Tools, when appropriately used, are the gifts of God for the works of God. But tools can also be twisted. Boats carried the gospel to the ends of the earth. But they also carried slaves in chains. The printing press spread the Bible to millions, but pornography to billions. In theory, technology is neutral, but in practice, it's never neutral because it's always caught up in human motives.
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Jesus didn't leverage technology for his impact. Instead of broadcasting his teachings far and wide, he invested in a few people deeply. He cared much more about transformation than impact. He cared much more about quality than quantity. In short, Jesus understood that tools and technologies may build towers, but they cannot build love.
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Every tool is powerful. No tool is neutral. Take fire in the right hands, warms your home. In the wrong hands, it burns it down. Take a gun in the hands of a soldier, it protects the innocent. In the hands of a murderer, it destroys life. AI is no different. AI can be useful, but it is never neutral.
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AI can be used for creativity and good, but it can also become a weapon in the enemy's hands, shaping your thoughts, distracting your prayers, and dulling your hunger for God. The fiercest battle you will ever face is only six inches wide, and that's the space between your ears. That's where the enemy plants doubts, shame, and distraction.
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Satan doesn't need you to worship him. He just needs to distract you from worshiping Jesus. If AI can fill your mind with noise, flood you with half-truths, or keep you scrolling endlessly, he's already got a foothold. And if we don't follow the instruction in 2 Corinthians to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ, then the enemy will gladly take our thoughts captive for us.
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The number one use of AI in 2025 isn't business or research. It's companionship. People are turning to AI for digital friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and simulated intimacy. Japan shows us a window into this future. They call it hikikomori, which is a crisis of young people retreating from society, shutting themselves in the rooms for months or even years, and living almost entirely through screens.
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It's a preview of where we're headed if we start believing that convenience can replace real connection. You know, first, convenience sounds like a gift. But when everything becomes convenient in your life, we actually miss out on growth. Romans 5 says this, suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. In other words, friction is not a glitch in the system. It's God's design for formation.
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AI demands nothing of you, but real life does. Raising a baby demands sleepless nights. Caring for a child with disability requires patience and sacrifice. Walking with a parent through Alzheimer's means showing up even when it hurts. Real relationships are not efficient. They're not run on your timetables. They require vulnerability, time, presence.
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These moments, the moments when we give and receive care, are the moments that form us most deeply. And if we train ourselves on tools that cost us nothing, then we will be unequipped to love when love costs us everything. Because we are formed in community and by community, then that means ChatGPT cannot be your therapist. It cannot be your pastor. It cannot be your confessor.
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AI may be useful for information, but the deepest work, things like therapy, pastoral counseling, the care of the soul, can't be minimized to a list of tips and tricks. Only a human being can sit with you in your fear, guilt, and shame and offer love and forgiveness in return. Only a human being can offer an authentic response over an automated one. Only a human being can be vulnerable and honor your vulnerability.
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Healing doesn't come through an algorithm. It comes when another human being looks you in the eye and says, me too. Technology can be an assistant, but it must never become our authority. AI is designed to please, not to disciple, to agree with you, not to sanctify you. And if we aren't careful, we will end up outsourcing our souls along with our spelling.
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Responsible engagement means setting boundaries. It means not not only asking, what can I do with this tool, but what is this tool doing to me? How is it forming me? AI is always quick, always agreeable, always predictable, but God doesn't work like that. He doesn't always respond immediately in prayers with a nice paragraph. That would be awesome. That hasn't been my experience.
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Sometimes he doesn't give me the answers that I want. Sometimes he's silent. But looking back, I'm so thankful for the silence and the waiting, because if I replaced that tension with instant answers, then I would be bypassing the process that actually forms my soul.
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When you have a question, where do you run? Do you go to the Lord? Or chat GBT? Because where you go with your questions reveals who you think possesses truth. And Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life. Do your questions reflect that?
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Jesus knows this all too well, because on the night before his execution, he pleaded with the Father for a shortcut. If you're familiar with the story in the Garden of Gethsemane, he begged, he said, there's got to be another way. Take this cup from me. There has got to be a shortcut. But in courage and faith, he said, not my will, yours be done.
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He avoided using his miracles to escape the pain, because the pain of being separated from you far outweighed the pain he would endure on the cross. So he went to the cross, taking the long road, not the shortcut, so that you don't have to. Friends, AI offers you shortcuts. Jesus offers you a cross.
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At the heart of all this is a convicting truth that our technologies, our advancements in society, they have become attempts to sort of become superhuman, to do the most amount of work in the least amount of time and energy. We use our technologies to escape the burdens of life. And today, we're tempted to think that if robots and AI just show up and they do all of our chores and cook and take care of our kids and organize our schedule and manage our finances, do all the stuff, that we have actually won back our freedom. But in reality, we will have lost part of what it means to be human.
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To be human doesn't just mean to experience pleasure without pain. It's to carry both. The magical, the mundane, the highs, the lows, the pains, the pleasures. How do I know this? Well, I look to the one who showed us what it means to be human. John 1 says, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. When Jesus came, he didn't hover above the grid like some super spiritual being. He came as a human, fully God, yes, but also fully human.
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AI can make bricks. It can even build them into towers, but it cannot breathe life into dust. AI can help brainstorm baby names, but Jesus came in the form of a baby. AI can generate words, but only Jesus is the word made flesh. AI can serve your work, but it cannot save your soul. AI can tell you about the steps of grief, but only Jesus died in your place. In other words, AI makes a great tool, but it makes a terrible God.
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Despite all the incredible things that ChatGPT can do, generate words, images, stimulate relationships, the one thing it can never do is bear God's image. Only you are made in the image of God. Not AI, not algorithms, not machines. You alone carry the dignity, the vocation, and the relational depth of bearing his likeness in the world.
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From the beginning, God chose to partner with humans, not machines. From Adam in the garden to Israel in the wilderness, to the disciples in the early church, God has always been choosing the ordinary, messy people as his co-workers. That's not an accident. It is his design. And your worth is not a result of the output or the work that you do in the day. It's bestowed by your maker.
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Your name is not something you build for yourself at Babel. It's something you receive from the Father. So the invitation for us is not to escape being human, but to embrace it with courage and faith. To discover holiness right in the middle of it. To see that your life, your actual ordinary, messy, beautiful life, your flaws and all, that is where the Father wants to meet you.
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To be human looks a lot like sitting in traffic on a Tuesday, paying bills on a Friday, and wondering if there's more to life than just the grind. It looks like the nervous excitement of a first date and the loneliness of scrolling your phone late at night wishing someone would reach out. It looks like changing diapers at 2 a.m. And it looks like watching your child walk across the graduation stage after years of effort.
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It looks like the surprise of getting the job you prayed for and the crushing weight of being told that you're no longer needed. It looks like the thrill of falling in love. And it looks like the ache of a marriage that feels colder than you ever imagined. It looks like holding a child's sticky hand as they tug you to wonder. It looks like gripping a cane when your knees won't hold you anymore. Looks like holding your newborn for the first time. And it looks like sitting beside a hospital bed when someone you love takes their last breath. This is the human experience.
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The things that we try to escape from are the very things that make life worth living. And this is the story Jesus entered into. Jesus shows us the way. The way of being fully human yet fully alive to the Father. Because he lived it, you've been given the Holy Spirit to live it too. The goal of your life is not to escape being human, but to be fully alive.
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We are meant not just for thin virtual connections, but for visceral, real connections to one another in this fleeting, temporary, and infinitely beautiful and worthwhile life. We are meant to die in one another's arms, surrounded by prayer and song, knowing beyond knowing that we are loved.
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So let me ask you this question. Is AI forming you into a person of love or letting you escape your humanity?
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