{"id":7701,"date":"2025-06-20T08:04:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T15:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7701"},"modified":"2025-06-20T08:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T15:04:18","slug":"the-four-loves-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2025\/06\/20\/the-four-loves-introduction","title":{"rendered":"The Four Loves: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/a>
The Four Loves by CS Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Some of us are read\u00ading through C.S. Lewis\u2019 The Four Loves this sum\u00admer for the Chi Alpha Sum\u00admer Read\u00ading Project<\/a>. Every oth\u00ader week I\u2019ll post some reflec\u00adtions on the read\u00adings. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we com\u00adplete our first read\u00ading, the ten pages of chap\u00adter 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What stood out to me is some\u00adthing that prob\u00ada\u00adbly seemed like a throw\u00adaway obser\u00adva\u00adtion back in 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I was look\u00ading for\u00adward to writ\u00ading some fair\u00adly easy pan\u00ade\u00adgyrics on the first sort of love and dis\u00adpar\u00adage\u00adments of the sec\u00adond. And much of what I was going to say still seems to me to be true\u2026. Every time I have tried to think the thing out along those lines I have end\u00aded in puz\u00adzles and con\u00adtra\u00addic\u00adtions. The real\u00adi\u00adty is more com\u00adpli\u00adcat\u00aded than I sup\u00adposed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Lewis knew what he intend\u00aded to write, but try\u00ading to work it out clear\u00adly enough to put it on paper showed him that his think\u00ading was fuzzy. Con\u00adtra\u00addic\u00adto\u00adry, even. Putting feel\u00adings, impres\u00adsions, and assump\u00adtions into words is clar\u00adi\u00adfy\u00ading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtive AI has entered the chat<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chat\u00adG\u00adPT and its com\u00adpeti\u00adtors are tools and they have a place, but please don\u2019t let them under\u00admine your abil\u00adi\u00adty to write out a clear argu\u00adment. Writ\u00ading what you think is one of the only ways to force your\u00adself to grap\u00adple with what you think. Talk\u00ading it out can also help, but it\u2019s not as bru\u00adtal as writ\u00ading. The flow of con\u00adver\u00adsa\u00adtion can allow you to gloss over a weak point in your argu\u00adment, but hav\u00ading to write out each of your assump\u00adtions and infer\u00adences on paper does\u00adn\u2019t pro\u00advide such wig\u00adgle room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think most of you know that I write my ser\u00admons out word-for-word and then try to deliv\u00ader the ser\u00admon with\u00adout con\u00adsult\u00ading my notes. Why do I write my ser\u00admons out if I don\u2019t intend to read the result\u00ading man\u00adu\u00adscript? It\u2019s for pre\u00adcise\u00adly the rea\u00adsons I men\u00adtioned above: to write it out means that any weak spots in my think\u00ading become clear. I still make mis\u00adtakes in both inter\u00adpre\u00adta\u00adtion and argu\u00admen\u00adta\u00adtion, but I avoid a lot of obvi\u00adous mis\u00adtakes that would oth\u00ader\u00adwise crop up. Deliv\u00ader\u00ading the ser\u00admon with\u00adout the notes is about bet\u00adter con\u00adnect\u00ading with the audi\u00adence. If my think\u00ading on the sub\u00adject is suf\u00adfi\u00adcient\u00adly clear, I don\u2019t need the notes except for when I\u2019m quot\u00ading a pas\u00adsage from the Bible or some oth\u00ader source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtive AI play into this? I don\u2019t use AI to write my ser\u00admons because the goal isn\u2019t a well-writ\u00adten ser\u00admon, the goal is a thought-through ser\u00admon. And specif\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly, a thought-through-by-me ser\u00admon. A well-writ\u00adten ser\u00admon is most\u00adly the byprod\u00aduct of prepar\u00ading a well-thought-through ser\u00admon. And so if I were to use a tool like chat\u00adG\u00adPT to write a ser\u00admon for me, I would be an actor, not a preach\u00ader. Actors need scripts. Preach\u00aders need con\u00advic\u00adtions. I need to know (and I need you to know) that I believe what I preach, and I can only know I believe it ful\u00adly if I write it myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if I became con\u00adfi\u00addent that a Chat\u00adG\u00adPT ser\u00admon would be bet\u00adter than mine and you would enjoy it more, that would\u00adn\u2019t sway me. Preach\u00ading that way would enfee\u00adble me, per\u00adhaps even cor\u00adrupt me. To be a preach\u00ader means many things, but among them is the claim that I real\u00adly mean it. Not just that I mean the things I say in that spe\u00adcif\u00adic ser\u00admon. I have to mean the whole Chris\u00adtian\u00adi\u00adty thing. To be a preach\u00ader is to claim that I\u2019m doing my best to fol\u00adlow Jesus. Even if I nev\u00ader preached a ser\u00admon against slan\u00adder, if I had a habit of post\u00ading slan\u00adder\u00adous things on social media you would nonethe\u00adless judge me a hyp\u00adocrite and some\u00adone who should be kept away from the pul\u00adpit. To stand in the pul\u00adpit is to stand before God and man and say, \u201cI real\u00adly mean it and I\u2019m try\u00ading.\u201d Part of that \u201creal\u00adly mean\u00ading it\u201d is man\u00adi\u00adfest in the way I pre\u00adpare ser\u00admons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t a new thing. Even before tools like chat\u00adG\u00adPT came along every preach\u00ader had the option of pla\u00adgia\u00adriz\u00ading oth\u00ader preach\u00aders\u2019 ser\u00admons. It has always been looked down upon, part\u00adly for its dis\u00adhon\u00adesty (one of the implic\u00adit claim of a ser\u00admon is \u201cthis is what I came up with\u201d) and part\u00adly because it meant the preach\u00ader was\u00adn\u2019t grow\u00ading \u2014 the act of craft\u00ading a ser\u00admon makes you a bet\u00adter Chris\u00adt\u00adian (or forces you to embrace hypocrisy) and a clear\u00ader thinker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not an anti-AI rant. I will some\u00adtimes use gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtive AI after I\u2019ve writ\u00adten my ser\u00admon. I will give it prompts like \u201cHere is the man\u00adu\u00adscript of a ser\u00admon I intend to preach to a group of Stan\u00adford stu\u00addents. What\u2019s the biggest blind spot in this ser\u00admon?\u201d or \u201cWhat\u2019s the most dev\u00adas\u00adtat\u00ading cri\u00adtique you can make of it?\u201d or \u201cIs there any\u00adone this might need\u00adless\u00adly offend?\u201d And then I\u2019ll take that feed\u00adback and use it to refine the ser\u00admon. Using AI like this is fine because it forces me to strength\u00aden my think\u00ading and wres\u00adtle with my con\u00advic\u00adtions. At times the AI has sug\u00adgest\u00aded that I should take out a poten\u00adtial\u00adly offen\u00adsive claim or tone down some rhetoric and I\u2019ve thought, \u201cNah \u2014 this is what peo\u00adple need to hear and this is how they need to hear it.\u201d Oth\u00ader times I con\u00adsid\u00ader the feed\u00adback and say, \u201cHuh \u2014 I had\u00adn\u2019t thought about it that way. Yeah, let me reword that so that I\u2019m mak\u00ading the point I intend to make and not being dis\u00adtract\u00ading\u00adly offen\u00adsive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obvi\u00adous\u00adly, none of you are preach\u00aders (at least, none of you has that as a key part of your job). But there is prob\u00ada\u00adbly some area of your life where you need to be able to think clear\u00adly and to know that you have thought clear\u00adly. Don\u2019t allow the won\u00adder\u00adful tool of gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtive AI to keep you from devel\u00adop\u00ading that skill. If you\u2019d like to mull that over, I rec\u00adom\u00admend the won\u00adder\u00adful and very short sto\u00adry The Whis\u00adper\u00ading Ear\u00adring<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis, of course, had no idea that such a thing as gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtive AI would ever be invent\u00aded. He just men\u00adtioned that his think\u00ading about love was unclear until he tried to write about it. One of the beau\u00adties of read\u00ading a well-thought-through book is that it con\u00adtin\u00adues to have rel\u00ade\u00advance decades after it was writ\u00adten and that its insights are rel\u00ade\u00advant to new domains that did not exist when its argu\u00adments were craft\u00aded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re not read\u00ading The Four Loves<\/em> with us, I high\u00adly rec\u00adom\u00admend it. You can down\u00adload a free copy at archive.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of us are read\u00ading through C.S. Lewis\u2019 The Four Loves this sum\u00admer for the Chi Alpha Sum\u00admer Read\u00ading Project. Every oth\u00ader week I\u2019ll post some reflec\u00adtions on the read\u00adings. Today we com\u00adplete our first read\u00ading, the ten pages of chap\u00adter 1. What stood out to me is some\u00adthing that prob\u00ada\u00adbly seemed like a throw\u00adaway \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cThe Four Loves: Intro\u00adduc\u00adtion\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[230,344,232],"class_list":["post-7701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-summer-reading-project-2025","tag-the-four-loves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-20d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7701"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7704,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701\/revisions\/7704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}