Welcome back to the Reformer Newsletter, where we can take a dive into projects and activities from around web3 and across the Christian community. You have joined this network to contribute to our collective mission of building for Christ’s Kingdom, and we will use this newsletter as a platform to encourage that.
The crypto and web3 space is still wild, and can be dangerous for those exploring. Practice good digital security, do your own research, and keep an eye out for fraudsters. Nothing here is financial advice.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Matthew 24:35
Institutions rise, merge, fracture, and fall. This is true of all empires, states, nations, corporations, and any other organization built by humans. With hindsight we can see clearly every epochal shift and point to the trends and forces which drove the plates of past institutions together— smashing some down while allowing others to lift and form new peaks. Sitting in the midst of the earthquake, it is not so easy maintain that perspective and grasp what is happening and what will come next. We see fissures forming, feel the earth shaking, and hear panicked voices shouting against the destruction. The breaking is the obvious part, but the new formations following the turbulence is hard to predict (much less embrace) while the ground below is shaking.
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive your inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Colossians 3:23-24
Our faith assures us all things will work for the glory of God, and we offer our lives as “living sacrifices" to contribute to that. Many swing between the extremes of expecting the world to end or the utopia to begin, but those voices will be irrelevant as soon as the earthquake has settled. Today we learn how the crisis of the 3rd century Roman Empire was settled as Saints and Church Fathers legitimized Christian faith in a previously hostile world, or we study how the catastrophic 14th century led to the Renaissance because of the creativity of the Christian Humanist Petrarch and Gutenberg’s printing press rolling out vernacular Bibles, or we observe how the wars, death, famine, and plague of the 17th century drove settlers and refugees from war-torn Europe to forge a new nation built to strive towards Scriptural principles (admittedly still a work in progress); so future history lessons will teach how the world after the “21st Century Tremors” was rebuilt by the people who worked to bring about the the Lord’s Kingdom— and that is happening today.
Everything will change, they say? Good! I’m tired of the way things are. Families are breaking, communities are stagnant, and basically everyone you know is unsatisfied with how they spend their days at work. How might we seize this moment of opportunity to charge others to work for the glory of God’s Kingdom?
Many people may think the web3 quake was overhyped and passed as a non-event, but I still believe “the big one is coming” and we have a lot yet to see. AI (read— “machine learning”), on the other hand, is already registering high on the Richter Scale. Is it a force for destruction or growth? That depends on us- how will we use it to rebuild after it shakes the foundations of our institutions?
If you had the tools, structure, and know-how to create your own AI-powered application, what would you build? The team at withsoul.io has set out to provide users with a language model trained on Scriptural and solidly doctrinal writings so they can leverage machine learning to build their own applications. Would you build a new AI tutor or teacher’s assistant to help save our floundering education systems? Would you seek to disrupt tech giants or redeem them?
It appears that, as economist Tyler Cowen said, there is no turning back on AI. As he puts it:
No matter how positive or negative the overall calculus of cost and benefit, AI is very likely to overturn most of our applecarts, most of all for the so-called chattering classes.
The ground is shaking, the weak foundations are crumbling, and most people seem unwilling or unable to do anything. Now is the time to move boldly and with conviction to “work heartily for the Lord.”