AI, God, and the Christian

We must be aware of what is happening with AI:

All things AI are moving along at a rapid pace – too rapidly, many experts believe. While it advances at an amazing rate, so too the steady stream of books that have appeared to discuss it, be they supportive, neutral or opposed to where all this is heading. See this somewhat recent reading list that I put together on this: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/01/17/what-to-read-on-ai-transhumanism-and-the-new-digital-technologies/

Christians have also been thinking and writing about this. Here I present three rather new volumes in which believers seek to make sense of the AI revolution and how it impacts our work and ministry. I simply introduce these three books by way of a quote or two from each.

Note: The first author describes himself as a “seeker” rather than a Christian, but he might be moving in that direction. And what he says in his book is the very sort of thing a biblical Christian would want to say.

Simon Christian Trepp, Servants of the Machine: AI and the Abdication of Human Responsibility (Quaternity Editions, 2026).

Al does not need to be self-aware for people to treat it as an authority. It only needs to seem capable of understanding. Once that illusion is accepted, we project onto it and with this comes the willingness to hand over decisions and moral responsibility to a statistical mirror of our own desires and fears.

 

I will not speculate about machine consciousness. I will also not urge a return to a pre-digital past or a destruction of our tools. I love technology and there are genuine benefits to our technologies when we use them wisely. However, this book is not really about technology. It’s about us and our tendency to abdicate. Our tendency to let something else take over the burden of judgement and choosing.

 

We will examine what is happening now. How people like you and me are deferring to algorithms in big and small matters. We will not focus on some future robot revolt, but on the mundane, immediate bargain we strike every day when we trade our autonomy for comfort and convenience. The threat I will outline is quiet and pervasive. It comes as relief, not as bold tyranny. It comes as a small series of surrenders that never announce themselves as surrender. (vii-viii)

To sum up, our contemporary approach to advanced technology, especially AI, exhibits many hallmarks of the sacred. All of it happens without us saying we are religious about it. Many who are most immersed in the cult of tech consider themselves sceptics or secular rationalists. That’s the subtlety, one can be intellectually atheistic and still emotionally and behaviourally partake in quasi-religious reverence of something like technology. That’s not without irony.

 

The purpose of highlighting this is not to accuse everyone of idolatry or to claim that smartphones are literal gods. It’s to notice a pattern. Belief does not vanish, it changes form. The human need for certainty and meaning finds outlets. In our era, technology has become a primary outlet. It offers, implicitly, a new covenant. Follow these systems, believe in progress and you will be saved, or at least taken care of.

 

Recognising this helps explain why so many are willing to treat AI outputs as authoritative or to let tech companies guide the norms of society. If we see technology as quasi-sacred, we are far less likely to question its moral or social implications. We might, like devotees in any religion, dismiss sceptics as heretics. And indeed, in modern discourse, those who question the beneficence of Big Tech are sometimes labelled as anti-progress or irrationally fearful.

 

We have moved the altar from the temple or the church into the palm of our hand. And there, in the quiet of the interface, we perform one of the most ancient of religious acts. We reveal what we hide from everyone else. (pp. 31-32)

Peter Goeman, Artificial Intelligence and the Christian (Sojourner Press, 2024).

In the Christian worldview, God is concerned not only with the final outcome but also with how we achieve it. The process is as significant as the result; one can pursue a noble goal in an inappropriate or harmful manner. This principle is central to the Christian faith and is especially relevant in the context of AI. It prompts us to carefully consider the methodologies and ethical approaches we employ, rather than merely focusing on the end products. By emphasising the importance of both means and ends, we ensure that our actions align with God’s standards and promote righteousness in our use of technology….

 

Another example is the growing trend of creating AI personas to interact on social media. Some might be tempted to use such technology to advance noble causes, such as spreading the Gospel. Hypothetically, one could create a fictitious AI-driven persona designed specifically for evangelism, engaging users online with tailored messages about faith. While the intention behind this approach is to share the Gospel widely, the ethical implications of such a strategy are concerning.

 

The use of AI personas for evangelism raises significant ethical concerns. First and foremost, Such an approach involves deception – users may believe they are engaging with a real person when they are, in fact, interacting with an artificial entity. This undermines the essential elements of trust and authenticity, which are critical for effective evangelism. Evangelism hinges on genuine relationships and meaningful interactions, which AI, by its nature, struggles to replicate. AI lacks the nuanced understanding required to assess the complexities of individual situations and engage in deep, spiritual conversations. Effective evangelism not only requires the right answers but also demands discernment about when and how those answers should be conveyed. As relational beings, we rely on wisdom and empathy to navigate these scenarios, something AI is currently incapable of achieving.

 

We could give a myriad of other examples, but the point is fairly obvious. Just because we can use AI for something doesn’t mean we should. As Christians, we need to be wise and discerning, understanding that certain aspects of teaching, evangelism, and life necessarily must come from internalised meditation on Scripture. (pp. 50-52)

Sean O’Callaghan and Paul Hoffman, AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep: Leading and Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Baker, 2025).

How is AI shaping religious-spiritual activities? Perhaps surprisingly to some, AI is proving beneficial for Christian mission. SIL International, formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics, is “a global, faith-based nonprofit that works with local communities around the world to develop language solutions that expand possibilities for a better life.” Its “core contribution areas are Bible translation, literacy, education, development, linguistic research and language tools.” The organization endeavors to tackle issues like poverty, hunger, disease, child mortality, gender inequality, maternal health, and environmental sustainability, to name a few. SIL incorporates AI programs such as M2 Chatbot Platform, Serval, Augmented Quality Assessment, and tools.bible to address these giants. SIL is affiliated with Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Global Missional AI Summit.

 

On the other hand, unfortunately, AI has been a subversive force in the ways it has assisted social media in challenging and undermining Christian faith and formation. Studies and stories abound. For our purposes here, however, we underscore the “attention economy” and what Shoshana Zuboff has called “surveillance capitalism,” a system that “claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data,” which AI analyzes and harnesses to “nudge, coax, tune, and herd behavior toward profitable outcomes.” In other words, dominant tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta devote enormous resources to making their products widely available and undeniably addictive, harvest their users’ data, create intrusive and intimate profiles of them, and then sell this info to the highest bidders while also deploying it for their own advantage. Essentially, they are commodifying human attention.

 

More pointedly, social media—by enabling “fake news,” echo chambers, and outrage-driven algorithms—has been used by various political and interest groups to distract and divide millions across the United States and beyond. This is why the European Union is drafting legislation that prohibits “manipulative systems.” To no one’s surprise, tech companies are resisting regulation.” For us, this brings to mind Screwtape advising Wormwood on the degenerative power of distraction—that is, “the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy” feed the victim’s “wandering attention,” which over time results in “a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them.” The church has gulped the potion of distraction and sedation offered by social media, and it is putting our ecclesial life, our worship and witness, into a debilitating stupor. (pp. 40-41)

Being human in the age of technology means being shaped by technology—but not the kinds of technology to which we have become accustomed. New and forthcoming technologies are shaping us from the inside out; they surround us and direct us down predetermined paths that are difficult to avoid as they are often algorithmically based. In the past, all technology was external to humanity. By its very nature and because of the fragmented kinds of societies in which we lived, technology prior to the digital world was very much limited in its influence and spread. For example, during the Industrial Revolution, even though new forms of technology emerged in all developing countries, machines could be found in factories and industries rather than one’s living room or bedroom, the café in which one drank coffee, or the train one took to work. These technologies were location specific. Now, technology is everywhere, and it is on the cusp of shaping our world in a totalizing way. Advances in biotechnology and bioengineering mean that even our own bodies become technologized, and this will become only more and more common. We are now immersed in this digital world and cannot avoid its influence. As Christians, our task is to help shape and direct it so that it reflects kingdom principles and brings freedom and flourishing rather than bondage. (pp. 108-109)

These quotes give you some idea of what these books have to offer. There are other volumes penned by Christians on these matters, but these three are a good place to start.

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