God from the Machine
Introducing our Spring 2026 Issue
In the age of artificial intelligence, how should we think about God?
For many Americans, this is a challenging question. The Christian faith teaches that God created humanity in His image—the imago Dei. He gave us the ability to think and reason and shape the world to reflect His Word. But now humanity seems to have taken a page from God’s book. We’ve created our own reasoning, thinking, world-shaping technology—artificial intelligence. Have we become gods ourselves? Do we even need God anymore?
It’s certainly easy to get carried away by the AI wave. The technology is surely the most amazing invention in human history. But make no mistake: Artificial intelligence hasn’t destroyed humanity’s desperate need for God. And if we let AI further separate us from faith, this technology will quickly spin out of control, doing untold damage to the family, to community, and to the very fabric of our society.
Put simply, faith in God is crucial to harnessing AI for good. And this is a call-to-action for all of us.
It won’t surprise you that, here at The Believe! Journal, we stand without apology for faith. One of our core principles is God and His Church. That belief informs everything we do, and even the name of this project reflects it. The first and foremost thing we believe is that Jesus Christ died and rose to save us all.
And so we believe that God is necessary to save us from AI gone wrong. It’s deeply concerning that many—perhaps most—of AI’s developers don’t seem to understand or appreciate Christianity. Silicon Valley isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of faith. While there are certainly good Christians working in the AI industry, the ecosystem is steeped in secularism, shaping AI in ways that can undermine human flourishing.
There are very real concerns that AI will be used to dehumanize workers, destroy jobs, and usher in an era of dependency. AI is also being used to usher in a new era of degrading women and destroying intimacy—need I say more? And AI has a powerful ability to shape civic participation. It could easily be used to stifle free speech, enforce intellectual conformity, and otherwise deprive people of our God-given rights and responsibilities.
But is AI doomed to do all of this? Absolutely not. While it may seem indistinguishable from magic at first glance, artificial intelligence is still just a tool—a uniquely advanced tool, yes, but a tool nonetheless. And like any tool, it can be used in moral or immoral ways. It all depends on how its creators design it and how we as consumers demand it be designed.
Every Christian—and person of goodwill—has a duty to help shape AI for the better.
We absolutely need more people of faith and virtue building AI companies and tools, with the goal of expanding opportunity and uplifting the human experience. We can’t leave this brave new world of innovation solely to non-believers. By the same token, as families and citizens, we need to demand the moral and virtuous use of AI. In some cases, that means pressuring companies to avoid evil. In other cases, it could mean supporting laws to keep AI on the straight on narrow.
This will be a challenge, not least because so many Americans have fallen away from faith. But that should only stiffen our spines to fight for AI done right.
In this issue of The Believe! Journal, you’ll meet people who have a lot of thoughts on AI’s potential—for good and bad—as well as its implications for people of faith.
Kevin Palau—the world-famous evangelist—asks: Can AI Help Us Believe in God? His answer may surprise you.
Larry Arnn—the President of Hillsdale College—asks what becomes of the human soul when AI begins to think and write for us.
Dick DeVos—the name rings a bell—reflects on the true meaning and purpose of work, which is timely given how AI could transform work.
Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel and now the Executive Chair and Head of Technology of Gloo, introduces a tool—the Flourishing AI Christian Benchmark—that can help you find AI that reflects the Christian faith.
Mark Johnson, a tech innovator and co-founder of Michigan Software Labs, explores how the rise of “AI agents” affects our ability to be “agents of God.”
Joel Chakra, from the Tebow Group and the Waterstone Impact Fund, worked in Silicon Valley. It left him very concerned—and determined to spark far more Christian investment in tech.
Dr. Jeff Meyers, president of Summit Ministries, offers seven pro tips for “raising kids in a virtual world.” His advice is as principled as it is practical.
Troy Evans, a pastor and urban ministry leader in Grand Rapids, says its up to Christian leaders to shape AI for the better. If they don’t, AI will shape our communities—for the worse.
M.I. Terzian wonders why humanity is losing its interest in fulfilling the Biblical mandate to “subdue the earth.” He points back to Scriptural insights that are being forgotten.
Clara Piano is a professor and expert in family, law, and religion. So when she writes about “faithful stewardship in a time of rapid technological progress,” it’s worth paying attention.
Dan Churchwell, from the Acton Institute, says that Christians have a duty to shepherd people through AI’s disruption. Now more than ever, we must recognize and respect human worth.
Aaron Renn, a truly original thinker and frequent contributor of ours, wrote a book last year: Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian World. We reprint the book’s introduction, which bears directly on AI.
Finally, the wildly successful entrepreneur Ritanker Das has a fascinating conversation with an AI model we developed for The Believe! Journal. Spoiler alert: The model thinks it’s… me.
Plus, the editorial team here at the journal has written a few thought-provoking pieces about the intersection of AI and Religion: What Would Jesus Do About AI Resurrecting Your Loved Ones, ChatGPT Psychosis is a Disease, Does AI Miss the Point of Christianity? and Don’t Turn A Chatbot Into a Savior; Religion is The Cure.
I also recently recorded a podcast with Johann Kurtz, who runs the popular Becoming Noble Substack. We talked about his new book: Leaving a Legacy. We don’t exactly get into AI, but we do look at what it means to build something that lasts long-term and spans generations. We need that sense of permanence as technology disrupts so much of daily life.
Closing thought: In Believe!, my dad’s bestselling book that we rereleased last year, he writes about the four stages that tend to define churches. But it really applies to all organizations and innovations, too. The four stages are creation, growth, defense, division; what begins with optimism and excitement ultimately descends into despair and destruction. While dad didn’t have AI in mind, I think his insight is very applicable.
I worry that our society has already jumped to the fourth stage with AI—fighting over its use and dividing the spoils amongst ourselves. But AI is still very much in the creative stage, and its continued development depends on good people making it better and directing it towards its best and highest uses.
The genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Artificial intelligence is here to stay. The question is whether it will be made in the image of man, with all our sin and suffering—or whether we, as men and women made in the image of God, will push this technology to reflect the truth. The choice is ours!
You may find this interesting, Ryan Selkis thinks we must train models to be more like Jesus as a matter of public policy: https://newrightpoast.substack.com/p/nrp-radio-ep-37-with-ryan-selkis
Mr. DeVos, I read this with real unease. You frame AI as a tool we can sanctify by building it well. But I cannot shake the sense that what we are actually building is an architecture, one that is quietly making participation in ordinary life conditional on proving, to a machine, that we are human.
The hard line, the one your essay never names, is this: coexistence with AI is being sold to us at the price of identity. To use the machines we once enjoyed freely, we are being asked to attach ourselves to them permanently. Sam Altman has co-founded World, a project that scans human irises to issue a cryptographic "proof of personhood," and he has publicly argued that this kind of verification will become necessary as AI fills the internet with activity indistinguishable from our own. He is not alone. The EU is deploying a digital identity wallet. Governments are mandating age verification, and a whole industry is racing to build the credentialing layer. A society where people could once think, speak, worship, and trade without attribution is being replaced by one where every act requires a credential. That is not a tool. That is a covenant, and it is being signed on our behalf.
Some will say none of this is compulsory, that an iris scan or a digital ID is voluntary. So were credit cards. So were driver's licenses. So were email addresses. The pattern is always the same: voluntary at the introduction, indispensable at the participation, mandatory by the time anyone notices and the opt-out narrows until it disappears.
I do not claim to know the hour or the meaning. I am not certain AI is the beast. But I am certain that "embrace it and shape it from within" is the answer every age gives to the thing it should have questioned more carefully. The Word is living, and the gist of its warnings survives every translation. When the world asks you to submit to a system in exchange for the right to buy, sell, speak, or vote, the faithful response is not enthusiasm. It is discernment, and a willingness to say no.
AI is already made in the image of man, trained on the collected output of fallen humanity. That is not raw material waiting to be sanctified. It is a mirror. Scripture does not tell us to decorate the mirror. It tells us to turn back toward God.