Called to Create
From The Pastor’s Desk—
As I mentioned in my newsletter article last month, I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose and function of AI, especially as it relates to religion. As technology has continued to progress, questions about the use of AI in planning services, crafting sermons and prayers, and other aspects of church life have become topics of informal discussion, seminars, even whole conferences.
Recently, I was at a meeting with fellow clergy, planning a joint service. As our group was roughing out the structure of the service, I was surprised to have one of the other pastors report: “Well, AI doesn’t have any suggestions.” I was momentarily shocked, as asking an AI tool to plan a service is something that would never occur to me. Don’t get me wrong; AI has many beneficial uses. A program developed in Japan for markets to scan different types of pastries by shape at checkout was further developed to help identify cancerous and precancerous growths in humans.
What troubles me, though, is when people ask AI to take on the work of the mind and spirit. An AI program can only report what others have done; it cannot innovate, or critically reflect. I recently read an article about the use of AI on college campuses -students using AI to complete their assignments, and professors using AI to grade them- and was struck by the reflection of a professor who was worried by this state of affairs.
Part of a teacher’s job—certainly in the humanities, but even in professional fields like business—is to help students break out of their prisons, at least for an hour, so they can see and enhance the beauty of their own minds. It is to help them learn, together, to defend how they want to live, precisely because they, too, unlike a machine, will one day die. I will sacrifice some length of my days to add depth to another person’s experience of the rest of theirs. Many did this for me. The work is slow. Its results often go unseen for years. But it is no gimmick. -Jonathan Malesic
The notion of willingly giving up some part of our lives to enrich the lives of others is at the core of our faith. Christians are encouraged to bear one another’s burdens, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. Each of these efforts is an investment in the lives of others, a response to our understanding that each of our neighbors is a beloved child of God.
AI cannot invest in others, because it cannot create, cannot offer anything other than a report about what others have done in similar situations. It cannot evaluate the truth of what it reports; it cannot distinguish between fact and fiction because, to a creature fundamentally composed of the zeroes and ones of binary code, all data can be reduced to such a scale, rendering veracity a mere byproduct of inference.
One of the understandings of what it means that humans are made “in the image and likeness of God” is that we share in God’s ability to create. We create: art, political structures, games, poetry, fishing vessels, even new life. In JRR Tolkien’s opus “Lord of the Rings” the core distinction between the powers of good and evil rests upon the issue of creation. Evil cannot create; it can only destroy, twist, and manipulate. Evil is self-defeating because it can create nothing new, nothing of value.
It would be easy to extend this argument and conclude that AI is evil. I don’t believe that is true. All tools can be used for constructive or destructive ends. As a woodworker, I can attest to the value of extremely sharp chisels, just as surely as the scars on my hands can attest to their risk. For me, the value of a tool is founded upon its ability to facilitate the work of creation. As the old adage goes: it is a poor craftsman that blames his tools. AI may have some value in the work of the church, but asking it to craft our praying, our thinking, and our care of others shirks our responsibility as co-creators. How are you being called to create, to invest your energy in the life of this church, this community, this world?
—Pastor Jon
