Bless Me Father, For I Have Sinned in using AI.

Is it a Sin to Use AI?

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I have a confession to make.

I’m a pastor, and I’ve used artificial intelligence on a limited basis.

I’ve used it on a limited basis because I’m 56 and I only understand so much of technology these days.

I’ve used ChatGPT, but I like Claude better.

I feel weird even saying that I’ve used AI. It feels like I’ve just said that I like to drown kittens or something.

I feel weird because of the cultural disapproval of AI, especially in religious circles. I’ve seen a number of articles on Substack and other places that share their fear and distaste of AI. Social media is repleat with people who are AI scolds- telling people they should not do something with AI and if you do, you are a person of questionable character.

None of this means that I don’t have concerns about AI. I do. I welcome criticism of AI. I’m thankful for Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which talks about the dangers of AI. (I’m still reading it, so I don’t have a full review at this time.) But in all of the concern, no one seems to ask if there is anything good about AI. It just appears as if it is all bad. The news is barely positive. We have stories of teens where the AI told them to kill themselves, fears that jobs will be lost due to AI, passing off AI writing as written by humans and other fears. Communities are banning data centers. Americans are just not sold on AI.

And there is a good reason for this. Go back 20 years to the dawn of social media. We were sold this was a way to communicate and bring people together and the public bought it wholesale.

Well, we know how everything turned out.

The thing is, it wasn’t just the social media oligarchs that got us into this mess with social media. Governments, cultural leaders, and the church didn’t really question social media. In the church, there was a push to get on board or be left behind. Why would any church not be on social media? I remember that time: I was pushing churches to be on social media and so were many others. Books were written by pastors about how this was a wonderful new world. We never asked when we should use social media and how. We never asked how kids should use social media, if at all. Where was God found in the algorithm? Where is the crucified Christ on Twitter? How should Christians act?

At least in my corner of the Christian world, none of that was asked. And the world suffered for it.

So, having been burned by social media, most people are wary if not hostile to AI.

But I don’t think the church is still not asking the right questions about technology. What is AI for? How should it be used? How can it be used to glorify God? Of course, asking these questions means AI is inevitable. And I do believe it is inevitable. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. So, if we can’t turn back time, then we have to find out how to best live with it, to find out when it can be used, how it can be used and who can use it.

Pope Leo is correct in saying what should be the focus in our tech age; it’s in the title of the encyclical: magnificent humanity. Technology should enhance God’s creation, the dignity of humans. AI should be there to serve humanity, not to rule over it. It should enhance our God-given dignity, not squander it. None of that means we will always have agreed-upon rules. But it does mean we have boundaries telling us when it’s okay and when it might be worrisome.

I use AI in my work as a communications specialist, but not really as a pastor. I have used it to write descriptions for podcast episodes, determine a good title for said episode, pull quotes from sermons to use for social media, level out the sound in my podcasts, and other duties. For the most part, I’m looking at what AI produced and making edits that I think sound better. There are times I don’t use what the AI created because I thought something else sounded better. Sometimes I use it to lay groundwork for something I will write. In every step, the human still has a role. I don’t just copy and paste.

Where I don’t use AI is in sermon preparation and sermon writing. The sermon is the thing a pastor, at least a Protestant pastor, does. It is pouring through the texts and allowing God to speak through you. I don’t doubt Claude could write a nice sermon. But a sermon should be inspired or God-breathed. An AI sermon reminds me of the Valley of the Dry Bones text in Ezekiel. The prophet sees the bones take on flesh and become bodies again, but they have no life. That is what an AI sermon would be. Just as the bodies become fully human when God breathes God’s Spirit in them, so it is with a sermon. What makes a sermon a sermon is God’s Spirit working through us to bring a word to the people. I just don’t think that happens with AI.

Also, aside from using Grammarly to help edit my writing as I go along, I don’t really edit my writing with AI. I tried that once. I didn’t specify that it needed to be lightly edited, so what I got was something that felt less in my own voice. So I decided I wouldn’t really edit my pieces using Claude. It might work for others, just not me.

The question for the church is not if AI will happen. The question for the church is how AI will be used. Pope Leo worries about tech leaders making AI an modern Tower of Babel:

Fearing being scattered across the earth, they sought to guarantee stability and power for themselves, and above all to “make a name” for themselves. It was an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single direction. However, the project concealed a profound danger. It was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion. When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks down, languages are confused and people no longer understand each other. The result is not unity, but dispersion. Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.

And there is some talk among AI honchos where it feels like they are trying to reach heaven through sacrificing human dignity and refusing God’s blessing.

The pontiff then talks about the task of Nehemiah as he tries to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem:

The Book of Nehemiah, in turn, opens at a time of great vulnerability in the history of ancient Israel. After the Babylonian exile, a portion of the people returned to Jerusalem, but the city was still in ruins, the walls collapsed and the gates burned (cf. Neh 1–2). Nehemiah, a Jew in the service of the Persian King Artaxerxes, received news of the disastrous state of his ancestral city. Before taking action, he fasted, prayed and interceded for the people. He then asked the king for permission to return to Jerusalem and, upon arriving, examined the destroyed areas in silence. He did not impose solutions from above. He convened the families, assigned each of them a section of the wall to rebuild, listened to their concerns, coordinated their efforts and addressed any opposition. The narrative shows how the city is reborn, not through the initiative of one man, but through the shared responsibility of all: men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households and young people all play a part. It is an undertaking with God at the center, which rebuilds relationships before rebuilding with stones. Thus, ancient Jerusalem rediscovers a common language — not one of uniformity, but one of communion, namely the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and recognize that their strength comes from the Lord.

So the question for me is if the usage of AI brings communion, bringing people together or does it divide and belittle humans?

Artificial Intelligence will bring great disruption to our society. It will also bring great promise. That’s how most technology operates, bringing rupture and repair. How does the church respond to this? It isn’t by banning AI, but by lifting up the human.

All technology is disruptive. The printing press was disruptive. It helped foster the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War. Technology can be wonderful and life-changing, but in a sinful world, there will always be pain. I saw this happen in my hometown.

I grew up in Flint, Michigan, a town dominated by one industry, making automobiles. Flint was the birthplace of General Motors, and the town was filled with auto plants. Tens of thousands of people were employed by GM, and suppliers employed thousands more.

Most people know the story of Flint. Today, General Motors is no longer the force it once was. There are a lot of reasons for this, but a major one is technology. Robots and other productivity improvements meant you didn’t need as many people. That meant a lot of layoffs and economic disruption, which, having lived through it, wasn’t fun. Our society, especially the church, didn’t do a good job of helping people manage that change.

Does that mean we sit back and let it happen? No. We should be prepared. As Canadian pastor Carey Nieuwhof noted in a recent interview about AI, “What happens when a lot of your congregation or community is unemployed suddenly?”

As I conclude, it’s important to remember one important thing: this is God’s world, not our world. God is the one who holds the future, not us. Does that make one feel better? No. I don’t feel better. But then again, it’s not up to me, it’s up to God. What we can do, is preach the good news of Jesus, and care for those who might be affected and remember that the technology, whether it’s social media, the printing press, or AI is not God. Love God and love those around us.