This blog is part four of a series on Flourishing in the Age of AI from Ed Stetzer. Read part three, "Discerning Together in the Age of Technology."

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Among the swirl of narratives, two big stories in particular are being told about artificial intelligence. Neither one is adequate.

The first story promises utopia. It says that AI will solve our problems, accelerate our progress, and usher in a new era of human potential. We need to embrace it.

The second story prophesies catastrophe: AI will displace workers, manipulate truth, and possibly threaten human existence itself. We need to resist it.

Christians have always been suspicious of simplistic stories of pure progress or pure doom, because we know the fuller picture. History does not just arc toward utopia or dystopia. It's a complex, contested terrain in which human beings make choices with real consequences, all while events are guided by God’s purposes toward the return of Christ and the renewal of heaven and earth.

The utopian or dystopian narratives don’t work for AI either. We need a better framework for thinking about it. We need a perspective that's neither naive nor anxious, one grounded in what we know about God, human beings, and the purpose of life. The Vatican's January 2025 document “Antiqua et Nova" put it well: the fundamental questions are not about whether AI is good or bad, but whether it serves "the integral development of the human person and society." We need to ask questions that get to the heart of that issue. And we can start with these seven questions every Christian should be asking about AI. 

Every person, regardless of background, productivity, or intelligence, has intrinsic worth that no technology can add to or subtract from.

1. Does This Tool Enhance Human Dignity or Diminish It?

This is the foundational question because it flows from the foundational Christian conviction that human beings are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Every person, regardless of background, productivity, or intelligence, has intrinsic worth that no technology can add to or subtract from. 

Technologies can honor that dignity or ignore it. Honoring dignity means that the use of an AI tool, or even the way AI is being innovated, must treat people as ends rather than means. It must serve the person rather than extracting from them. It must empower people to connect in genuine ways rather than managing them from a distance. The question of dignity helps us discern the foundational issues at play in the AI moment.

2. Is This Tool Making Me Wiser or Just Faster?

Speed is not wisdom. In fact, a breakneck, unreflective pace is often the enemy of wisdom. This seems obvious when stated plainly, but the pull toward efficiency can quietly eclipse the commitment to depth.

The biblical tradition consistently values wisdom. Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes: these texts spend considerable energy distinguishing those who are truly wise in the sight of God. Possessing knowledge, while important, is not the same as possessing wisdom. Knowledge can help optimize. Wisdom knows what’s worth optimizing.

AI is remarkably helpful. It can synthesize information and generate responses at a speed no human can match. What it cannot do is be wise. It has no experience of failure, love, loss, or prayer. It cannot weigh a situation the way a wise person can. It cannot suffer and learn amidst that suffering. These are uniquely human experiences. And if we’re to take the writers of Scripture seriously (and I think we should), we see that wisdom is given by God alone. No algorithm can provide what only God can ultimately offer. 

So, we must discern whether our uses of AI are working with or against the need to develop wisdom in intimacy with God. We must make sure we are not outsourcing the hard work of thinking. Because that will only get us faster answers with a shallower understanding. Both outcomes are possible. Only one of them is worth pursuing.

3. Am I Using AI to Serve People or to Avoid Them?

Christians are called to love their neighbors. The gospel shows us that love is embodied and costly. It doesn't happen at scale by default. It happens person to person, in the specific details of specific lives.

AI can help us serve people more effectively. It can help us communicate more clearly, respond more quickly, and research needs more thoroughly. Used well, it frees us to be more present, not less.

But AI can also become a buffer. A way to create the appearance of engagement without the substance of it. A way to respond to emails without reading them, to generate pastoral content untampered by prayer and reflection, to appear responsive while remaining relationally distant.

The test is simple, even if not easy: Is my use of AI making me more available to people or less? Is it freeing me to love my neighbor, or is it helping me avoid the cost of doing so?

4. Does This Tool Free Me for Deeper Obedience to Christ?

This question reframes the productivity question in theological terms. God does not call us to productivity, but to fruitfulness. At face value, productivity and fruitfulness sound the same, but they can be worlds apart. Productivity aims to get things done, but fruitfulness aims at faithfully getting the right things done in the way God desires. Productivity is transactional. Fruitfulness is formational. 

Say AI saves you two hours a week on administrative tasks. Your mindset should not just focus on being able to work less or more. Instead, you should be seeking what obedience to Christ requires. What have you been lacking the time to pursue? Is it deeper prayer? More time with your family? More presence in your community? More focused attention on sharing the gospel with people you encounter?

AI can help you optimize time, but it cannot redeem that time for you. Redeemed time requires intention. Intentionally using AI to reduce the burden of tasks that don't require human presence expands our capacity for those that do. By doing that, we are using AI in ways that honor the lordship of Christ over our time.

5. What Habits Is This Technology Forming in Me?

We already broached the formation question above, and this fifth question gets at the heart of it. Sadly, it may be the one Christian communities are least equipped to answer. It’s not because we lack the theological framework for the question, but because we haven't applied that framework to digital tools with enough seriousness.

We become what we repeatedly do. That's not just ancient wisdom; it's neuroscience. The habits we form shape the people we become. And AI, just as with any other technological change, is forming and reforming habits in us, whether or not we're paying attention.

God desires Christ to be formed in us (Gal. 4:19) and us to be formed in the image of Christ. So ask yourself formational questions: What does my AI use look like over a week? What does it encourage me to do? What does it discourage me from doing? What am I unintentionally losing by using it? Am I becoming more dependent on it in ways that concern me? 

6. Who Is Accountable for How This Technology Is Used?

The Christian tradition has always insisted on moral accountability. We are responsible for our choices and their consequences. If I use AI to generate content and that content is misleading, I am accountable. The stakes are not hypothetical.

People using AI are already producing enormous amounts of misinformation, which can be especially deceiving in the form of deepfake videos and manipulated photos. Such uses can elevate racial and gender biases. They can normalize extreme ideologies. And if we’re not discerning about what we’re creating with AI, we are accountable for passing it on.

The diffuse nature of AI (the fact that it involves many actors, many decisions, and often opaque systems) can create a moral haze that tempts us to believe no one is truly responsible. “Well, I didn’t make it, AI did!” 

Christians should resist this cop-out. Accountability doesn't disappear just because it becomes complicated. If anything, complexity raises the stakes for clarity about who is responsible for what. For Christian leaders, this means being willing to own the AI decisions your organization makes. We need to understand them, to be transparent about them, and to be willing to be held accountable for their outcomes.

7. Would I Be Comfortable If My Use of This AI Were Transparent?

This may be the most practically clarifying question of the seven. It's a modern version of a very old principle: act in such a way that you would be comfortable if your actions were known. Christians should hold themselves to a higher standard than the industry average, not out of legalism, but out of integrity.

Before submitting that AI-assisted document, ask yourself: Would I be comfortable if my colleagues knew how much AI contributed to this? Before publishing that AI-generated image, ask: Would my audience feel misled if they knew this wasn't created by a human? Before using AI to draft pastoral communication, ask: Would the recipient feel served or deceived if they knew? 

Transparency is not always required. But the discomfort we feel at the thought of transparency often signals something important. It tells us where our practices are outrunning our ethics. It's a useful internal corrective. And when in doubt, cite your use. 

Christians who use AI with integrity are Christians who use it in ways they would be comfortable owning publicly. That's not a perfect standard, but it's a good one.

The question is not "What will AI become?" The deeper question and the one that matters more is, "What will we become as we use it?"

Beyond Fear and Hype

Notice what these seven questions do and don’t do. They don't simply ask, Is AI safe? Or, is AI useful? They do ask deeper questions: What is AI doing to us? Who are we becoming? Are we being faithful in how we use this technology?

These questions are exactly where the church has something irreplaceable to offer. Not just caution—the world has plenty of AI skeptics. And not just enthusiasm (Silicon Valley has more than enough of that). Instead, the church offers a vision of what (and Who) human beings are for. A conviction that technology must be evaluated not just by what it can do, but by what it does to us and for those it affects.

AI will reshape work, education, communication, and the rhythms of daily life. Those shifts are not in question. What is in question is whether we will navigate that reshaping with wisdom or simply drift along with the current.

And Christians don't have to drift. We have a tradition, a community, and a Spirit to guide us. We have Scripture that illuminates what it means to be human. We have centuries of accumulated wisdom about technology, power, and the formation of souls.

The question is not "What will AI become?" The deeper question and the one that matters more is, "What will we become as we use it?"

If we ask these questions and pursue wisdom, leading courageously and forming community intentionally, Christians can flourish in the age of AI. We won’t get there by chasing the latest fads, but by grounding our approaches in a theology that's older than any algorithm and truer than any model.

We are not excitedly anticipating utopia or nervously afraid of dystopia. We’re people of a Kingdom that is already invading the world but not yet fully present. The moment calls for engagement. Not panic. Not passivity. Faithful, discerning, hopeful presence. 

That's what the church is called to. That's what this moment demands.

Todd Korpi, author of AI Goes to Church, contributed to this article.