April 11th

A servo is a motor that can follow orders. I don’t mean that it just turns on or off at will, I mean that it follows, to the best of its ability, exactly what the master does. OK, maybe that’s oversimplifying things a little bit, since servos can’t actually sing or dance or recite poetry, but within their limited scope of activity, which is moving or spinning, they are totally faithful to the wishes of the operator. For instance, a servo driving a robot’s elbow joint will move that joint as quickly and as far as the operator wants it to. If she needs just a little delicate lift to lift a soup spoon, the servo will provide a delicate lift. If she demands a quick flip of the elbow to toss a frisbee, then so be it, the robotic elbow will whip that frisbee as fast as it can.
Servos have one other property: they are scalable. In other words you can make a servo as big or as small as you need it to be. No matter what size it is, it will still follow your orders, only in direct proportion to the scale of the machine. Thus, if our robot operator is running a desktop version of herself, the little tiny servo in the elbow will lift the little tiny spoon in a miniature motion that exactly mimics its commander. On the other end of the scale, if the robot is the size of a house, the much larger servo will still command a delicate movement of a much bigger spoon.
You can look at servos in one of two ways. You can either see them as being under control of the operator, or as mimicking their operator. I like the second option. I like the thought of a servo mimicking its operator because it makes me think of our relationship with God. We are made be God in God’s own image. Thus we are earthly versions of spiritual perfection. I’m not sure about the scale, but I imagine we’re quite a bit smaller than the creator that assembled the entire universe from nothing. Yet despite being tiny human versions of the almighty perfect spiritual head of the universe, like a servo imitating it’s operator’s actions, we too try to copy what God does.
We love in an attempt to imitate the way God loves us. We care in an imitation of God’s care for us. We even get mad in an imitation of the way God sometimes gets mad at us. That, however, is not necessarily a good thing. Servos, you see, are prone to errors. They don’t always get things right. Sometimes their mimicry is less than perfect and they spill the tea. Sometimes they just go haywire and do completely the wrong thing.
That’s our lot in life, too. Our imitation of God isn’t always perfect, and sometimes we get it all wrong. With a servo, there is usually a reset function, a switch that sets it back on track. With humans, we have a forgiveness function that straightens us out whenever we need it. The only difference is that servos act as they do with no conscious choice. We, on the other hand, must choose to imitate God. It is up to us to use our God reflecting God created image to do what’s right, and frankly, I can’t see why anyone wouldn’t choose to do so. After all, why not make the best possible use of our amazing selves than to honour the one who made us by doing our best to be just like His loving, lovable self? At least that’s the way I see it.