The Truth

The other day my daughter took a photo of me, pseudo punching towards the camera. I found an AI button on my phone (which I hadn't used before) and told it to make me look like a kung fu master. Here is what it spit out:

For reference, here's the original:

My first thought? Man, I look cool. Maybe I need to get back into karate...

Then I thought how amazingly real that photo looks. If I sent that to ten friends I think at least nine of them would assume I was going to a costume party dressed as a Shaolin monk and made a commitment in hairstyle for the role.

But my next thought was, Wow, my daughters are going to grow up in a world where nothing is true...

We've all seen or heard photos and videos of famous people saying things they never really said, all generated by Artificial Intelligence. But the farther along it goes, the less fake they appear to be. Now imagine the digital Wild West that we're heading into where nothing you read or see or take in can be trusted as authentic -- what are the ramifications of such a world?

An actual photo of me taking karate. Pretty different...

I began to pray for my daughters to have great discernment in finding truth, knowing that what God says is true is the most true thing in the Universe.

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" (John 14:6)

In all of the chaos of the world that keeps getting less and less reliable, there is a truth we can anchor ourselves to, and that is the person of Jesus, having come down from God the Father to show us what true living looks like. In a world of fakes that keep getting fakier (not a word, unless you are talking about skateboarding), may you let this be your foundation.

"Jesus is our foundation," from "Fill the Gaps" by The Smiley Kids.