How many times can a guy let the church on Twitter (Still not calling it X) or Substack, or YouTube, or even Bluesky, (I know right?), that this A.I. stuff shouldn’t be used the way they are using it. It’s like they aren’t listening! But then it comes to me. How would they listen to spiritual things with robot ears.
One of the quiet issues that shows up when you even consider the issue of A.I. replacing in the church what the Holy Ghost does for the church is that upon His replacement, He might be absent from the assembly from that point on. If the latest A.I. tech is used to translate the worship service into 6 different languages, for engagement and stewardship, of course, then He might take His gift of tongues and their interpretation and find another church.
This is only, really a problem for the charismatics in the crowd. But discernment as outsourced to Grok and ChatGPT can find every denominational hamstring there is. You think You’re gonna be the exception to the rule because you’re using the robot the right way alongside your smoke machine and projectors? If the theologian strays too close to the wrong kind of fire and ends up thinking he can disciple the A.I. alongside the flock he’s responsible for, The Holy Spirit might stop giving him things to teach. Though I am certain the theologian in question’s content will still get generated like clockwork.
“And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God.”
1 Chronicles 13:9-10 KJV
“And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.”
Leviticus 10:1-2 KJV
What these two sections of God’s book tell us is that if you do things the right kind of wrong, you don’t get a second chance on this side of eternity. Worship matters. And the kinds of things we let into our sanctuaries to be called worship will matter also.
You see you don’t get a chance to bring your gift to the altar if you put your hand on the ark before it gets there. And way too many pastors have their hands on the A.I. cart to notice that their headed to exactly this kind of situation. They will shove A.I. into anything they can to get an intellectual edge on “Doing church right” and in doing so, burn what chance they had at stopping before the point of no return. The evangelical mind doesn’t want to square the idea of a God hardening the hearts of a rebellious or disobedient people. Because that might mean they could be that kind of people. A kind that does things wrong.
Remember that the same Pharoah that had his heart hardened had wise men just as capable as Moses in the beginning of all his trouble. And instead of listening to the peers of snake sticks and bloodied water, he waited until there were no more firstborns before letting Gods people go. His magicians did the same things God’s messenger was doing through the power of God. And how did that end up for them? Did they rightly distinguish between the snakes and the sticks or did their hearts harden like their master’s until they were too entrenched in beliefs about their techniques and technologies (Read as secret arts in the NIV). You want to balk at the nomenclature there but exactly how A.I.'s work is as magic would be to the layman for most of you.
If you don’t notice that your technology has replaced what the Holy Spirit did. You may not get the checkpoint and save spot your video game theology has so reliably assured you that you will. You may find your self hardened and wicked as you preach Jesus' name off the back of pagan works. Rebranded as tech savvy and modern by the craftiest of all salesmen of sticks there ever was. And the gifts and fruits which would have been found in you in abundance, discernment, teaching, wisdom, and every form of tongues Google could translate for you, will be missing. And in their stead, snakes that can only serve as food for greater miracles and evidence of works worthy of destruction and curse.
There is a reason the Bible talks about people having ears to hear and the converse. People who have ears to hear but can’t / don’t. If you convince yourself that God’s will is in the black box of A.I., and this is just what modern Christianity looks like. That using tech is a non negotiable, maybe it won’t be negotiated for.
Maybe there are sins that don’t get mediated for.
“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”
Matthew 12:31-32 KVJ
You might wonder what speaking against the Holy Spirit would look like in a context of livestreamed, online, techno-savvy church. But if you didn’t notice it when the dopamine reaction from soft music in a dark room, was all but farmed for engagement and tithe’s, you will not notice it when your air pods start interpreting tongues in His place.
“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:”
Exodus 34:14 KJV