To the Christian, living authority has only one placement: Christ, who is in us through the grace of the Holy Spirit. To offload our dependence on the Holy Spirit and the broader word of God to ChatGPT is probably the greatest unconscious error that a Christian can make today. Remember that technology has no divine plan for your life. It is a willing participant in a transaction that affords its survival. Whether or not you prosper as a result, that’s of no matter to it. Human flourishing is not its mandate. But it is part of what God promises to us time and time again throughout his word. In Jeremiah 29:11-14, it says this, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord.” David Foster Wallace in his very famous Kenyon College speech says everybody worships. And what is worship if not explicit and sustained attention? This choice is where you will derive your world system, your values, your satisfaction, your loves. So stay attentive to that which is sustaining your attention, as you might unknowingly be building altars within yourself for things that simply don’t deserve it.
Questioner 1: Um, one of the things I thought was really interesting when you were talking, you used the term like not letting AI become almost the first consultant. And I think I promise you for many of us in the room where it’s like I feel like I am very intentional when I want to have a reflection or I’m trying to answer a deep question to, you know, turn within and turn to God. But I think for me, it’s actually where it starts to eat into my life is like, “Oh, I just want to decompress. I just need like 20 minutes.” And where I might have been quiet before or I might have subconsciously let prayer or God take that space, now that has kind of been cannibalized by just doom scrolling. Or getting back to emails or whatever, you know, kind of like a mindlessness. And so I’m just interested in what the research says and maybe what your personal opinion is on what’s the loss in that situation because I think it feels more mundane and it feels like a less risky place to let technology take that role in your life. But I’m very interested in what happens when there’s not quiet anymore. Speaker: 100%. What I would say is this: Does the rest you experience from Netflix or doom scrolling, do you genuinely feel that that’s regenerative? You know, the point of resting in the Lord is a regeneration of the self, right? That is true rest. So soothing your anxieties of the day, that’s like a shot, you know, it’s penicillin of sorts.
When faith is presented honestly in a non-religious forum, it can create space for people to engage with spiritual questions they’d otherwise dismiss. The conventional approach to evangelism asks people to perform an acknowledgment of shortcoming — but people resist that when they don’t trust the institution that follows to shepherd them through what comes next. This is especially true in tech: ambitious founders don’t see the church as equipped to meet them where they are, so they never reach the point of vulnerability that spiritual growth requires. The more effective approach bypasses the institutional ask entirely and instead models honest engagement, which gives others permission to do the same. faith
