Artificial Living

A note of thanks, and a confession about the parts of us that still want to pretend.

First things first. I want to start off by saying thank you to all my readers, subscribers, followers, and friends for your prayers and your encouraging words.

Today, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be artificial. We live in a world where it’s getting harder and harder to tell the artificial from the real. You have people who can make images, videos, and music that are all artificial, that only a trained ear or eye could catch. It’s caused me to reflect upon myself. It’s caused me to reflect upon my story and who I am.

You see, I’ve never tried to be someone who has everything put together because I don’t. A great many times I have lived with immense shame that I’ve even titled my Substack “The Biblical Man” because, in comparison to what a “Biblical man” I am anything but. I find myself being like David. If you had spent any time in the Psalms, you would start to think that David was, as some men say, a basket case. That he was up and that he was down. That he was doing good and then he was committing grievous sins, and then he was repenting, and then he was lamenting, and then he was happy, and then he was scared. You just go through it. The whole Book of Psalms is one diary entry of a man’s life. That’s how life is: it has its ups and its downs.

My goal has never been to be someone clean or put together, who has it all figured out. No, I believe that, since I have been saved by my Savior Jesus Christ, I’m a peculiar person, and because of that, I dwell with two different natures in this body. I have a quickened nature that was made alive by Jesus Christ through salvation, as the Scripture says, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;” Ephesians 2:1. Yet I still live in the flesh. Paul laid out many things in his writings about the fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the flesh, and how, when you want to do right, a lot of times you find yourself doing wrong.

To any new readers I have, to anybody who has come on to my pages and has read any of my work, my guides, my Substack posts, X posts, anything I’ve sent out, you might see sometimes they would seem like I’m crazy. You know what? In some ways, I am. One of the things I’ve learned is that trying to pretend that you’re anything but human never works out. What happens is you become artificial, and it’s not so much about artificial intelligence as it is about artificial living.

The nature of the enemy is to get you alone, and in today’s culture, we’re more connected than we have ever been. People can jump on Facebook and catch up with an old friend. You can text someone. You could even FaceTime somebody. When Blake was in Florida, we were here in North Dakota. That was awesome because we would FaceTime with him and see him and interact with him, but now he’s here. He’s in my home; he’s with us, and there’s nothing that can replicate that yet with any type of artificial intelligence. You see, that has to be done intentionally and through life.

I just wanted to drop in today and put this post up and tell you all I appreciate you. I thank you for being a part of this community. To those of you who support The Biblical Man, I appreciate you greatly.

one-time support