The age of artificial intelligence has arrived, and we were not ready for it. As AI infiltrates more and more of our digital tools and experiences, it is quickly becoming apparent that we aren’t quite sure how to approach this technology. Some are enamored with the wonders of its computing speed, unthinkingly eager for new conveniences and savings. Others engage with AI apparently forgetting that it’s a computer at all, responding with love or fear just as they might with another human.
And what about the church? What about evangelical pastors? We’ll see the same split there, with a few thoughtful resisters but, if I had to guess, more taking the path of eager adoption. Some will jump in with reckless abandon. Others might caution congregants about AI, but I worry that after raising the customary yield sign to a little-understood new technology, many will give AI the green light.
There are risks, they’ll say. But we have a responsibility to use this tech for good. Just as Paul tells the church to redeem the time (Eph. 5:16, KJV), I expect many Christian leaders will tell the church to “redeem the tech.”
Yet redemption does not mean hesitant engagement. It does not mean doing what everyone else does, only on a slight delay. With AI—and other as-yet-unknown technological revolutions—I want to challenge my fellow pastors and Christians more broadly to ask a more fundamental question. Not necessarily, or at least not at first, “How can we use it?” but rather, “Should we use this technology at all?”
In his encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” Pope Saint John Paul II argued that some actions are intrinsically evil, no matter the context. Protestants can and should agree. For example, there are no circumstances, cultures, or conditions that could permit a Christian to commit blasphemy, rape, or murder. He put it this way:
The negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the “creativity” of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids.
Just as we can identify inherently evil actions, we must recognize intrinsically evil technologies and inventions. Contrary to the popular notion that all technology is neutral and all that matters is how you use it, some technologies cannot be used for any moral purpose.
Sex robots are an easy and obvious example. The church would never speak of “redeeming” this tech. There is no way for a pastor to encourage folks in the pews to use sex robots with prudence. The intrinsic morality of other examples that come to mind for me—nuclear weapons, cocaine, euthanasia pods—are more widely debated. But that there is such a thing as irredeemable technology should not be a controversial idea for Christians of any stripe.
We should learn to ask the question “Is this inherently immoral?” about any new technologies because they will continue to appear at a rapid pace. Current debate about AI is not the end of this discussion but its continuation.
Consider future possibilities like babies grown in artificial wombs or even something like severance. We are repulsed by immoral technologies in science fiction, but will we shrug when the real thing arrives? I remember my revulsion when I watched the scene in The Matrix showing fields of babies grown in artificial wombs. Will Christians find that technology “redemptive” if it’s offered, with friendlier aesthetics, in this century or the next?
Without asking that question, many American Christians, including pastors, barrel forward, asserting that AI is merely “a tool that can be used for good or bad.” Already there’s a Christian AI app and pastors preaching that AI is an important career path for young Christians. And maybe that will prove true, but we can’t assume new technologies are neutral, inevitable, or worth exploring. If most Christians use a new technology without thinking about morality, the church should not celebrate but groan in prayer. We must ask if before we ask how.
In this we have a model in the Amish. The world has long rolled its eyes at these Christians, but they’re still here—growing, in fact. Maybe artificial intelligence will prompt a greater breadth of Christians to think about technology more like the Amish do, to see its adoption as a choice subject to real review by the tenets of our faith rather than an inevitability. Why not abstain from AI for a while rather than rush into uncharted territory? Many of us were early adopters of smartphones, and look where that got us.
A tech optimist may argue that using new tech is analogous to Israel “plundering the Egyptians.” This image from Exodus 12:36 was used by Augustine to justify the integration of Platonic philosophy into Christian theology. And yes, it’s true that the Israelites used some of the Egyptian gold to build the tabernacle. But they also used the same gold to make the golden calf, and God did not encourage the Israelites to engage with idolatry responsibly and prudently.
In other words, you can plunder gold from the Egyptians to build a sanctuary, but you can’t use it to make an idol—and idols are far easier to fabricate than we like to think.
My argument here is not that AI is intrinsically evil. I don’t and can’t know that at this stage. Moreover, any techno-pessimist worth his salt must admit that Christians can and do take up innovations from the world and redeem them for good. Sometimes we do build the tabernacle instead of the golden calf. Some technology is neutral or even better than neutral.
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But other technology is bad for a Christian’s soul whenever she uses it, regardless of how cautious she is. The world would be better if some technologies had never been invented, and some technologies that are not quite intrinsically evil may yet be intrinsically dangerous and prone to create opportunities for temptation.
For the foreseeable future, these are categories Christians must have in mind, approaching each new technology with the understanding that it may well be good, useful, or at least redeemable—or it may be intrinsically evil or dangerous. In the latter case, redemption attempts are a category error, and redemption instead requires the stubborn refusal to use that tech at all. Pastoral green lights are mistakes we will come to regret.
Christ’s redeeming word in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery was “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11, KJV). In the 21st century, we will sometimes have to say, “Go, and use this tech no more.”
Mitchell East is the adult education and small groups minister at Memorial Road Church of Christ in Edmond, Oklahoma. He writes about the Bible and theology at his Substack, East of Eden.
