My instinct toward artificial intelligence (AI) is skepticism. I’m not skeptical that it has practical applications—clearly it does. But to be honest, it seems a bit scary and, at times, downright creepy to me.
I approach most new technologies this way. I am often a reluctant adopter. When smartphones and iPads were first released, I was uninterested. Same with smart watches. I was even anti-GPS for a long time (I love map-reading). When pedal-assist e-bikes became popular in the US a few years ago, I scoffed as riders passed me on the trails. “Cheaters,” I thought. That scoffing lasted until I took a test ride on a friend’s brand-new e-bike. One trip around the block was all it took for me to abandon my reluctance. I am now a proud owner of one. It allows me to ride farther and for longer durations than I would be able to do on my ‘normal’ bike. My aging knees are happier.
Despite my reluctance, I know that I use AI every day—just like most of us do—often without realizing it. Spell checking is AI. Predictive text while typing is AI. Chatbots on customer service sites are AI. I’m sure I have other encounters I’m not even aware of.
One thing that softened my stance toward AI was a talk I heard at a ministry conference last year. The speaker, a tech company CEO, suggested that we think of AI as a high school intern—someone to help with small administrative, organizational, or research tasks. So, preparing to write this article, I decided to see if I could use some AI functions as an assistant, not write it for me, but to assist me in the process.
Here’s what I did: I dictated my thoughts into a Word document using my iPhone’s speech-to-text feature. I then copied/pasted the text into ChatGPT and asked it to organize it for me. I copied what it generated back to another Word document. I then checked to make sure that it was made up of only my sentences, as I had dictated them and had not added anything of its own. I was pleasantly surprised. I now had a decent, and relatively well-organized, first draft from which to work. I then edited and rewrote various things to get to the final product.
It was, I must admit, very helpful for me. I speak faster than I write, so dictating saved me time and helped me improve my writing efficiency. Even so, I remain steadfastly resistant to using AI to generate content. I use Grammarly to catch typos and grammar errors but asking AI to create something still crosses a line for me.
One thing I realized in reading the articles in this issue is that AI is really hard to define. It’s more than just machines writing content. It includes things like self-driving cars, voice assistants, and yes—even speech-to-text.
Like every technological advancement before it, AI presents both opportunities and threats—to society at large, and to the church. Balancing those requires divine wisdom and discernment. As one of the writers in this journal notes expresses, engaging with new knowledge wisely is a timeless Christian endeavor.
As a student of history, I know that technological change is inevitable and that every generation faces its own technological disruption. Every innovation brings both benefits and drawbacks— winners and losers. Adding machines, rotary phones, and answering machines are museum pieces, and the companies that made them are no more. Cars made horse-and-buggy drivers obsolete. Typewriters displaced scribes, and computers replaced typists.
AI is our disruptive technology, and we cannot respond with blanket rejection (as tempted as I might be) or blind acceptance (as tempted as others might be). Just as transistors, jet engines, and microchips are here to stay, so is AI. James Huang, the guest editor of the summer 2025 issue of the ChinaSource Journal—Where Wisdom Meets Faith, quoted a Harvard Business professor who said, “AI will not replace humans. But humans using AI will replace humans not using AI.”
My first reaction to that was skepticism. But the more I think about it, the more I realize he’s probably right. AI has become so integrated into everyday life that it’s hard to go a whole day without using it, whether through a smartphone, the internet, customer service interactions, or search engines. AI is unavoidable, and there is no turning back.
Adopting AI tools requires thinking deeply about theology, ethics, and responsibility. Each person, business, and ministry organization will need to reflect on the significant issues and set clear boundaries: red lines on where AI will and will not be used. That is not a task AI (the high school intern) can do for us; that takes wisdom.
At the Lausanne Congress in Korea last year, one of the speakers was Joanna Ng, a tech entrepreneur who focuses on AI. She reminded us that as Christians, we must never let AI replace divine wisdom. AI can support us, but it cannot replace human conscience or spiritual discernment. That’s where we come in.
She has graciously allowed me to share this “formula” that she came up with to help Christians think about AI.
It is only through divine wisdom that even a semi-Luddite like me can find a thoughtful and wise way to engage with it.
Bonus: This video clip of a talk that John Piper gave at The Gospel Coalition Conference in April 2025 is also a good reminder about the difference between machines and the human heart, especially when it comes to worship.
