Published: 2026-03-13
There's a panic that runs through some Christian circles every time a new technology emerges. People wringing their hands, wondering if we've gone too far, whether the machines are going to take over, whether God is somehow caught off guard by what we've built.
I don't buy it. Not even a little.
God is not surprised by artificial intelligence. Let me explain why.
Every piece of hardware running a large language model right now — the silicon, the copper, the rare earth metals, the gold — God made all of it. Not just in a general "He created the universe" kind of way, but specifically, on purpose, knowing full well what those materials could become in the hands of the creatures He made in His image.
Psalm 24:1 says the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. That includes the silicon in your GPU. That includes the lithium in the battery powering the server. None of this snuck past Him.
When God spoke creation into existence out of nothing — ex nihilo — He loaded the material world with potential. He didn't just make atoms. He made atoms with specific properties that humans, made in His image, would eventually discover and leverage. The same God who put gold in the ground knowing we'd eventually smelt it, wire it, and use it to conduct electricity is the same God who put germanium and silicon in the earth knowing we'd eventually figure out semiconductors.
That's not an accident. That's providence.
Genesis 1:28 is one of the most underappreciated verses in Scripture. God tells His image-bearers to fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. This wasn't a one-time assignment for Adam and Eve. It's the ongoing calling of humanity — to bring creation under order, to take what God made and develop it, to work it and keep it.
Every technological advance in history is, in some sense, a fulfillment of that mandate. The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. The internet. And yes, artificial intelligence.
We didn't stumble into this. We were built for it.
From a postmillennial perspective, this makes a lot of sense. We're not waiting for the world to get worse until Jesus swoops in to rescue us from a burning planet. We're engaged in the long, progressive work of building God's kingdom. The Great Commission isn't just about saving souls — it's about discipling nations, transforming culture, bringing every sphere of life under the lordship of Christ. Technology is one of those spheres.
AI isn't outside that work. It's part of it.
Some people push back here. They'll say the Dominion Mandate was corrupted by the Fall — that fallen humans building things is just fallen humans making bigger messes.
There's a kernel of truth in that. Sin distorts everything we touch. But that's not the end of the story.
Christ has come. He completed the sacrifice. He is risen. He sits at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning right now. And because of that, the body of Christ is mandated to pursue the redemption of all things — including creation, culture, and technology.
This is the whole arc: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. We're not waiting around for the restoration to start. We're in the redemption phase. And the church — the body of Christ — is the mechanism through which that redemption works itself out in history. Not in our own power. Through Christ, by His Spirit, under His Lordship.
Here's where it gets interesting. Think about how an AI system works. A human tells it what needs to be done, gives it the resources, sets the parameters, and the machine goes and does the work. The output belongs to the human. The machine only acts because someone orchestrated it.
That's not unlike our relationship to Christ. He tells us what needs doing. He gives us the resources — the gifts, the callings, the raw material of creation itself. We go and do the work. And the work only counts for anything because He set it in motion and sustains it. Without Christ, all of this is just noise. Luckily, He has risen.
Here's where someone will push back: "But AI can be used for evil. Deep fakes, misinformation, surveillance states."
Sure. Every technology ever made has been used for evil. A horse and buggy transported criminals. The printing press spread heresy just as fast as it spread the gospel. The internet gave us access to Scripture and pornography at the same time. Fire warms homes and burns them down.
The misuse of a tool is not an argument against the tool. It's an argument for who controls it.
We've already seen what happens when the church stays on the sidelines. Social media is the obvious case study. For years, the Christian community largely kept its distance — didn't engage the conversation, didn't help shape the norms, didn't ask the hard questions early enough. By the time we showed up, the culture of those platforms was already baked in. We were playing catch-up instead of setting the tone.
We cannot afford to repeat that with AI.
God gave us this technology now. The church needs to get in and get its hands dirty — understand how it works, learn what it can and can't do, and show up in the rooms where the decisions are being made. Not to complain from the outside, but to help steer it. To be voices for human dignity, truth, and the common good in conversations that will shape society for decades.
Stewardship doesn't just apply to money and time. It applies to technology. Christians who understand both the theology and the technology have a responsibility to be part of that answer.
There's something worth noticing here that gets missed in most of the conversation.
God made us in His image. He is a Creator — we create. He is rational — we reason. He speaks and things come into existence. We speak in code and systems come to life.
And now we're building systems in our image — tools that can reason, generate language, solve problems, and assist in work that previously only humans could do. We're making something that mirrors, in a limited and soulless way, what we are.
I'm not saying AI is conscious. It isn't. But there's something deeply human about the impulse to build a mind-like assistant. We're doing what image-bearers do: we're reflecting our God-given capacity for creativity and reason outward into the world.
I want to be honest here, because this piece isn't meant to be a pep talk with no edge.
My real concern isn't that AI will become sentient and take over. That's not what keeps me up at night. What concerns me is simpler: if Christians don't get involved, this technology will be shaped almost entirely by people whose goal is not to advance God's kingdom.
Their goal is profit. Their goal is influence. Their goal is their own agenda.
That's not a conspiracy theory — that's just how incentives work. And when you combine enormous power with incentives that have nothing to do with human flourishing or truth or dignity, you get something that erodes all three. Slowly, then all at once.
God is in control. He's not surprised by any of this. If His church stays on the sideline, He'll accomplish His purposes another way. I believe that. But that belief is not an excuse for passivity. The fact that God is sovereign doesn't mean we don't act — it means we act in confidence, trusting that our striving is not in vain.
So my concern isn't really about the technology. It's about whether the church will show up — as developers, as thinkers, as pastors willing to engage the question, as everyday believers who use these tools with intention. If we don't steer this, someone else will. And they won't be steering toward the kingdom.
I build AI systems for a living. So I'm not writing this from a distance.
The theology doesn't create tension with the work. It makes me more confident in it.
When I see how much more productive I am with these tools, how much of the daily tedium is just gone, how much more I can focus on the things God actually wired me to care about and be good at — I don't see a threat. I see leverage. God giving me a longer lever so I can move more with the same effort.
Some of the things I used to spend hours on I just don't have to do anymore. That's not a loss. That's God multiplying my capacity to do what He's called me to do. The skills He's given me, the things He's made me care about — those matter more now, not less. The AI handles the tedium. I get to go deeper on the stuff that counts.
That's not a coincidence. That's providence.
The end goal, if I'm being honest, is Eden. Or as close to it as we can get before Christ comes back to restore all things to their fullness.
We won't get all the way there on this side of His return. Sin is still here, and it'll be here until He comes. But in the redeeming — right now, in the middle of history — we have the ability to make life genuinely better for everybody. Christians and non-Christians alike.
There's an idea I've heard: that a man blessed by God becomes a source of radial blessings to everyone around him. The blessing doesn't stop with him — it spreads. That's how the kingdom works. It's not zero-sum. It's an ever-expanding circle of flourishing.
That's what I want AI to be in the hands of Christians. A tool that multiplies the blessing outward. Churches doing more with the staff they have. Missionaries reaching people they couldn't before. Individuals learning better, serving better, thinking more clearly. People in real need finding help they wouldn't have found otherwise.
Human flourishing, kept at the center of everything we build.
God put the silicon in the ground. He gave us the minds to understand physics and mathematics. He gave us the creativity and the relentless drive to build. He gave us the calling to take dominion and build His kingdom.
He was never surprised by AI. He's been waiting for us to show up.
Happy coding, J.R.