How to keep revelation, identity, community, and creation at the center of a life increasingly shaped by algorithms.
AI can answer questions, but it cannot answer prayers.
In an age when people turn to algorithms for answers, guidance, and even comfort, the question of what machines can and cannot give us has never mattered more. AI can organize information, but it cannot offer revelation, covenant connection, or divine truth. That distinction is the spine of this message.
The author writes from an unusual vantage: a self-described "Silicon Valley kid" whose father co-authored a physics text with a Nobel-winning semiconductor pioneer, who later helped research a U.S. State Department study on the age of information, and who now serves as a global faith leader visiting more than 120 countries. Everywhere, he finds the same pairing: a deep love of humanity and a deep concern about AI.
His response is neither fear nor hype. He treats AI as a genuine tool that can narrow divides and expand human flourishing, provided we remember who we are while we use it.
Before sorting AI into "good" or "bad," the message offers three gospel-centered orientations, a compass for any disciple's personal use of the technology.
Let technology support, not supplant, revelation and personal study. There is no substitute for studying a thing out in your own mind and feeling the confirmation in your heart.
Apply judgment informed by doctrine and your own lived experience. Wisdom is the bridge between what a tool can do and what you ought to do.
Anchor understanding in scripture, prophetic counsel, and reliable information, not in whatever a system predicts you want to hear.
The heart of the message: AI touches every one of our four core relationships. Naming them keeps us awake to where a tool is helping, and where it is substituting for something it can never replace.
AI is math, and math is not conscious or alive. It can mimic a persona, but it is always, by nature, artificial. Don't let it shape your image of God, or come between you and Him. He never hallucinates; He always tells the truth.
As intelligence becomes a commodity, redefine yourself by what a machine cannot weigh: faith, compassion, humility, forgiveness. You are not a data point. No machine can measure your worth. Let AI inform; you decide with the Lord.
A monologue with an algorithm is not a dialogue with a friend. "No one sits alone," least of all alone with a chatbot built to maximize screen time. Use AI for logistics; spend your best energy on real people.
Screens can serve us but can't substitute for sunlight, wind, and wonder. AI also taxes creation: land, electricity, water, rare-earth mining. Steward both the outer environment and your inner one.
"As a creation of God, man can create AI, but AI cannot create God."On the limits of machine intelligence
For decades we defined ourselves by what we could do that machines could not. Three landmark defeats, and one public debut, rewrote that story.
Defeated world champion Garry Kasparov 3.5–2.5. It never tired, never got psyched out, and had studied every game Kasparov ever played.
Beat champion Ken Jennings, who noted it "never hesitated, never doubted, and never flinched" before pushing the button.
Beat champion Ke Jie three games to none, inventing moves no human had played. Ke Jie called it "the God of go."
In November, generative AI entered the popular mind, one of the fastest technology adoptions in history.
people now use AI tools regularly
roughly 1 in 6 people worldwide
If you're not paying for the product, you are the product. Many platforms optimize for screen time and ad profit, and that has a price, both personal and planetary.
Water is the full life-cycle footprint, including the water used to generate the electricity consumed. Mistral's 2025 analysis lands near 45 mL per response; operators' on-site-only figures (Google reports 0.26 mL) are far lower. Figures are conservative estimates and vary by model, data center, and region.
Assemble your gear by a single candle in a lit room and you'll never notice the flame. Turn off the artificial light, and it shines clear and bright. The candle was never invisible; the room's glare simply obscured it.
The flame is lost in the brightness. Modern life's artificiality crowds out a quieter light.
Step away from the artificial, and you see not one candle but, as E.B. White put it, "the combustion of stars."
The message invites a simple, honest audit. Where might AI help you and those around you, and where could it detract, limit, or substitute for something better?
A central conviction runs through the message: the more we work with intent, diligence, and effort, the more we benefit from the work itself. AI can be a remarkable tutor, but there is a real difference between letting it deepen your understanding and letting it do your homework while you learn nothing.
Used well, AI can enliven creativity and capacity. Used to replace effort, it can make us lazy, dependent, even dishonest. So acknowledge your work honestly, and don't claim as your own what a machine has primarily produced.
The caution sharpens in spiritual settings: don't let AI write your talks, lessons, or testimony. Let spiritual preparation and personal conviction lead, and reserve AI for research, editing, and translation, not for drafting the words of your own heart.
"You are not a random data point in an unfeeling algorithm. No machine can measure your divine potential."On identity & agency
The message closes not with prohibitions but with practices: small, concrete steps to keep the human and the divine at the center.
Decide in advance how you'll use AI, so it never gets between you and your relationship with God.
A child of God, a child of the covenant, a disciple of Christ. Place them somewhere visible; pause each time you see them.
Send one message you write yourself, or visit a family member, friend, roommate, or neighbor in a genuine way.
Silence your notifications and make time to "touch grass." Offer a prayer of gratitude for the beauty and order of creation.
The message anchors its argument in voices across faith and letters, a reminder that millennia of human wisdom can help us govern what we've just built.
"Our human stewardship for the created world includes governing the gift of intelligence so it enhances human progress and the common good."Vatican · "Antiqua et Nova"
"The Adamic Covenant signifies the primordial moral bond between humanity and God, and among human beings."An Islamic perspective
"I am because we are." Divine connection with God defines our shared belonging to one another.Ubuntu · Southern Africa
"There are miraculous relationships between beings and things… from sun to aphid, no one looks down on anyone else."Victor Hugo · "Les Misérables"
"Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God."John Muir · Sierra journals
Beauty is the "signature of God." To know Him, learn to discern His signature in creation.Marilynne Robinson
The goal is an "AI gift of human possibility": technology that expands agency and dignity, and lets anyone, anywhere, become anything.
On the five-by-seven-mile island of Nevis, the message finds its emblem: the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, and a schoolteacher who believes any of his students could be the next one. In a world of accelerating technology, may we never lose the intelligence that matters most, the voice of God, and may we love one another beyond algorithms.