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The book of Judges closes with these words:  In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes”.

              In my one room school days recess was my favourite subject.  In summer days we would often play our version of soccer.  We had no TV to watch how it should be played or rule books to explain and illustrate how it should be played.  So we made up our own rules.

              Goal boundaries were not defined by clearly visible markers like the foul poles in major league baseball parks or the pipe framed goals in real soccer games.  Our goals would often be marked by a stick, or a stone or even someone’s shoes!  This led to many heated opinions as to whether a shot was in our out.  Fortunately, while there could be heated discussions for the moment, they had no long term consequences and were generally forgotten by the next recess.

              This week I read a news article about a college professor who had designed an AI detector.  He used it to examine test results of his students and found that well over fifty percent of his students had used AI to write part or all of their assignments.  In simple words they cheated.  There was no indication of what the significance of that cheating would be in a real life situation.  But unlike the non impact of school recess activities think about the potential impact in real life if over fifty percent of students in medical school were open to cheating in their tests and assignments.

              The blame cannot be assigned to the new AI technology. In this case it just provides another, albeit more sophisticated, way one can cheat.  The real blame is with the human heart.  As the book of Judges closes the nation is entering a time when society would depend on personal morality, a dangerous approach to be sure.

              The professor’s results is just one indicator of the general decline in morality that is part of life in 2026.  We continue to see rising crime rates, little regard for personal purity and the list goes on.

              Jeremiah 17: 9 (NLT)  says: “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

              Only the word, the Holy Spirit and the power of the risen Christ can deal with the change of the wicked heart.

Pastor Dave