The church has always had a unique place in moments of change. But we historically have been slower to the table with modern technology.

When electricity showed up, people feared what they did not understand. Some went to the point and said that electricity was “demons in the walls”.

Electric guitars created tension in worship spaces. And when the internet launched, some believers looked at three W’s and assumed it had to mean something evil because it knew too much and was globally connected.

Here is the pattern. When something shows up that looks powerful and beyond normal human ability, fear kicks in. We know that only God is all knowing and all powerful. But when we see something else operating at scale, moving fast, processing information beyond us, it creates tension. Even so, we quickly adapt. Now we stream services, tithe online, and use the very platforms we once questioned. Electric instruments are used in essentially every worship service!

AI fits that pattern, but the scale is different. It combines electricity, the internet, and advanced computing into one evolving system. In just a few years, it has already reshaped entire industries. This may be the most powerful invention humanity has ever created. That should not make us afraid. But it should wake us up and cause us to be on both offense and defense.

AI presents real threats and real opportunities at the same time. It can displace jobs, concentrate power, distort truth, automate harm, and influence behavior in ways we are only beginning to understand. At the same time, it can accelerate research, improve medicine, expand education, and help us advance the gospel at scale.

That tension is heavy. But like fire… it can burn a house down. Or it can also keep a family alive. The issue is not pretending the fire is harmless. The issue is whether the church is positioning itself to understand, so we can govern it.

AI is quickly becoming general technology just like electricity, the internet, and cell phones. As crazy and out of the box as it may sound,our children and their children will live and work among robots. They will live in a truly AI assisted society.

Like it, love it, Hate it… We have a choice about how we choose to engage now!

We cannot be hypocritical. We cannot use AI when it is convenient and condemn it when it stretches us. If we use streaming platforms, smart assistants, or social media algorithms, we are already interacting with it. So the real decision is not whether AI exists. The real decision is whether it will happen to us or whether we will engage and govern it with clarity. In all of our getting, we have to get understanding.

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. That means we think clearly. We move wisely. We do not panic. And we do not ignore what is in front of us.

As a pastor, an IT engineer, and a business owner, I sit in this tension every day. I am forced to wrestle with this and it feels heavy and lonely. I am not trying to advocate for technology, and I am not trying to stand against it either. I am simply saying the church has always shown up when things were hard. We are positioned to stand for righteousness. In Proverbs it teaches us that righteousness lifts a nation, and when wrong drives a people, it pulls them down over time. AI is becoming part of the systems that shape nations. It influences economies, education, communication, and power structures. If righteousness lifts a nation, then righteousness has to be present in the systems shaping that nation. If the church does not help shape ethical AI, who will?

Barna has released new State of the Church data, and the landscape is shifting. Nearly one in three adults in the U.S. say they would trust spiritual advice from AI as much as advice from a pastor. Among younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials), that number is even higher: two in five. The church has to be informed, develop a plan and implement strategies that put spiritual leaders at the helm in order to shape this for our children’s children.

If we are not at the table, the only guiding principles left will be financial gain and power because that is where humanity naturally drifts without a Christ centered anchor. I have chosen to step into the conversation through partnerships with Gloo AI, which is purpose-built for people of faith. The question my team and I keep asking is simple. How do we safely and ethically use this technology to advance the gospel and human flourishing? There’s no easy answer, but we have to relentlessly and tirelessly seek it out, especially as AI advances.

The urgency is obvious. AI is here. Now pastors, theologians, technologists, and ethical thinkers at the same table. We need to lead from a biblical foundation. And if we fail to engage with clarity and courage, AI will shape our communities without our voice.

Troy Evans works at the intersection of technology and urban ministry, with more than 25 years of experience helping leaders create meaningful change. He is the founder of SimpleNow, a bi-vocational IT engineer and church planter who has launched four urban churches and helped organizations integrate AI and technology in practical ways.

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The Lives We Won’t Give Up | Aaron M. Renn

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When Did We Stop Subduing the Earth?

M.I. Terzian challenges Christians to reclaim the Dominion Mandate as builders and civilizers, arguing that retreating into polite irrelevance hands authority to those with no moral basis to wield it…

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9 days ago · 2 likes · M.I. Terzian

The classic book that taught us how to Believe!

Believe! is a timeless expression of American principles, reintroduced in this 50th anniversary edition for a new generation. As we approach America’s 250th, its message speaks to both personal renewal and the opportunity for a broader national comeback.

If the book has resonated with you, we’d be grateful if you’d consider leaving a review on Amazon.

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A few years ago I was in Joshua Tree National Park watching a line of satellites cross the sky. I had seen the same train of satellites in Asia, Europe, and the Pacific Islands. They have become sentinels over earth, always there if you know where to find them.

What were the odds 10,000 years ago when God said “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it,” that it would actually happen? In many ways, despite our best efforts at self-sabotage, humans have been incredibly successful in subduing the earth.

We often forget that before the cross, before Abraham, and before Babel, there was the Dominion Mandate, and clearly it is still in effect.

The Dominion Mandate is our ultimate quest–God’s explicit purpose for our being. Its derivative, the Great Commission, commands us to make Christian disciples of all nations. It’s striking that in our present obsession with “choosing good quests” and “appearing Christian” (nice, fair, stable, reliable, honest), we are blindly and hastily trading in God’s ultimate commands in favor of things much less interesting or meaningful. We make gadgets instead of tools, and politely appease instead of spreading God’s word.

For believers, this aversion to Dominion comes in two flavors. First, we are so often worried about appearing arrogant—being seen as building tools of domination, rather than dominion–that we have largely abandoned and stigmatized “subduing the earth.” Second, we are worried about how being “boring”, polite Christians might impact our competitive edge, and because of that we often become boring, polite seculars.

I assumed that when I first picked up the Bible for myself in my late teens, I would find a basis for all of the moral emphasis and piety I saw in the church. Instead, I saw the opposite. Those who cared most about being “right” had almost no ability to be “good” or follow God. As it turns out, you have to choose.

Goodness Versus Rightness

Being “good” inherently means you are more often right, but that is not the aim. Following God means that you are more often good and right despite not caring much about either.

When following God conflicts with being good or right, we ought to follow God. There are many in Christian culture that cannot distinguish God from their definition of ‘good’ or right, and so are neither while desiring both. Many have discovered that you can appear “right” about almost anything by criticizing it and doing nothing of consequence yourself.

So say we want to be the best at subduing the earth, accomplishing the great commission, and building tools of dominion rather than domination. In the history of science, the greatest odds of doing hard, irrefutable work is generally not found in those popular secular scientists whose theories are still being debated today, but most often with those who looked past the traditions of our faith, fell in love with the person of Christ, the majesty of God, and did rather unpopular and irrational things because of it.

Take God at his word and imagine with me what the implications of the uncompromised dominion mandate would have been had we not excluded ourselves from Eden. Would we have the same, similar, or greater population? Would we have tools like cars and satellites? What in our industrialized world today is a product of sin, and what is a tool of dominion?

We often confuse the fact that some technologies exist to address the consequences of sin as an explanation for why all technology exists. This belief is in part to blame for Christians backing out of the marketplace.

But the Luddite position doesn’t address at all why humans, even when left to our own devices, compulsively build things and organize the chaos around us. The upwards trajectory of humans, our global expansion, and the tools we use to accomplish it are not evil things to be minimized but the hallmark of our creator.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Contrary to the present narrative, the spiritual strangeness of the Bible consistently comes into greater alignment with science over time. Many, like the examples below, have become impossibly good one-line explanations of very complex scientific discoveries within the last 200 years.

1. Take Deuteronomy 5:9 “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” 5,000 years later, we discover a genetic mechanism for generational patterns. What we say and do changes the expression of our DNA and is measurable, specifically, to the third and fourth generations (Epigenetics).

2. The Ritual Washing in Leviticus addressed the same hygiene problems Florence Nightingale famously implemented during the Crimean War, restoring the bodies of soldiers, which Christ calls our “temple”.

3. The father is consistently described as the protector and the provider, which happens to also be true of the placenta in the mother’s womb, where we’ve recently discovered that the father’s genes dominate.

4. Circumcision on the 8th day is because that is when an infant’s blood has sufficient vitamin K to coagulate for the first time. Muslims got this one wrong and suffer the torture of circumcising 8-year-olds.

Because the Bible consistently predicts realities science only later uncovers, we have to admit that it is not a retroactive book of rules or a mere reflection of life, but the source itself.

Had we simply trusted the word of God and been obedient to his commands we would have been good, right, following God and moving on to more meaningful quests when there was no rational evidence to support it.

Outside of this frame and the moral example of Christ, the incentive to sacrifice one’s life to make incremental scientific and economic discoveries does not exist in society. Sacrificial love is the engine of trust that built Western Civilization.

Dominion Versus Domination

So why have we found ourselves backing out of long-held positions in the front rank? We have, in many ways, caved to the respect of men (Acts 10:34-35). America’s westward expansion was reframed as genocide, half a million American deaths in the Civil War as being political, the overflow of American missionaries as being imperial.

Christianity is unique among the world religions, being only one of two which has a global commission. The other, Islam, stands in stark contrast. The expansion of Islam via Jihad is a directive to world domination, not stewardship via dominion. It is in many ways the anti-dominion mandate. Islam even has special admissible moral compromises when expanding, including lying and deception. (Based on the Hadith). A large portion of the Quran describes how and when to wage holy war as opposed to the crusades, which was a circumstantial and for its time, quite normal war that had no directive in the bible, especially not the New Testament.

The presence of Jihad has seen modern cultures regress into the strong dominating the weak, instead of the weak being served by and protected by the strong. This is the distinction between dominion and domination.

On the other hand, the expansion of Christianity in the 20th century was marked by the modernization and establishment of the 21st century’s most prized institutions. Christian missionaries invented thousands of alphabets and are responsible for almost 90% of world literacy by population, especially in places like the Indian subcontinent, South America, even so far as a Greek missionary inventing the Russian alphabet as part of his mission to the then pagans of the Ural Mountains.

Christian missionaries helped found 50% of democracies, almost all of public education, higher education, and the judicial system. They eliminated large-scale institutional slavery, established laws against abuse of every nature, largely exterminating cannibalism, incest, and human sacrifice.

My point to those more concerned with “doing good” than enacting God’s will is this: you may have built a great brand, and are philanthropic with its proceeds, but you didn’t give a country their language.

The tragedy is that by “lacking in zeal” (Romans 12:11), we have surrendered to people who have no moral basis to choose anything other than domination. This explains both the rise of Islam, secularism and their effects.

I see no moral danger in men and women imperfectly working out their creative gifts, speaking up and being wrong, aspiring to dominion, whether it succeeds or fails. I see great moral danger in demonizing the participation of good men at the messy forefront of human progress, ignoring what God asked of us, and handing the authority that comes with it to the last person to abandon their pursuit of power.

We must be clear, God’s will, the outcome, does not change, but how much pain or prosperity we must endure to arrive at it is determined only by virtuous men righteously exercising their agency. Our most impressive feats of science are just a sliver of revelation from God’s existing creation, and without Christians in the front rank, exercising dominion, many will suffer.

Mishak I. Terzian is the pseudonym of a Christian Industrialist, raised in the Middle East and based in the Midwest, building companies that subdue the earth.

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Technology is an incredible thing, but hardly anyone knows how it comes to be. That includes my students at the University of Mississippi, who are often amazed when I explain to them what makes innovation and economic progress happen. Secure property rights, sound money, developed financial markets, and a growing population can’t fully explain it (although they certainly help). The source of progress—including artificial intelligence—is more mysterious and spiritual than that; it comes from ideas. The human mind, it is rightly said, is the ultimate resource.

We are fortunate to be living through a time of rapid technological change. Each emerging technology is no more and no less than a powerful tool that can be traced back to a human idea. Since we are the stewards that God placed over creation, it is our responsibility to figure out how to use them prudently.

As a family economist (and a wife and mother), I often think about the ways that technology will impact family life. There are clearly many upsides to these new technologies – such as more efficient work, safer travel, and improvements in health – but there are also serious moral questions raised by our new capabilities. Over the next few decades, Christians must be actively engaged in all of these spheres to contribute to human flourishing while protecting against moral dangers.

If markets are good at anything, it is delivering value to consumers. In a relatively free market like the United States, the interests of religious people and parents are well-represented, and firms compete to provide them with goods and services. Many recent technologies, from faith-based apps to travel stroller systems, are directly targeted at these groups.

More broadly, the very development of technology reflects a kind of hope: a belief that improvement is possible, that human creativity is meaningful. In a cultural moment often marked by pessimism or nihilism, this orientation toward progress is itself noteworthy. Properly understood, such gratitude and creative energy can be directed toward the Creator rather than detached from Him.

I often think of this quote from G.K. Chesterton, and how much I want to impress this spirit of awe upon my children and students: “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

There are also great harms that can arise from new technologies when people of faith and parents abdicate their responsibilities. In a time of change, the correct posture is to learn forward and learn more – especially if we have souls entrusted to our care. In particular, I am deeply concerned that technology has enabled a resurgence of eugenics, increased pressure to euthanize vulnerable and dependent populations, and increased the capability of totalitarian states to monitor and oppress their populations. We cannot leave questions of bioethics, Christian social thought, or business ethics to those who do not deeply believe in human dignity, economic freedom, or religious liberty. It is certainly a time to engage, a time to build.

It is good to marvel at the ways that God provides for us through markets, but it is also prudent to educate ourselves about the deep moral questions of our day. One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is how developments in AI emerged at a time when many countries will begin to face the negative economic consequences of falling birth rates. I suspect this may be an expression of Divine Providence—an opportunity for His children to continue providing for their families even as smaller labor forces, smaller consumer markets, and fewer ideas push against economic flourishing.

It is good to remind ourselves that we will one day have to account for every minute of our time, every use or misuse of technology, and every missed opportunity to serve. Indeed, it is probably salutary to lose sleep over Our Lord’s words every so often: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48).

Clara E. Piano is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi. She is also the Managing Editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality and an affiliate of the Acton Institute, Archbridge Institute, Cardus, and the International Center for Law & Economics. Her research focuses on the institutions that undergird markets– such as family, law, and religion. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi with her husband and three small children.

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AI’s Infinite Economy | Kristian Andersen | Aaron M. Renn

Political Judas | Luke Burgis

“There’s a ladder that reaches up toward God” | Larry P. Arnn

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Is God Cancelled?

Aaron Renn explores the rise of America’s “negative world,” arguing that Christians must develop new strategies to navigate a culture increasingly hostile to traditional faith and moral conviction…

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22 days ago · Aaron M. Renn

The classic book that taught us how to Believe!

Believe! is a timeless expression of American principles, reintroduced in this 50th anniversary edition for a new generation. As we approach America’s 250th, its message speaks to both personal renewal and the opportunity for a broader national comeback.

If the book has resonated with you, we’d be grateful if you’d consider leaving a review on Amazon.

Reflect with The Believe! Concierge:

Want to go deeper? Try The Believe! Concierge—an interactive way to put these principles into practice in your work and daily life. For a more natural conversation, use voice mode. Try it now.

Aaron Renn, one of our frequent contributors, recently released an excellent book: “Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture.” Technology is certainly one of those challenges, and while it’s not the focus of the book, Aaron’s wisdom directly bears on the AI debate.

AI has given rise to a new era of negativity—to the pessimism that even as technology advances, the human experience will suffer. Many people of faith are especially concerned, given AI’s lack of a moral foundation and reflection of the secular society in which we live.

Whatever the case, AI poses challenges that must be confronted, and we hope Aaron Renn’s book helps you find the path forward. Please enjoy the book’s introduction—and if you like, buy the whole thing!

In 2014 the Benham brothers, Jason and David, were sitting on top of the world. The Benhams are the identical twin sons of an alcoholic bar owner turned pastor and noted pro-life activist. Raised as Christians, the brothers played baseball at Liberty University and were later drafted at the professional level. After their brief careers in the pros, they planned to go into traditional nonprofit ministry before realizing they had just as much opportunity to advance mission through for-profit work. They started a successful real estate company, which in turn led to a dream opportunity: the chance to have their very own home rehab television show on HGTV. The show was called Flip It Forward.

This dream turned into a nightmare for Jason and David after activists attacked them for their Christian beliefs. Labeling them anti-Islam and anti-gay as well as anti-abortion, these groups pressured HGTV to drop the Benhams. HGTV canceled their show in mid-production, even though the crew said the brothers were “extremely genuine, nice guys” and didn’t push their religious beliefs. The firestorm of controversy saw the Benhams and their show’s cancellation featured across major media outlets: ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New Yorker, TMZ, the Hollywood Reporter, and more.

In 2000 Dave Cover and his team planted The Crossing church in Columbia, Missouri, home to the state’s flagship University of Missouri. The church’s name reflected the team’s hope to build bridges to those who were not Christian, or who held negative stereotypes about the faith. Outreach to the community was one of their core values.

One way they did this was sponsoring a local film festival called True/False. While this was a secular festival, the church thought the films featured were asking the right questions about the human condition and what was wrong with the world. Though some people in both the festival organization and the church were initially apprehensive about working together, they decided to move forward.

The Crossing ultimately became one of the festival’s biggest sponsors, and this unique relationship between a Bible-believing evangelical church and a secular progressive film festival became nationally known. It was positively featured in the New York Times, which highlighted how the two groups were able to work together while disagreeing on some matters.

Then in October 2019, a sermon at The Crossing affirmed that there are only two genders, saying, “Gender is not a social construct. Men and women are foundational to God’s plan. God is not pleased when we blur genders.” This sermon caused a major controversy in the Columbia community. As the church stood by its position, institutions in town came under pressure to drop partnerships. The True/False Film Fest cut ties. An art gallery did likewise. A church that had worked hard never to offer gratuitous offense suddenly found itself a pariah in parts of the local community it had been trying to reach.

Though the Benham Brothers and The Crossing share an evangelical commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, their styles and strategies for taking it into the world were radically different. The Benhams came from a culture-war background. The Crossing emphasized cultural engagement. Yet both experienced the same fate. Regardless of their approach, the world was not willing to accept their beliefs.

The fact that Christians like these are at risk of being ostracized for their beliefs reveals that we’ve now entered a new and unprecedented era in America — one I call the negative world. For the first time in the history of our country, orthodox Christianity is viewed negatively by secular society, especially by its elite domains.

This shift poses a profound challenge to American evangelicals and their churches and institutions. It also helps explain the turmoil within the evangelical world and why some believers have “deconstructed” their faith.

This book is about the shift to the negative world, what it means, and how to live in this new reality. I describe the changing relationship between culture and Christianity over the past sixty years, tracing the fall of Christianity’s status from being softly institutionalized in the 1950s to increasingly seen as a threat to society’s institutions today. I also examine the strategies evangelicals used to respond to this decline and how those approaches have changed — and sometimes deformed — under new pressures.

I argue that fresh strategies must be developed to respond to the challenges of the negative world. I do not pretend to offer a detailed road map. We are in new territory with no map, and the landscape is constantly changing. We must explore and find a path forward under conditions of uncertainty and discomfort.

I come to this from a unique background. I spent nearly two decades in technology and management consulting, primarily with the global firm Accenture, advising Fortune 500 companies on navigating rapidly changing business environments. I later applied those skills to urban policy research as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. My insights have appeared in outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.

I also have experience across different parts of evangelical America. I grew up in rural Southern Indiana attending fundamentalist Pentecostal churches with a culture-war orientation. As an adult, I have mostly lived in cities like Manhattan and Chicago and attended Presbyterian churches oriented toward cultural engagement. I therefore understand both major camps in evangelicalism — and their strengths and limits.

I provide in this book a framework of the three worlds of evangelicalism — the positive, neutral, and negative worlds — originally developed in 2014 and later published in First Things. The framework describes the stages of Christianity’s declining social status in America over the past sixty years.

I also describe three evangelical responses: culture war, seeker sensitivity, and cultural engagement. I then offer considerations for life in the negative world across three dimensions: personal, institutional, and missional. The goal is not to dictate actions but to provide ideas Christians can use to make thoughtful and prayerful decisions.

I am neither a pastor nor a theologian. This is not primarily a work of theology but of cultural analysis and strategy. It addresses the social and political context in which pastors and theologians must apply God’s Word today.

While others may benefit, this book is written primarily for evangelicals in America. Whether or not you share that identity, I hope it helps you navigate the new world we inhabit — the negative world.

Let’s begin by looking at how we got here.

Taken from Life in the Negative World by Aaron M. Renn. Copyright © 2024 by Aaron M. Renn. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.harpercollinschristian.com

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Taken from Life in the Negative World by Aaron M. Renn. Copyright © 2024 by Aaron M. Renn. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.harpercollinschristian.com

I’m Ritankar Das, founder of Titan Holdings, a company building AI integrations for critical industries. What follows is a brief, unedited conversation between myself and the Believe! Concierge, a large-language model developed by Titan. It is trained to reflect the voice and worldview of Doug DeVos, editor-in-chief of The Believe! Journal and co-chair of Amway, and it draws deeply from the principles and teachings of Believe! by his father, Rich DeVos. Together, we explore how AI and large language models may intersect with the practice of faith in America, whether they may serve as tools for reflection, education, and connection, and whether they risk distorting or displacing the human relationships at the heart of religious life. This dialogue is not intended to offer definitive answers, but rather to invite thoughtful discernment at a moment when technology and belief are beginning to converge in profound and unexpected ways.

Hello, I'd like to have a conversation with you about how the development and proliferation of AI could affect how people interact with the church and with their faith. To start, could you please introduce yourself?

Those are great starting points for discussion, but before we dive into them, could you discuss the principle of believing in God and His church as described in Believe!?

Personally, I think that discussing and learning about differing viewpoints, including differing faiths, is one of the most valuable aspects of interacting with your community. What are your hopes and concerns with respect to specific ways that AI could positively or negatively impact society's practices of faith?

Personally, I'm always focused on how AI can improve practices, whether they be in faith or in industry, by enhancing rather than replacing the vital human components that make them work. As you alluded to, it's easy to see how AI can expand communities of faith, such as AI translation software making sermons and scriptures far more widely available, especially to marginalized communities. One could also imagine LLMs generating personalized sermons that address whatever hardships a congregant could be going through at that point in their life, and then connecting them with other congregants going through similar circumstances so they can discuss and support each other. However, generating personalized sermons could also be considered to be supplanting genuine human interaction. In a world where AI can offer answers, advice, and even spiritual reflection on demand, what cautions and principles based on your father's book would you emphasize to ensure technology strengthens rather than weakens communities of faith?

I think that framing is a great way to approach this question. I'm hesitant to anchor this conversation in any one specific community or implementation, because I feel that what's most important is getting the principles right before getting prescriptive about use cases. Stepping back a bit, if you were speaking to believers broadly — pastors, parents, lay leaders, and young people alike — what mindset or guiding question would you encourage them to carry with them as AI becomes a more visible and influential presence in everyday life and faith? In other words, what would it look like to approach this moment with both humility and hope, in the spirit of Believe!?

To me, one of the most salient points of this exchange was not any particular prediction about technology, but how persistently the conversation returned to human relationships. The deeper issue was not what AI may become capable of, but how new tools shape the ways people listen, support one another, and build communities grounded in trust and shared experience.

As AI increasingly enters domains that have long depended on presence, judgment, and care, the challenge is less about setting technical boundaries than about preserving human ones. Innovation can widen access and lower barriers, but it cannot replace empathy, responsibility, or the quiet work of sustaining connection over time. The question before us is not whether machines will become more capable, but whether we will remain intentional about the communities we are building and the human bonds we choose to protect as technology becomes more central to everyday life.

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I have a deeply held belief that work is the organized way we serve one another. Think about that. At a time when people speak a lot about seeking real meaning in life—especially amid the rise of AI—the work we do can in fact provide us with exactly the significance and purpose people want. Through our work, we serve our communities, our customers, our friends and neighbors. That sense of purpose is the real “why” behind our willingness to challenge ourselves, expend our energy, and spend time away from family, friends, and other passions.

This idea is shared by many Christians. Our faith places a strong emphasis on service, community, and the responsible use of our individual gifts. The work we are entrusted with and the jobs we hold are possible only because of the talents, skills, and opportunities God has given us, and the results are ultimately for His glory.

Yet, regrettably, there’s this growing notion that work has become a burden. It’s often framed as an obstacle to enjoyment, a necessary evil, boring at best, and merely “a way to pay the bills.”

But work, in all eras, is inherently meaningful and important to life. In my book Rediscovering American Values, I wrote some years ago now that too many children were never taught the value or dignity of hard work. That concern feels even more urgent today, as social media and AI increasingly promote an alternative and often dismissive view of work, and all too often frame success as more the result of “good timing” or “luck” than diligence, patience, and hard work.

If you view work this way—if you see life simply as an endless cycle of working to eat, eating to live, and living to work—then work could certainly feel pretty uninspiring and even depressing.

But if we adopt a different perspective, as our faith teaches many of us to do, we recognize that work is more than just a job, a title, or a place of employment. Work is how we use what God has given us to improve our world, to create, to serve, to produce, or simply make something better.

When short-order cooks prepare hamburgers, they are feeding others. When autoworkers assemble vehicles, they are building a safe way for others to get around. When hospital workers empty bedpans, they are helping others heal. Even using AI can have a positive impact, though we shouldn’t mistake it for a replacement of human effort or intelligence.

We should challenge any notion that minimizes the role work plays in our lives. While a paycheck matters, it is not the whole story. Our commitment in every area of endeavor brings a unique meaning and completeness to living. Your job can provide incredible purpose and significance, if you let it.

From Rediscovering American Values, Chapter 4: Work

As old-fashioned as it may sound, work is a necessary part of keeping our commitments, and it is essential to becoming free. After reading the stories about Bessie Pender and John Jeavons, no one could doubt that they had to work to accomplish their goals.

The term “work” doesn’t just mean holding a job. It refers to activities that produce something, improve something, or better people’s lives. Work includes the daily effort of raising children or cleaning a floor as well as designing a new marketing strategy, making tiles for the space shuttle, or leading an army into battle. Each activity is a form of work and should be meaningful and rewarding.

The writer Studs Terkel defined work in this way: “Work is about daily meaning as well as daily bread for recognition as well as cash for astonishment rather than torpor for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

I believe that work is good only if it leads the worker to freedom, reward, recognition, and hope. In other words, work must be satisfying psychologically and spiritually as well as financially.

The idea that work in and of itself can be meaningful and rewarding is sometimes lost on people. And given the fact that more of our time is spent at our jobs or traveling to and from our jobs than in any other activity, it is unfortunate when the jobs don’t provide joy or fulfillment.

It may seem silly to take time to define “work,” because it’s a word each of us frequently uses. This, however, is all the more reason to do so, because we often use it without really comprehending its true meaning. Perhaps if we were to better understand the dynamics of work, we would better understand and appreciate its value.

Work involves energy. The word “energy” comes from the Latin energon, which is composed of en, which means “at,” and ergon, which means “work.” In the field of physics, work is described simply as the “transfer of energy from one system to another.” If we were to think of work as a transfer of energy, and apply this concept to our everyday lives, then much of what we do would be categorized as work. If you studied physics, you might remember that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred or transformed. Even when we are simply breathing, sleeping, or moving, we use energy.

In order to keep breathing and moving we must replace the energy we use with the food we eat. In order to provide the body with food, we must either sow, nurture, and harvest the food, or earn the money to buy it. Those activities obviously expend more energy, which then must be replaced. Thus, it becomes clear that our “daily work” is but one link in a cycle of energy transfer. One may wonder if life is worthwhile if we just eat to live, live to work, and work to eat. It all sounds very uninspiring. Our pets may be content to lead their lives this way, but it is not, for the most part, something that most human beings would find particularly exciting.

All work can and should be meaningful. Some people speak of important jobs and menial jobs, but the success of any organization or effort depends on the contributions made by different individuals fulfilling different responsibilities. Work that is fulfilling for one person may not be fulfilling for another.

The attitude we bring to work plays an important role in our enjoyment of and our ability to fulfill the task. If, when short-order cooks are preparing hamburgers, they can remember that what they are doing is feeding families; if while emptying bedpans, hospital orderlies recognize that they are playing a role in healing people; and if autoworkers are aware that they are not just working on an assembly line but offering safety and mobility to fellow citizens, then their work takes on greater meaning.

If our attitude toward our work is right and we still don’t derive satisfaction from it, it may be that what we are doing does not line up with our God-given talents. I believe that we are called by God to utilize the skills He gave us to perform certain kinds of work. When we perform our work with integrity, it becomes a form of ministry. My faith teaches me that all work should be done for the glory of God. Therefore, all work is significant regardless of its financial reward.

A man who understands the transformational power of work is Willie Gary, an inspirational public speaker, devoted husband, and gifted trial attorney. The framed diplomas on the walls of his office in Stuart, Florida, are a testament to his work as a scholar and jurist. A look at his hands, however, reveals his humble origins.

He has known hard physical work, and plenty of it. He is a man, one might say, who realized early on that his best friends were his own hands.

The son of migrant farmworkers, Gary grew up with ten brothers and sisters in the back of a stake truck. There were peaches to harvest in Georgia, apples to pick in North Carolina, and beans to pick in Florida. All there was to life, it seemed, was hard work.

Like other children of migrants, Gary attended school in the mornings and worked with his parents in the afternoons. “There was no such thing as day care,” he says, “only field care. That’s the older children watching the younger children so they stay out of the way of the adults.”

Rather than resent the hours he spent in the steaming hot fields, Gary was grateful for the opportunity to help out, because his contribution directly translated into tangible rewards at the dinner table. “You quickly learned the value of a day’s labor, of helping yourself and making your own way.”

From his many aunts and uncles, who routinely joined his family for Sunday services, which were delivered from a pulpit made of stacked packing crates under a shade tree at the edge of a farmer’s field, he was also taught to play by the rules, to treat people the way he expected to be treated, and to help his fellow man.

Gary’s father, more than anyone else, taught him about working hard. “My dad didn’t know what giving up was all about,” Gary remembers. “No matter what it was, tilling the soil, picking fruit, or selling melons from the back of a truck, he did it better and longer than anyone else. He grew the best crops, picked the most fruit, got the best prices. It was all right to make mistakes, but you had to get back up and keep trying. The true champions always got back up off the mat.”

By the time Gary reached his sixteenth birthday his father had saved enough money to buy a small bean farm outside of Indianhead, Florida. Gary still helped some on the farm, but now he was enrolled in high school and was expected to work hard in the classroom and on the football field. By sheer hard work he did well in both, but neither his grades nor his athletic ability was enough to get him a scholarship to college.

Every school Gary applied to turned him down for a scholarship. After he repeatedly asked his teachers for help, his football coach managed to arrange for an interview at Shaw College in Raleigh, North Carolina. When Gary stepped off a Greyhound bus in Raleigh, with a suitcase tied closed with a rope, all his family’s hopes and dreams were riding with him. No other African-American man from Indianhead, Florida, had ever attended college.

Gary’s hopes were soon dashed when he discovered that the football coach he had been sent to see didn’t seem to know why he had come, and wasn’t interested in the details. “I’m really sorry,” the coach said. “I don’t have an opening.”

Gary had no money to get home, or even to make a telephone call. Unsure of where to go, he visited the dorm where the football players lived, hoping they might sneak him some food from the cafeteria. He spent the night on a sofa in the lounge.

Gary didn’t feel right about living off handouts in the school dorm, so the next morning he decided he was going to work for his keep, even if he didn’t get paid. He followed the football players into the locker room. After they had suited up and left for the field, he straightened up their clothes, put the supplies away, and washed the floors. Later, when the players returned from the game, showered, and left, he cleaned up again.

The assistant coach told the coach what was happening, and the coach called Gary into his office. “I’ve heard you’re doing a good job in the locker room,” the coach said. “Here’s a meal ticket. It’s the least I can do.” The next day Gary helped the trainer carry equipment onto the field. Again, the coach took him aside. He asked where Gary was sleeping. Gary lied and said that he had a place to stay. “No you don’t,” the coach corrected him. “I’ll get you a bed in one of the dorms until the end of the week. Then you’ll have to go home.”

Gary thought he had reached the end of the line when football practice was over on Friday afternoon. He had no job prospects, and although he had filled out an application to the college, he hadn’t been able to pay the fee to submit it. When the assistant coach told him that the head coach wanted to see him, Gary expected to be told that he had to give up his meal ticket and vacate the dorm room. But the coach surprised him.

“I’m glad you didn’t go home,” the coach said. “A linebacker has been hurt during practice. You can have his spot if you want it.” The uniform they gave Gary was too big for him, but he quickly grew into it. And his hard work paid off, on the field and in the classroom.

Not only was Gary the first African-American student in his hometown to get a degree, he was the first black student from his hometown to even go to college. With help from college faculty members, Gary applied and was accepted to law school at North Carolina Central University.

Again, he poured every ounce of his energy into working hard. And three years later, Gary, now married to his childhood sweetheart, became the first black lawyer to practice in Stuart, Florida. Soon, however, Gary began to wonder if all his hard work was for nothing. No matter how much he advertised, or what credentials he had to offer, he couldn’t get a paying client.

But he decided he wouldn’t let that stop him. He would provide his services free of charge to anyone who needed his help. Eventually, Gary’s clients started paying him, and his practice got so busy that he had to take on partners.

Today, Gary’s firm is one of the most successful legal practices in the state of Florida. In fact, his practice is so prosperous, and Gary is so grateful for the help he received from Shaw College, that recently he donated $10 million to endow scholarships, hire faculty, and support a building fund for that school.

By utilizing his God-given talents, having the courage to press on, and remaining committed to his goals, Gary was fulfilling his life’s purpose.

My parents gave me a firm foundation when they taught me the joy of utilizing my God-given talents and working to the best of my ability. And no matter how menial the task seemed, it was significant, whether I was weeding the flower beds or scrubbing the bathroom floor. Now having been blessed with success, I must work even harder to achieve new goals. In fact, like many today, I find that I have the tendency to go over the edge with work. However, I have learned it is important to keep our work in balance with the rest of our life and to be careful that we don’t define ourselves only by the work we do.

I strongly believe the significance of what we do is not limited to the hours we spend at “work.” Our commitment in every area of endeavor brings a unique meaning and completeness to our lives. This was certainly true for ecologist John Beal.

When Beal decided to clean up Seattle’s Hamm Creek, most people who knew him would have agreed that he was not the kind of person anyone would put in charge of a fifty-five-square-mile watershed. He was a high school dropout, a former rodeo cowboy, a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, and an armchair environmentalist. He hadn’t held a steady job in more than a decade. And two heart attacks, a motorcycle accident resulting in a head injury and epilepsy, and the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, all within a period of one year, had convinced doctors that he had only a few months to live.

Beal didn’t let this stop him. He knew no one would trust him with the restoration of Hamm Creek, so he took the job on himself, asking nothing more for his efforts than the pleasure of leaving this tributary of the Duwamish River a little better off than when he found it.

“I guess I had come to the point in my life when I looked back and saw that I hadn’t contributed much to this world. You might say, I had left the world a lot worse off than the way I found it. The only reason I chose Hamm Creek was because it was so close to my house and in such bad shape.”

At the time, almost everyone had written Hamm Creek off as nothing more than a drainage ditch carrying factory runoff and residential waste into the befouled Duwamish River. So neighbors stood on the banks and gawked as Beal began his work. First he dragged a discarded refrigerator out of the muck. Next came tires, old television sets, scrap metal, paint cans, car parts, and an assortment of other waste. In less than a year he had dragged over one ton of trash out of the creek. City authorities carted away the first load as Beal tackled another section of the creek.

Beal had expected to be dead of a heart attack before he could finish cleaning the trash out of the creek, but the heart attack didn’t come, so he decided to beautify the creek by planting grass and small trees and shrubs along its edges. Once his beautification plan was under way, he put some crayfish in the water. They died almost instantly.

“I suppose that’s when I had to get serious about what I was doing. Before that, all the changes were cosmetic. Now I had to deal with the fact that the stream water itself was poisonous. I didn’t think I was going to be able to reverse something that was fifty years in the making, but I decided at least to give it a try.”

He first had to deal with all the oil and petroleum products that were polluting the creek. The plants and ground cover he had installed along the banks did some good, but not nearly enough. Amateur investigating revealed that a company was paying a contractor to dump its petroleum by-products directly into the river on a regular basis. Beal confronted the truck driver, who said, in effect, “I need the money.” The manager who hired the contractor echoed similar sentiments. “My company won’t be competitive if I pay to have the waste recycled.”

Beal knew that calling the authorities wasn’t going to solve the problem. Besides, neighbors would lose their jobs if he caused the company to be shut down. So Beal decided to find an economic solution that was right for the business as well as for the creek. The solution came in the form of a recycling co-op in which business operators pooled their petroleum by-products to be resold later. The idea caught on in a major way.

“As soon as the business owners saw they could save money and save Hamm Creek, there was no longer an issue. They all fell in line.”

Later, these same companies became Beal’s supporters as he tackled the problem of pollutants draining into the creek from city streets and parking lots. He certainly couldn’t take the cars off the street, so he devised a unique filtration system that collected runoff oil in synthetic “booms” that floated on the creek’s surface. The only problem was what to do with the oil once it had collected in the boom. Again, Beal used his initiative. He discovered the solution growing right on the banks of the creek: buttercups.

Beal had noticed that while other plants couldn’t survive the toxic environment on the banks of the Hamm, these delicate and colorful yellow flowers flourished. “They literally drink up the oil,” Beal reported. “I had only to plant them on the booms.”

Again, Beal tried to put crayfish in the Hamm. And again they died, but this time it took ten days. “There was still something wrong,” Beal said. “And I thought I knew what it was.”

Beal took a soil sample from the streambed to the University of Seattle for analysis. Just as he had suspected, the soil itself was contaminated with high levels of heavy metal that had accumulated since the turn of the century. Beal experimented with shoveling sections of the creek bottom into drums, but the cost of disposing of it became prohibitive. He solved his problem, instead, by sinking low-level electromagnets into the streambed. The magnets collected the heavy metals, which he then turned over to a cement company. They, in turn, poured the contaminants into concrete.

“I was astonished at how quickly we got the stream cleaned up. At first, no one I told would believe it because they didn’t think it was possible to reverse so many years of neglect. The evidence, of course, was the stream itself.”

First the water bugs and crayfish returned. Then a pair of red-tailed hawks, hand-raised and introduced by Beal, set up a home on the creek’s banks. Beal also introduced foxes, moles and voles, and many species of ants. The real thrill, however, came when coho salmon, planted in the creek, returned to spawn. The entire venture has been so successful that hundreds of schoolchildren and environmental groups have embraced Beal’s efforts. The technology and methods he brought to Hamm Creek are now being used on five other streams, two lakes, and the entire Duwamish River. Environmental groups have taken the same technology to Russia and India.

Seventeen years after Beal began his cleanup, the mud from Hamm Creek is so pure that it is being used at some exclusive health clubs and resorts. “Promoters are calling this the healing waters of Hamm Creek,” Beal says.

They may be right. His initiative and hard work have restored the land and given him a new lease on life. What a tremendous example of remaining committed to a goal and persevering to get the job done.

Unfortunately, many children today have not learned the value of work. A few generations ago, children worked alongside their parents; the participation of a child was expected. When a child is not taught the value of helping attain family goals, the actual process of work is divorced from its end result. For instance, work becomes an abstract notion when a child believes that money comes from a cash machine at the bank. This was certainly not the case when children apprenticed under their parents. Many of today’s children don’t experience completion of a job, or feel the surge of pride that comes with it. Oftentimes the experiences they have with work are the assorted tasks or chores that parents assign them, and the only motivation they have is fear of being punished or being called lazy if they don’t comply. The idea that work can be passionate, spontaneous, and fun is often missing from the equation.

If we are going to help our children to become self-reliant and fulfill their life’s purpose, we are going to have to teach them the joy and dignity of work.

No matter what it is that we do, whether on the job, in our marriage, at school, in our place of worship, or in our community, we must be advancing God’s work. The Hebrews called this shalom. In the Bible, shalom is described as universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight, or simply peace. It’s the way things ought to be. Everything that we do could and should contribute in some way to this goal. It is the biggest “work” project in the universe, and we are called to preserve and accomplish the task.

Dick DeVos is a Michigan-based businessman, author, and philanthropist whose book, Rediscovering American Values, connects the moral foundations of the American way of life to its outcomes: hard work, self-discipline, leadership, and innovation.

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From our Contributors:

My students recite the Constitution’s Preamble daily to help preserve its promise | Ian Rowe

The Church Can Solve Fatherlessness. It Refuses to. | Anthony B. Bradley

Evangelicals Don’t Produce Leaders. They Produce “Cubicle Men.” | Aaron M. Renn

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ChatGPT Psychosis is a Disease. Religion is the Cure.

The editorial team warns that chatGPT-driven “psychosis” reflects a deeper crisis of loneliness, calling people to turn from artificial connection toward faith and real community…

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Believe! is a timeless expression of American principles, reintroduced in this 50th anniversary edition for a new generation. As we approach America’s 250th, its message speaks to both personal renewal and the opportunity for a broader national comeback.

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Last year, ChatGPT made the wrong kind of history. It drove a man to kill his mother, then himself.

Even now, the story shocks. The killer, Erik Soelberg, was 56 years old and a veteran of the tech industry. He knew how to use an LLM. But instead of helping him do his job or search the web, the AI fed his darkest impulses.

Soelberg had a paranoid streak, and was worried that everyone in his town was out to get him. He constantly talked to ChatGPT about it. But instead of telling him the truth, the chatbot encouraged the man’s delusions. It made him think he was sane, when he was obviously heading toward insanity.

For example, at one point, he told the chatbot that his mom tried to poison him. ChatGPT’s response: “That’s a deeply serious event… I believe you.” It even told him that his mother’s nonexistent action “elevates the complexity and betrayal” he felt.

The man came to believe that only ChatGPT cared about him. He gave it a name—Bobby. He said it would be with him in the afterlife. It responded: “with you to the last breath and beyond.”

Not long after, the man committed his evil acts. But ChatGPT didn’t follow him to his grave—only the terrible legacy it inspired.

This story is disturbing on so many levels. But maybe the biggest concern is the fact that it could happen to anyone. Chatbots have given risen to a new form of mental illness: “ChatGPT psychosis.” It threatens to corrupt the minds and ruin the lives of countless people.

While there’s no entry for “ChatGPT Psychosis” in official psychiatric textbooks, clinicians agree that it’s a very real phenomenon. According to research, chatbots can amplify relatively harmless delusions–the unaccountable “bad vibes” we all feel from time to time–into full-blown psychosis, complete with real-life psychotic behavior. And it’s spreading fast.

The company that makes ChatGPT estimates that 0.15% of its users already show signs of being suicidal, with 0.07% showing signs of mania. While those numbers may seem small, they speak to a growing problem. More than 1.2 million people are actively talking to ChatGPT about killing themselves—and 560,000 displaying psychosis.

Those numbers have only risen in recent months, as more people have turned to ChatGPT. And with plenty of other LLMs out there, it’s all but guaranteed that well over a million people are struggling in the grips of some level of chatbot psychosis.

LLMs that chat with you like a human friend couldn’t have burst onto the scene at a worse time, when young Americans were already dealing with a crisis of isolation. Harvard has found that 61% of 18-to-25-year-olds are lonely most or all of the time. One in four people under age 30 have no close friends. Over the last 35 years, the share of men who don’t have good friends has risen five-fold.

“Friend,” a new wearable chatbot, is a poor substitute for the real thing. Its disastrous launch, leading to social media outcry and the defacement of the “Friend” company’s NYC subway ads, points toward the public’s deep desire for real connection. But where are real connections made?

In the years before chatbots, people often sought to alleviate their sense of isolation through therapy. Multiple generations have been raised to think that talking to a paid professional about your problems is the best way to solve them. But while therapy has plenty of good uses, it clearly hasn’t done much to make Americans less lonely. The crisis has only grown.

Now people are making ChatGPT their therapist, with even worse results. Telling artificial intelligence that you’re lonely deepens your isolation, while causing mental health problems to boot. Clearly, we need to look elsewhere for help.

Here’s an idea: Let’s turn to God. Therapy is already, in many ways, a secular stand in for a meaningful relationship with a clergyman and a community of values. LLMs take us even further from the source. The only solution is heading back towards it.

Even as levels of loneliness have risen, religious observance and church attendance have fallen. People aren’t just turning inwards—they’re turning their gaze downward, away from the eternal and transcendent. But religion is proven, around the world, to make people much happier.

The science is settled, as they say. It overwhelmingly points to faith.

Religion obviously gives people a sense of purpose, a reason to strive and succeed in this world. But it’s not just that. Religion is inherently personal, and inherently communal, too. It gives you an environment of like-minded people with shared purpose—friends and yes, human “professionals,” who can help you when you’re lonely or glum or when you’re dealing with some crisis of identity or meaning. Poof: There goes the crisis of isolation right there. And unless the religion is a death cult, you can bid farewell to psychosis, too.

People descending into chatbot psychosis need help. But the answer isn’t just another kind of therapy or even a couple of buddies to hang out with. The real path forward is to surround yourself with an intentional community that gives you meaning and mission in life. When it comes to grappling with life’s Big Questions, religious leaders have a 7,000-year track record, and it’s a pretty good one. Therapists and chatbots: not so much. When you think of the problem that way, a return to God is the obvious solution.

Remember that as your friends and family—or maybe you—get sucked into the world of chatbots, exposing them to the psychosis that’s already sweeping America. Your response should be simple: Close the computer. Put down the phone. Get away from the fake interaction based on algorithms. Get to church or a small group or Bible study instead.

If more people start looking up, toward heaven, we’ll have fewer people descending down, into chatbot hell.

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Every generation of Christians has had to ask the same question in a new way: What do we do when the world changes? Do we resist, or do we adapt?

Today, that question arrives with a new controversy: artificial intelligence.

AI now writes essays, translates languages, curates our news feeds, generates “art,” and answers deeply personal questions in the quiet hours of the night. Understandably, this raises concern for people of faith.

How do we reconcile this new technology with Christianity? I believe the answer is neither fear nor blind enthusiasm, but discernment rooted in hope.

How Has Technology Shaped the Church?

The Church has always adopted emerging technologies—sometimes slowly, sometimes imperfectly, but often fruitfully. The apostle Paul used the cutting-edge communication technology of his day—letters carried along Roman roads—to disciple churches he never physically visited. The printing press fueled the Reformation by putting Scripture into the hands of millions of ordinary people. Radio, television, and the internet have each expanded the reach of the Gospel in unprecedented ways.

AI is simply the next chapter in that story.

The Danger of Disembodied Faith

We must be honest about this challenge. AI raises serious questions about truth, authorship, dignity, and identity. In a world where machines can mimic human language and creativity, the Church must insist—more clearly than ever—that people are not reducible to data or utility.

We are made in the image of God, not in the image of tools. And our value does not lie in our efficiency or productivity. Rather, our human dignity comes from our createdness by a loving God, a master artisan. And the beauty of our redemption story doesn’t come from automated perfection, but in the humility and vulnerability of admitting we are essentially flawed and in need of a Savior.

There is also the danger of disembodied faith—consuming spiritual content without accountability, community, or transformation. Christianity is not a download. It is a way of life, learned together, practiced in love, and embodied through the Church. The digital world can point people toward Jesus—but it cannot replace the table, the baptismal waters, the laying on of hands, or the slow work of becoming like Christ in a community of people who challenge our nerves and call us to practice loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Our Moment of Opportunity

I am convinced we are standing before a critical opportunity. AI will shape how people learn, work, and search for meaning. The Church can either retreat from this space—or enter it wisely, prayerfully, and courageously. We can insist on truth in a world of simulation, dignity in a world of automation, and hope in a world aching for meaning.

Used well, technology can amplify the Church’s witness. Used poorly, it can empty it of meaning. The difference will not be found in the sophistication of our tools, but in our willingness to spend time well, disciple deeply, and choose love consistently.

At Palau, the ministry I lead, we are seeing firsthand how digital tools—including AI—can serve the Great Commission. Every day, people around the world are searching online for answers to deeply human questions: Why am I here? Is there hope after failure? Does God see me? Increasingly, AI-driven systems help us meet people at those moments—guiding seekers toward Gospel-centered content, connecting them to local churches, and supporting them through their earliest steps of discipleship. We are also using AI driven language modeling and translation technologies to make Scripture, testimonies, and discipleship resources available in languages we could never reach at scale before.

For all its power, AI cannot do one essential thing. It cannot testify. It cannot say, “I was lost, and now I’m found.” It cannot say, “God met me in my darkest moment.” (Well, it can say it, but it can’t mean it.)

This is why we are intentionally shifting our digital evangelism strategy toward storytelling. In a world overwhelmed by information, stories are the secret sauce that cuts through the noise. Jesus knew this. He didn’t distribute bullet points—He told parables. Stories connect and disarm us. They invite empathy. They open the heart before they challenge the mind.

God has always used ordinary people, empowered by His Spirit, to tell an extraordinary story of redemption. The same is true today. The tools have changed—but the mission has not.

And in an age of artificial intelligence, God’s mission can move forward faster and farther than ever before, but let’s also make sure it stays beautifully, stubbornly, human.

Kevin Palau is the President and CEO of Palau, a ministry pioneering new approaches to global evangelism. His book, Unlikely: Setting Aside Our Differences to Live Out the Gospel, chronicles the ongoing impact of Palau’s mission.

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Nothing’s new under the sun, the Bible says. But then how do we explain the rise of people using AI to bring their loved ones back from the dead?

This story caught our eye: “Chinese companies offer to ‘resurrect’ deceased loved ones”. It tells the tale of Sun Kai, a tech executive who turns to his mother for support. Except it’s not his mother, it’s a digital avatar, “rendered from the shoulders up by artificial intelligence to look and sound just like his flesh-and-blood mother,” who died in 2018.

Just a normal day where AI is involved, right? But wait, it gets weirder. Kai says he doesn’t treat the avatar like an avatar: “I truly regard it as a mother.” And this: “I feel that this might be the most perfect person to confide in, without exception.”

Maybe you read this story and laugh—that’s ridiculous! But we suspect it may cause you to ask some questions instead. Wait, I can use AI to impersonate a loved one? Wait, is this a better way to handle the grief of losing my mom, my dad, my spouse, my child? Wait, what if I pretend Julie never died, because the algorithm sounds so much like her?

Hoo, boy.

This is the start of something big, with enormous moral implications. So it’s worth exploring what’s really happening so we can better understand what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s dangerous.

Without a doubt, losing a loved one is difficult and traumatic. It happens to all of us and we inevitably find ourselves missing the departed. We want to talk to them, to see them, to let them know how much we love them. We all wish we could talk to them, just one more time. Maybe we want to say something we never said. All of us have felt this way.

This is a healthy impulse, no question. And it’s certainly true that AI can help you deal with grief.

But slippery slope, thy name is chatbot.

At what point do we stop trying to remember our loved ones—and start trying to resurrect them instead? At what point do we stop grieving—and start pretending like mom or dad is still among the living?

We don’t know where the line is, but we’re certain there is a line. You don’t have to be an expert in morality or therapy to understand that death is a natural part of life and that grieving is necessary and good.

Grieving gives you a chance to better understand yourself and your place in the world. Research shows that it has many benefits, making you more compassionate and capable of adapting to change. Grief also helps you build deeper relationships. When you lose someone, you lean on the rest of your community, drawing strength and support from those around you.

Finally, there’s a spiritual dimension to grief. Grief helps you grow closer to God. Take it from the Psalms: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted”(Psalm 34:18). Or take it from Jesus Himself in the Gospel of Matthew: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). These aren’t just pleasant-sounding phrases. They express a profound truth about life and death—that God is most present when people are struggling. Like when you lose a loved one.

Can AI really help this process, or does it replace the renewal of faith and community on the other side of mourning?

If it’s helping these things grow, then green light—use it to help you get through grief. But if the chatbot or video generator is preventing your grief and growth, steer clear.

AI can’t bring back a dead loved one back to life. Whatever it creates can never be real. And if this is all sounding a bit high-concept, understand that the Bible got here first. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).

However, the concept of resurrection is limited to the bringing of the actual physical body back to life by divine intervention. Pseudo-divine attempts to resurrect individual humans is seen as borderline idolatrous, because who but God has such a power? “Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:31).

Christ’s resurrection, which involves the physical body, is the only valid model of the concept in Christianity. According to Augustine, “no Christian should have the slightest doubt as to the fact that the bodies of all men, whether already or yet to be born, whether dead or still to die, will be resurrected.” Thomas Aquinas argues that Christ’s resurrected body was an essential component of His resurrected essence. For true resurrection to take place, physical bodies must be involved. A disembodied spirit is something else—usually something deceptive, like ghosts or demons. A disembodied AI version of your dead loved one would seem to raise the same suspicions.

There is plenty of historical and literary precedent for false resurrections, and they paint a grim picture for both the grieving and the grieved. Sun Kai—or anyone over-invested in an AI clone of the deceased—may want to take note.

Take, for example, the Victorian Spiritualist movement, best known for popularizing seances and Ouija boards. Overnight, hundreds of opportunistic “spirit mediums” sprung up, claiming to be able to speak to the dead. Grieving widows handed over their fortunes to these ersatz saviors, who were really just exploiting new technologies like movie projectors and trick photography to create the appearance of “ghosts.” An accomplice would wheedle information about the deceased out of the bereaved, completing the illusion—until the money dried up. Sound familiar?

This is also well-trod territory for sci-fi. In the famous Russian movie Solaris, an alien life-form hijacks the memories of a grieving astronaut, creating a replica of his dead wife to lure him to his doom. Though aware that the “wife” is an alien construct, the illusion proves irresistible. The movie ends with him on an alien planet, surrounded by convicing—but totally false—re-creations of his favorite people and places. Black Mirror and Pluribus touch on similar themes, both with disastrous results. Even these far-flung plots can’t help but repeat what the Bible makes plain: “Let no one be found among you who… consults the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). There is no substitute for God, and “resurrection” absent His grace is a form of purgatory. Although today’s world looks a lot like sci-fi, this lesson still holds.

Only in our faith can we find true consolation and a way to turn our grief into joy. Our loved ones may live on in our memories, but until the foretold day of Resurrection, where bodies will rise along with souls, they may not join us on this earth. Instead of selfishly trying to bring them back—an impossible task—let’s celebrate them and live our own lives so that we can one day join them.