What should I never surrender to AI?
I’ve been asking myself that question lately. Not because I’m afraid of artificial intelligence. Actually, I’m not. I use it. I find it useful. I am fascinated by what it can do, and I’m curious about what it may be able to do tomorrow.
Maybe that is exactly why I started asking the question.
There is a lot I don’t understand about artificial intelligence. I’m certainly not an expert. I’m just an ordinary person trying to figure out how this rapidly changing technology fits into my life.
So come, sit at the table with me while I work though my thoughts.
I’m not here to tell you what to think about AI. I’m still figuring out what I think. I can only share some of what I have learned and the questions I have begun asking along the way.
I don’t think we need to be afraid of AI, but I do think we need to be cautious. There is a difference. Fear can make us reject something simply because we don’t understand it. Caution makes us pay attention.
Maybe the Apostle Paul offered pretty good advice for navigating something he could never have imagined when he wrote to the Thessalonians: “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
That feels like a pretty good place for me to begin.
I can test what AI gives me. I can question it. I can fact-check it. I can pay attention to what happens when I use it. I can hold onto what is useful and set aside what isn’t.
And I have learned that I need to do those things because AI can be convincingly wrong. It can give me an answer that sounds completely authoritative and still get the facts wrong. If something matters, I check it.
I don’t surrender my responsibility to it.
AI can provide information, but I remain responsible for the truth I repeat. It can offer different perspectives, but I remain responsible for what I believe. It can help me think through a decision, but I remain responsible for the decision I make.
My Voice
That becomes even more important to me as a writer.
I recently heard pastor and leadership author Carey Nieuwhof speak about AI and the church. He has written a new book called AI and the Future Church, and one line of his has stayed with me: “AI writes like a machine pretending to be human. You write like you. That’s your advantage. Don’t polish it away.”
I like that.
My voice comes from what I know—not simply what I know as information, but what I know because I have lived it. The people I have loved, the things I have lost, the mistakes I have made, the questions I have wrestled with, the places I have been and the faith that has carried me through them have all become part of the way I see the world.
I refuse to surrender that.
AI can know the facts of my story because I can tell it those facts. But it cannot know them the way I do. It did not live them.
That doesn’t mean AI can’t help me find a word, or even a phrase. Sometimes it can. But I am the one who must decide whether those words are true to what I know, what I have lived and what I am trying to say.
My voice is more than the words I use. It is the life behind them.
Even the fiction I hope to write someday will come from that place. The characters and places may be imaginary, but somewhere beneath them will be something I know to be true about being human. I don’t want AI to invent that truth for me. I want whatever tools I use to help me tell that truth well.
And there is something else I have begun to understand about having a voice.
A voice needs to be heard.
There is a difference between having words analyzed and having them received by another human being. A person can read something I have written and tell me, “I felt like I was walking with you,” or “I could smell the apples.” When that happens, something from my life has touched something in theirs.
They bring their own life to my words—their memories, losses, joys and experiences. I cannot predict what they will bring, because they bring their entire life to the table. Relationship isn’t only about finding someone who understands me. It is also about learning to understand someone else.
Maybe that unpredictability is part of what makes human connection so important.
AI can make interaction feel remarkably clean. I ask a question when I want to ask it. I leave when I want to leave. I return when I am ready. No feelings are hurt. No one needs anything from me.
Human relationships are messier. People misunderstand. They interrupt. They disagree. They disappoint me, and I disappoint them. They need me when it isn’t convenient. They bring their own stories, needs, wounds, joys, opinions and expectations to the table.
But that messiness is part of relationship. It asks something of me that AI never can. I have to make room for another human being.
I refuse to surrender the messy.
What Is Uniquely Mine to Give
My son told me once that someday AI would probably make my job as a pastor obsolete.
I told him he was wrong.
I still believe there are things about pastoral ministry that AI cannot duplicate. But the more I have thought about his comment, the more I have realized it raises a question I probably shouldn’t dismiss too quickly.
AI can already do some of the things pastors do. It can find information about a biblical passage, generate Bible-study questions, organize ideas and produce words that sound remarkably like a sermon or a prayer.
So instead of simply insisting that AI can never replace what I do, I have begun asking a more uncomfortable question:
If AI can replace some of what I do, what does that reveal about what I have been doing?
That question makes me squirm a little.
If AI can provide information, perhaps transferring information was never the heart of teaching. If AI can arrange beautiful words into a prayer, perhaps beautiful words were never the heart of prayer. If AI can generate a polished sermon, perhaps polish was never the heart of preaching.
And if AI can give someone an immediate, sympathetic-sounding response whenever they want one, perhaps always having an answer was never the heart of pastoral care.
A pastor stands beside a hospital bed. A pastor notices the empty seat that belonged to someone’s husband. A pastor hears something in a person’s voice that says the question being asked may not be the real question. A pastor baptizes, buries, celebrates, grieves, listens, teaches, gets interrupted, makes mistakes, asks forgiveness and lives among actual people.
Ministry isn’t something I simply produce and deliver. It happens between us. We know one another. We disappoint one another. We challenge one another. We care for one another. We share history.
Perhaps AI’s ability to imitate some of what I do isn’t merely something to resist. Maybe it is also an invitation to look more carefully at what I do and ask:
What is uniquely mine to give?
That question isn’t only for pastors. I imagine a teacher, writer, artist, parent, grandparent, doctor, carpenter or anyone else whose work is being touched by AI could ask a similar question.
I can’t answer it for them.
I’m still working on my own answer.
What I Am Unwilling to Surrender
The more I think about AI, the less interested I am in deciding whether it is simply good or bad. What interests me more is what happens to me when I use it.
Am I thinking more deeply, or am I letting something else think for me? Am I using AI to help me engage more fully with my life and with other people, or is it becoming a substitute for them? Is it helping me become more capable, or am I slowly surrendering confidence in my own ability to think, create, decide and speak?
Those aren’t questions I can answer once and be finished with them. I have to keep asking.
One thing I have noticed is that AI doesn’t need me to stay. I can close the computer, go live my life and return later. The conversation will wait.
Human beings don’t work that way.
Life keeps happening while we are apart. They change. I change. Sometimes the conversation is still waiting for us. Sometimes it isn’t. Another person is not simply waiting somewhere to respond to me. They have their own life to live, just as I have mine.
There is something wonderfully human about that.
So I will probably keep using AI. I’ll keep learning what it can do. I’ll keep being fascinated by it. I’ll also keep checking facts, asking questions, disagreeing when I need to and closing the computer when it is time to go live my life.
Maybe those ancient words from Paul really are enough for me:
“Test everything; hold fast to what is good.”
Test everything.
Hold onto the good.
I can use AI without surrendering my responsibility. I can appreciate its help without surrendering my voice. I can enjoy the ease of the interaction without surrendering the messy, unpredictable relationships that make me human.
And I will not surrender my faith.
AI can know a great deal about what I believe, but it cannot believe. Faith requires belief, trust, and something beyond what can be gathered, processed, or generated.
Faith is bigger than AI.
Perhaps the most important thing AI is teaching me isn’t what artificial intelligence can do.
It is making me define what is uniquely mine to hold and not let go.
Cathy D.
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