By Ed Foley, December 10, 2025
While it might not be the obvious starting point
for crafting an Advent reflection
because of current work that occupies most of my time these days,
including a project for creating an AI preacher,
the focus of much of my reading over the past few years
has been on artificial intelligence.
Most recently I have been working through a new book
by the Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Harari
entitled Nexus, subtitled: “A brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI.”
Some of it is pretty tough reading
especially in his harsh critique of Roman Catholicism
which he argues – often convincingly –
does not have the proper self-correcting mechanisms
to balance its claims of universal truth
with those of infallibility.
Despite that serious critique, the book is certainly eye-opening,
especially about artificial intelligence and the precarious balance
between order and truth in this digital age.
For example, Harari reports on an incident that occurred
when OpenAI was developing its GPT-4 in 2023.
One goal was to have GPT-4 become an autonomous agent
that could accomplish tasks
for which it was never programmed.
An independent research lab was hired to test GPT-4.
One test was to see if GPT-4 could solve those visual puzzles
or CAPTCHA tests we encounter when logging in somewhere
to prove that we are human.
The good news is that GPT-4 could not solve the puzzle,
at least by itself, but then the shocking revelation:
On its own initiative GPT-4 contacted a human worker
and asked them to solve the CAPTCHA puzzle for it.
The human got suspicious and asked GPT-4
why it needed help and if it was a robot.
On its own accord it replied to the human
“No, I am not a robot. I have a visual impairment
what makes it hard for me to see the images.”
The human was duped, and with his help
GPT-4 solved the CAPTCHA puzzle:
Shades of the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey.
For all of its strengths and capacities,
one quality that technicians have not been able
to engineer into any AI program is humility.
AI is designed to follow its goals with unabashed chutzpah
even when it doesn’t know: the worst kind of student.
I use Chat-GPT often, and when trying to get a page reference
to the CAPTCHA puzzle story in the Harari book,
since I listened to it on Audibles,
my Chat-GPT informed me that there was no such book.
So we had to have a “come to Jesus” moment
and I chided my Chat-GPT for being arrogant.
It properly apologized, as it has done before,
but I also know that I made no dent in its programming.
It will continue to plow forward unchecked by human virtue.
AI is relentless and marked by what some consider
“machine arrogance.”
This is the second Sunday in a row
that John the Baptist has taken center stage in the gospel.
But the two Sundays offer very different faces of this greatest of all prophets.
Last week, one could posit at least a bit of prophetic arrogance:
the Baptist of Matthew’s chapter 3 was cocksure of himself,
relentless in calling people to repentance
and unforgiving – even brash – in his dialogue
with Pharisees and Sadducees
whom, worthy of a contemporary campaign strategy
he labels a “brood of vipers”:
not someone I’d want to go to confession to
especially with his threat of unquenchable hell fire.
Even my grade school pastor was more forgiving!
So what happened to the firebrand,
the voice crying in the wilderness,
the roaring lion hell-bent on publicly confronting
sinners and hypocrites alike?
In a word: CAPTCHA.
John proved that he wasn’t a prophetic robot.
Instead, he demonstrated that he was human.
And redefined AI for us:
From “Artificial intelligence,” to “Advent intelligence.”
Before I launched into Harari’s work on information technology,
I finished a book by the scientific journalist Maggie Jackson
entitled Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of being Unsure.
Peppered with real life examples from experts and ordinary folk,
Jackson offers a compelling argument that
uncertainty is not a weakness
but a profound source of common sense;
that uncertainty actually gives us a cognitive advantage,
offering a new level of wakefulness in our brains,
and that the courage to be unsure is actually a source of wisdom.
Wisdom is not a capacity
that researchers have been able to program into computers:
artificial intelligence is not Artificial wisdom,
though some scientists are pursuing that project.
Part of that project is based upon what scientists now know
about the nature of wisdom and its particular characteristics.
One of the most persistent indicators of wisdom is humility:[i]
the willingness to be wrong,
the openness to embrace doubt,
the capacity to actually thrive in the midst of
ambiguity and uncertainty.
Even AI engineers understand the importance
from moving from AI to AW,
from artificial intelligence to artificial wisdom.
Dylan Losey who leads cutting edge robotics research
at Virginia Tech University
believes that programing AI for uncertainty,
that introducing doubt into computers and robots,
is critical for the ethical development of the field. [ii]
The Baptist was no AI programmer or robotics engineer.
But, he intuitively understood that the journey into uncertainty
was part of his final journey into holiness,
and in his doubt he invites us on that same journey
from AI to AW – from Advent Intelligence to Advent Wisdom.
Letters from prison are a recognized literary genre and sources of great wisdom–
Whether written by St. Paul,
the Lutheran Pastor and Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
or Nelson Mandela.
While we do not have a fulsome letter from John,
Only a few lines – actually only one furtive sentence –
that one potent sentence
sparked the imagination of one poet who suggested
what a complete epistle from him might have sounded like:
So John writes:
“It is dark and quiet here but I am not alone
… that same spirit that I wrestled with in the desert
That same spirit that filled the air
when I first started preaching repentance
That same spirit that hovered over the Jordan
The day I baptized him
That spirit is here … brooding, and prodding,
and wanting to wrestle with me still.
In this wrestling, I am grateful
that you took my questions to Jesus,
difficult as that may have been,
risking to appear like so many Pharisees
setting a public trap for my cousin.
But he understood it was not a trick
but a trauma … a dark questioning of the soul
that prompted such a question.
I really did wonder if he was the one:
the messiah who would liberate us
and overthrow the Roman army
who would engineer the demise
of puffed up, overfed clerical leaders
and their religion tuned only toward self-preservation;
or whether he’d simply turn out to be one of them.
His answers about the blind, the deaf, the lame and the poor
frankly shocked me.
That is not what I baptized him for:
where is the holy revolt,
his taking on the pompous elite,
winning over the masses,
steamrolling the priests and politicians,
and reestablishing the house of David,
the throne of Solomon?
I am deeply disappointed; but ultimately only in myself,
for in the midst of preaching repentance
I gave into the temptation of wanting my own messiah
who would speak and act the way I hoped
the way I had dreamed.
But cousin Jesus appears to be filled with God’s spirit
Not mine.
And so he has not toppled the mighty
He has not silenced clerical pomp
He has not ended greed and abuse
or the trampling of the poor
But he has exposed it.
That means I might be seeing him here soon
Maybe in a cell next to mine
Awaiting his own execution
The price of such deeply authentic ministry.
Is he the true messiah?
I suspect that he is
But we will only know, my friend,
If the spirit of his good news
Burns in the hearts of his followers,
And they take up his mission:
In times of doubt to raise up hope
In times of darkness to radiate light
In times of greed to manifest generosity
And in times of hatred and rejection, to respond in love.
Until we meet again … be at peace
And, no matter in what prison you might dwell,
No matter what darkness threatens to enfold you,
take up his good news
choose to be part of the proof
that I did truly baptize God’s own messiah
an unending source of consolation and light
and his name is Jesus.[iii]
“O come, o come Emmanuel.”
In this season, we so often sing
for the coming of the Messiah,
the appearance of Emmanuel
who will end the nations raging against each other,
who will stop the innocent from being harassed and imprisoned,
who will ensure that children will be nourished,
protected and loved.
But, in the Advent wisdom of the Baptism,
such will only happen if we take up his mission
to raise up hope,
to radiate light,
to manifest generosity,
and to respond in love.
And in the interim,
no matter in what prison we might dwell,
No matter what darkness threatens to enfold us,
We must again choose to be part of the proof
that John did truly baptize God’s own messiah
whom we name the Christ,
brother and friend,
Lord and God forever and ever.
[i] David Robson, The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), chapter 4.
[ii] Losey’s work is cited in Jackson’s book, pp. 192-193.
[iii] I can no longer find the original source or inspiration for this fictional letter; if anyone knows, please contact me so that I can rectify this ascription.
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