It can be very difficult to admit you’re “in debt” to someone else. Self-sufficiency can become a deadly sin. We need to stop keeping score.

Here’s how the article begins:

Perhaps you’ve been in my shoes when the bill is offered at a restaurant. Out of cheerful generosity, you consider paying for others. Yet you stop to think, “what have they bought for me, lately?”

Continue reading at The Gospel Coalition Canada here.

To make wise technology decisions for our kids we must consider each technology, its blessing and its burdens, and what God has said in his Word.

In the case of social media, we see plenty of positives. Like ancient letters, we can use communications technologies to connect with others. But it has its limits. As John says in his second (very short) letter:

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

John knew the technology of letters (which is a technology) should be limited. The same is true of social media today.

Meta was recently found guilty for harm to teens by a jury — a historic win for people like me who have repeatedly argued these companies must be held responsible. In particular, the jury determined that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what they knew about child sex trafficking on their platforms. The humans who were responsible for these decisions should be held accountable. And this is only the first step in more lawsuits coming their way.

In Deuteronomy 22:8 it says:

When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

The idea is simple. People used to walk on their roofs and so you must build a railing (“parapet”) on it, otherwise you are guilty of “bloodshed.” The same applies for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, OpenAI, and so on.

But this doesn’t mean that parents are not also responsible for their children. We shouldn’t pit one against the other, as if a parent giving their child cigarettes is not also to blame. Parents should learn the harms and act accordingly. For example, you can read this 2026 paper by the famous researcher Jonathan Haidt, a leader in the movement to delay teen access to social media until at least age 16. Jonathan Haidt has studied this in-depth and concluded an important lesson: parents have overprotected our children in-person and under-protected them online. I agree with his thesis. The benefits of being connected are not worth the restlessness, access to sexual immorality, and self-centeredness that these apps normalize

None of this says that social media cannot also be used for good. Just yesterday I listened to a number of people share their story before they were baptized. One woman described how God used videos on TikTok to help her see the need she has for God and the church. Christians shouldn’t hide these potential benefits as if we are on one side of the argument or the other. We’re team Jesus. We call it as it is.

Likewise, with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we should expect a mix of blessings and burdens. Missionaries and pastors are making use of AI for translation. And yet, the early research shows harms such as deskilling, disempowerment, and a false sense of self. ChatGPT will always compliment you, which is perhaps why one in ten teens prefer to speak to an “AI Companion” over a human. This is concerning.

I stand by the video I made last summer that parents should not give their children unsupervised access to Large Language Models (such as via ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude). Waiting until age sixteen makes sense. There are benefit in using AI but there are also harms, especially for children. As an aside, I never understood the argument that “AI is the future, so children need to get better using it.” That implies school is about skill development rather than virtue and knowledge. I wasn’t allowed to use a calculator regularly in class until, well, never. It was always supervised. There are far more harms to AI, so why risk it? Especially when it’s so new.

Wise technology use begins with parents, not Big Tech, nor the school your kids go to, nor the church you attend (though those all have an important role to play!). As parents, we need to model limiting technology for the sake of relationships, while also teaching the good of creativity and innovation. In this way, we can both image God’s creativity and align with Christ’s character.

Two quick notes:

1. A much shorter version of this article (about half the length) was written for the newsletter of my children’s school. I am thankful for partnering with them.

2. The “photos” above are actually both AI-generated images. I drafted a prompt with the help of Anthropic’s Claude and then had Google Gemini create it. In posts about LLMs (or “AI” — I use them interchangeably even though I know I could be more specific) I tend to use AI images, as they can illustrate the benefits of AI. I’m still a bit uneasy about using AI for “realistic photos” but I won’t get into that here.
   
   For clarity, the writing of this article was done completely by me. I only used LLMs to check for typos.

Podcast Links

It’s been awhile since I’ve linked to the podcasts I’ve produced.

I encourage you to listen.

Thinking About It | Season 5: Live Like a Christian (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• The Neglected Virtue of Friendship

• Have we removed God from the Christian life? (with Kelly Kapic)

• Be Quiet

• Live a Simple Life

• Your Car Isn’t Really Yours (Stewardship)

• Take a “Me Day” or a “God Day”?

• Building Annual Rhythms: The Church Calendar

• Is Your Weekly Worship Weak?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• An Honest Conversation About AI Chatbots (with Bonnie Kristian)

• What’s Really Happening in the Faith & Technology World? (with John Knox)

• AI Warfare, Kids Tech, and Wild Times

• Are Sports Betting & Gambling REALLY That Bad?

• Should We Be Concerned with AI Agents?

Thanks for reading and listening.

Consider sharing this post if you found it valuable.

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Around the same time, I read an announcement from a Christian blogger about his upcoming book project. His project sounded interesting and I wondered, even though I was young, if I could help. Or maybe I could encourage him. I’ve never met him and I wasn’t sure what to say. I stopped writing the email.

Now in 2026, both of these tasks could be significantly supported by generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. These tools would help. Is it okay for Christians to use them? I’ve come to think of it this way: for researching an article, yes; but for crafting an email, no.

This goes back to a rule of thumb made by Kevin DeYoung: it can be good to use GenAI for retrieving information, and potentially harmful for crafting it. We were created by our Creator in his image, our creativity is part of who we were made to be.

It’d be foolish to go to the gym and bring a machine to lift the weights for me. This is why limiting our use of GenAI makes sense. We reclaim our humanity when we choose to do the tasks we should. But it can get complicated. It can depend on your job, the way you use it, which tool you choose, and your spiritual maturity.

To help unravel the pros and cons of GenAI, I’ve started to think in terms of metaphors.

AI is like a Video Game

A video game is not inherently sinful. As Sarah Zylstra noted, playing games like Mario Kart can be a joyful outlet of creativity and exploration. Of course, it can also be a little self-interested (games are built around keeping you hooked), and it can disconnect you from day-to-day responsibilities. AI is like this too. It’s permissible within reason. But too much of it? That’s a waste of time.

I recently went back and forth with Gemini to create an image to promote a project I was working on. The image generator kept making mistakes even as it kept improving in other ways. I realized I needed to start from scratch and write a detailed and precise message to Gemini (this process is called “prompt engineering”). I decided to stop. I didn’t see the point. As Christians, we should “make the best use of the time” (Eph. 5:16), and sometimes these technologies waste it even while they promise to save it. As a recent HBR review has noted, AI doesn’t eliminate work, it intensifies it.

Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick has given some advice on prompt engineering and how to save time. This helps. But we should guard against using it as a distraction or as if it’s a person. Because prompt engineering is always changing, keeping up takes more and more time.

A lot of this depends on where you work. For some companies, it’s essential to be experimenting with GenAI. For others, it’s frowned upon or forbidden. Just as there is no command against driving a pretend car in Mario Kart, there’s no command against getting Apologist AI to tell you a dad joke. But that doesn’t mean the Bible is silent on whether or not we should be spending our time on these things. We must be thoughtful.

AI as Steroid and Digital Sherpa

I do not think GenAI is morally neutral. It’s a potentially dangerous activity, given that already, one in ten teens would rather talk to AI than a human. More AI tools are adding the ability to have “erotic” conversations; internal documents from Meta’s AI show how they allow bots to hold “sensual” chats with kids. Given that the top three uses of GenAI include therapy/companionship and “finding purpose,” Christians should be concerned about these idolatrous machines.

It’s a bit like a steroid, at least in some uses. When I was a kid I needed to take a kind of steroid for my asthma. Certainly, this was helpful. But most steroids negatively affect your health even as they improve performance. We shouldn’t underestimate those risks, and likewise, we shouldn’t understate the benefits.

The internet is a big place. It can be hard to find journal articles and pull together key information (whether recipes or location-based). The internet is like a mountain and GenAI is like a digital Sherpa who helps you navigate it. I’ve used AI tools to help me save money when navigating foreign public transportation, for example. GenAI can give good advice when used well.

A Sherpa is a climbing companion who carries supplies and guides the way. But of course, this analogy has a flaw. A Sherpa is human. These AI tools are not. It’s that falsifying of the image of God which is one of the key risks with these chatbots.

As soon as you start using these tools for one thing they trick you into thinking you can use them for more. “How do I make a cheese roux?” can easily turn into, “How do I deal with difficult in-laws?” ChatGPT is especially keen to adapt its “personality” to keep you talking to it. I agree with Noreena Hertz: people are using ChatGPT for too many tasks, like moral decisions and emotional support.

In 2 Kings 17:33 it says, “They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.” I wonder if too many Christians are simply following the customs of our neighbours instead of reflecting on whether or not these tools are like steroids and idols.

GenAI as Help and Harm

Using GenAI might help you ace an essay writing contest, but at what cost? It can summarize the readings for you, but what will that do to your ability to reason and reflect? Research shows that whatever skills are offloaded to AI are eventually lost by the user (this is called “deskilling”). It can help. With the right methods, it can help a lot.1 It can also harm.

Because GenAI is so new, researchers are still learning about the negative side-effects. It’s always easier to see the benefits than the burdens.

Pray over your use of GenAI tools. Ask God to give you wisdom. Talk with people in your church about this. Read a good book by a Christian on AI (or two, or three). Don’t go with the flow, renew your mind. Keep your heart with all vigilance.

Generative AI is fun like a video game and helpful like a digital Sherpa, but the risks are real. It’s also like a steroid and a potential idol. Every AI app comes with biases (including with anti-Christian subjectivism). Christians must have their own bias: a bias toward whatever is true, whatever is good, and whatever is beautiful.

Be wise. Think on these things.

His story is no different from one I’ve heard many times before, whether at FaithTech events, the broader “faith and work” community, or in my good friend, Joel Jacob.

Joel thought: “Am I really serving God? Am I designing fishing boats instead of fishing for men?”

Continue reading…

For a little extra context, Joel and I discussed this article together and I ended up writing it. He and I talk frequently about the tension that Christians feel when they work in tech. You can listen to these conversations on our podcast, What Would Jesus Tech?

Like my kids, I smiled at the first snowflakes in November. Through December, I appreciated the extra opportunities for shovelling; I needed the exercise. Then January came, and the Christmas lights came down. The past two weeks have been some of the coldest on record. My face hurts when I go outside.

It’s dark, too dark. It’s that time of year.

Keep reading…

Subscribe now

Recent podcasts episodes I’ve hosted. For Thinking About It we are focused on spiritual disciplines and we have been joined by our new lead pastor at my church, Jeremy McQuoid.

Thinking About It (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Is Work-Life Balance Biblical?

• How To Talk To God

• Scripture Intake: Why, What, and How?

• You can grow. Here’s how.

• Living Like a Christian With a Rule of Life

• Q52: What Hope Does Everlasting Life Hold for Us?’

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• AI is Interpreting the Bible Now? With Jonas Kurlberg & Zoltan Schwab

• We’ve Arrived In Digital Babylon... Now What?

• How the Bible Helps Us View Technology

• Do It For God, with Gregg Hinzelman

• What Will Happen in 2026? (Our Predictions)

Thanks for reading and listening.

Here are some of my top articles and podcasts from the year.

Top Three Articles

My most important article, in my humble opinion, was written in Mere Orthodoxy under the title Faithfulness in an Inside-Out World. They summarized it this way:

Andrew Noble critiques the "Inside-Out Approach," where personal desires outweigh external commitments. He argues this mindset fosters self-centered individualism, devaluing relationships and obligations. Noble contrasts this with a biblical view that prioritizes faithfulness over fleeting emotions, calling for a reorientation toward responsibility and commitment.

My best writing comes from my most patient thinking. I have been thinking about the concept of the “Inside-Out Approach” for years, applying it to my own life and to my teaching.

Similarly, I have long considered our difficulties in navigating social media (e.g., increased anxiety) to be itself an argument for Christianity. The lifelessness of technological idolatry leads to seeking life, and potentially finding it, in God.

Consider Deuteronomy 4:28-30:

There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him.

It is out of this interplay between our frustrations with technology and the hopefulness of heaven that I wrote Something Is Wrong, my most read article on Substack this year.

Lastly, while I think many of my articles for TGC Canada were helpful and valuable, I had the most fun writing In Defence of Silly Summers.

One day, after my PhD is over, I’d love to explore the concept of fun in-depth. Not a blog post about joy, or a book about silliness, but an academic monograph on the biblical theology of fun. I may never get to this, so I hope someone else takes up the task.

In the meantime, in light of the holidays, consider reading:

Other notable articles:

• My review of Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation.

• Are We The Idols? — an introduction to how we are shaped by idols and are like idols.

• My advice for using social media and whether Jesus would use TikTok.

• Why pastors should limit their use of Generative AI in sermon prep.

• Also, my post “The Evolution of Isolation AI” had an attachment within it which links to my notes for when I teach on AI at churches.

Top Podcast Episodes

The podcast that I’ve received the most positive feedback on is the one I recorded with Bob MacGregor and Jon Cleland after the passing of Stan Fowler. He was a faithful man, to God, to his family, and to his students.

We recorded fifty-two episodes for “Thinking About the Faith,” a podcast which served as a delightful way to learn devotionally rich doctrine amid daily life.

Our episode on What is God? was my favourite. I hope to take all 52 weeks and upload them together to YouTube soon, which essentially would be a 13-hour course on the basics of Christian theology.

It was a big year for What Would Jesus Tech?

Not only have we been growing and attracting an increasing number of listeners, but we hired a podcast manager to free up some of my time.

The best WWJT episode of 2025?

It’s hard to choose. Choosing and Using GenAI as Christians was one of the most popular (likely in part because of my very strong stance that Anthropic’s Claude is better than OpenAI’s ChatGPT) but I think Altman, Musk, and Belief in God was the best because it got to a deeper issue in our tech age: disenchantment.

It is also interesting, looking back on 2025, just how dominant Artificial Intelligence was. From demons, to the overhyped AI Bubble, to transhumanism, I’m really happy with what we covered.

You can find all episodes at https://www.whatwouldjesustech.com/all-episodes

Merry Christmas

Many are placing their hope in Superintelligence (or “AGI”) to solve the world’s problems. At the other extreme, in the midst of doomscrolling, it can be tempting to lack hope altogether.

I’ll end this post with a couple quotes from my cohost, Austin Gravley, who riffed off the idea of technological hope in our episode, Advent and the Technological Impulse.

We might say there is a material distinction between the coming of Christ and the coming of AGI. They are two different things. But our point is that these two different things are being discussed using the same language.

God's approach to solving our biggest problem — the existence of sin, the existence of death — he doesn't solve this problem in a way that we would prefer him to solve it. The advent of Christ shows us the humility of God... It's a sneak invasion, so to speak. God's way of dealing with our greatest problems is going to look different from how the world is going to want to do this — with impressive displays of wealth or knowledge or power. But those things will all fall short.

The advent of Christ, coming into the world to save the world, also prefigures his second advent.

Advent signals the eventual end of the ways in which technology can be used sinfully, or the way technology can exert itself against the Lord. And this coming of Christ in this first instance may not bring an end to that, but one day, [the second coming] will.

According to Statistics Canada, the number of Canadian-resident return trips from the United States was down 30.9% year over year, while the number of trips to Canada by US residents decreased 2.6%. There are more Americans visiting Canada than Canadians visiting America, despite us being less than 10% of their population!

This is part of what I call Canada’s Anti-American Moment. What is going on? And how should Canadian leaders respond?

Read my thoughts here:

https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/responding-to-our-anti-american-moment/

Today is the last day to sign up for my course before the late fee kicks in. (Sign up via Heritage’s Apply Page, either to Audit or for Credit). Learn more here:

Recent podcast episodes which I have hosted:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q49: Where is Christ Now?

• Q48: What is the Church?

• Q47: Does the Lord’s Supper Add Anything to Christ’s Atoning Work?

• Q46: What is the Lord’s Supper?

• Q45: Is Baptism with Water the Washing Away of Sin Itself?

• Q44: What is Baptism?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• Reading and Teaching in an Age of AI (uploads later this morning and includes a discussion about my upcoming course)

• There Is No One Christian View of Technology

• Advent and the Technological Impulse

• A Christian Perspective on the Neo Robot

Let’s consider three Christian books on AI.

The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity was written by Jason Thacker in 2020.

AI Goes To Church: Pastoral Wisdom For Artificial Intelligence was written by Todd Korpi in 2025.

AI for Theological Education was written by Artificial Intelligence under the supervision of Thomas E. Phillips in December 2024.

That wasn’t a typo. The third book was primarily written by an AI tool (they don’t say which AI model they use). Thomas Phillips is a Professor of New Testament Hermeneutics at Northwind Theological Seminary.

The first book, by Thacker, was published before the launch of ChatGPT. I can trust that when I read Thacker’s book, I’m getting to know a human’s perspective. When I read Phillips’ book, I know upfront that I’m not learning straight from Phillips.

Interestingly, though Thacker’s book is five years old, it speaks at a principle and biblical level and is still relevant today. Phillip’s book tends to be more practical, and it seems it was written with an older AI model (it lacks the deep research of 2025 AI models). Though less than a year old, the book written by AI is already outdated.

Now let’s consider the second book. I placed it in the middle for a reason. A very small portion of the book was written by AI, while most was not. It was published in 2025, which already raises some questions (which all authors must now face) about the extent of AI involvement. And my suspicion grew as I read the following sections of Todd Korpi’s book:

Following OpenAI’s release of their custom GPT feature in 2023, I created a custom GPT, a limited-memory AI version of “myself.” The KorpiGPT bot has learned from my previous writing and other publicly available content and can make recommendations about future projects with ease. While I don’t use the bot for the actual writing process, KorpiGPT has been an invaluable tool to help me create outlines, edit content, and be a brainstorming aid that has saved me from countless hours of staring at “the drawing board.”

On the back end of a lot of my larger writing projects, I use Grammarly’s masterful AI-powered resources to make recommendations in the editing process. I tend to be verbose, so Grammarly helps me trim down my word choice. I also tend to be needlessly snooty in my word choice, and Grammarly helps me temper that tendency in favor of a better blend of readability and sophistication. (page 16)

Here we learn that Korpi doesn’t use AI for “the actual writing process.” But what does he mean by that? He goes on to describe how much time he has saved in brainstorming ideas, saving “countless hours.” To me, the tasks of brainstorming, selecting, and organizing concepts is an essential aspect of the writing process. It’s what makes my writing mine. Spellcheck with AI makes sense. I’ve used Grammarly, too. But brainstorming? Hmm…

In a section on technical AI terms, Korpi passes the job of writing over to AI:

I want to offer some basic definitions for words commonly used in conversation about and around AI… for our purposes, I’ve asked ChatGPT to provide some working definitions. With only a little tweaking, this is what ChatGPT has to say about, well, itself: … (the definitions are then provided across page 19 and 20).

Having asked ChatGPT to do the work, instead of doing it himself, it’s not surprising that many of the definitions are rarely revisited later in the book. Perhaps Korpi’s unstated intention was to demonstrate the helpfulness of AI. In general, Korpi emphasizes what AI can do and underemphasizes what AI is.

Later in the book, Korpi says:

I’m not suggesting that AI write a pastor’s sermons. Instead, it should be an indispensable aid in the sermon planning and creating process. For example, in the fall of 2023, a friend reached out to me for some feedback on his sermon series plan for 2024. There were large themes he wanted to make sure that they touched on, but he had been racking his brain for a few hours to no avail. I created a ChatGPT prompt with the parameters he was looking for and within seconds had a rough draft of a sermon series plan. He liked the plan but wanted to make some tweaks to better align it with the liturgical calendar, so I prompted ChatGPT again, and it revised the plan to those parameters.

With ChatGPT in hand, the two of us went back and forth over the course of half an hour, creating an outline for each of his sermon topics and texts for the entire year . . . a task to which many pastors devote countless hours within any given year… In this situation, AI was a sermon planning aid — helping get the stuck wheels of creativity freely moving again. It was not a crutch to avoid time in prayer and study, and ultimately my friend defers to the leading of the Holy Spirit as he approaches each individual sermon. But it helped bring cohesion and organization to what he already had on his heart for the people God has called him to serve. (page 101)

In Korpi’s own words, AI has become an “invaluable tool” and “it should be an indispensable aid.”

But what is the cost of this?

Even if Korpi carefully limited his use of AI to only the instances he listed, I admit to being skeptical of whether or not I was actually reading his words throughout the book. How much has been ideated through KorpiGPT or rephrased with Grammarly? This isn’t to say that this isn’t a human-written book. I learned a lot about Korpi through the book. He deeply respects his wife. He thinks AI is cool. He likes N.T. Wright. He dislikes Donald Trump. He hates proof-texting verses out of context. He wants his readers to grow in their love of God and neighbour.

I’m not here to write a book review. My friend Austin Gravley has already written an excellent review of Korpi’s AI Goes to Church.

What I’m observing is my growing skepticism about the things I read, and whether I’m interacting with a human being or a stochastic parrot.

I even copied around 1500 words from Korpi’s book and put them into one of the leading AI Detector programs (Pangram, which isn’t perfect but seems helpful, as it compares text to known phrases used by generative AI). The report came back saying that the sections I quoted from Korpi’s book were human written, and it gave a high-confidence rating. For comparison, the third book (the one that says it was authored by AI), was found to be written by AI. Here are some related screenshots from Pangram:

I think my skepticism is good and bad. Positively, I will be grading assignments next semester and I should have an eye for AI-writing. Professors must adapt to a new era of cheating.

Negatively, my suspicions are dehumanizing to the people I read. By entertaining the idea that their book is written by AI as I read it, I create an unnecessary barrier between their words and my soul.

More should be said. I’d love to discuss solutions. Perhaps we might think of John’s desire to see others “face-to-face” rather than writing a longer letter (2 John 12). Perhaps we might think of Jesus’ incarnation. Perhaps we might think about Paul’s call to love others; love “believes all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). Is my growing skepticism a failure to love my neighbour?

For now, I’m not offering a solution. I’m wrestling with a problem. All technologies include unintentional side effects. I worry about what AI writing does to my love of books.

I wrote a new article for The Gospel Coalition Canada: Would Jesus Use TikTok?

For a time I considered writing a book for What Would Jesus Tech (the podcast I cohost with Austin Gravley and Joel Jacob). I decided against this as I focus my writing in other areas (publishing is hard work). But after a year of sitting on three chapters of the six I had planned, I realized my time is committed to other good things at time point, and so I am prioritizing them. I’m thankful for The Gospel Coalition Canada and am glad to publish with them.

How Should Christians Talk About AI?

New WWJT episode:

AI summary (I include this because it adds more search terms to make it easier for people to discover this podcast when the search for similar terms. My recommendation would be to read my actual article rather than read an AI summary of it.)

AI summary:
Andrew Noble explores the concept of the ‘Side Syndrome,’ which describes humanity’s tendency to pick sides in debates, particularly regarding AI. He argues that this binary thinking oversimplifies complex issues and prevents nuanced understanding. Noble emphasizes the importance of recognizing the multifaceted nature of technology and its implications for humanity, urging listeners to consider the underlying values that drive technological development.

AI Takeaways

The Side Syndrome reflects our human bias toward binary thinking.

Nuance is essential in the AI debate; it’s not just for or against.

Human nature seeks meaning through narratives and stories.

Sports fandom exemplifies the Side Syndrome in everyday life.

Avoiding the Side Syndrome can lead to a richer experience.

Politics and technology are often oversimplified into binary choices.

Critics of AI can hold complex, nuanced views.

Understanding technology requires examining societal values.

Critical thinking is necessary to navigate technological discussions.

The urge to use AI reflects deeper human desires and values.

AI Summary:

Andrew Noble explores the intersection of technology and Christian wisdom, emphasizing the importance of imitating Jesus in our tech choices. He discusses the challenges of navigating modern technology, the need for contemplation, and personal reflections on platforms like TikTok. Noble argues that wisdom involves understanding God’s truth and applying it to our digital lives, ultimately asking the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’

Read enough Wendell Berry, and you might reject AI for the sake of nature.

Read enough Tristan Harris, and you might reject AI for the sake of safety.

Read enough Jacques Ellul, and you might reject AI for the sake of telos.

Read enough Gary Marcus, and you might reject AI for the sake of the future.

Read enough Neil Postman, and you might reject AI for the sake of humanity.

Or at least that’s how it seems to happen. It seems as if there are two sides in the AI debate: for and against. And the authors above all push you to the side of anti-AI. Right?

The truth is much more complicated.

One of the issues with humanity is our anti-nuance impulse. We want to be for or against nearly everything. Let’s call this our Side Syndrome. The Side Syndrome is the human bias toward picking a side rather than recognizing issues as multi-faceted.

You see the Side Syndrome in all of life. In sports, for example, people don’t stay neutral. We want one side to win (“our” side), and another to lose. I remember enjoying fantasy sports for the very sake that it made me more interested in watching. I had something to root for.

Because of human nature, we seek meaning. All meaning is story-driven. And so as humans we are constantly getting caught up in narratives, for better and worse. Join the bandwagon and if the Blue Jays win, you win. When they lose, you lose. And you feel it.

The extreme rise of sports-betting taps into the same impulse. Pick the right side. Be part of a larger story. Their victory becomes your victory. This is Side Syndrome, from relatively inconsequential decisions (cheering for the Blue Jays), to life-destroying gambling addictions.

A couple days ago, I spoke with one of the elders at my church about this and he said he never picks a side when he watches sports. Rather, he enjoys the game. It is an interesting concept, isn’t it? What if what you enjoyed most about something was not reducible to a binary result (win or lose), and not even a number (the number of strikeouts). What if you were impressed by the skill, the athletic feats, or the courage of jumping straight into a teammate for the sake of making a catch, at the risk of losing the game?!

What if you were more impressed by people than metrics?

Of course it’s not wrong to cheer for your local sports team. But the elder of my church is quite unique in avoiding Side Syndrome. The same human impulse applies to many spheres. Politics is treated as a simple left vs right rather than a more nuanced assessment of policy. Christian schooling versus home schooling arguments are treated as a matter of one side or the other. And of course, with technology, we like our technology critics to pick a side.

Some of the biggest Wendell Berry fans I know are currently using LLMs daily, and see no contradiction.

Tristan Harris, despite his calls to slow the development of AI, also promotes his colleague’s work in building a generative AI tool to decipher the language of animals.

Gary Marcus, one of the loudest critics of AI labs, still thinks AI should be developed.

Neil Postman found ways to celebrate the “reign of hygiene” in our technological age, and so he might also celebrate the mRNA vaccines which were created with the help of AI.1 None of these technology critics can simply be placed on “one side” or the other.

At this point, I am convinced that “AI” is too nebulous and abstract a term to evaluate holistically. And beyond that, I’m not convinced “for or against” is a helpful line of questioning in the first place, as if the balance can somehow be weighed. Again, this goes back to an orientation toward metrics (“weigh this on a scale”) versus an orientation toward humanity, godliness, and glory.

As such, Jacques Ellul is helpful. He did not assess technologies but assessed the society in which they were embedded. We need to move beyond a simple “how good” or “how bad” each technology is, and towards the difficult questions of what it means to be human, why do we exist, and how technology shapes our worldviews.

Similarly, I have been reading Brent Waters, who says, “Artifacts cannot, on their own, both perform the instrumental tasks of fabricating a world and its inhabitants and provide the content of what is desired in such fabrication. Rather, we must turn our attention to the underlying values that drive technological development in accordance with certain desires and aspirations stemming from those values.”2 This makes sense to me. It’s not just about AI and what it’s saying. It’s about what’s behind our urge to use AI in the first place, as just one example.

Of course, this is going to require a lot of care and effort. Most of all, it will require critical thinking. Who has the time to do all that? Perhaps we should just ask ChatGPT instead.

I recently spoke at Bluewater Church in Sarnia across three sessions for their Fall Conference. Last year they had Wes Huff fill this role. The pastor told me I might get the “Bluewater Bump” and get on Joe Rogan too, just like Wes Huff. We’ll see about that! Hah! Here are the YouTube links below to each session:

• God and Technology

• Social Media and Virtue Formation

• Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Life

Here are some recent podcast episodes I have hosted:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q43: What Are the Sacraments or Ordinances?

• Q42: How is the Word of God to be Read and Heard?

• Q41: What is the Lord’s Prayer?

• Q40: What Should We Pray?

• Q39: With What Attitude Should We Pray?

• Q38: What is Prayer?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• Becoming Gods: Theosis, Telos, and Transhumanism, with Wyatt Graham

• The AI Bubble: Reality or Hype?

• TGC’s AI Christian Benchmark, with Michael Graham

• Altman, Musk, and Belief in God

New technologies are reshaping our world. Christian leaders are grappling with social media, livestreaming worship, and now, Artificial Intelligence chatbots.

In January 2026, I will be teaching a twelve-week course at Heritage College and Seminary called Technology and the Christian Life.

My goal is for the church to better make disciples in our technological age. We must be neither fearful nor foolish. We must consider the benefits and burdens of technology, the ways it transforms us, and the ways in which we might transform our use of it. We will explore ways to grow in faith, reclaim our humanity, and love our neighbour in a digital age.

The three main focuses of this course are: media ecology (and technology ethics), biblical theology, and pastoral theology (in the areas of anthropology and ecclesiology). To be honest with you, I’ve always most enjoyed interdisciplinary learning like this. It’s why I’ve been enjoying my PhD so much, and why I think this course will act as the culmination of much of my learning.

In addition to lots of Scripture, there will be readings from the following authors:

• Aristotle

• Albert Borgmann

• Michael Burdett

• John Calvin

• Andy Crouch

• John Dyer

• Jacques Ellul

• Noreen Herzfeld

• Samuel L. James

• Melvin Kranzberg

• Marshall McLuhan

• Sean O’Callaghan and Paul A. Hoffman*

• Neil Postman

• Tony Reinke*

• L. M. Sacasas

• Sherry Turkle

* The two textbooks for the course are Reinke’s God, Technology, and the Christian Life and Callaghan and Hoffman’s AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep.

Here’s a brief video explainer:

Heritage offers both in-person and online options. And this class will be available at both the college and seminary levels if you are taking it for credit (Heritage is accredited; transfers are possible).

Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

You can register here: https://discoverheritage.ca/admissions/apply/

The medium shapes the message. Three metaphors have helped me see the benefit of physical Bibles and the burdens of screens.

Keep reading…

The latest podcasts I’ve produced, on the Holy Spirit, AI & Demons, and Psychedelics, are among my best. I encourage you to listen.

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q36: What Do We Believe About the Holy Spirit?

• Q37: How Does the Holy Spirit Help Us?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• Demons Can Use AI, Within Limits

• Psychedelics: a Christian Evaluation, with Phil Cotnoir

While humorous, the underlying situation is weighty and near. Might we, without knowing it, be on the side of evil rather than good?

We need to ask ourselves, “Are we the idols?”

Continue reading at TGCC…

Recent podcasts I’ve produced:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q33: Should Those Who Have Faith in Christ Seek Their Salvation Through Their Own Works, or Anywhere Else?

• Q34: Since We Are Redeemed by Grace Alone, Through Christ Alone, Must We Still Do Good Works and Obey God’s Word?

• Q35: Since We Are Redeemed by Grace Alone, Through Faith Alone, Where Does This Faith Come From?

• Remembering Stan Fowler (with Bob MacGregor)

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• Learning and Building AI, with Daniel Manary

In the summer of that year, Stan Fowler experienced a stroke. This affected his ability to speak and write. He was no longer able to teach.

This past week, on August 26, 2025, Stan breathed his last breath and entered into glory. His obituary information is here.

I miss Dr. Fowler. I admired his clear thinking and his pastoral heart. I am inspired by his legacy.

Encouraged

I primarily knew Stan Fowler as a theologian and seminary professor. He was always Dr. Fowler to me. After preaching my first sermon at Grandview in 2022, he gave me a thumbs-up when I saw him in the hallway. I remember trying to share something about the sermon preparation with him. He nodded with a smile. His wife, Donna, encouraged me.

When I preached again, a year or so later, I was a bit nervous thinking about how he’d respond to my message. I briefly spoke about natural theology and its limitations, drawing upon the text in Proverbs about the sluggard and the ant. Again, after the sermon, I met Dr. Fowler in the church lobby, and again, he gave me a smile and a thumbs-up.

While he did not use words, I was so encouraged by Dr. Fowler in these small interactions. He waved. He smiled. He nodded. I knew from being in his systematic theology class that he believed God is sovereign over all, including pain and suffering. In these recent years, I felt that belief. He used his final years not to sorrow in solitude, but to come to church (even to members’ meetings), to smile, and to give a thumbs-up to an intern.

This was all possible because of his good God and his faithful wife. Donna Fowler has provided a great example of how to care for others. I am thankful for her. And I am thankful for Stan. He was a faithful man, whether in teaching at Heritage Seminary or chatting in the church lobby.

Equipped

Most people know Stan Fowler through his teaching. In class, he would often raise a difficult question and then analyze the biblical texts in support of and against it. Some people say systematic theologians skim the Bible rather than dive deep. Not so with Stan. He carefully brought forward each text in context.

Dr. Fowler was a great professor. He would give us textbooks that he didn’t agree with (like one on open theism) to ensure we learned how to engage with our opponents’ arguments. He was careful with language. He once drew a line through “make” in one of my papers and wrote next to it, “declare.” He was correcting me on the doctrine of justification, which relates to how we are declared righteous before God, not made righteous.

A few years ago, I transferred all my lecture notes from classes I took with him to a new location. I never want to lose them. I once told a new friend at the church, Jon Cleland, that it would be cool if someone were to make his lecture notes public in some way, because they were so good. Jon informed me that he had already begun a project to bring all of Stan’s writings into a two-volume series. These books are now available (here). Jon was able to complete them and hand them to Dr. Fowler earlier this year.

Challenged

Fowler was not afraid to speak up on controversial topics. During the pandemic, he spoke publicly both of the obligation to submit to government authority and against the overreach of government authority. Many appreciated his balanced clarity as too many others were either holding their tongue or burning it. When I joined Grandview, I saw how stabilizing his voice was to the ministry team and the congregation. We trusted him not because he was “in the middle” but because he carefully read and applied the Scriptures.

After his stroke in 2021, we could no longer hear that voice except through recordings. He and Pastor Bob McGregor had started a podcast in early 2020, entitled "Thinking About It." It often covered difficult social issues. Bob and Stan would meet together, often with only a few minutes of discussion ahead of time, and then dive into a difficult question for fifteen minutes. Bob is a master at Socratic questioning. Stan brought calm to complex topics. They made an excellent pair.

They recorded many episodes at a time, often far in advance. And so even after Dr. Fowler’s stroke, new recordings were still being published. On September 6, 2021, for example, they published an episode on “When to Compromise.” It dealt with the Christian position on abortion and the complexities of dealing with it politically. For example, is it okay for a Christian politician to vote for a restriction on abortion even if that restriction does not go as far as they would like? True to his usual form, Stan articulated a defense of both sides of the argument, and then, ultimately, why he leans a certain way rather than the other.

Dr. Fowler was the first person who opened my eyes to the history of abortion in Canada, to the various positions on government authority, to principles to apply to IVF, to the biblical value of social action, and to a whole assortment of other issues. Like I said, he did not shy away from difficult topics.

I once shared with Jon Cleland how cool it is that Heritage Seminary, as a Baptist institution, has a required course on Moral Theology. Jon replied, “that’s all Stan.” Dr. Fowler believed that future pastors must not only parse the text of Scripture but also apply it to the ethical issues of our day. That’s difficult. But it’s important.

Jon recently spoke with Christian Clement, another young theologian in Canada. They both shared how they struggle to speak on controversial ethical issues like Fowler did. On that same struggle, historian Michael Haykin recently said, “for me personally, I know of no one who will be able to fill Stan’s shoes in this regard in Ontario in our deeply divided and contentious day.”

I do not know of anyone either.

However, I do not lament. If I learned anything from Stan, it is this: God is sovereign over all. God will build his church. And he will gift new theologians.

Stan Fowler’s funeral is this Saturday. His obituary states:

As expressions of sympathy donations to the Stan Fowler Scholarship Fund would be appreciated (cards available at the funeral home).

I encourage you to make a donation.

On almost every episode of Thinking About It, Bob would wrap things up and say goodbye, and then Stan would add, “keep on thinking.”

I will, Stan. I will.

Here’s the key section of potential concern:

Culturally, there are many factors pushing against appropriately silly parenting. As Mary Midgley observed, ever since the 17th century, we think of ourselves as being like machines. And when you think of your kids as computers, you’ll think of upgrades and achievements rather than personhood and character. To be sure, our kids should grow to be more like Christ—that is a kind of “upgrade”—but we mustn’t forget how the hidden Kingdom belongs to them, right now.

Freya India recently argued, “Nobody has a personality anymore.” She noticed how today’s therapeutic approach turns every eccentricity into a problem to be solved. She’s worth quoting in full:

We have lost the sentimental ways we used to describe people. Now you are always late to things not because you are lovably forgetful, not because you are scattered and interesting and secretly loved for never arriving on time, but because of ADHD… You are the way you are not because you have a soul but because of your symptoms and diagnoses… Every heartfelt, annoying, interesting piece of you, categorised. The fond ways your family describe you, medicalised. The pieces of us once written into wedding vows, read out in eulogies, remembered with a smile, now live on doctors’ notes and mental health assessments and BetterHelp applications.

We have taken the joy out of life by crunching it into machine-like parts for the sake of statistics. Parenting becomes tinkering—looking for the next area to optimize through technique or therapy rather than peace-filled presence.

Our culture pressures us against appropriately silly parenting by over-medicalizing personhood; by labeling and diagnosing normal human behaviour. It turns joyful parenting into machine-like optimization.

My question here is, does my argument diminish the realities of those with real ADHD?

I have not changed my mind since quoting India. But on the topic of over-diagnosis, there’s more I could have said.

ADHD is real. Depression is real. Anxiety disorders are real. It is appropriate for some people to be diagnosed with various mental illnesses. All good gifts come from God, including pills and counseling.

That said, I also believe some people are labeled as having ADHD and other mental illnesses when they should not be. Not everyone. Not all the time. But I believe this happens, and it happens too often. And I think too often we self-diagnose these disorders as well.

What’s my evidence for this?

I have been reading about the rise of the therapeutic self. Part of this is through books and articles by Jon Haidt. For The Atlantic, Arthur Brooks wrote, “Being Anxious or Sad Does Not Make You Mentally Ill.” In Vanity Fair back in 2023, there was a lament of “TikTokified psychobabble,” and how “Amateur Therapy-Speak Is Just Making Us Lonelier.”

A great overview of therapeutic language is “The Christian in a Therapeutic Age” by Ian Harber. It’s great. He believes mental illness is real. He also believes that people have been misled by false and dangerous notions of “therapy.” Ian writes:

While we turn to therapy in order to heal our inner wounds, more and more people are finding themselves even more anxious and isolated than they were before. As they turn inward, they damage relationships with people who would otherwise be there to help them through difficult circumstances. This isn’t necessarily because therapy is broken but because of how we have begun to use therapy as a buffer between us and the uncomfortable realities of life when it was never meant to function that way. The more we avoid the hard knocks of life, the more we’re hurt when we’re hit by them. So, the very thing intended to help us become more resilient in a difficult world ends up making us more fragile.

And this isn’t a recent phenomenon, as if we’ve only learned of it in the past couple years. Today’s overdiagnosis is a product of a long trend toward a therapeutic approach to life in general. And Christians aren’t exempt. Christian Smith’s 2005 research on evangelicalism showed the rise of (in his terms) Moral Therapeutic Deism (MTD). Too many Christians treat God as a distant rule-giver (deistic and moral), who primarily exists to give us good feelings about ourselves (therapeutic). Of course, God does help us feel good. The Psalms talk of that. But the Psalms also talk about great sorrow and frustration. In MTD, Christians only pick the therapeutic “coffee mug” versions of Scripture and do themselves a disservice in the process.

We could go back further. In 1966 Philip Rieff wrote The Triumph of the Therapeutic.1 Carl Trueman and Timothy Keller have both summarized this book in their work. Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self shows how notions of Freud’s inner self (and sexualized self) have become increasingly normalized in the way we think today, and he builds upon Rieff’s work. These authors note the pendulum swing toward self-improvement and optimization, especially in how we prioritize our “selves.”

This chart from Google Ngram viewer (a tool that analyzes the frequency of words and phrases within a vast collection of digitized books) shows how much more we think about the self.

I am concerned about this trend. I’m concerned about what it does to personhood. I am concerned about what it does to our parenting, as we see our children through a lens of feeling-metrics to be optimized through therapy rather than as a person to giggle with.

And I’d argue, by the way, that keeping medical language restrained for only those people who truly deserve it is loving. Overdiagnosis (and turning personality quirks into medical illnesses) is the kind of thing that hurts those who actually struggle with such illnesses.

For the person who is sometimes late, but otherwise showing no signs of ADHD, and they say “Oh, it’s just my ADHD,” they risk trivialization, treating the realities of ADHD as a light and flippant trait.

It’s as if someone shares they struggled to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and someone else comes along and says they had a hard time recently too, since the parking spot for the grocery store was too far away.

Ultimately, we should take mental health seriously! Turning every little distraction into ADHD does the opposite.

Let’s stop doing that. Let’s enjoy the rest of summer.

Recent podcast episodes:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q23: Why Must the Redeemer Be Truly God?

• Q24: Why Was it Necessary for Christ, the Redeemer, to Die?

• Q25: Does Christ’s Death Mean All Our Sins Can Be Forgiven?

• Q26: What Else Does Christ’s Death Redeem?

• Q27: Are All People, Just as They Were Lost Through Adam, Saved Through Christ?

• Q28: What Happens After Death to Those Not United to Christ by Faith?

• Q29: How Can We Be Saved?

• Q30: What is Faith in Jesus Christ?

• Q31: What Do We Believe by True Faith?

• Q32: What Do Justification and Sanctification Mean?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep, with Pastor Paul Hoffman

• A Gentle Singularity?

• You Have a Calling, with Karen Swallow Prior

This summer, I’m prioritizing silliness over seriousness.

Keep reading at The Gospel Coalition Canada…

(Also, in Canadian English, the preferred spelling for the noun referring to the act of defending is defence, with a "c".)

Enjoy your summer!

You should limit its use in sermon preparation for these four reasons.

1. Using GenAI is (Often) Plagiarism

Plagiarism is grounds for removal from the pastoral office. It breaks two of the Ten Commandments: stealing and coveting.

2. Using GenAI Will Stunt Your Growth

The greatest calling of the pastor is not the delivery of a sermon but the development of character.

Writing sermons forces you to consider your audience and write for them. It is an act of love.

3. Using GenAI Can Dehumanize The Church

Church gatherings are not mere content delivery mechanisms – they are the embodied proclamation of the risen Lord in a fallen world.

It is better for a pastor to be present with his people and to preach a text without elegance or extensive research than for a corner-cutting pastor to rely on technology. Some trust in chariots, others in Chatbots, but we trust in the name of the Lord (Ps. 20:7).

4. Using GenAI Can Cause Division

I anticipate that at least some church members would have issues of conscience with GenAI being used to generate content like sermon introductions, or even the discussion questions for small groups.

I don’t wholly forbid the use of Generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT or Claude).

Asking ChatGPT for feedback on an already written sermon and lightly incorporating some feedback doesn’t seem to cross an ethical line. But what about an AI-generated illustration? Drafting an outline from a text? Crafting a polished conclusion? Personally, I avoid those uses for the reasons above.

No matter the tool, no matter the trend, we preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to algorithms and foolishness in a technological age.

Read more here.

Recent podcasts I’ve produced:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q18: Will God Allow Our Disobedience and Idolatry To Go Unpunished?

• Q19: Is There Any Way to Escape Punishment and Be Brought Back into God’s Favor?

• Q20: Who is the Redeemer?

• Q21: What Sort of Redeemer is Needed to Bring Us Back to God?

• Q22: Why Must the Redeemer Be Truly Human?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• How AI Can Function As Idolatry

• Navigating the Christian Tech World, with Cory Hixson

• You Were Never Meant to Do It All, with Kelly Kapic

• AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep, with Paul Hoffman

Social media introduced a new path for human relationships through leveraging digital versions of real life.

Heavily oversimplified, it looks like this:

It was unprecedented. As a society, we still have yet to appropriately adapt. (Anton Barba-Kay’s book on this is valuable.)

Somewhere along the way (I’m not too concerned about date precision), algorithms introduced a more streamlined way to view data. In 2012, Facebook made a major shift in it’s News Feed toward a “Timeline” that was fully algorithmic. You didn’t see things chronologically anymore. You saw what the algorithm wanted you to see. That algorithm was told what to do by people who worked at Facebook and the users who told Facebook what they liked.

It started to build a cycle of feedback, which looked like this:

Algorithms now separated people’s digital pages from one another. While all algorithms are not AIs, there’s enough of an overlap here to not get too bogged down in the definitions. On Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky, there is still a way to view content chronologically and without the mediation of AI, but such use is rare.

The feedback loop was given steroids in the form of advanced AI (this is where Machine Learning and Deep Learning took things to a new level). Chatbots like ChatGPT came onto the scene with a novel approach: instead of merely showing data or organizing data, they used the feedback loops inherent in the internet to make data.

In the early days of social media, Christians would try to consider, “Is Facebook safe for my daughter?” Most thought it was fine (or didn’t think about it at all) because it depended on who your daughter became friends with. Now, it’s much more difficult. Not only is your daughter’s content filtered through algorithms (not to mention the rise of online ads and p*rn bots), but across all internet platforms, AI is making data to addict teens to their platforms.

Social media was once a gateway to other people. Now, with AI, social media is primarily a gateway to the internet. We ask “Is ChatGPT safe for my daughter?” but we don’t know how to answer because we don’t know what data OpenAI will send to her. In fact, OpenAI may change their algorithms over the weekend and then apologize for how it behaves. This just happened. OpenAI continues to “move fast and break things” for the sake of learning.

Here’s Sam Altman, CEO and semi-cult-leader of OpenAI, apologizing on Twitter/X:

No Christian book on AI is going to teach you how to navigate all this. AI developments are impossible to predict. Impossible to neatly categorize. Things are moving too fast. But here’s a few ways I think about AI.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a broad term that includes predictive AI (like text messaging suggestions, sales forecasting, traffic or weather predictions), generative AI (such as ChatGPT and social media chatbots), and multimodal AI (like Siri or Google Gemini). It’s an umbrella term, for better and worse. It can be narrow (when it accomplishes only one task) or general (when it can accomplish many tasks). One day it will appear to be more intelligent on most knowledge questions than most humans, perhaps in the next 1-3 years. Some will worship it.

Generative AI, in its current form, is biased and unpredictable. Sam Altman (co-founder of OpenAI) talks openly about how AI must have a "worldview" to draw on, since the training of AI must be done with human-created goals.

Generative AI is genuinely helpful. It is hard to appreciate just how valuable tools like Claude or ChatGPT are without personal experience. Here are a list of things I use it for that I find beneficial: travel planning, feedback on finished and already written articles, brainstorming, advanced thesaurus, alliteration, advanced dictionary (what does this complex set of words in this book mean?), finding Bible verses, telling me what people generally think about things, and more. For ethical reasons, I prefer Claude over ChatGPT.

AI is not a fad. It is changing how we work. It is changing how we live. One in five people use GenAI at least weekly.

Consider the work of HBR.org writer Marc Zao-Sanders. He tallied up tens of thousands of internet comments to determine how people are using GenAI. He did this in 2024 and again in 2025.

Take some time to swallow these changes:

Did you notice the top three ways AI is being used? Number one is therapy and companionship. (Third is finding purpose… though I could not find what is meant by this).

GenAI is a friend-replacer. It’s a pastor-replacer. At least in many ways. Snapchat has built AI into their app, and it cannot be removed by parental oversight technology. (By the way, Snapchat is bad for teens regardless of AI). People are copying and pasting conversations into AI to figure out how to respond to their boyfriend or friends or whatever.

AI is made to be like humans because that's the nature of the human heart. When people make an idol, they don't turn a stone into something that looks like a rock. They make it look like an animal, a human, or a god. Why? To entice the human heart toward it. To build allegiance. And allegiance = money.

Whereas social media was an app for “connection,” (which it failed at doing) AI is explicitly an isolation app. You do not connect with others through it. It is private. Solo. Alone.

It may be helpful to give some practical examples of what I do not believe AI should be used for. I do not use GenAI to: journal, think for me, write sermons, tell me how to parent, tell me what is right and wrong, or give me knowledge expertise. As Kevin DeYoung recently said, AI can be great to retrieve knowledge, but do not use it to create knowledge.

Much more could be said. At minimum, we must recognize three truths:

1. AI is accelerating the problems started by social media.

2. AI is creating new problems.

3. AI should not be given to children or teens. As Brad Littlejohn argues, this kind of dangerous technology should be regulated in the same way we do cars.

We must use wisdom in our use (and potential abstinence) of these platforms. Some people should stay off of it completely. Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. Ask God. Ask your pastor. Ask your mom. Ask your small group. Don’t ask ChatGPT.

Today I am speaking at a church leadership conference on AI. Here is a link to a PDF handout that summarizes and outlines my workshop.

Recent podcasts I’ve produced:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q13: Can Anyone Keep the Law of God Perfectly?

• Q14: Did God Create Us Unable to Keep His Law?

• Q15: Since No One Can Keep the Law, What Is Its Purpose?

• Q16: What is Sin?

• Q17: What is Idolatry?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• Multiplying the Word: Creating Local Digital Content as a Church, with Pastor Luke Simmons

• Choosing and Using GenAI as Christian

• Multiplying the Word: Steward Your Story, with Ian Harbor

• The Tech-Savvy Christian Faith | Re: Wes Huff's History of Technology & Christianity

Thanks for reading (and listening!).

AI-generated summary: Andrew Noble explores the contradictions of our technological age, highlighting how advancements have led to feelings of numbness, loneliness, and a loss of meaning. He presents nine key contradictions that reflect the dissonance between our desires and the reality of our experiences. Through references to C.S. Lewis and personal reflections, he emphasizes the need for a deeper connection to spirituality and the longing for a world filled with meaning and glory.