Transverse Orientation Series

Exodus 7:(8) And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, (9) When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast [it] before Pharaoh, [and] it shall become a serpent. (10) And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the LORD had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent. (11) Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. (12) For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.

I. We live in a time of when we are exposed to an overwhelming amount of artificial. There are a lot of synthetic, fake, phony, unnatural, replicas of things around us.

A. We have artificial sweeteners, ingredients, body parts, grass, flowers, light, etc... if there is something natural than most likely you will find some form of an artificial facsimile of it. If man can somehow make a mold of it and reproduce it, you will find it sitting on a shelf somewhere.

1. There is nothing wrong with something that is artificial. It has its place sometimes. In medicine there are artificial hips, hearts, knees, limbs, and these things have helped thousands maintain an active life. I am not against the use of artificial things. I have a vinyl fence because I knew that I didn’t want to deal with the maintenance of a wood fence. I love the look and feel of wood, but sometimes if you can pay the extra; go with synthetic, especially if you don’t plan to maintain that fence or deck.

2. In décor it isn’t always practical to have trees, bushes, and flowers growing inside your home. Having a living tree growing in your house just isn’t practical. So, we have great reproductions to add a “lively” touch to our spaces. Y’all remember churches in the 80’s and 90’s loved them some fake trees and plants. You had ivy, ferns, lilies, trees, and palms all over the church. There were some churches their stage looked like a rain forest because they had so much stuff up there. Then we realized we could add Christmas lights on them and add a whole new level of wow.

B. Just as much as there are some legit benefits to artificial, there are more cons than pros. Everything that is artificial is manmade. Its design and function come from man. Its composition comes from man. It may be inspired by the natural but it doesn’t function the same way.

1. Take those trees and potted plants that you had to hack your way through when you were coming up on the stage for that prayer line. We replaced those natural looking ornaments with a modern industrial look, and those dust covered plants found their way to the trash and then to a land fill.

2. A natural tree serves a purpose while living it provides oxygen and cleans our air while providing food and shelter to wildlife and when it dies it continues to provide benefits to man and nature. On the other hand, those stage ornaments will sit in a landfill forever providing no benefit since they are made of plastic and wire, they just remain as a reminder of a forgotten fad or moment.

3. We have manmade ingredients in food, you know the ones you can’t pronounce but begin with poly, mono, or end with “a-t-e”, and those have been linked to the increase in cancer and other health conditions.

4. The natural can never be replaced or have all the benefits it has to offer duplicated. That’s the problem with man-made it is created to serve a temporal role. It has limitations due to its unnatural composition its function and design though modeled from the natural is flawed due to its designer.

a. Right now there is a heavy emphasis on “AI” Artificial Intelligence. Which is used in many applications from photography to virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri. Its great when it works but the problem is that it is already flawed from the moment it is applied because its source of intelligence was man made.

b. Since AI algorithms are built by humans, they can have built-in bias by those who either intentionally or inadvertently introduce them into the algorithm. If AI algorithms are built with a bias or the data, they are given to learn from is biased, they will produce results that are biased. This reality could lead to unintended consequences like Microsoft’s Twitter chatbot that became racist.

C. The limitations of artificial to natural extend themselves to the Spiritual, but we are talking about more than landfills, environmental, and health concerns. The affects weigh into the eternal. With such an emphasis on eating right and avoiding manmade artificial toxins that have adverse effects on our bodies why do we not take the same caution when it applies to the spiritual?