, an email, plug it into artificial intelligence, and then a video can be created of this person talking or dancing as if they're really there in the present. So, what's crazy about this with artificial intelligence is now you could actually take somebody who maybe passed away at five, tell what they looked like at seven and 20 and 30 and 40, and be able to age with them as if that person is going with you through time. And I just saw this morning with artificial intelligence that we now have these kinds of automated responses that businesses can use kind of for customer service that are becoming increasingly impossible to tell with voice inflection and the beautiful responses, so to speak, whether you're really talking to a person or not. So they described this scene from "Avengers: Endgame." You know with me, it is always gonna come back to basketball or superheroes. And there's a conversation in which Pepper Potts and her daughter, Morgan Stark, the son of Tony Stark, watch an AI recording of Tony Stark playing from the helmet of the superhero's final Iron Man suit. He had recorded a message for his wife and daughter before dying as a martyr in the battle against Thanos. Now, of course, he really recorded this. Artificial intelligence is a part of it, but now you could create all sorts of conversations with somebody as if they are there talking to you, looking and sounding like that person. So, on Kim Kardashian's 40th birthday when Kanye was, when they were still together, he gifted her with a hologram of her deceased father, Robert Kardashian, speaking to her. I mean, just let that sink in. And then more recently, just last year, Taiwanese entertainer, Tino Bao, posted on Facebook a video of his daughter who had passed away two years earlier at 22. He used AI to create a video in which her digital version was seen dancing. Now those people have more money and resources than you and I do, but this technology is coming. So, pretty soon someone can just type in and a video pops up as if that person has been resurrected. Do you have concerns? Are you encouraged by this? Give me your thoughts as you see the story emerging.

Thad: Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, one of the thoughts that pops into my head is it would be really cool to have an AI-generated Charles Spurgeon hologram preaching in my living room, you know, or getting to hang out with Francis Schaeffer, have an AI CS Lewis sitting there puffing—

Sean: Or the Apostle Paul, right? Or Jesus, literally. I mean, seriously.

Thad: Imagine that. So, when I hear stories like this of things that seem novel, strange uses of technology, I wanna ask the question, what deeply human need, what existential itch is this scratching? Because there is a real itch, a real desire, a real drive underneath this use of technology. And is that technology seeking to scratch the itch in a way that's compatible with how the God of the Bible would scratch the existential itch? And you see this, so what is the need here? I would say it's seeking to meet the need for reunion, the need to transcend the powers of death, the separation that death causes. But when you seek to meet that apart from God, obviously it leads to disillusionment, unfulfillment, and destruction. So the need here is, you're correct, Sean, to connect it to Easter, this just right around the corner. This is a need God cares about, the need for reunion, the need to transcend, to overpower, to overcome death. Man, we're talking about the heart of the gospel here. God declared what John Owen called the death of death in the death of Christ. And so one of the great resurrection hopes, one of the great Easter hopes that defines the people of God throughout the New Testament, throughout the New Covenant, is that hope of future reunion with your actual departed loved one who dies in Christ, not some cheap hologram of them. Like think of, you bring it back to superhero movies. For me, it almost always goes back to a Christopher Nolan movie. I love Christopher Nolan, I think he's just a genius. His movie “Inception,” spoiler alert, has the character Molly, who is Leo DiCaprio's departed wife, and not the real her, but a dream version of her keeps popping up in all these layers of the dream world. And there's a powerful line at the end where he confronts this projected version of his lost wife and says, "You're just not good enough. You can't capture the beauty in the nuances. You're just a cheap idol of the real thing." And so the resurrection hope in Christianity tells us we don't have to settle for the cheap hologram or the product of wish fulfillment. There is real reunion possible through the cross’s work and through the empty tomb of Jesus. So, just one more thought on this in terms of the church's role in scratching that existential itch, the need to transcend death, the need for reunion and resurrection. My wife and I have been going through some of Paul's shorter letters recently, and we hit on 1 Timothy, this whole section on the care of widows, which is a recurring theme. Even the book of James, right, says, this is true religion to care for widows and orphans. Why are these people pushed to the front of the line so often in Scripture? Because they're dealing with the same loss that this AI technology is trying to compensate for. The widow has lost her husband and the orphan has lost his or her parents. And so, there's a sense that part of meeting that need to hear before the bodily resurrection and the new heavens and the new earth is Christians stepping up, finding the lonely, finding the grieving in being a physical presence, not a hologram, not a AI-generated presence, but being an embodied presence around people who are in a state of grief to help them as we await the full effect of Jesus' resurrection in the new heavens and the new earth. So, there's a few of my thoughts.

Sean: Oh, yeah. Those are great, super helpful. I love that you approach it positively 'cause it's easy as Christians to be negative and be critical. Now, any technology can be used for good, but it also can be twisted for sin. So you mentioned the movie "Inception." There's also, people haven't seen it, Leonardo Capra and his team go into a dream and sometimes a dream within a dream, and their goal is to find people's deep-seated beliefs and then change their beliefs, because if they change their beliefs, then they're able to completely change their perspective on life and hence their actions. I started looking at this technology thinking, what if we could resurrect, and I use that with scare quotes, somebody with misleading information that's not true. They could literally change somebody's perspective of themselves and their life and their choices because it's increasingly hard to know what is fact and what is fiction. So, it could be manipulated in such a powerful way, like in "Inception," to quite literally change the trajectory of somebody's life. That's one concern that I have. This article really brings out some fascinating things. It talks about how there's already research on this stuff that ghost bots by the bereaved to interact with the deceased is not a healthy coping mechanism. So they make a distinction between saying, and I'd be open to this, in a controlled environment with a professional psychologist and with truth that's embedded, at times could you use technology like this for healing? Well, maybe it could be a piece of it. I don't wanna rule that out, but to rely upon this, they said it can become addicting, is not a healthy coping mechanism the way we're meant to deal with death. So this technology can actually keep us from grieving and moving on in a healthy fashion. That's a concern that this article raised. Yeah, they taught how it can be really kind of addicting. And they say it's unlikely to provide substantial comfort in part because of what you said, in the new heavens and the new earth, we are resurrected bodily. Resurrection is not just a spirit floating in space. It's not just returned to our broken bodies. 1 Corinthians 15 is that we are resurrected, new seeds where we develop, so to speak, there's continuity with this life, but we have a transformed physicality. And so this kind of resurrection is not even embodied at all, which is the kind of healing we need of appropriate touch and real eye contact. So, I don't wanna rule it having some role, but there's no way as real as it seems, it can actually be the kind of healing that somebody needs. They also said there's legal concerns about this, which is, I can't even comment on that, about what it means to control somebody's image. So anything else in this one, or we wanna move to an article that you wrote?

Thad: Let’s bring it back to the Old Testament for a minute.

Sean: Okay.

Thad: Because the reason I'm calling them existential needs is regardless of the time you're living in, regardless of the culture, regardless of the melanin levels in your skin cells, regardless of your XX or XY chromosomes, there's things that just unite us as humans. These shared drives, these appetites, these needs. And so, the same need that I think they're calling them ghost bots, ghost bots, these AI generated, departed loved ones, is something like, I would argue, what drove in the ancient Near East, certain cultures, certain tribes, to pursue necromancy, to try to contact the dead, divination, things like that. And so scripture is not silent on that. In Deuteronomy 18, verses nine to 14, very powerful, God speaking to his people says, "When you come into the land of the Lord your God is giving you, don't learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or daughter as an offering. Anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, a sorcerer, a charmer, a medium," right, mediums are supposed to be bridging that gap between the living and the dead. This technology is doing something very much like that, maybe not literally. A necromancer or one who inquires of the dead. And you better believe this AI technology, people would be using it precisely for those reasons, like, "Dad, did you really love me? Mom, why did you do X, Y, or Z?" It's an attempt to inquire of the dead in the language of Deuteronomy 18. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. Because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving him out from among you. And so there's several passages scattered through the Old Testament about very strong language. This is an abomination of the Lord. And what's fascinating, Sean, is if you really zoom in what's going on here, it's almost always connected to some form of idol worship. So, in the passage I just read, don't pursue mediums or necromancers or inquire of the dead is right there in the same context, Molech worship, worshiping the fire God, offering your sons and daughters to this false fire God. In Leviticus 20 verse six, if a person turns to mediums and necromancers, listen to the language here, it's strong language, whoring after them. I will set my face against them and will cut them off from among the people. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy for I'm the Lord your God. Heat my statutes and do them because I'm the Lord who sanctifies you. So, in Leviticus 20, the immediate context is also idol worship, Molech worship. And so seeking that kind of contact with the dead in Leviticus 20 is connected to idolatry. And then this language all over the Old Testament of whoring, of Israel stepping out on cheating on its covenant God. So, instead of getting their need for reunion, their need for resurrection, their need to transcend death, being met by the God who actually has the goodness, the power, grace to do that, they are turning away from, they are whoring themselves by seeking other means to scratch those itches. So, I think theologically thinking about AI in that context, are we pursuing these technologies under what Romans one w