The Golden Calves we built this week (and what it tells us about us)

Isn't that beautiful?

Hold your head up high.

Whatever's gone through this week, whatever you're going through, the moon will sink, the sun will rise.

So hold your head up high.

My wife and I got a chance to go to Japan last year.

And part of it, you go to the normal places, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto.

But I wanted to go to Hiroshima.

I really wanted to go to Hiroshima.

I wanted to see what a city looked like after it's been hit by an atomic bomb.

I took a picture of the ground zero, essentially.

Where the bomb dropped.

For whatever reason, that structure still is there.

They've kept it together as a memorial to say this is where an atomic bomb landed on our city.

The initial blast killed between 50 and 70,000 people.

Over the next generation, the estimates are somewhere between 140 and 200,000 people died because of that bomb.

And I wanted to understand through their eyes, what does this do to humanity?

What does this do to a culture?

What does this do to a people?

So I went to the memorial.

Now, one thing you have to understand about me and my wife, we are not museum people.

This is the part where I apologize to Trevor because he always says, Did you go to the museum?

I'm like, I did not go to the museum.

But this one I went to, but only half of it.

We had to rush.

There's a lot of kids.

I don't.

I got through the parts.

Here's the thing.

Whenever they could, they used the passive voice.

Do you remember from Grammar?

The bomb was dropped.

They didn't talk about who dropped the bomb.

If they needed to, they would.

The bomb was dropped.

But then they have this whole arm of the memorial dedicated to the technology that created an atomic bomb.

Is that, yeah.

It's a bit strange, isn't it?

I remember going through there and thinking, I went from the museum part of me is not really enjoying myself a ton, and there's a lot of kids, so I'm like specially not.

But then technology, so the engineer in me is like, whoa, technology, I love this.

Am I losing my mind?

Are we hearing music outside?

Just checking.

You see, the atomic bomb was a revolution of technology.

That technology didn't exist till weeks or months before that month.

That's gonna be hard to talk over, isn't it?

Where am I?

What are we talking about?

Does anyone just want an ice cream break now?

Should we just like stop the service and be like, we're just going to go for ice cream?

Okay, be back in 20 minutes.

Okay, where am I?

Oh, yeah, atomic bombs.

Atomic bomb was the end result of the technology of nuclear fission.

I'm gonna take it to school a little bit here.

I'm gonna do my best, Trevor.

Do you guys remember?

This is gonna be a long morning, folks.

Please, for the love of everything, holy, move on.

Um atomic bomb is made from the technology called nuclear fission.

Do you remember the Einstein equation E equals Mc squared?

I know you guys all think about these things a lot, but this is it.

Mass is proportional to energy.

They figured out a way to get that mass to release its energy.

One cup of uranium, enriched uranium, if the nuclear fission process was 100%, would create 89 kilotons, equivalent to 89 kilotons of TNT.

That's how much energy was brought out in that one moment.

That's my wife, so she's not walking up, she's not going to get an ice cream, it's fine.

I tried to figure out how much is 89 kilotons of TNT.

That's how much energy it was.

If you take a semi-truck and you fill the back, the trailer portion with TNT, like dynamite, and you started to fill truck after truck and you line them up bumper to bumper, it would start in Calgary and reach all the way to red deer.

And then if you lit all of that at the same time and had it all explode at the same time, that's the amount of energy that was given off by one cup of enriched uranium in a perfect world.

That's a lot.

That's why so many people died that day.

Now, here's the thing.

There's another way to take one cup of uranium, and you do the same process, nuclear fission, but you control it.

It will power thir uh 3,100 households for an entire year for all their energy needs.

Their lights, charging their cell phones, heating their spaces, cooling it, whatever they need.

About the same amount of energy.

How we use it has unbelievable impact in the world.

We can use any technology as a bomb and blow stuff up.

We can use technology too to create health, to support humans.

The technology is just a tool.

Most of the time it's not good or bad.

It's how we as humans use it.

And here's the thing.

I believe, and this is why I want to do this series so I was so passionate about this series.

When we look at our lives through a spiritual lens of what does our life look like more?

Whatever that means to you, Craigy helped us navigate some of that today.

Talking about your values is more.

What you want your life to look like more.

How the world is more.

Something supernatural, more.

How do we use that framing or that trajectory and then harness the tools of technology to be in alignment with that?

Isn't that how we create 3,100 homes for a year powered with the same tool that someone used to kill almost 200,000 people?

Now I hear all the time on social media technology's bad.

That technology is bad.

It's bad.

It's easier when we can just say it that way, isn't it?

A few hundred years ago, there's a group of weavers, people who created cloth.

Along came weaving machines.

Well, they were like, well, those weaving machines are gonna put us out of business.

So what they did is, I don't know if they did dynamite, but I'm gonna use dynamite.

They used some of that dynamite that we talked about.

And they put it on the weaving machines and they blew them up.

That technology is bad.

Their name actually were the Luddites.

That's why we get this term of anti-technology.

But here's the thing.

Yes, the weaving machines impacted their livelihood.

But take a second.

If you take a t-shirt made before we had weaving machines, can anyone guess how much money it would cost in real-time dollars?

Just yell at a number.

400 bucks.

400 bucks.

Anyone else?

The number is 4,000 for a single t-shirt.

If I paid 4 grand for this, this is the only t-shirt I'd own.

You'd see it every week.

It would be dirty and stinky, and that's all I would wear.

What's a current t-shirt?

I bought one, I bought this one.

It's like 20 bucks or something.

If we try and use black and white thinking and say technology is bad because it hurts some people, and it does, we run the risk of living in a world where we have a single t-shirt worth four grand, and that's all we wear.

And so it's never as simple as, well, just do this.

How do we navigate the complexity of a world that's changing and evolving with these different tools?

The Luddites, it was the weaving machine.

We can go further back.

Domestication of animals changed everything.

We figured out a way to attach a plow to an ox.

And instead of people digging by hand to figure out crops, we could industrialize creating food.

It's how we urbanized.

But when people come to me, they say, and I hear it all the time on social media, even pastors, they're like, no, no, it's all this way, it's all bad, or it's all good.

Really?

Yeah, no weaving machines, but$4,000 t-shirt.

What's the balance between those two things?

Remember, as we do this conversation, your brain, my brain, our brains want things simple.

Because it uses less energy.

If somebody says there's a simple answer to something, your brain's like, yeah, let's take that one.

Yay, I like that one.

It takes less energy.

Is it true?

I don't care.

It takes less energy.

So as we go through this, be aware of what your brain wants to do.

It wants to do, have a solution that takes less energy, not a solution that works, not a solution that's nuanced and is complex.

But let's be honest.

This is Friend Church.

If I ever tried a black and white solution with you guys, you guys would like boo me off the stage, wouldn't you?

You're like, yeah, we don't play that game, Klauson.

But through this process, be mindful.

If you have a voice that's saying to you right now, oh, this seems like a lot of work, it's just your brain saying, I want a simple solution because it takes less energy.

Is that the right solution for you?

That's a different question altogether, isn't it?

Remember, these tools have incredible power if we point them at good.

The same machine that will, you know, if we look at AI, the same machine that's probably figuring out the next drug that will save a chunk of our lives, is also burning through more energy than any single industry has ever done.

Actually, I haven't checked that.

Possibly.

Burn through more energy than any other industry has ever done.

That said, every tool has a cost, doesn't it?

If I take that same one cup of uranium and I turn it into energy, and that energy fuels a diagnostic medical machine that can look at my dad, who right now is at the end of his life, and it could figure out what's wrong with him and solve it, having the cost of radioactive waste to me seems like, yeah, I'll pay that.

If I take that same one cup and it fuels somebody who's a trillionaire to make another trillion dollars, I'm like, that nuclear waste doesn't seem worth it, does it?

The cost is as unique as the tool.

And each tool, the cost has to be applied to a situation.

And the situation is as unique as we are, I think.

We have this value at Friend Church.

We value each person's unique spiritual journey.

It says you are unique.

What you need to is different from me.

Who you are, where you are, where I am, who I am, what's going on in my life, what's healthy, what's unhealthy, it's all unique.

About 7 or 8,000 years ago, uh, people figured out that if you take grapes and they get mushed and you leave them in the sun for a while, what happens?

Oh, they ferment.

Really good technology, wasn't it?

And they figured out because the first technology wasn't what we use it for.

It was we have this high-calorie thing and we have no refrigeration.

So either every day we got to go find grapes so we can get some calories, or we figured out that if we ferment the grapes, we can keep those calories for a much longer period of time without refrigeration.

And we got winemaking.

Now, for some of us, wine is just wine.

It's just something good that goes with a steak.

It's not a big deal for us.

And some of us, that wine is a step towards the destruction of our lives through addiction.

Is the technology of winemaking good or bad?

Unique to the person.

It's even unique.

If you can you bring up the model for me, friend, our spiritual journey model.

The thing that we're gonna do in this series is I'm not gonna talk as much about technology as I'm gonna talk about the I, who we are, who you are.

Because like wine, it matters.

It also matters, so we're gonna focus on the I, but also the them.

If you're out with a friend who struggles with alcohol and is not healthy for them, should you be like, order another round, let's do this?

Or do you say, hey, this tool of fermentation isn't intrinsically anything.

It's unique to this moment of people, of whether or not this tool is used for good, creating energy or evil, making a bomb.

So as the bang comes up, I want to invite you to start this conversation by dropping into who you are.

Cregory did this beautiful.

Yeah, you guys can come on up.

Craig did this beautiful thing of uh he has a story about being made.

Who am I?

If you use the story of made, who how was I made?

Who what what is the thing that works for me?

Because once we figure out the I, we can figure out a lot more of how do we use technology for health, not for harm.

Often write a note on my board when I build a series.

It's kind of like the core thing that I want to think about.

And I had a few of them for this series, but one of them was this I think healthy people create a healthy world.

And the negative, unhealthy people create an unhealthy world.

So if I see technology as a tool, how do I use it to create the most healthy me I can be?

So that I create a healthy world around me.

So as that band plays, it's a song about forgetting who we are.

Drop into who you are, not in a judgmental sense, but in an honoring sense.

In an awareness that says who I am will color this entire conversation.

So start here.

Who am I?

I love that reminder.

I think this all starts in who we are, who you are, who I am.

So, in that feeling, I want to ground us in one of the most profound learning things that have ever happened to us.

And that's the painful experience of us, experiences of our lives.

Take a second.

Drop into those moments that have been unique to your life.

For me, one of my moments was my doctor, Dr.

Fong, she's on 16th Ave.

On the second floor, you walk into her place, and then you turn this kind of weird staircase and you go up this white staircase that is like medically clean but psychically filthy.

I don't want to touch the door, I don't want to touch anything.

It just feels like sickness.

And as I'm walking up one day, my phone rings and I pull my phone out and I see it's my dad.

And I say, Hey dad, can I call your back?

I'm going to the to see my doctor.

He says, No.

I've told this story before, but I remember the line.

You'll understand in a bit.

I'm going to try and keep my emotions down, or I'm going to lose my crap for a while.

It says, Your mom has cancer.

We spent the next four and a half years watching her die.

A really bad death.

When I think about the painful moments of my life, that's one of them.

My divorce is another one.

Losing our house.

What are the painful moments of your life?

Bring it to mind right now.

Have you lost someone you care deeply about?

Have you experienced pain that you never ever wanted?

Hold on to that.

I know it's not pleasant.

I won't leave you here.

I promise that.

But these are the moments that change us.

If we're willing to let them.

And this is where technology comes in.

Because your pain, this most beautiful, instructive, horribly hard moment, experience, whatever, can either be ex supported and helped through technology or undermined.

The people of the Bible were experiencing pain.

Theirs was abandonment.

The story is that their leader, Moses, went up to the top of a mountain.

In their era, they conceived of the divine as living on the top of a mountain.

Makes sense when I go to the top of a mountain.

Feels pretty divine up there.

But for them, that's they didn't talk to the divine.

That's not how they conceived of God.

What they did is their leader went and talked to God and then came back and brought God to them.

So their leader left.

So it'll be right back.

It didn't come back.

Day after day waiting.

Finally, the pain of the abandonment was so great they said collectively, We can't take this anymore.

The pain's too much.

Anyone giving a hardcore amen to the pain's too much?

Don't put up your hand, but you know what I'm feeling, right?

So here's what they did with technology.

They got together everyone's jewelry, everyone's made out of gold, and they melted it down and they made a statue of a golden calf.

Can you show up or put up the series image for me, friend?

That's where I got this image from.

They made an image of a golden calf.

And the technology that they're dealing with here is I didn't give it to her, so I'm trying to get her to put up something that I did not give to her, which is really tricky.

Sorry, friend, that's on me.

They created a golden calf.

The technology is an idol.

It's a psycho technology.

Anyone study John Vervake?

Great, great scholar, right?

He has this idea of that there's technologies of the mind, psycho technologies.

An idol is a psychotechnology.

There's many psycho technologies.

When you meditate, that's a psycho technology.

When you fast, psycho technology, psychedelics, all of this stuff.

It's a way of moving your mind.

So that what they did is instead of saying there is a conception of God up on the mountain that has left us, has abandoned us, and we feel pain, they said, We will make one and put it right here.

Now we don't feel abandoned.

See how the technology works?

It's right there.

Look, I'll move over here.

We're in control.

That day they had a party.

God is back in town.

And for a time they felt better.

Anyone else have some connection to trying to distract yourself from pain?

Don't put up your hand, but you know what I'm talking about, right?

I haven't made a golden idol recently to handle it, but it works pretty good.

Here's the problem.

A few days later they woke up in front of their golden idol and looked around and said, wait a second.

Did Moses come back?

No.

Does it feel like we're not abandoned?

No.

When we use technology to try and distract us from our pain, we lose the ability to learn from our pain.

I was driving back.

I just was on a dirt bike trip to uh the West Coast.

I was driving back just into Kamloops.

There's a lake just before Kamloops.

I think it's called Lake Kamloops.

There's a little area I'm coming over the edge.

And all of a sudden, I've told you my dad is nearing end of life.

We hit the last stage now.

He's still alive, but he's terminal.

They've pulled all treatment, but just want to make him comfortable.

And just this pain of sadness.

I'll never get to talk to my dad again.

And in the same way, I don't want to feel this crap right now.

I did not want to feel it then.

And so I went to turn on my stereo, which is my favorite way to distract myself.

Podcast.

Does anybody use LC's podcast?

God bless them.

My stereo had broke the day before, and I was like, sweet Jesus, what am I supposed to do with this?

I need a distraction.

I can't feel this.

People say it's easy.

Let's just ban social media.

Oh, I can distract with all kinds of things, folks.

Learning.

Anyone distract with a to-do list?

Well, that's a good one, too.

TV, the greatest of all things, right?

Sports, all these things.

We have more distractions.

For them to get rid of technology as a distraction, they would have to get rid of printing.

I can distract myself with a book.

The distraction is the golden idol.

The thing we use to distract us from, the very thing that could teach us something profound if we're willing.

So is my first expression of technology that is not used to help create health.

What is your golden idol of choice?

What's the thing you reach for when the emotions come up or the spitting in your mind comes up?

What's the thing that you don't even realize is you're doing and you realize you're doing it?

Right?

Like, I didn't even realize I brought up took up my phone and unlocked it.

Oh wow, I'm doing that.

No, that's the first step.

Now, if you're ninja level and you've already done this work, the next step is to ask, what is the emotion you're trying to distract yourself from?

The people of the Bible.

I think it was abandonment.

Anyone else that feel like abandonment's not a great feeling?

It's painful.

Neglect.

Sadness.

I do not enjoy sadness.

You can tell.

I'm willing to go there, but I'm like kicking and screaming.

I do not want to feel that.

I want to shove it down and never deal with it.

What's the emotion that you're trying to hide from that feels overwhelming, that feels too much, the pain is too great.

We can use technology for all kinds of things.

The newest technology has taken distraction to an art form.

My feed is literally curated perfectly for me.

Every dirt bike race there is in the world is on here.

What am I distracting myself from?

Now I told you, technology is just a tool, I believe.

So I decided with the inspiration of a guy named Les from our community, he's actually just in Edmonton today.

He said, Vince, have you ever thought about using technology to help?

And I was like, Well, yeah, like combustion engines, pretty awesome.

He's like, no, no, the newest technology, AI for spirituality.

I thought, well, isn't it just supposed to write emails that don't sound as terse and cranky?

He said, try it.

So the last couple days, I've spent some time creating a prompt.

That if you're open to it, I would encourage you to put into whatever AI you use.

Here's the prompt.

Can you throw up for me, friend?

I think there's an emotion I'm avoiding instead of working through, and I want help finding it in naming what I use to distract myself from it.

Kind of on brand, isn't it?

Walk me through this one question at a time.

Don't give me the whole list at once.

Wait for my answer before asking the next question.

It went a little fast.

I'm a little remedial, so I had to slow it down a little bit.

First ask me when I last felt something rise that I didn't want to sit with.

Okay, driving into the lake at uh Kamloops.

And what was actually happening right before it came up?

Do you see how this works?

The AI will literally walk you through.

It will help you name the emotion.

It'll help you name the deeper emotion.

It'll help you name like the core thing, and you're going, yeah, that's exactly what I'm feeling right now.

And round that is this.

I went through with my dad, and I was like, Well, I'm feeling sadness, of course.

Duh.

No, I'm feeling a loss that I'll never see him again.

So, what else are you feeling?

I was like, I feel a little guilty that the last time I saw him, I just kind of gave him a high five on the way out.

When he dies, is that enough of a greeting or a farewell?

It's like, oh, okay, I gotta deal with that now.

What's my distraction?

Learning.

Don't worry, you don't have to take a picture of this prompt.

I will send me an email, I'll send it to you.

I will also post it on all the show notes to everyone online.

You can go to the show notes, it's right there.

Podcast people, it's there.

Put it in your favorite AI and let it walk you through what you're not learning from, what you're trying to distract yourself from.

It is insanely good.

Insanely good.

Just so you know, this is another prompt.

You say start from scratch again because I want to do another one.

And you start with another emotion, and then you can say start from scratch, you do another one.

This is technology used to help us create health.

If technology is a tool, how we use it matters.

We can aim it towards creating health.

Healthy us, as I said, I believe creates a healthy world.

Or we can use it to build bombs.

Whatever that looks like.

And we can distract like crazy.

But the reality is when the distraction is done, when we put our phone down, the pain is still there.

The learning is still there.

My prayer for you, and it's for me too, more than I want to be a healthier human being.

I've suppressed sadness for too long.

I just worked with my counselor this week.

I I know what's going on.

I'm starting to know what's going on for me.

I'm learning to deal with those painful parts inside of me that all this stuff triggers and not have them come out ugly, not have them come out blowing things up.

That's not what I want.

For you and for me, may we use technology, maybe harness this tool to create the healthiest versions of us we possibly can.

And through that, create a world around us that is healthier than we found it.

I use an old school term.

Amen.

It kind of, if you're not from a church, it means hell yeah.

Like, yeah.

So let me say, hell yeah.

This is the first Sunday back.

We have a whole bunch of baking out at the back.

Don't rush out, hang out, visit with your friends, talk to the people who volunteered, say thank you, share some stuff with people, talk about your favorite distraction if you're comfortable with that.

Sharing with it always helps.

See you guys next week.

Have a great week.