Do Engines Get Rewarded For Their Steam?

On March 11th, 1811, a group called the Luddites attacked a new automated textile plant. Their stated concerns were shrinking wages and a decline in the quality of output due to automation.

On February 1st, 1962, Johnny Cash released his song "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer." The "bad boss man" threatened to replace John Henry with a steam drill. John Henry replied, "Did the lord say that machines ought to take the place of living, and what's a substitute for bread and beans, I ain't seen it, do engines get rewarded for their steam?"

It is not a novel or original opinion of mine to say that since the fall of man in Genesis 3, every technological advancement has served the purpose of dampening the effect of our accursed toil.

And while no wise person believes that technological advancements are inherently bad, each such advancement should pose the question, do engines get rewarded for their steam?

Ecclesiastes 2:24 tells us that there is nothing better than that we should eat and drink and find joy in our toil. This is from the hand of God. Joy after toil is from the hand of God.

Toil is from God so that our joy has a weightiness to it. A well-earned, well-deserved gravity. When we completely outsource our labor to a technological advancement, we lose the dinner table's nightly pull of joy's gravitational field.

As that tree grows to maturity, its fruit are hands without blisters, atrophied muscles, and brows that have never known sweat.

In August of 2024, a church in Switzerland debuted "Deus in Machina."

Deus in Machina was an AI chatbot trained to present itself as none other than Jesus. Poetic irony would have it that, due to space constraints in the small Swiss Catholic church, the theologians overseeing this project placed the hardware for this "Machina" in the priest's booth of the confessional.

I am pretty sure the creators of Black Mirror were jealous that they hadn't come up with this idea first…

Among the many concerns raised by Deus in Machina, the chief of these is in the soulless nature of outsourcing your faith’s labors to an algorithm seated on the other side of the confessional.

The fruit of that vine is a people who no longer have bookmarks in their Bibles, journals no longer brimming with notes, and pages without well-earned tears. I am not arguing that spiritual maturity is dependent upon your Bible being leather-bound and gold-laced, but I am arguing that the advent of the search bar in your Bible has not yielded a net positive.

Daily Bible reading has innumerable benefits. Only a fool undervalues scripture memorization. You can read more about that here.

One of the undervalued benefits of scripture reading is its sobering effects. Its ability to remind you of the insignificance of your struggles. Its ability to make you touch the metaphorical grass of history.

As my wife and I instinctually plod through our daily lives like migratory creatures, it feels there is no end in sight to our parenting journey. It is easy to convince ourselves that our toughest battles are currently underway.

Then you open the book of Job. 

It is easy to think all is lost.

Then you open the book of Judges.

It is easy to think ______.

Then you open the Bible.

Unplug Deus in Machina. Open the Bible.