On Resisting Our Dumbed-Down Culture

We should not surrender to this downward spiral:

I write a lot. And a lot of folks copy, share, reprint and republish what I write. Sometimes they do it without me even knowing about it. Sometimes they ask me first. But either way, I am increasingly finding that some of these folks want to take some heavy-duty liberties with my pieces.

Now that can be a good thing – I am not the world’s greatest writer. But too often they are doing radical changes for various reasons, including the desire to greatly reduce the length of what I have written, in the interest of keeping the attention of contemporary readers.

They want everything REAL short and sweet. And worse yet, they think that relying on AI is a great step forward. I beg to differ – big time. I have had to tell some of these folks that I am not a fan of chopping things down to hyper-short pieces and relying on machines to do the dirty work.

I am seeing this editing trend more and more in various Christian circles, and I have had to respond to some of these folks as well. To be honest, I have very real concerns about all this. Here are a few key things that I believe must be said – and carefully considered – about this.

Sadly it seems that too much of this is simply an accommodation to the surrounding culture. Instead of challenging it to excellence – including intellectual excellence – we are willing to dumb ourselves down to accommodate it. Whether that actually means we are helping it or reaching it better is not at all clear.

We keep being told that we must keep everything short. Nothing over 400 words. Keep it down to a 2-minute read. Use videos and pictures, etc. But there are significant problems with this approach. Most folks today have the attention span of a goldfish. I for one do not think we should cater to this, or in effect promote it. Our culture is being destroyed by being dumbed down, and by allowing the vital arts of reading, thinking and reasoning to be dispensed with.

That is a great way to help destroy Western civilisation, so it is odd that conservative Christian groups would more or less give it a hearty imprimatur. It is thinking Christians who will help save the day, not dumbed-down and illiterate ones.

And related to this is how we demand everything in an instant. Christians are increasingly not reading books anymore. They are not even reading serious articles – they prefer a 2-minute YouTube video or a 20-second TikTok offering. If a sermon goes over 10 or 15 minutes, they get restless and reach for the car keys. I do not want to contribute to this downward trend.

I suspect most believers today have a hard time reading the Bible for more than a few minutes a day – if they do in fact read it daily at all. I suspect they would prefer the Readers’ Digest version of Scripture, or a cartoon or video version. Again, I do not think we should cater to that or encourage it – we should instead resolutely stand against it.

The push to have really short articles, and to only have one-sentence paragraphs grates on many writers, including myself. Paragraphs exist for a reason, and eliminating them for whatever reason is far from ideal. Why put up the white flag of surrender here?

And as Christians should know full well, the issues we are dealing with and fighting over (be it theological truth, culture war issues, political debates and ideologies, etc) are NOT something we can properly deal with using bumper-sticker cliches, partial sentences, and super-short articles. Deep and complex ideas and issues deserve to be carefully and thoroughly discussed and assessed and not chopped down to a two-minute read.

Yet some of these folks will say that a big part of this ‘editing’ process in making articles briefer means that more folks will read more of my stuff – and that of others. Um, just the opposite of course will happen: people will be reading less of our articles if half of the text is axed or radically reworded!

Sure, most writers can have some things shortened or left out, but if it comes down to AI or a machine determining what stays and what goes, I would rather stick with what the author has chosen to write. Generally speaking: humans yes; machines, not so much. I make that case in more detail in this generic piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/12/09/writing-and-ai/   

Just one quote from that article that I heartily concur with: “I have never used a ghost writer nor AI for writing in my name. I never will. I believe in authentic authorship under God Almighty” (Christian apologist, professor, and social media friend, Douglas Groothuis).

It is one thing for AI to edit MY writing. I can perhaps live with that. But when AI edits the quotes of others that I feature in my articles, that is quite another. I try to respect what other authors have written, and I try to take great care in how I quote them. AI does not seem to care about that at all.

As but one example of this, I was recently sent a heavily redacted version of an article I had written. I was asked what I thought. I said I was NOT impressed. My original piece of some 1300 words was chopped back to around 700 words. So just over half of the piece remained. Again, if we think the best way to reach an increasingly lost and uneducated generation is to go along with their being dumbed-down and having almost no ability to sit still, read, study and think, then this edit would be OK.

But I do not write for that reason. I write to help people think, and to help turn this culture around. So I am not thrilled with chopping things down just to keep things short in the somewhat vain hope that we might reach more people or get more clicks.

And there were basically no paragraphs left, just short sentences (if they can be called that). Many were just one- or two- or three-word phrases! It almost reads like a string of bumper sticker cliches. That is not an article. That is not a serious piece of writing that will help change a culture. That is catering to 10-year-olds. It may be trendy in some circles to do this, but I cannot see it doing much at all to serve Christ and the Kingdom, let alone the Christian mind and the urgent need for rigorous thought and reflection.

Worse yet, every single quote that I had in my article had been hacked out, replaced with rather trite and anodyne remarks that tell us very little. Again, editors (whether human or machine) can take out most of my content, but when other important authors and leaders have their remarks completely removed or radically changed, then we no longer have serious writing or editing. That is not my idea of treating a person’s words and work carefully, respectfully and with integrity.

The truth is, most more-or-less good writers can use SOME editing and some improvements along the way. But when things get so heavily changed, then we no longer have writers who are seeking to do their best for God and his glory. Instead, we have AI and machines taking over and becoming the real author. So we might as well all just go on an extended vacation and let them do the job!

I will take a thoughtful Christian human being with the indwelling Holy Spirit any day of the week over some soulless ChaptGPT or some other machine being put in charge of editing what I and other authors have written – especially when it comes to Christian content. What will busy Christians do next? Allow all sermons, prayers and devotionals to be done by AI?

I really do NOT want my articles to be so hacked out of shape, turned into a string of half-sentences and numerous bold subtitles. Except for perhaps the book of Proverbs, I am so glad the biblical authors did not go down this path. They wrote lengthy pieces with real, solid content.

Yes, call me an old guy, and call me old school. But I very much worry about how we are allowing the erosion of the Christian mind and the elevation of AI to somehow save the day. It will not save the day, and it simply contributes to our cultural idiocy.

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