Lies You’ve Been Told About AI: Three Pastors Respond
What makes for a good life? Humans have been wrestling with this question for about as long as we’ve been around. Philosophy and religion are dedicated to seeking and sharing some of the answers we’ve discerned together over millennia, and each generation must grapple with this question again in its own time. As young pastors, we have had innumerable conversations with friends, family, members of our congregations, and colleagues regarding the good life and the role that technology might play within it - and yet, over the last 12 months, these conversations have more and more turned an eye towards Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, is a software program. You can think about a software program like a house, there’s what you see when you look at it, and then there’s the bones of the building, the electrical wiring and framing and such. The framing of a software program is called ‘code’. Software developers write code that contains instructions about how the software should look and function, and then a computer or other device reads that code so that you can use that program. There are many different types of AI, and more are being created all the time - maybe you’ve heard about AI being used to help doctors spot pre-cancerous clusters of cells, or assisting researchers in decoding ancient scrolls. These are programs designed and coded for a specific function, so that they can identify patterns in the pictures, scans, or data that the user puts into the program which might not be discernible with our own eyes.
Generative AI is a particular type of artificial intelligence which is created to comb through data, and generate responses to user queries. Available from a variety of developers, some of the popular brands (also called ‘AI Models’) include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and DALL-E, though there are many models (brands) available. On the surface, AI looks like it functions in much the same way as a Google search prompt; the user enters a question, the computer finds the answer and directs the user to a series of resources which they can click to access. But AI operates differently, with some variation between different platforms due to dataset and encoded model ‘personality’ by searching for information, collecting that information from a variety of sources, and then attempting to repackage the material into an answer for the user's original prompt. The term ‘Generative AI’ highlights the perception that the program is creating an entirely new response, but this is misleading. The program is merely repackaging the information it found in the data it could access.
This brief introduction cannot be sufficient to explain the inner workings of AI and the many functions and models which have come into popular use. Our hope is that it helps you understand the terms which we will use over the responses which follow. We have taken on this project as a pastoral response to the increasing popularity and use of Artificial Intelligence models within the church, and we wish to speak in service of our community, sharing our perspectives, concerns, and thoughts on the ethics and use of AI programs as pastors and leaders in our faith community, but also as young people in the Moravian world. This is a series of responses, one written by each author, to three lies about AI that seem to be misleading the church. We hope that you sense our great love for our Moravian community in these responses, and consider this our plea to reevaluate our relationship with artificial intelligence on the personal, congregational, and institutional level.
The church is always being asked, ‘what makes for a good life?’ and our Christian response to the communication and technology revolution of the 21st century will certainly be part of our witness and answer. The Moravian Book of Worship speaks to this in hymn 694 ‘The church of Christ, in every age beset by change, but Spirit led, must claim and test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead.’ We are beset by change, as our elders have been, and as our ancestors in faith and history have always been. May we have the courage, as they did, to claim and test not only our religious tradition, but also, our culture.
Lie #1: AI Was Built to Help You
Rev. Charlie McDonald
The integration and destigmatization of AI is designed specifically to make people reliant on its use and either ignorant or indifferent to its invasion of our privacy. The way this is being done is rather insidious. Artificial Intelligence in the form of Chatbots generate materials on command and have been made widespread, nearly free of cost, and easy to access for anyone with an internet connection. They are marketed as something to make our lives easier. AI in other forms has been integrated seamlessly into tools we use every day, without our consent, and usually without us noticing. Notice how google searches don’t ask if you want AI results or not, they simply provide them. More often than not they are a summary of the first search result, something you could have scanned and discerned yourself in ten more seconds.
Maybe on the surface this doesn’t sound like a bad thing to you. If that’s the case, I invite you to think back before streaming services like Netflix were widespread. They were cheaper and easier to use than cable, but nowadays there are dozens, each with their own subscription cost, which are bloated with advertisements, and if you’re a sports fan, you know that streaming services have made certain teams inaccessible to view simply based on where you live. Not to mention that since before Netflix launched its streaming service in 2007, the average cost of cable, satellite, and live streaming television services in the U.S. has nearly doubled.
Underneath superfluous matters like price, ease of use, and plain comfortability, there is a greater cost to simply going along with the development and deployment of this technology. In the same way that streaming services were easy to get into and now everyone has them, AI is like a Trojan horse we are inviting into our lives. Once we have set it in its place within the fort’s walls, become accustomed to asking it to perform certain tasks (ones that we used to do with ease), and gotten comfortable asking it to think for us, more and more, it will open up to reveal a dangerous surprise before we even realize we’ve become dependent on its use. And then it won’t be free anymore.
With human wealth soaring beyond what anyone ever thought possible, one of the last things to profit off of is people’s attention. With the advent of AI, tech titans are hoping to make us dependent on a product that can track everything about us, think for us and then sell us back our intelligence, and prey off our insecurities. The worst part about it is by participating in this first free launch, we’re participating in training this technology to exploit us. We are participating in the acceleration of our own demise, not to even get into the environmental impact.
Christ came so that we could have life, and have it abundantly, and the Scriptures are clear that this life is spent in relationship with our fellow people, wrestling with hard questions, struggling in uncomfortability, and growing together as a result. No matter how easy it is to use, no matter how tempting it is to participate and play along, don’t lose sight of what Christ has in store for us, don’t leave your cross on the ground behind you, pick it up and follow.
Lie #2: AI Will Make You a Better _______
Rev. Byrnese Craig
Everyone I know is doing the best that they can to manage all the challenges and stresses of life. Many are juggling work, relationships, and the basic functions of being a person, but these burdens are becoming increasingly difficult to balance. Under the weight of a struggling economy, relentless news cycle, tension and division in relationships, social media and smart phone addiction, and the constant messaging that we are not enough- not thin enough, strong enough, smart enough, safe enough (the list goes on, curated for your weaknesses and delivered directly through your feed) how can anyone manage it all?
AI is offered as a tool to help release all of this pressure. After all, it’s easy to see how people are struggling, and who doesn’t want to be a better worker/ parent/ friend/ spouse/ employer/ pastor/ etc? Artificial Intelligence models are marketed as a resource to improve productivity, freeing up more time for us to do the human stuff - and that sounds great! But the data tells a very different story. AI chatbots are increasingly replacing human relationships of every kind, colleagues are discouraged from collaborating with one another and instead directed to ‘ask ChatGPT’, young adults are turning to chatbots for friendship and romantic engagement - seriously impacting their ability to build healthy relationships with people offline, and the proliferation of misinformation online has led generations to take in news, articles, and other content that is simply false. Philippians 4:8 challenges us that “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” and in Matthew 7:15-18, Jesus himself teaches the crowds at the Sermon on the Mount saying “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”
AI promises something good, but we have an obligation to examine the fruit, to determine if it is true, noble, lovely and admirable, or rotten. The expansion of AI so far has led to greater suffering, the proliferation of lies, and an extraordinary consolidation of power and wealth into the hands of the rich, at the expense of the most vulnerable.
I want to be a better pastor, a better mom, friend, spouse, you name it! But AI cannot help me be that. In fact, using AI makes me complicit in sin. Generative AI steals from the creative work of human beings to respond to queries, is actively destroying the environment across the United States and the world, and relies on the underpaid work of impoverished people to train its dataset. The fruit of widespread generative AI might look fresh and bright, but at its core, it is rotten.
If AI is a tool, one that is truly intended to serve humankind, then let us really evaluate it as a technology and a tool. I’ll end with this framework offered by Wendell Berry to help determine whether or not a new tool is as useful as it’s marketed to be:
The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that they have the necessary tools.
It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.
Lie #3: AI is Inevitable
Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey
From the men who own the tech companies, to celebrities, to the random guy at your local coffee shop, maybe you’ve heard: “AI is inevitable.” But, is it really? The owners of the major generative AI platforms are spending billions to make this a reality, and yet only two percent of adults living in the United States actually pay for their services, and global statistics say roughly twenty percent of our overall population are actively using generative AI. So, yes, there has certainly been rapid adoption of AI, but if eighty percent of our global populus has still not taken up the mantle, then maybe this is the time for us to slow down and ask the question: what kind of world do we want to build?
In his Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XVI invokes the stories of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) and the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile (Nehemiah) as a way to highlight our position at a fork in the road. For those of us who call ourselves Christians, we must consider what kind of world Jesus has called us to build, and by what means are we still being called to do so. Will we be like those who laid the stones at Babel, building their tower on pride and claims of self-sufficiency, which ultimately became their downfall? Or might we look to Nehemiah and his fellow exiles–the men, women, children, artisans, priests, and others–as they came together to rebuild the city they wanted not merely for themselves, but for each other and all those who would come after them?
Those who are individually poised to benefit from the expansion of AI claim that these programs are the way toward collective progress, it is being sold as a savior for our use. However, generative AI is not neutral, given its training models, it is being formed by its owners to serve the interests of the company, not the user. So this begs another question: Is what generative AI offers true salvation from the Christian perspective? From what are we being saved - the human experience? As Pope Leo names, AI “does not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean.” If we believe AI is an inevitability of our progress as humanity, are we therefore progressing toward a world that is, ultimately, less human? If so, I am not convinced this is what the God who chose to become human thought we needed saving from.
Is generative AI inevitable? Maybe, but only if we abandon our collective responsibility to care for the dignity of all. But as someone who has found her spiritual home in the Moravian Church, a global community whose unity is in the centrality of Jesus across all our varying lived experiences, I firmly believe the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection tells us what is truly inevitable: the love of God is what will save not only humanity, but our entire created world and it will do so as it “descends into the most fragile point of our history and renews it from within.” If indeed there is truth to be found in this Gospel, then the kind of world I want to build is one that uplifts our collective humanity and does not see one another as a problem to solve with tools of efficiency until we merely fade away, but rather one that looks at where we are most fragile as the point from which God will bring about our collective renewal and salvation. This kind of progress, this kind of salvation is certainly an inevitability I can get behind.
Concluding Thoughts
‘Then let the servant church arise, a caring church that longs to be a partner in Christ’s sacrifice and clothed in Christ’s humanity’. If our church desires to be efficient and effective, we believe that the use of Artificial Intelligence, marketed to us for precisely that purpose, is antithetical to partnering in Christ’s sacrifice and humanity. So, as the hymn writer calls to us, let us rise, a servant church, prioritizing ethics over efficiency, sacrificing what we might have been able to do for what we are truly called to do, embody Christ in this age.
AI cannot do what we, as humans, must. It cannot know God, and therefore cannot do theology. It cannot be embodied, and therefore cannot have communion with human beings. AI claims to improve us, but it is trained and built to exploit our weakness, pain, and loneliness for profit.
Where is Christ in any of this? Where does the Spirit lead the church? We, as pastors, pray that this moment with AI is revelatory, and that it turns our hearts and attentions back toward the human community. There is no substitute for the body of Christ in the church, we are not perfect, but we are worthy of love. There is no value to trading the Imago Dei, that sacred spark in each and every person, for the pseudo-relationship that computer programs offer us in exchange for financial, environmental, and emotional resources which are rapidly draining humanity and the earth.
It is our hope that this piece might assist in furthering the conversation around the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Moravian Church, and our strong desire would be for the development of a policy on the use of Generative AI from our denominational leadership that could be shared and adopted by agencies and congregations for their own use. The fear of making mistakes must not prevent us from following the Spirit where she leads, and we would rather have an imperfect AI policy, than no policy at all. If we wait to act until we can craft the perfect statement, it is there that we will truly be ‘left behind’.
About the authors:
Rev. Byrnese Craig is the Pastor serving the Northern Province's newest emerging ministry, Manna, a dinner church whose mission is 'to encounter God around the table through worship, fellowship, and service.' Wife and mother of four, serial hobby experimentalist, and self-proclaimed “Moravian Bread Lady”, Byrnese brings more than ten years of ministry experience that has stretched across multiple Christian traditions and settings. A graduate of the Moravian School of Theology, Byrnese has also served locally as Pastor of MorningStar Moravian Church (Coopersburg, PA), as Community Engagement and Outreach Coordinator for Emmaus Moravian Church (Emmaus, PA) and as Interim Chaplain for Moravian Hall Square (Nazareth, PA).
Rev. Charlie McDonald (he/him) is the Chaplain of Moravian University. He previously served as the Pastor to the Moravian Church of Chaska Minnesota from July of 2021 until June of 2025. Charlie is an avid walker, and loves to sing. McDonald’s professional ministry experience spans hospital chaplaincy, police chaplaincy, jail ministry, congregational leadership, and youth/young adult spiritual formation.
Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her) is the pastor at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a heart for building inclusive and affirming faith communities. Mikayla's ministry focuses on creating space for the doubters, seekers, and tenaciously faithful alike, while also making the Bible accessible to everyone by bridging the gap between ancient history and our modern lives with curiosity and care. When she isn't serving her congregation, she can almost always be found with a cup of tea, a knitting project, a good book, and her rescue pup "Pawstor" Hildie (named after St. Hildegard, of course!).
Human Made: Our work, including writing, formatting, and research, was done without the use of AI.
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