This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. – Ezekiel 17:22

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 10, 2014): Ezekiel 17

Stephen Hawking, the physicist and best-selling author of “A Brief History of Time” (not to mention the intellectual idol and sometime antagonist of Sheldon Cooper on the television comedy “The Big Bang Theory”) admits that the idea of artificial intelligence scares him. With so many advances in the field of artificial intelligence as well as the number of companies and the amount of money that is being spent to chase after the elusive dream, the science fiction plot device might not be all that far off. In fact, we are already seeing forms of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, including self-driving cars and digital personal assistants like Google Now. Even my I-phone insists on telling me driving times to places without me asking simply because it knows that I have been there before. The future may be already arriving.

For Hawking, the original problem of artificial intelligence comes down to who it is that is controlling the intelligence. In the wrong hands, artificial intelligence could be a weapon like we have never seen before. But for Hawking, the larger problem is really the question of whether artificial intelligence could be controlled at all. And if it can’t be controlled, what would happen then. Hawking doesn’t know the answer to that question, and he is pretty sure that no one else does either. His solution is to pause the development of artificial intelligence while the scientific community ponders the appropriate questions and holes in our knowledge. While Hawking believes that we might be technologically ready to make the leap toward artificial intelligence, he is sure that in every other area of our existence we are just not mature enough to be ready to make the jump.    

Ezekiel tells a parable about two eagles and a vine. The eagles represented the two major powers in Israel’s circle of influence – Babylon and Egypt. The vine itself represents Israel. And according to the story, the vine is threatened by the one eagle and so it creeps toward the other. But in the end, the second eagle cannot help the vine - and so the vine is uprooted. The reality for the people of the time is that it did not seem that the two eagles could be stopped. The vine would not be just uprooted; it looked very much like the vine would be permanently destroyed.

But this is when God steps in. He too has a shoot of the vine – one that he had taken from the top of a cedar. And he too decides to plant the vine. Only God doesn’t plant it in the lush valley. He plants it on the top of the mountain – not the most advantageous place to plant a vine. But according to the story, while the vine that was in the valley would be destroyed, the remnant that God would plant on the mountain would survive. The identification of that remnant from the mountain can be seen in the Israel that was born in exile, the Israel that remained in Canaan living in constant danger and without the support of a nation, and ultimately in the Messiah that would come not to be born in a palace, but in a manger. But no matter the challenges, the remnant would survive because God had decreed it.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 18