As AI Leaves You Behind, What Will You Live For?

Can anything good come out of Liechtenstein?

When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn traveled there in 1993 to receive an honorary doctorate from the International Academy of Philosophy, the famed Russian dissident had visited the tiny European monarchy of some 30,000 people twice before. But this trip marked massive global changes at the end of the 20th century. The Soviet Union had fallen less than two years earlier.

Unlike other hosts who felt Solzhenitsyn’s wrath, Liechtenstein received his thanks. When the Iron Curtain descended across Europe at the end of the Second World War in 1945, Liechtenstein protected anti-Communist Russians. But British and American leaders chose to placate Joseph Stalin instead. They sent hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens living in territories they occupied back to Russia, though they knew this would mean certain death for many.

In his acceptance address, Solzhenitsyn returned to a common indictment of the modern West: “We have ceased to see the purpose.”

No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth. Victorious technological civilization has simultaneously instilled in us a spiritual insecurity. Certainly, its gifts enrich, but enslave us as well. All is interests, we must not neglect our interests, all is a struggle for material things; but an inner voice faintly prompts us that we’ve lost something pure, elevated—and fragile.

What, Solzhenitsyn asked, are we living for?

More than 30 years later, as we hurtle into the middle of the 21st century, that’s still our question.

What are we living for?

We Can’t Keep Up

Seen within this context of Western history, the unprecedented and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence offers us an unexpected gift. But we can’t receive it until we surrender.

Surrender by not pretending you can keep up with AI.

Surrender by not pretending you can control AI.

Make no mistake: AI will leave you behind.

It already has.

While AI enthusiasts warn that you better get on board the train, its engineers say the train has already left the station.

And no one’s driving the locomotive.

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa termed our experience of modern technological phenomena “social acceleration” in his 2013 book by that title:

Simply put, technical acceleration tends to increase the pace of social change, which in turn unavoidably increases the experienced pace of life, which then induces an ongoing demand for technical acceleration in the hopes of saving time, and so on back around the circle.

Rosa’s theory explains why greater productivity has contributed to greater anxiety among some AI power users. That anxiety may be simply the cost of doing business with computers that now have a mind of their own, with power and speed far outstripping our paltry human efforts. The resulting productivity could produce economic and scientific breakthroughs we judge as worth that cost. Or those productivity gains may simply prove necessary in a world of falling birth rates and declining population.

That future remains to be revealed, as in the original meaning of “apocalypse.” Again, not even the engineers know where this train is headed, or where and when it will stop.

We Must Discern

But to judge what’s necessary, that remains our human task. AI might have already left us behind. But it’s still up to us—as individuals, as families, as communities, as educators, as employees and employers, as ministers, as Christians—to exercise wisdom in how we deploy these technological powers. We still decide when and how to engage, what’s for good and what’s for ill.

We’re not helpless against constant technical acceleration.

The machines may work what appear to us as miracles. But they can never generate wisdom. They can never help us see the purpose.

What are we living for?

“We must not simply lose ourselves in the mechanical flow of Progress,” Solzhenitsyn said in 1993, “but strive to harness it spiritually—for our own sake; not become the mere playthings of Progress, but rather seek or deepen ways of directing its might towards the accomplishment of good.”

AI has left you behind. How can AI help you see the purpose of life?

AI will do some good. But what good will you live for?

I want to live for God. I want to live for my family, friends, and neighbors. I want to live for joy.

I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a world that remembers the purpose, even as they struggle and fail and give up and make something great.

At TGC, we want to help you navigate the AI apocalypse, the most rapidly implemented technology in history. We want to help you live for good.

Bradbury for Today

As I learn about and experiment with AI, I keep thinking about books. I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a world of books, written by human beings, read by human beings. Not summaries of slop, written by AI, read by AI.

I didn’t experience the school-age rite of passage in reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. So I had to borrow my more erudite wife’s copy from seventh-grade advanced English. But as I plucked her 1990s paperback from our home library shelves, I stumbled over the cover: “The Classic Bestseller About Censorship—More Important Now Than Ever Before.”

I’ll grant some exuberant marketing exaggeration. But a book about censorship? More important in the 1990s than any (by default, earlier) time? If I’d only read the CliffsNotes, maybe I’d nod along. This 1953 book is about a time when the government won’t need to censor books, because few will take any interest.

I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a world that remembers the purpose, even as they struggle and fail and give up and make something great.

I fear it’s a book about today.

What’s labeled “artificial intelligence” is neither artificial nor intelligent. It’s designed by us, and it feeds on us. Sometimes it preys on us too. Nearly every day someone’s sharing with me another AI-generated article about why AI will change everything. Before long, it’s not hard to see that the boom case isn’t different from the bust case. The doomers and the accelerationists are the same. If the accelerationists are right, then it doesn’t matter if for the moment I’m one step ahead of the last in the pack. Eventually, AI will catch up and eat me too.

When this is the positive case for AI, who needs a doomsday scenario?

I don’t doubt AI will change and even improve many things. The humans developing and deploying AI are made in the image of a Creator God. The benefits will fall on the righteous and unrighteous alike in common grace. You and I might even be cured from a deadly disease thanks to research advancements powered by AI. Fields from medicine to law to accounting to investing to marketing and just about everything in between are being disrupted. It’s not hard to see more changes looming. Some jobs will be lost. Others will become more efficient. Humans made with dignity in the image of God have a knack for eliminating the drudgery from their work.

But humans under the curse of sin also have a knack for confusing drudgery with dignity. And that’s the point Bradbury makes in his novel, far ahead of its time. Not only did Bradbury anticipate the technology of interactive screens for home entertainment, but he also grasped the underlying philosophy of technologies that promise deliverance but deliver servitude.

In his book, the firefighters start fires as they seek to rescue humanity from the plague of books with their pointless abstractions. Books make us think about war and love, and who wants to think about such difficult subjects when the White Clown is about to come on the screen? Books make us think about our stewardship for the next generation, and who wants to think about that when you can just get abortions and schedule C-sections and send your children away to storage?

This, then, is another gift from AI: to remember why literacy matters, to promote it, to protect it.

Among many memorable scenes in Fahrenheit 451, Fireman Montag begins to question his fire-starting work in the case of a woman who refuses to leave her books before the firemen burn down her house. Montag’s boss, Captain Beatty, appeals to her “common sense.” He shouts, “None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!”

She won’t move. She opens her hand and reveals a match. The firemen flee. She starts the fire herself, “her quietness a condemnation.”

No matter what rest and recreation AI offers, we must never give up on writing. Because when we give up on writing, we’ll have no need for reading. And when we stop reading, we’ll no longer be thinking about love and war and other big topics like how to make our world better for the next generation.

Literacy is the house I’ll burn down in.

Literacy is the house I’ll burn down in.

You’re reading an article about AI not written by AI. I trust, then, you’ll join me.

After all, what else are we living for?

When You’ll Let AI Write Your Sermon

I’m not naive. I know I still haven’t convinced all of you that the goodness of technology, as a by-product of humanity’s call to exercise dominion over the earth from Genesis 1, must be viewed alongside our human fallen nature of Genesis 3.

I know because I can’t even convince all the pastors I train—even when I lay out the following scenario of how AI will claim another victim of “cognitive offloading.” A similar situation could be sketched for just about any workplace. Here’s what I tell pastors:

The week you use AI to write your sermon will probably involve a crisis: an unexpected death or funeral, another preacher fallen ill at the last minute, a critical email that requires a tense in-person meeting. You run out of time to prepare. You don’t have the necessary hours to study original languages and consult commentaries and develop illustrations. Your head is spinning; you can’t lock in to the mental work of an exegetical or homiletical outline. It’s 10 p.m. on Saturday. You need to be up by 4 a.m., and you can’t even think about how you’ll apply the passage to a congregation you know well.

Generative AI offers you a solution to what feels like an impossible problem. You need to preach the next morning. You need to sleep so you can handle the morning services, afternoon meeting with elders, and evening dinner with new members. And you have nothing to offer.

AI isn’t like the sermons you’ve been tempted to plagiarize. It’s too big of a risk to grab something from John Piper or Tim Keller. Odds are that someone recognizes the plagiarized sermon, or at least wonders why it doesn’t sound quite like you. AI can sound like you. You can train it on your past sermons, your notes, your previous queries. You can prompt the output with your own voice and draw from the collected wisdom of other preachers and scholars over the decades, even centuries. AI excels in mimicking the three-point sermon with introduction, thesis, points, subpoints, illustrations, even applications and conclusion. If you don’t like the first draft produced in seconds, you can prompt necessary revisions to complexity and tone.

And the congregation will love it. They’ll tell you afterward that you were especially clear this week. They loved the depth of insight. They felt like you were really speaking to them individually, like the Holy Spirit told you what they were thinking.

That’s why you’ll use AI to write your sermon the next week too.

But this time you won’t have the crisis. You’ll just realize it’s inefficient to spend so much time writing an inferior sermon. You can’t catch up to computers. That train has already left the station. Why not spend your time instead visiting the sick, or praying, or meeting with your fellow leaders? Plus, the congregation likes the AI version of you better. You’re doing them a favor! Bonus, you get to spend more time with your family, hit the gym, play some golf. Who’s hurt? The ends justify the means. As long as you don’t give away that you’re not spending any time on your sermon, no one may even know what’s happening (or not happening) in the pastor’s study.

Product, Process, and Purpose

So often in ministry—really, in all of life today, as Solzhenitsyn warned—we’re tempted to confuse the product with the process. If pastoral ministry is primarily content delivery, then AI will often—maybe even usually—win. The product is better than what most of us can muster. But if pastoral ministry can’t be separated from the kind of Christian we’re becoming in the process, then AI-generated sermons rob us and our congregations of God’s intended blessing.

Consider the alternative when we off-load our preparation to the machines. AI doesn’t just write sermons. AI can also put the preacher—any preachers—onscreen. You don’t even need to stand up front to read what the computer wrote for you. What would your congregation lose without you? They can customize the voice, the hair, the dress, the volume—if they could agree. Maybe they’ll just stay at home where they can set all their own preferences. Each family member could craft their own sermons with their own AI preachers.

As I already warned: The boom and bust cases of AI end up in the same place. Whether you think it’s great or worry it’s terrible, the train eventually arrives at the same station.

You lose the need for you.

For humanity.

So, what are we for? How can humanity survive the AI apocalypse?

Yes, I tell preachers, the product matters. But so does the process of who God is making you to be when you wrestle in prayerful study before the open Word. The key word comes in the apostle Paul’s exhortation to Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2, emphasis added). Whatever AI is and becomes, it’s not patient. It can’t be patient. It’s not sentient. It’s not wise.

Humans become patient as God shows patience to us in the process of study and writing, of appropriating God’s promises before we proclaim them to others. Then humans offer each other “logic on fire,” to borrow the famous description of preaching from Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

If you think you can beat AI in producing content, you probably can’t. You certainly can’t do so with the same efficiency. But if every sermon is a weekly climb up the mountain to behold the face of God, then the preacher’s radiance shines before all who “see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

Yes, the product matters. But so does the process of who God is making you to be when you wrestle in prayerful study before the open Word.

What a sight for all of us to behold!

Surrender your ability to outwit AI. Never surrender your irreplaceability as a human to reflect the God who made you in his image and conforms you to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29).

What are we living for? How can humanity survive the AI apocalypse?

If we’re content delivery machines that get hungry and tired, we lose to AI.

If we’re data processors that get confused and forgetful, we lose to AI.

If we’re the only creative beings made in God’s image, then AI can never replace us.

Because AI can never show us the purpose. AI can never call on wisdom to call out good. Only human—you and I—can do that, when we call on the Lord.