AI and Too Much Content

Somewhere along the way, content stopped being something we went looking for and became something that chases us. News alerts, videos, newsletters, podcasts, devotionals, forwarded messages. Pick up your phone for ten seconds and something is already waiting for you.

And now that AI can produce articles, images and videos in a few seconds, the pile is growing faster than ever. I create content myself, so I'm not pointing fingers from the outside. But I think it's time we asked an honest question: is all of this actually helping us?

How much is out there?

The numbers are hard to wrap your head around. One estimate says the world creates, captures, copies and consumes about 402 million terabytes of data every day, and that the yearly total is heading toward 221 zettabytes in 2026, up from 181 in 2025. People send hundreds of billions of emails daily, and more than 720,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every single day.

To be fair, a lot of that "data" is backups, streaming traffic and machine activity, not articles and sermons meant for you. But even if you shave off most of it, the direction is obvious. There is far more than any person could ever take in, and more of it is being aimed at you every year.

The result is a fight for your attention. Everyone wants a piece of it, and most of us are running out.

What it does to us

I used to think of this as an annoyance. The research says it is more than that.

In one US survey of about 1,100 adults, roughly 16.5% showed what the researchers called "severely problematic" news habits. Nearly three out of four of those people reported real mental health struggles, such as anxiety and stress, compared with about 8% of everyone else. Over 60% of them also reported physical problems. What caught my attention is that the researchers said the issue wasn't simply how much news people read. It was whether they felt trapped in it, unable to stop and unable to step away.

Another study looked at what happened after the Boston Marathon bombing. People who watched more than six hours of coverage a day were about nine times more likely to show signs of high acute stress. And researchers at University College London described a kind of loop: the worse people felt, the more negative content they went looking for, and the more negative content they consumed, the worse they felt.

A caution here. Most of these studies show a link, not proof that one thing causes the other. But I doubt many of us need a study to tell us what it feels like. You read about one tragedy after another, you can't do anything about most of them, and you go to bed with a heavy heart and a busy mind.

The same news, five times over

Here's something I see all the time. Plenty of people belong to several WhatsApp groups run by different news outlets and agencies. The same story shows up in one group, then another, then another, each with a slightly different headline and each asking for your attention.

You haven't learned anything new. You've just been told the same thing five times and felt the same worry five times. That isn't being informed. That's being worn down.

Even the short stuff is too much now

This next part may sound backwards, because the whole world is moving toward shorter and faster content. Reels, shorts, clips, ten-second takes. The idea is that it fits our busy lives and our shrinking attention spans. But I think we've reached the point where even the short stuff is too much.

There is so much of it, and it's pushed so hard, that many people can't get through it anymore. They swipe, swipe, swipe, and a minute later they couldn't tell you what they just watched. One clip has barely started before the next one is lined up. Our attention is being asked to jump so many times a minute that it never gets the chance to settle on anything.

And I'd say that's the real problem with short-form media. It's not only that it's shallow. It's that we forget it. When you take in too much, too quickly, nothing has time to sink in.

Researchers are starting to see this too. In one set of experiments published in Communications Psychology, people who learned from short videos remembered less accurately than those who watched longer ones, and brain scans showed less coordinated activity in regions tied to attention and memory. Another study, from Francesco Chiossi and colleagues, found that scrolling a TikTok-style feed made it harder for people to hold on to a task they had meant to do afterward. They were more likely to forget what they were supposed to be doing.

I want to be fair about this. This research is still young. Many of the studies are small, many involve young adults or students, and nobody can yet say what years of this will do to us. And I'm not saying a short video can never be useful. A good short clip can be helpful or encouraging.

But what I notice in my own life matches what I'm reading. When I sit down with a long conversation, a full sermon, a chapter of a book or a good teaching, I can usually tell you something from it a week later. When I've scrolled for twenty minutes, I'm lucky if I can name one thing. Long-form takes more effort, but it's the kind that stays with us. I know that goes against where the trend is headed, but I think it's true, and I think it's something we should say out loud.

What Jesus did

I keep coming back to the Lord's own example. Nobody has ever had a busier ministry than Jesus. Crowds followed him, the sick were brought to him, and the needs never stopped. And yet the Gospels keep showing us the same thing. In Mark 1:35, he got up while it was still dark and went off to a quiet place to pray. Luke 5:16 says he often withdrew to lonely places. In Mark 6:31, when the disciples were overwhelmed, he told them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."

He didn't wait until the work was finished to rest, because the work was never going to be finished. He made quiet a regular part of his life. I wonder how many of us can say the same. Most of us now carry the noise with us, even to the quiet place.

What church life used to look like

Think about an ordinary Christian fifty years ago or so. They went to church, heard a message, and probably had a Bible at home that they read each day. That was most of their spiritual diet. It wasn't much compared to what we have, but they lived with it, chewed on it and acted on it.

Today we have more sermons, clips, devotionals, podcasts and commentary than anyone could finish in many lifetimes, and a lot of it gets pushed at us whether we asked or not. So here's the question I can't shake. Is it all making us more like Christ, or is it just making our lives louder? Having more access does not automatically give us more depth. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10) is a hard verse to obey when your phone buzzes every few minutes.

To those of us who create content

Most of us started with a good reason. We wanted to help people. But if the pace and volume of what we publish, added to everyone else's, ends up burying the people we hoped to help, then we've worked against our own purpose.

I know some people create content for income, and that comes with pressures I won't pretend to understand. But for those of us who do it out of a genuine desire to serve, here are a few things I'm trying to keep in mind:

• Say it when you have something to say. Posting every day because the platform rewards it is not the same as having a daily word worth sharing.
• Ask whether it adds anything. If the same point has been made a hundred times this week, maybe wait.
• Respect people's attention. Skip the false urgency and the alarming headlines, and don't blast the same thing into every group you can find.
• Think before you forward. Passing along something you haven't weighed just adds to the pile.
• Rest. Content that comes out of an exhausted, empty place rarely helps anyone, including the person writing it.

For the rest of us, a few simple steps

If you're on the receiving end, you can't control how much gets pushed at you, but you can control what gets through. These are things I'd encourage:

1. Choose your sources. A few trustworthy ones are better than twenty. Leave the extra news groups. You won't miss anything you truly needed.
2. Check at set times. Look at the news once or twice a day on purpose, rather than every time something lights up.
3. Pay attention to how you feel. If a source regularly leaves you anxious, angry or helpless, take that seriously.
4. Guard the first hour. Give your first moments to Scripture and prayer before the phone. It's the same pattern Jesus followed.
5. Plan real retreats. An afternoon, a day or a weekend with no screens. Treat it as a spiritual discipline, not a luxury.
6. Go deeper with less. Read one book slowly. Stay with one passage for a week. Put a sermon into practice before you listen to the next one.
7. Let technology help you. This is where I think AI can actually be useful. An AI assistant can filter and summarize things by rules you set, so you get one short daily brief instead of fifty alerts, or only what matches what you've decided matters. Used well, it can cut down the flood. Used carelessly, it just adds to it. The point is that you're in charge of the tool, not the other way around.

Where this leaves us

I don't think the goal is to know everything. I think it's to know what matters, and above all to know God. A life with fewer inputs leaves room to listen, to rest, and to hear what the Lord is saying.

Jesus went to quiet places because he knew he needed them. We need them too.

Artificial to Super Intelligence

 

On a new executive order, a very old question about what things are called, and what it means for people of faith. (Updated as of October 2026.)

Something unusual happened on September 29. The President of the United States signed an executive order telling the federal government to stop using the words "artificial intelligence" and start saying "super intelligence" instead. Within days, "SI" was showing up in government communications, and a few weeks later the White House was warning that anyone who kept using the old term would be treated as "the enemy."

Is this just a branding exercise? Or does a two-letter change matter? In my recent post on AGI and superintelligence, I looked at the debate over whether superintelligence might arrive and what the risks could be. This post asks a related question: what happens when the word itself gets redefined by the government?

As always, my goal is to explain what is happening, give each side a fair hearing, and then ask what faith has to say.

What Actually Happened

President Trump first floated the idea in a September 22 speech to the UN General Assembly, saying the word "artificial" makes intelligence sound fake. A State Department email then told diplomats to change all references from "Artificial Intelligence" to "Super Intelligence" in their documents and positions.

On September 29, the White House issued the executive order titled "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence." Here is what it does, according to the White House text and legal summaries:

• It sets a rule for the executive branch. Agencies are to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in place of "AI" in official correspondence, websites, reports, and other non-statutory documents, "to the maximum extent permitted by law."
• It does not create a new technology category. The order says "Super Intelligence" covers the same technologies already defined as AI in federal law. There is no new capability threshold.
• It does not rewrite the past. Existing regulations, contracts, grants, and historical documents stay as they are.
• It does not bind private companies, Congress, or other countries.
• It starts a clock. The President's science adviser has 60 days, until around November 28, to propose a formal federal definition of "Super Intelligence."

On the same day, six tech companies signed a separate "White House Accord on Super Intelligence." It is a one-page set of voluntary commitments on safety policies, risk reviews, audits, and third-party evaluations for frontier models. President Trump called it "morally binding," though it is voluntary and not law. Interestingly, the accord itself speaks of "frontier models," and only its title uses the new term.

Why Did They Do It? Two Readings

The administration's case

The executive order says modern systems do far more than imitate or automate pieces of human intelligence, and that the old term no longer reflects what the technology can do. The White House describes the change as recognizing the "immense opportunity" in these technologies and notes that the United States has led this field for more than 70 years. Supporters in industry have echoed the idea. Nvidia's Jensen Huang has described data centers as "super intelligence factories," Elon Musk has said he will rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, and Meta has reportedly begun using the term in internal communications.

The critics' case

Critics see something different. They note that the rename arrives amid public worry over AI safety and a wave of local backlash against data centers, and they read it as an effort to improve the technology's image. Others point out that the move came as the White House was dismissing calls to regulate AI companies. Even Nick Bostrom, the philosopher whose work popularized the term "superintelligence," reportedly said it is a stretch to call a spam filter a superintelligence, while acknowledging that the rename could work as a clever rhetorical shield against regulation.

Industry itself is not unified. OpenAI's Sam Altman has said there are no plans to rename the company, even though OpenAI's president attended the signing and signed the accord.

Why the Word Matters

Here is the heart of the problem. "Superintelligence" is not a new word. In AI research, it already has a specific meaning: a hypothetical system that vastly exceeds human intelligence in nearly every area. When I explained the three types of AI back in 2021, I described Super AI exactly that way, as something that did not yet exist. It is also the kind of system that Senator Bernie Sanders's proposed "Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act" targets.

By the categories I laid out in 2021, today's tools are still on the Narrow-to-General side of the line, and reporting on the order notes that superintelligence in the technical sense has not been achieved. So when the government applies the word to current systems, it creates several tensions:

• Confusion about what exists. David Krueger, who founded an AI risk advocacy group, has pointed out that superintelligence already means AI so far beyond us that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to control. Brendan Steinhauser of the Alliance for Secure AI says the new usage muddies the line between ordinary tool AI and superintelligence.
• A mixed message on risk. As one commentator put it, the government's own vocabulary now suggests superintelligence has arrived, while the administration also says the industry can police itself.
• Hype in one direction, dismissal in the other. Calling today's systems "super" can inflate expectations. It can also blur real warnings about future systems, since "superintelligence" becomes just another word for the chatbot on your phone.
• Legal ambiguity ahead. The coming federal definition could affect how laws, contracts, and regulations are written. Whether a ban on "superintelligence" would mean something different from a ban on "AI" is exactly the kind of question lawyers will now have to ask.

To be fair, naming conventions are not unusual in politics, and a government can choose its own vocabulary for its own documents. The executive order cannot force Congress, the courts, other nations, or the research community to change their language. The EU's AI Act, for example, keeps its title. The real test will be whether the term sticks outside Washington, and what the new federal definition turns out to say.

What Still Isn't Clear

• What definition the White House will propose by the end of November.
• Whether Congress will adopt, ignore, or push back on the new term.
• Whether more companies follow Musk and Meta, or hold with Altman.
• Whether the voluntary accord ever becomes binding law. Its text says some of its measures could eventually become law or regulation.

Where Faith Has Something to Say

I want to be careful here. This is not a post about a political party or a personality. Any administration, company, or critic can use words to shape perceptions. The question for people of faith is a deeper one: what does Scripture teach us about names, truth, and the pursuit of wisdom?

1. Naming is serious work.

In Genesis 2:19-20, God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would call them. Naming was part of humanity's stewardship over creation, and it required understanding what each creature actually was. A faithful name describes reality rather than hiding it. That standard applies to everyone in this debate: governments, tech companies, and critics alike.

2. Truthful speech is a Christian calling.

Jesus said to let our "yes" be yes and our "no" be no (Matthew 5:37), and Paul urges believers to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Whether the word is "artificial," "super," or something else, the real question is whether it helps people understand what is true. Precision matters most when the stakes are high.

3. "Artificial" is more honest than it sounds.

In 2021 I described AI as machines made to seem to have human intelligence. That word "artificial" points to something theologically important: this is made by human hands. Psalm 115 warns that idols are the work of human hands, with mouths that cannot speak. A powerful tool is not a person, and it is not a god. A name that elevates a creation toward something "super" calls for extra caution from believers, because it can quietly shift where we place our trust.

4. Intelligence is not wisdom.

Even a truly superintelligent system would still lack what Proverbs 9:10 describes: the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. Intelligence can solve problems, but wisdom knows what is worth solving and why. James 1:5 reminds us that wisdom is received from God, not generated. I made a similar point in Create First, Consult AI Later: fluency is not the same as faithfulness.

5. Our confidence is not in a label.

Colossians 1:17 tells us that in Christ all things hold together. No executive order, accord, or rebrand changes who is sovereign. That is no reason to disengage, since Scripture also calls us to speak up for what is just and true. But it is reason to engage calmly, without fear of the technology and without awe of the name.

A Practical Response

1. Pay attention to definitions. When you hear "superintelligence," ask: do they mean today's tools or a hypothetical future system?
2. Read beyond the headline. Look at what the order actually says and does, and what it does not.
3. Ask for clarity from every side. Governments, companies, and critics should all use words that help people understand rather than persuade.
4. Pray for wisdom for leaders and builders. Pray that those shaping policy and technology would seek truth over image (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
5. Keep the order straight. Tools serve people, and people serve God. Whatever we call the technology, it is still a tool and never a throne.

Names change. The questions that matter most do not. Who do we trust? What do we love? Whom do we serve?

What do you think: does the name "AI" versus "SI" matter, or is the substance more important? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Sources and Further Reading

This story is moving quickly. These were the sources used for the reporting above, and I encourage readers to check the originals:

• The White House, "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence" (executive order, September 29, 2026)
• The White House, Fact Sheet on the order
• CIO, "Trump's answer to AI's image problem: Industry self-regulation and a new name"
• Implicator, "Trump super intelligence order keeps AI definition"
• Crowell & Moring client alert on the accord and executive orders
• Fast Company, "Trump's AI rebrand raises an awkward question for OpenAI"
• Techstrong.ai, on industry reaction and Nick Bostrom's comments
• SF Standard, on the White House lunch and the rebrand
• The Next Web, "First a gulf, then a lake, now a technology"
• The Hill, on the State Department instruction to diplomats
• AFP via Malay Mail, on the "enemy" post and private sector adoption
• History and Types of AI (this blog, 2021)

On AGI, Superintelligence, the extinction headlines, and where faith belongs in the conversation.

 

If the news has left you uneasy lately, you are not alone. On September 8, an AI researcher resigned from his lab and warned that the people building this technology believe it could end humanity by the end of the decade. A Nature report says the post drew more than 100 million views in a single day. Millions of ordinary people learned in one week that AI experts openly debate the odds of human extinction.

This post is not meant to add to the panic, and it is not meant to wave the concern away. It is an attempt to separate what is known from what is feared, and then to ask where people of faith should stand.

Where We Left Off: What I Wrote in 2021

Back in 2021, I wrote History and Types of AI, where I explained that AI falls into three categories:

• Narrow (or Weak) AI, which performs specific tasks such as translation, voice assistants, and facial recognition.
• General (or Strong) AI, which could perform the full range of intellectual tasks a human can, including understanding context and making judgments.
• Super AI, which would far exceed human intelligence in nearly every area, from creativity to problem-solving to general wisdom.

At that time, I noted that General AI did not exist outside science fiction and that Super AI was still a prediction. I also pointed out that even if General AI were achieved, such machines would likely not possess sentience, the ability to actually experience and feel. I also mentioned that figures like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking feared Super AI might lead to the end of the human race.

Five years later, the first category is everywhere, the second is being loudly claimed, and the third has moved from the margins into the headlines. That is why it is worth revisiting.

AGI and Superintelligence: Then and Now

	Narrow AI	General AI (AGI)	Superintelligence (ASI)
What it is	Good at specific tasks	Matches capable humans across many fields	Far beyond the best human minds in nearly everything
My 2021 view	Exists today	Does not exist; unknown if possible	Does not exist; a future prediction
October 2026	Built into daily life	Claimed as close by some labs; disputed by others	Not achieved, but named as an explicit goal by several major labs
The core question	How do we use it well?	Who decides when it has arrived?	Can it be kept under human control?

A simple picture: AGI would be like a brilliant colleague. Superintelligence would be something humanity has never met, and honestly, no one can say with confidence what that looks like.

What Is Actually Happening

In an August interview with TIME, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company expects to have an internal system by the end of 2026 that it calls AGI. Here is the catch: there is no agreed definition of what counts as "achieving" AGI. A company can effectively declare success by its own standard.

Not everyone is convinced. AI researcher Gary Marcus has argued that AGI within five years is extremely unlikely, and that claiming otherwise is marketing while problems like hallucinations and reasoning errors remain unsolved.

Meanwhile, the race toward superintelligence is openly acknowledged. OpenAI, Meta, Safe Superintelligence Inc., and Microsoft have all named it as a goal, even though it has not been achieved.

The Warnings

The loudest alarm came on September 8, when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned. Hours later, his colleague Evan Hubinger, who leads alignment science at the same company, said he puts the risk of AI-driven human extinction above 10% within the next decade. Hubinger also said the risk today is low. His worry is that AI systems could eventually improve themselves to the point of becoming an existential risk, and that no one yet has a plan to solve "alignment" for superintelligence. (Alignment simply means making sure a powerful AI actually pursues goals that are good for people.)

He is not alone. Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel-winning "godfather of AI," has estimated a 10 to 20% chance of AI-caused extinction. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute has gone much further, saying its leadership puts the odds above 90% if there is no aggressive policy response. Around 1,400 AI-sector employees reportedly signed an open letter calling for a slowdown, and Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a ban on superintelligence.

In 2021 the loudest voices were outsiders like Hawking and Musk. What has changed is that today, some of the warnings are coming from inside the labs.

The Pushback

Serious people see this differently, and a fair post has to say so.

In Nature, RAND researcher Michael Vermeer said extinction forecasts involve so many untestable claims that the debate becomes "more like faith than something scientific." Heidy Khlaaf of the AI Now Institute calls the extinction framing fear-mongering and asks regulators to focus on disinformation, bioweapon risks, and false military intelligence instead. Others, including a widely discussed Jacobin essay, argue that doom talk can double as hype, noting that apocalyptic warnings have not hurt the valuations of the companies making them.

Even some who take the risk seriously say the nearer danger is people, not machines. Computer scientist Stuart Russell has said that in the next year or two, the greater risk is human misuse, such as an AI-enabled terror attack.

A Balanced Reading

• Nobody knows the timeline. Predictions range from "this year" to "not in our lifetimes."
• The extinction numbers are educated guesses, not measurements. A 10% and a 90% estimate cannot both be right, and neither can be tested.
• Everyone has incentives. Companies benefit from hype, and critics and doomsayers benefit from attention too.
• Present harms are real. Job disruption, deepfakes, and misuse by bad actors need our attention whatever happens with superintelligence.
• The concern is not fringe. When insiders say publicly that they lack a solution for controlling something they are racing to build, wisdom says take it seriously without panicking.

Where Spirituality Belongs

This is where people of faith bring something the headlines lack.

1. We are made in God's image. AI is made in ours.

Genesis 1:27 tells us humanity bears the image of God. AI is a human creation that can imitate our words and reasoning, but thinking is not the same as being a person, and intelligence is not the same as a soul. A machine can model a mind. It does not carry the breath of God.

2. Human ambition has a long story.

At Babel (Genesis 11), people united around technology and a desire to make a name for themselves. Scripture does not condemn building. It warns about building without God. The question to ask of AI is not only "Can we?" but "For whom, and under whose authority?"

3. Do not make AI an idol, and do not make it a demon.

Psalm 115 describes idols as the work of human hands: they have mouths but cannot speak. Some will treat AI as an oracle or savior. Others will treat it as an unstoppable doom. Both give it more power than it deserves.

4. God's sovereignty is not threatened by a server farm.

Colossians 1:17 says that in Christ all things hold together. That is no excuse for carelessness, since Scripture also calls us to wisdom, stewardship, and justice. But we can face this moment with sober eyes instead of fear. "Do not fear" (Isaiah 41:10) was never conditional on a calm news cycle.

5. Wisdom still comes from above.

AI can give us information quickly. It cannot give us repentance, forgiveness, or presence with the suffering. James 1:5 still points us to the One who gives wisdom generously.

A Tool, Not a Throne

I have said before that AI is a remarkable tool, and I still believe that. A tool serves the craftsman, and the craftsman does not serve the tool. In Create First, Consult AI Later, I argued that the order matters: bring your own thinking and prayer first, then let AI help you refine. In Is Using AI Like Stealing?, I wrote that using this technology well is stewardship, not theft. The same principle applies to the bigger questions we face now.

Here is how I would suggest we live in this moment:

1. Stay informed, not frightened. Read beyond the headline, and notice who is speaking and what they stand to gain.
2. Hold the builders accountable. Ethics does not stop at our own use of the tool. Support wise regulation, transparency, and the protection of human dignity.
3. Pray before you scroll. Anxiety feeds on constant headlines. Anchor your mind in Scripture first.
4. Keep your own voice and calling. Create first, consult AI later, especially in ministry and sacred work.
5. Remember who holds the future. Intelligence, human or artificial, is a gift that carries responsibility. It is never the Giver.

Whether AGI arrives in two years or never, the most important questions are not technical. Who do we trust? What do we love? Whom do we serve?

We are not anti-technology. We are pro-human, and above all, we are people who trust the God who made humanity in His image and holds all things together.

What are your thoughts? Do the extinction warnings concern you, or do you see them as hype? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

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Sources and Further Reading

News in this area is changing quickly. These were the sources used for the 2026 reporting above, and I encourage readers to check the originals:

• History and Types of AI (this blog, 2021)
• TIME, interview with Sam Altman on OpenAI (August 26, 2026), as summarized by Gigazine
• Axios, "AI's extinction debate breaks containment" (September 9, 2026)
• Holyrood, "Researchers warn AI 'could kill us all' by the end of the decade" (September 9, 2026)
• AFP via Deccan Chronicle, comments from Stuart Russell and others (September 2026)
• Summary of Nature's report, "Will AI really kill us all? The science behind the hype"
• Jacobin, "AI Doomsaying Is an Aggressive Sales Pitch" (September 2026)
• Summary of MIRI's report on superintelligence risk (August 2026)
• CO/AI, including Gary Marcus's comments on AGI timelines

Create First, Consult AI Later

On creativity, dependency, and where we draw the line in the age of artificial intelligence

There is a quiet crisis unfolding — not in our servers or our software, but in our minds. As artificial intelligence grows more capable, more accessible, and more persuasive in its usefulness, a troubling pattern is emerging: we are increasingly letting the machine speak first, and our own voice is growing fainter.

This post is not an argument against AI. It is an argument for you — for your creativity, your judgment, your unique perspective, and especially your calling. It is a plea: create first, consult AI later.

The Perfect Paper Problem

Universities around the world are sounding the alarm. Students are submitting papers that are grammatically flawless, logically structured, and impressively comprehensive — except for one small detail: they did not write them. AI did. The tell-tale sign? When these same students are called in for an oral examination on the very paper they submitted, they cannot explain their own arguments. They stumble over concepts that their "work" handled with apparent mastery.

This is not a minor academic inconvenience. It is a window into a deeper problem. The grade was earned. The knowledge was not. The output looked brilliant. The mind behind it remained unchanged.

What we are witnessing is the outsourcing of thinking itself. And when we outsource thinking long enough, we forget how to think.

The Pulpit and the Algorithm

The challenge reaches beyond lecture halls. A recently circulating video — the reference for which will be added below — alleges that more than sixty percent of pastors use AI in some form of sermon preparation. Let that number sit with you for a moment.

The question is not whether AI can produce a theologically coherent sermon. It can. The question is: what happens to the preacher who no longer wrestles with the text?

Sermon preparation has never been merely an intellectual exercise. It is a spiritual one. It involves prayer, silence, struggle, revelation, and the very personal work of allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through a yielded vessel. A pastor who sits before a blank page and wrestles — who prays over a passage, journals through confusion, and arrives at a word born in the crucible of personal encounter with God — brings something to the pulpit that no algorithm can replicate: anointing.

If AI consistently prepares the sermon before the pastor has prayed about it, we must ask a sobering question: Are we in danger of producing a generation of ministers who can deliver compelling messages, but who have never learned — or are now forgetting — how to hear from God on their own?

"The danger is not that AI will preach badly. The danger is that it will preach well enough that we stop learning to preach at all."

Fire-Making and the Long Arc of Lost Skills

To be fair, this is not the first time humanity has traded a skill for a convenience — and many of those trades were good ones.

There was a time when making fire was a survival skill, mastered through patience and practice. Then came the match, then the lighter, then the electric igniter. Today, most of us could not produce fire by friction if our lives depended on it — and for the vast majority of modern life, that is perfectly fine. We do not mourn the loss of the fire-bow.

Similarly, we no longer need to memorize entire phone books, navigate by the stars, or hand-calculate a loan amortization schedule. Tools replaced these skills, and we adapted. Life improved.

But here is where the analogy with AI deserves careful scrutiny: the skills that AI threatens to replace are not merely technical — they are formational. Writing, thinking, reasoning, preaching, creating — these are not just tasks to be accomplished. They are disciplines that shape who we are in the process of doing them. When you write your own sermon, you are not just preparing a message for your congregation. You are being transformed by the process. When a student wrestles with an essay argument, the struggle is the education.

We did not lose anything essential when we stopped making fire with rocks. We will lose something essential if we stop making meaning with our own minds.

A Tool, Not a Throne

Let us be clear: AI is a remarkable tool. Like a search engine in the early 2000s, it can surface information, check facts, suggest alternatives, improve grammar, and spark ideas. Used wisely, it can make good work better.

But a tool serves the craftsman. The craftsman does not serve the tool. The moment we let AI sit in the driver's seat of our creative and intellectual lives — the moment we ask it to generate first and we merely react — we have handed it a throne it was never meant to occupy.

Think of how we used Google. We searched for information to inform our thinking, not to replace it. We looked up a statistic, then wove it into our own argument. Furthermore, we found a map, then planned our own journey. AI should serve the same role — an assistant that amplifies our voice, not one that supplants it.

Sacred Work Requires a Human Soul

When it comes to ministry, teaching, and any creative work that is rooted in spiritual responsibility, the stakes are even higher. There is a dimension of that work that no language model can access: the movement of the Holy Spirit.

A sermon prepared in prayerful dependence on God — born out of the preacher's own struggle with Scripture and their intimate knowledge of their congregation — carries something alive. The people in the pews can often sense the difference between a message that was received and one that was generated.

This does not mean we cannot use any external resources. Commentaries, concordances, theological libraries — these have always been part of a minister's toolkit. AI can earn a legitimate place in that toolkit. But it belongs after the creative work, not before it.

A Practical Principle: The Create-First Framework

1. Create first. Write your first draft, outline, or idea entirely on your own — even imperfectly.
2. Pray and reflect. For any ministry or sacred work, bring it before God before bringing it to an algorithm.
3. Consult AI after. Use AI to refine, fact-check, improve clarity, or explore what you may have missed.
4. Own the final product. Make sure every word reflects your understanding, your conviction, and your voice.
5. Resist the shortcut. If you find yourself opening AI before you have written a single word of your own, pause. That impulse is worth examining.

The Line We Must Draw

The line between helpful and harmful AI use is not drawn by the technology. It is drawn by us. It is drawn every time we choose to wrestle with a blank page rather than prompt our way past it. It is drawn every time a pastor kneels before preaching rather than querying before writing. It is drawn every time a student chooses the hard, slow, formative work of genuine thinking.

We are not anti-progress. We are pro-human. We are pro-soul. And we believe that the most important things — creativity, wisdom, faith, and voice — are developed in the struggle, not bypassed by it.

So before you open the chat window, open a notebook. Before you type a prompt, type a prayer. Let your ideas come first — raw, imperfect, and fully yours. Then, and only then, let AI help you polish them.

Create first. Consult AI later. The order matters more than you think.

Reference: https://youtu.be/B_ZYCtN0eNk?si=HEmBdFTT4e9XWLIW