October 1, 2020 – Click here to listen
I’ve been trying my best to be more mellow. It is difficult for this Christ transformed street fighting sociopathic maniac to do, but I’m making an effort.
So the other day I was using Siri on my I-Phone to navigate somewhere and the crazy thing couldn’t understand my request though I voiced it several times. Each time I became more and more irate and finally I screamed into the phone, “You stupid idiot I said Key Largo not Wells Fargo.”
Immediately Siri answered and said, “That’s not nice!”
Hmmm . . . So is it a sin to scream at and call Siri, a piece of artificial intelligence, an idiot?
I’m not sure but I don’t think Jesus would not have done it. Not that all anger and publicly insulting someone is bad, remember Jesus angrily running the money changers out of the temple and calling the Pharisees a bunch of pit vipers among other things. I’m curious how Siri would respond to that.
Being nice is mostly easy and is an admirable trait to have. Many of my ex-employees and friends have told me that I’ve mellowed out through the years and I’m proud of that because it does not come naturally to me. I talked about this dilemma one time with my good friend Jack Murphy and told him that I loved Christ with all my heart, but I often felt that evil demon still inside of me rising up and at times I had to call on Jesus and fight with everything I had to beat him back down. Murf said he experienced the same thing.
Although we are new creatures, I believe those words, “new creature” refers to the spirit within us. The old creature, our flesh, can and will be stirred up and try to get us to sin. Paul in Romans 7:15 stated: For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.
It is our job to fight it with all we have. Siri has the right idea; we should be nice. It gets you a lot farther with people and I suppose with artificial intelligence. So check the temper at the door and just smile, but if some antichrist communist radical comes along spouting their blasphemy, I suppose it is okay to be angry.
Am I right or wrong? Not surprisingly I think I’m right
Romans 7:19
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do. And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it . . .