I Don’t Know What’s Real Anymore

An iPad, a Dog, and the Question of Truth

It was my Dad talking. 87 years old, an iPad in his hands. He’d been scrolling videos on-line.

Not the Queen buying street food in Camden, not Donald trump showing off his pecs in the gym, but a video of a dog rescuing a small child from a room seconds before the ceiling came down. 

I nodded at him. I mean, he had a point. With the accelerating genius of AI, just about anything can gallop across our screens. But how can we know what’s true?

For example, I asked Chat GPT to take an uploaded photo of myself and turn it into a painting by Rembrandt. Within 60 seconds, I was looking at my portrait by the Dutch master.

AI in Everyday Life

Wanting to change my car and trade in my 15-year-old estate, I used AI twice.

Firstly, I described, my budget, all my lifestyle needs, my age, my family situation, the kind of holidays and adventures I hope to have, even the dimensions and breed of my dog.

It took a few seconds then pointed me to the exact make and model.

Secondly, having tracked a promising local dealership with such a car in stock, I asked ChatGPT to draw up a script and strategy for haggling and getting the best part exchange deal.

The newer car is now parked outside my home, and I am delighted with it. Thank you, AI.

But as the screen in our hands increasingly becomes the portal through which we view and understand the world, how do we know when to believe our own eyes?

Doubting Thomas and the Need for Evidence

When ‘doubting Thomas, heard his mates raving about how they had seen Jesus alive, post crucifixion, speared side and burial, he was refreshingly honest about his disbelief.

‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will not believe. (John 20:25)

A week later, when the disciples were gathered along with Thomas, Jesus appears amongst them, even though the doors were locked. He turns to Thomas and says:

‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe.’

And Thomas’ response?..

Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and My God!’

Life With and Without God

In the first part of my life, the first 26 years, I tried to live without God in my life.

For the last 35 years, I’ve tried to live with God in my life. Chalk and cheese.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been huge challenges, painful moments, and of course countless failures, but I know which part has benefitted from direction, assistance, purpose and meaning.

Jesus famously contrasted the purpose he brings to people’s lives in stark contrast to that of a thief.

‘The thief comes only to steal and destroy; I have come that they may have life, life in all its fullness.’ (John 10:10)

In my experience, having Jesus in your corner, makes the challenge of life entirely different.

So, you won’t be surprised to learn that I regularly pray that my 3 grown-up children will encounter the power and lordship of Jesus, alive and large in their own lives. I want them to have ‘life in all its fullness’.

A Father’s Story: The Long Road of Illness

And so, it is time to tell you about a recent miracle.

My middle child, the same son who nearly drowned in a swimming pool in France, the same son who survived a breath-deprived night of Croup in Kenya, grew up strong and capable.

Except that whilst studying History at Uni, he started having seizures out of the blue. Brain scans revealed a tangle of malformed vessels in his brain, 4cm by 6cm.

The experts predicted that he would have a stroke at some point in the future and administered Gamma Radiation Therapy to try and shrink the problematic tangle in his brain.

A year later he had a massive stroke. In the first week his chances of survival were 50-50. The National Neurological Hospital told us that if he lived, he would have no movement in the left side of his body. He survived that first week.

The Fight Back

When he came out of his coma, we began a determined and long journey to kid his brain that his left side could work again.

He relearnt how to walk. But his left arm and hand hung motionless and unresponsive. We continued everyday to support him in his fight for recovery of movement.

One day, months and months later, he showed that he could move one of his fingers. Much, much later, he would regain 90 % of his function, run a half marathon, qualify as a barrister and get married.

But still he lived with the jeopardy of a further stroke; the malformed tangle of vessels, still an ominous bomb-like reality in his head.

A Second Bleed and Renewed Fear

Six years after the first stroke, and one week away from the birth of a first child, he had another bleed. Back at the National Neurological Hospital, his brain was scanned and this much smaller bleed confirmed. The jeopardy, never departed, still looming loud and large.

The medical team seeking to understand more, requested an Angiogram. Dye to be introduced to the artery feeding his brain, in order to chart flow and map the architecture of the offending tangle.

A Prayer for a Miracle

Just before the appointment I sat with my aged parents around their kitchen table. We prayed for my son and asked Jesus that not only would the doctors be astonished to find the tangle gone, but that this miracle would communicate the reality of God alive and well and involved in his life.

I was babysitting my grandson when his father rang me from the hospital.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

‘It’s the strangest thing, but they can’t find it. They keep saying it’s gone!’

The Miracle Confirmed

Days later my son received a written confirmation from the Director of Neurosurgery. ‘I am delighted to tell you that the Arteriovenous Malformation has completely resolved.’

He can’t quite believe it and awaits the face to face follow up meeting with the medics, to see the scans and hear them say it again, out aloud in the same room, in person, up close and personal.

I don’t blame him for doubting. It’s hard to let go of the thing that has haunted each day for the last 7 years.

Praise you Lord Jesus and thank you from the bottom of a father’s heart.