With the advent of AI, it is more important than ever that Christians cultivate the spiritual aspect of their lives. Too many of us don’t recognize the Spirit or know how to cultivate that aspect of our faith. We are distracted a lot, and I struggle, too. It’s hard for me as an older adult, but to be born in an age when you don’t know what it’s like to live without the internet or a cell phone is challenging to say the least. And now there is alarming talk of bionic beings – a mix of human and machine. How that will affect our lives is an important question to answer.
According to the Bible, human beings are made in the image of God, or what is called “Imago Dei,” a Latin phrase meaning the likeness of God. God is spirit (John 4:24). This means we are not just material beings but have a spiritual essence. So, the good news is that AI cannot replicate that, nor can any form of bionic fusing of technology with human bodies, and this is what technology leaders don’t seem to get.
I recently heard Elon Musk talking about a Neuralink brain chip that will allow users to control electronic devices with their thoughts. Imagine being able to simply think of a Google search and have the answer immediately downloaded into your brain. This is where we are “heading” (pun intended).
But what will this do to a Christian? I certainly won’t opt for such a device in my brain.
Because we live in the digital age, it’s challenging for people to unplug and plug into God. But if we don’t learn how to plug into the spiritual, we might find ourselves in a digital nightmare. Nonbelievers are going to be outthinking us because they’ve implanted this chip that allows their thoughts to work like search engines. It will be hard to compete with that in the workplace.
Will we cave to technology this because we will be overrun by Neuralink thinkers? I hope not. We have one thing they don’t – the Holy Spirit. But not if we don’t cultivate this spiritual aspect of reality.
I volunteer for a great online ministry where we help those struggling with doubt about Christianity. It’s called “Talk About Doubts.” One conversation I had recently was about the Holy Spirit. This person said, “I have yet to see evidence of the Holy Spirit.”
This person questions “evidence” of the Spirit, as if we can somehow measure it. How is that possible using methods of materialism on the immaterial? It is not. Nonetheless, this person said they have yet to “see any proof” for it (Holy Spirit) without it being personal testimony. Yet religious experience is evidence of something.
The doubter continues with this question, “Why do we not have a basis for proving the existence of the Holy Spirit like the other two parts of the Trinity?”
Can we prove with 100% certainty the other two parts of the Trinity? No. We make our decisions based on a reasonable amount of evidence, similar to a court case. Religious experience is evidence, and then we add the historical evidence of the Resurrection and Gospel testimonies to get a cumulative case for Christianity and the transforming power of the Spirit. That stacks up to a reasonable amount of evidence that Christianity is true (just ask ChatGPT).
And consider how Christianity has changed the world. Just one example is the concept of Imago Dei. This sets us apart from all other created things – it makes humans special. This is what grounds the human rights movement. If we don’t believe humans are unique among other things on Earth, then humans should have no more rights than animals. And some believe that.
Another major uniqueness is that the Christian God became man. The Creator becomes the created? Yes! And then he promises us the Holy Spirit…
“Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
John14:23 (ESV)
God will make his home with us? Wait…what? Yeah. True believers have the Holy Spirit within them. A true believer is an apprentice of Jesus Christ, who practices spiritual disciplines regularly: 1. Sabbath, 2. Solitude, 3. Prayer, 4. Fasting, 5. Scripture, 6. Community, 7. Generosity, 8. Service (these were taken from: https://www.practicingtheway.org/)
Most of us don’t have an experience that radically changes us overnight. Typically, believers go through a lifelong process of being sanctified or becoming more Christ-like. This is when God works on our motivations, and He begins to prune us as we yield to his leading.
Pruning is a symbolic gardening term that shows where the good growth comes by cutting out things preventing “good fruit” from growing. The fruit is symbolic of spiritual things as described in Galatians 5:22-23, which are considered “evidence” of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in a believer’s life. These things are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are spiritual realities, and not of any material aspect of our existence.
Cultivating the Holy Spirit in your life is going to be vital in the upcoming years ahead. We all need to consistently practice the basic spiritual disciplines (as mentioned above). It will guard us against the coming digital nightmare and keep us formed in the Imago Dei.
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
1 Corinthians 3:13
