Robot?
I was taken by surprise several years ago, when after filling out a form online the message popped up, ‘prove you’re not a robot’. Whoa, I thought, how do I do that? But rest assured all I needed to do was check the right box. I have run into those boxes since and as long as my glasses are working and I can see the picture or the box I’m good. Robots—those used to be in the science fiction realm but they are here in today’s world.
A few years back there was a discussion on FaceBook about farming and raising food. The exact dialog escapes me of course, but in the end, one of the takeaways was that some people enjoy working and some just want to lay around and do nothing.
I live in the middle of nowhere in the middle of farming country and some of what the FaceBook discussion was about was growing your food in skyscrapers in hydroponics. And while you could do that with some items that we eat, we can’t do that with everything. Nor should we desire to raise everything in that manner. Everything meaningful comes with a cost and often it is through struggle that we gain our sense of accomplishment. As Gerard Manly Hopkins summarizes in his poem:
What would the world be, once bereft,
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.
Robots. Some people envision a world where every person receives a stipend from the government and then people go about their lives basically doing whatever trips their fancy. There are already robots taking over jobs in factories from people. In our homes, we have been leaning toward types of robots and never realized what we were doing.
At one time most homes had hired help such as a cook, a maid, or both. And it wasn’t all that long ago. We now have dishwashers, clothes washers (and driers), refrigerators, freezers, vacuums, etcetera. Honestly, I would like to have all of my lovely appliances and a cook…and a maid. Whereas the appliances have given us a freedom from the drudgery of the mundane there is a versatility in a human that you can’t get from a robot or an appliance. You can’t get the same interaction with a robot. At the end of the day you can say, let’s sit down and have a cup of tea, Molly—to the maid, but not to an appliance.
Sometimes I’ve looked at myself and compared me to a child. Like the time my daughter was wondering if God ever thought she looked like her two year old when her two-year-old was pitching a fit. “Yes,” I said, I’m sure I do.” God didn’t make us robots he made us flesh and blood and human, and far from a robot.
Romans 5:
1) “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
2) By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
3) And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
4) And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
5) And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
