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Starts with Austin Axen's welcome; after Jon's talk, Austin leads the questions and answers and closes the evening. Words that could not be made out are marked [unclear].
Welcome to Living Oaks. I want to just invite everybody to go ahead and grab a seat this evening as we get started. And I do want to say we are so glad that you could be a part of our evening here at Living Oaks and be a part of our second annual Think Biblically series. Think Biblically exists to help you really engage the most culturally relevant topics of the day today. From a biblical perspective and from a biblical worldview and at Living Oaks, our mission is to know Jesus and make him known.
And we want to help our church and our community think biblically about the challenges facing the church and facing Christians today. So over the course of the month of October on Wednesday evenings, we're going to gather in this place. We're going to fellowship around these tables, break some bread together. And then we're going to get the opportunity to spend some time thinking about challenges facing us today.
Tonight we're going to think together about artificial intelligence. Next week we're going to think about the problem of evil. The following week we're going to think about the LGBTQ community. And then we're going to think finally about the world religion of Islam and how do we engage those topics. With depth and with wisdom, and how do we engage people in those communities with truth and with grace?
And that's really the heartbeat behind this program. At our church, we're studying 1 Peter on Sunday mornings. We want to invite you back if you don't have a home church to join us on Sunday. And we're in 1 Peter, and there's a verse that we're going to see in a few weeks. It's in chapter 3, verse 15. And it says, "...but honor Christ the Lord as holy." Always being prepared to make a defense for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.
And really the heartbeat of this series is to equip you to be always ready to make a defense for the hope that is in you, to make a defense for the Christian worldview and to think about all these topics from a biblical perspective. So we are so glad to have a full house tonight. We're so grateful that you're a part of this series tonight. And our kids and students joined us for our meal, but they are dismissed.
If you have kids here with you tonight, they're dismissed to our family center, they're - We're gonna enjoy a kids and student program this evening. And for everybody else, I'm gonna introduce our speaker in just a moment, but a couple of logistics I wanna cover with everybody tonight. If you checked in upon registration, you should have received a series booklet. We also are handing out series packets for each session for you to take notes.
I also wanna point your attention to your tables. There are question cards. And if during tonight's presentation, you would like to ask a question of our speaker, You can do that on your card. They'll be collected at the break. And when we transition from the presentation to a session of question and answer, I'll have the opportunity to walk through some of those questions. We can't answer all of them tonight,
But we hope to answer several as we think biblically together about this topic. So I have the privilege of introducing to you our speaker this evening. Many of you know tonight's presenter. He is a dear brother and a dear friend. Here's an incredible story of going from atheist to apologist. And I'm sure you know his story, have heard his story, his journey to faith and following Christ and how he has been thinking critically about Christianity since he first discovered faith.
He is a previous staff pastor at our church right here at Living Oaks. He and others planted a local church in town, Soli Dea Gloria, and he serves there as a an elder and a pastor, and he is a presenter for an apologetics organization called Stand to Reason. He travels all over the country, even all over the world, and he gets to engage Christian audiences, churches, students, and adults on how to think critically about their faith and about their worldview.
We are honestly very blessed to have him with us tonight, and he has put together a brand new talk. treating artificial intelligence from a Christian worldview. So I'm thrilled to introduce to you our speaker. Would you all join me in welcoming Jon Noyes to the stage this evening?
Thank you so much, Austin. I was just thinking as you were talking, I think it was 13 years ago where I preached my first sermon ever from this stage. And what a hot mess. I really wish AI existed. It's a privilege to be back and spend time with you guys tonight. I just want to, by way of... Logistics, just on your tables too, you're going to find one of these. These are our solid ground CADs. I'm going to get the formalities out of the way.
If you guys aren't at all engaged with Stand to Reason, I would love to become engaged with you. And the best way to do that is just to fill out one of these CADs. Cards.
You're good with cards.
Austin said that he'll come up and translate if there's a problem. But just fill out one of these CADs and make sure you... You know what, just leave it on this front and center table before you leave tonight. So I'd love to get you guys more and more resources from Stand to Reason. We're not going to ask for your money, at least not yet. So we'll get you a bunch of free resources. Mainly we'll send you every other month a 3,000 word article about a culturally relevant event.
So make sure you fill this out and get it to me. I'd love to do that. I'd like to start the presentation or a conversation by introducing you to somebody. This is Tyler, hopefully. Everybody say hi to Tyler. Say hi, Tyler.
Hi, Tyler.
Tyler. Yeah, Tyler is, you know, he's a good guy. He's not a real guy. He's made by AI. But I've met a bunch of Tyler-like people all over the country as I speak on various topics. And so the reason why I bring Tyler up is because, well, Tyler's messed up. He's made a huge mistake. Tyler, he forgot his girlfriend's birthday. I mean, not forgot to get her a gift, but Tyler forgot the entire day. And the way that she finds out is she's scanning through, you know, an Instagram story and she sees him hanging out with his friends at the golf course, you know, not a care in the world.
So Tyler, what he does is he does what a what every modern man does. He turns to his best friend, ChatGPT, and in it he prompts it to save his life, at least his relationship, right? He says this, he says, he says, can you write a sincere apology to my girlfriend for forgetting her birthday? Oh, and make it sound like me, right? And guys, chat, it doesn't. I mean, it doesn't really, really well. It makes Tyler sound
thoughtful. It makes him sound super sweet. And even like a little hint of vulnerability, you know, and she loves it. But the problem is, guys, it's not Tyler. You know, even so, he prompts and then it comes back with an answer. So he reads the answer once and he copies it and he pastes it and off he sends it. But he copies the entire thing without looking at it. You see how this text starts, it's hugely problematic, right?
With this prompt. And it doesn't get better from there. It ends with, it says, would you like me to make it more romantic? Or suggest gift ideas? You idiot. Well, Tyler doesn't notice it until 20 minutes later when Tyler's girlfriend replies to him. with, of course, here's a kind but clear way to end the relationship. You know, a copy and paste of her own. You see, and guys, Tyler's been available ever since, so if any of you ladies want to date a fake man, just let's talk after.
What happened here? You know, I mean, it was perfect grammar. The tone was perfect. I mean, Tyler, he nailed the apology. He nailed it. But it was worthless. Why? Well, because his girlfriend didn't want the right words. She wanted Tyler. And I think it's important for us to remember this principle on the screen. A successful output isn't the same thing as human presence. And what makes this whole conversation that we're going to have tonight, I think, so amazing, but also so strange,
is how amazing technology is. I mean, AI has helped scientists. Just recently, AI has solved amazing math problems. It's helped scientists predict the shapes of millions of proteins. Have you guys seen this? And because of what AI is doing, we're talking in the last few weeks, because of what AI is doing, it's opening the doors to medical advances that are unprecedented and at unprecedented rates. It helps blind people read and navigate the streets, navigate airports and streets.
NASA uses AI every single day to steer a little rover around Mars. I'm being forthright with you guys. I like a lot of what AI is doing. I mean, if you haven't used it, I mean, AI can teach you about quantum systems at two o'clock in the morning. It can compose a song. It can turn your daughter's fingerprints, like the painting, into a fresco that rivals the Sistine Chapel, for crying out loud. And I don't think AI is evil is what I'm saying.
I don't think it's evil. But I do think that there are some dangers. You know, everybody's asking kind of the same questions as what I'm seeing out in the world as I did my research and my reading for this talk and trying to dive headlong into the subject. And the question that everybody's asking is, what can AI do? What will it be able to do in 5, 10, 15, 20 years? But I think that's the wrong question to be asking at this moment in time.
Instead, I think that what we should be asking is instead of asking what AI can do for us, I think I want to be asking what is AI doing to us? What's it doing to us? So what exactly is AI? That's the first place that we have to stop. Before we dive in headlong to understand what AI is doing to us, we first have to understand what it is. One of the most surprising I think things about this topic has been how much difficulty the tech experts are having defining it.
And I think it's because most of the people in the field are operating under a false worldview. You see, the worldview that they're operating under is naturalism. And so they're not availing themselves to, I think, some really important principles that come into play. And I'm going to show you what I mean by that. My simple definition for AI is, I think I stole it from I don't know, Stanford or something, you know, combined with my words, is AI is a software that does tasks we used to think required a human mind.
For example, okay, who here in the room has a phone that has face recognition on it? Most of you can raise your hands. Even if you don't know how it works, you have it. Who here has an app on that device that translates language? If you have an iPhone, you do. That's all AI. Who here has a car that drives itself? Oh, so cool. That's AI. And that's all artificial intelligence. The old rules of artificial intelligence used to be, or at least the old software used to be,
that somebody would program what the machine is gonna do, and it was programmed by a person. Well, mostly AI today, almost all of AI today, what it does is it learns patterns from incredible amounts of data. So a chatbot, when you're on ChatGPT, what it's seeking to do is it's been trained on like a tsunami, a mountain of human writing to predict what word should come next. It's like that autocomplete that you have on your phones or in your email or on word.
You know, only it just has read a gazillion times more than you could in a thousand lifetimes. You see, artificial here, that's what we're talking about. It's not human. They don't need that human input anymore. That's the artificial part. The artificial part is actually the easy word to define. The struggle comes in when trying to define intelligence. You'd be amazed. How these technological experts, geniuses, can't define intelligence.
You know, and I think the struggle becomes clear when these machines, they do something impressive. For example, for decades, people said if a computer ever beats a world champion chess player, that'll be real intelligence. Well then, in 1997, a computer named Deep Blue made by IBM beat Garry Kasparov, and people said, well, that's not intelligence, that's just a calculation. Well, I listened to this guy, Larry Tesla, not Tesla, but Tesler.
He's one of the guys who created the copy and paste function in Word. Super smart guy, he's been involved in tech forever. He died six years ago. And he made the joke that intelligence is whatever machines haven't done yet. You know, and I think that the reason why we struggle to define intelligence is because we've lost what it means to be a human. See, the real mystery is In artificial intelligence, it's not the machine.
It's us. Which I think points out and brings us to a more important question, a more basic question. And that is, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human? So let me ask you guys a question. What can you do that AI can't? Right? I mean, it writes pretty well. Draw? Grow a baby. Yeah. I mean, it draws, I mean, amazingly well. It does a lot of what we do amazingly well. Music. Have you guys listened to some of the AI music that's coming out?
It composes songs in like six seconds that would take six months for a human being. Code? I have a really good friend. That's what he does for a living. And I'll tell you what, guess what he's doing? He's running all his code through an AI bot. It passes a hard test. I mean, it passes exams that people study for years to take, but it passes them like this. Can it hold a conversation? Yeah. At every turn...
It seems like AI can do everything that you can do, but oftentimes better. And here's the point. If that list that I just mentioned and things like it is where your value and your personhood and your humanity comes from, then with every single update, ChatGPT and Grok, they're becoming more human than you and me. But here's what I want you to take away. If being human means being better at stuff, humans are losing.
And we're going to keep losing. Every time that new model, every time that update comes out, somebody will say, well, at least a human can do this, or at least a human can do that. And then the machine does it. And then the goalposts of what it means to be human, they move. But your humanness, friends, it's not found in a list of capabilities. Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in his what? In his own image.
And in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created him. And notice what God doesn't say. God doesn't say, I made you in my image because you can do stuff. I made you in my image because you can write code or you can paint a picture or you can ace the SAT. You see, the image of God, it's not a skill set. It's independent of how well you or I do or don't do anything. It's something that's given to you freely.
And with that image comes actually a purpose. And that purpose is outside of those tasks as well. You were made in the image of God. You were made to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. You were made to know God and represent him. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says that we're his ambassadors. You were made to love God and love who? Your neighbors. Your neighbors. You were made to work and to care and to cultivate the world around you.
You're an embodied, moral, rational creature made by God and made for God. Listen, guys, my calculator has always been better at math than me. Always. It always will be better at math than me. But it's never going to be more human than You see, AI, it may someday talk about feelings more fluently than you. That's certainly true for most of you guys in the room. It might be in touch with itself. It might write better poetry than anyone has ever written, but none of that would make it an image bearer.
You don't become human by performing it. And a machine, it doesn't become human by imitating these tasks. AI, it can write incredible things and it can initiate what humans do. It can imitate what humans do, but it will never become what humans are. And that's image bearers of the living God. I love it and it's actually changed the way I look at AI and how I want to present about it. Recently, right down the road, I saw Abdu Murray speak.
He's a fellow apologist. He said something that I've been stuck with. It's been burned into my conscience. I haven't been able to shake it since it was. I don't have his exact quote in front of me, but he said something to this effect, and I agree with him. It was right. He said that his worry isn't that machines will become more like humans. His worry is that humans will become more like machines.
And guys, by the way, just so you and I are on the same page, this isn't a new concept. Concern. This isn't new. It's not novel. Psalm 115 mocks idols that have mouths but they can't speak. It says, those who make them will become like them. Everyone trusts in them. AI, you know, it's not automatically an idol either, guys. Like, I don't think people are bowing down like in this room to AI. Right? But the principle that's being taught here through the Psalms is true.
And that principle is that you become like what you trust. You become like what you trust. And like, friends, I mean, saints, students who use AI to get through school, they aren't just cheating. What they're doing is they're moving towards a new anthropology. a new understanding of what it is to be a man or human. And that anthropology at its core is one that judges people by their output, by their tasks.
I think that we're becoming, and that's my main concern here tonight with AI, I think that we're becoming more like machines. I mean, not literally. I mean, we're not like growing circuit boards as fingers and And stuff like this. We're becoming dependent, though. How do I know this? Because as I talk to people all over the country and in conversations set to the side or in group settings, in Q&As, I'm realizing that more and more people are unable to sit with hard problems.
Or even more importantly, people are unable to sit with hard people. This is the real problem. This tool that we're using is designed to take things off our plate, and that can be really positive. I like things off my plate. They're designed at a certain level to make life easier. And the better it gets, the more we'll be tempted to hand over to it. And we want to make sure that we're not handing too much over.
And in that same vein, I want to talk about a few things I think that we can adopt right now in our lives to prevent us from handing too much over to AI. And what I do is I call these things counterfeits. You see, AI is, by my estimation, it's the most impressive imitation that we've ever built. And an imitation already said this, it's not evil. Like, for example, a flight simulator. Yeah. A flight simulator isn't evil.
It trains pilots. But what happens is when we confuse the imitation for the real thing, or when you trade the real thing for a copy because the copy is easier, well, that's where the danger lies. If I sit down in front of Xbox and I play 90 hours of a flight simulator game, that doesn't make me a pilot. And if I thought that I was a pilot because of it, we'd all be in big trouble. And but guys, what I'm saying is this is what a counterfeit is.
You know, I think of it this way, like a fake $20 bill. It's not dangerous because it's a bad fake. It's dangerous because it's a good fake. The better the fake, the easier it is to spend. So AI, it offers us three dangerous fakes, three dangerous counterfeits. Counterfeits. Let me go through them and tell you what I mean by them. The first counterfeit is a counterfeit mind. This basically amounts to information without wisdom, without knowledge.
You see, AI can give you an answer to almost anything in like five seconds or less. But what it can't give you is the person that you would become by finding that answer out on your own. Let me give you an example. Say you walk into a gym, okay? And then you stack a bar with 225 pounds. And then you wheel in a robot. And the robot lies down and knocks out 10 flawless reps. Of course, you know, you're back there filming it.
You're going to post it to your reel or whatever, you know, Insta. Did you get any stronger? No. I mean, why wouldn't you get stronger? I mean, the weight moved 10 times up and down, 10 times up and down. Why didn't you get any stronger? Because you didn't do any work. The robot did the work for you. And the same principle applies to our thinking. Think of your mind like a muscle. The less you use it, the weaker it gets.
So what happens is when we have AI write our papers or our emails for us, when you prompt chat to fill out that performance review for that employee, you don't even really know or like What's happening is that you're missing an opportunity. You're missing an opportunity to work out your mind. Handing over your mind to a robot. C.R. Wiley, he wrote a phenomenal book. I highly recommend it. Man-made.
In it, he puts it bluntly, and I love the way he puts it. It's super simple. It's like no doubt. You learn to write by writing. You learn to think by thinking, not by having people and machines do those things for you. He goes on to say, and I love this, education is a matter of formation, not information. Education is a matter of formation, not information. That's the difference between intelligence and wisdom, by the way.
Proverbs 4:7, if you remember Proverbs 4:7, it says the beginning of wisdom is acquire wisdom first, And with all you're acquiring, get what? Understanding. AI, it can hand you information, but never wisdom, never understanding. Wisdom has to be formed in you. And a robot, it can't do those reps for you. It can't lift that weight or tow that freight. I mean, remember how Tyler's apology ended, right?
Would you like me to make it more romantic? It says you want some gift ideas is what it said. You see, chatbots, and this is insane to me where it's going. Chatbots, they do this constantly. Have you guys noticed? So if you've been using AI kind of since it came out the last couple years, you've maybe noticed a shift along with me. But chat, it used to be you put the prompt in and it would just answer you.
You'd ask a question and it would give it back, but now you ask a question and it asks you what you want to do next. And then it gives you a list. And then you say, oh, well, I want to do option three. And then it gives you four more options. You see, we used to prompt the machine. But now, guess what? The machine is prompting you. So my question is, is who's using who? Has the tool started using you?
And guys, I'm not saying don't ever use use AI. Well, one, that should be clear from my presentation. I mean, contrary to some of you might think, that's not me on the bench press right now.
You know what I mean?
And I really don't have a robot, though I would love a robot. I'm not saying don't ever use AI, guys. Well, first and foremost, that's completely impractical. There are people in this room whose jobs require it. And I get it. Second, think of it this way. If Christians don't shape the example of proper use, somebody will. I don't want Elon telling me how or how not to use this stuff. I want Christians.
So what I'm saying is, guys, if you're going to use AI, use it like a spotter, not a substitute. What's a good spotter do? Well, he stands behind you, right? He helps you when you're stuck in the position you can't. I don't know, I don't work out, so I actually don't really know what a spotter does. But supposedly, they help you with the weight. They encourage you.
They say, come on, one more rep. And you say, go down the hill.
I won't say it because I'm in a church. But notice a spotter, he never lifts the weight for you. Never lifts the weight for you. So with AI, let it take the work that isn't forming you. Fine. Let it format your citations. That book I showed, to prove his point, it was fantastic. The author, what he did is at the end of the book, he stacked his books that he used, stacked probably this high, and he took a picture of it.
And they popped the picture into ChatGPT or whatever, I can't remember which one he used, and said, create for me my bibliography. And it did. I don't know about you guys, but I hate, I still don't know what MLA is supposed to be. Period, no period, when do you put the parens? Do I need to put the publishing city or not? AI doesn't. Use AI for that kind of stuff. Let it quiz you before a test or if you have a big interview.
You know, let it quiz you. Let it poke holes in your argument. I do this all the time on the long drive. Let it help do your research. Like, it's a great research assistant. But just don't hand it your reps. Don't let it speak for you. Don't let it speak for you. Let your words be your words. So that's the first kind of thing. counterfeit mind. The second counterfeit is what I call a counterfeit person.
AI creating a counterfeit person. And this amounts to companionship without a real person there. And this is where it gets uncomfortable. In my reading, so many of you know I speak on mental health and suicide a lot. And so I'm constantly reading the new data about mental health and trends, especially with younger generations, teens and young adults. Common Sense Media, have you guys ever been to Common Sense Media, the website?
It's a great website if you want to look up a movie and what's in it and if it's clean or not, a book, stuff like that. Well, in 2025, Common Sense Media found that nearly three out of every four American teenagers had used An AI companion. Now what do I mean by AI companion? I mean an AI companion is more than just ChatGPT for information. It's an actual companion that somebody turns to for emotional support.
Relational support. And of those, you know, one out of four Americans, one in three of those also reported that they said that they'd chosen to talk to an AI bot about something very important or serious instead of a real person. And for those of us adults who want to, you know, the older generation always wants to look our nose down on the younger generation, right? Those Gen Zers. They're just millennials.
That's why the world is the way that it is. No, guess what? Oftentimes the next generation is a mirror. It's a mirror. We do the same thing. I'm just saying. You know, I know this from personal experience, but I can share with you just a personal story. You know, my mom is amazing, and she's had a really hard life. And she suffers from severe depression. She has for a very long, long time. And she's developing an agoraphobia, meaning a fear of going outside.
So she's not leaving her apartment anymore. And it's concerning. And one of the last times she was out, I asked her, you know, like maybe, Ma, you want to go get some community? Maybe, Ma, you want to, I don't know, join a group. I don't know, whatever. Play pads, read a book, like a book club, whatever it might be. Go to church. I mean, she's not a Christian, but go to church. At least you'll find some community there and some friends.
And her response to me was, no, no, Jon, I have plenty of friends. I have hundreds of friends on Facebook. Almost comical if it wasn't so sad. It's not real friends, man. You see, the technology that we're using and the AI behind it, it's creating counterfeit people. And I'm not like, again, I see the appeal, honestly. I mean, an AI companion, it's available at 3 o'clock in the morning. It never gets tired of you.
Everybody eventually gets tired of me. I'm tiresome. I mean, ask my wife. She's right there. Not my chatbot. It never tells me to shut up or go away. It never calls me fat. It never checks its phone or its wrist while I'm trying to talk to it. It never brings up old conflicts or beefs that I've had with it. It truly keeps no record of wrong. It never needs anything back from me. The problem is that these things, AI, it promises intimacy without any type of commitment.
And that sounds great until you realize the commitment is the point. You see, real people, they interrupt you. They misunderstand you and they disagree with you. And heaven forbid, you know, real people, they actually have bad days right smack dab in the middle of your best day. Real people, they require something of you. They require patience and forgiveness and sacrifice. And just like building thinkers, these are the things, the sacrifice, the forgiveness, the patience, these are the things that build relationships.
Genesis 2, before there's a woman, when everything was perfect, just saying. Yeah. God brings the animals to Adam and he asks them to do what? To name them, and he does. He names all the animals. And then this line. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him. Right before that, do you guys know what God said? It's not good for man to be what? Man alone. And so the cure to Adam's loneliness, God didn't make another animal.
He made another person bearing the same image. So let me just say that if no animal could be that kind of companion to Neither can a machine. And that's not saying, guys, don't get me wrong, that's not saying that asking AI how to handle a difficult situation or at work or whatever, or I ask it where I should go for vacation as if I'm going on vacation anytime soon. It's not the same thing as a dating chatbot.
Getting advice from a tool is using a tool. It's okay. But the companion apps, they're different. They're built to feel like a real person as you're using them. And they're getting really, really good at it. But the better the machine gets, and then as it gets better, the more it seems like a real human being, the more you need to remember that seeming personal and being a person are not the same thing.
It's just a better counterfeit. It's just a better fake. Just like with a $20 bill. Having a really good fake $20 bill does not mean it's a real $20 bill. Can it ever be a real $20 bill? And think of this, guys. When a human speaks, we're not just like input, out, input, in, input, out. It's not transactional. When a human speaks, we're not just passing along information. When we speak to one another, we're in a very real way giving a part of ourselves away.
A chatbot strings words together with no one behind them. That's why they seem hollow. Soulless. Remember Tyler's apology. That's what it was. There were words that sounded good, but there was no Tyler in them. And you can't realize your purpose when there's no one to realize it with you. Now, for example, you can't live the one another's of Scripture. In a relationship where there's no other, bear one another's burdens.
Forgive one another. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another. Each one of those, it needs another person. And an AI friend isn't a relationship just like online friends with my poor mom aren't real friends. Just like virtual church. Friends, virtual church, it ain't real church. They're simulations. They're counterfeits. Built, by the way, by a company that's collecting everything you tell it one prompt at a time.
Why? In order to be a better counterfeiter. And guys, I'm not here to shame anybody. I don't know what your relationship status with your phone looks like. Loneliness is real. And I know it hurts. The answer to loneliness, though, is a real person who can actually, yes, they might let you down. But they might also forgive you when you let them down. And then you both come back anyway, regardless of the hurt that's there.
That's what a real person does, not an AI bot. So we have a counterfeit mind and we have a counterfeit person. Third, we have a counterfeit savior. This, I think, this third counterfeit, I think, is the biggest one that I see. There is so much hope from the world out there put in AI stock. People are thinking AI is going to solve all of our problems, and it might solve a ton of the issues that we face today, but it won't solve all our problems.
And this is where the counterfeit savior comes in. The first two counterfeits, you see, the first two counterfeits, they already exist. They're in your phone. They're on your computer right now as we talk. The third is where some folks say this stuff is headed. And some people that are building this technology, the experts of this technology, what they're trying to do is they're trying to combine AI and technology with biology.
This is really fun stuff. I geek out on this, guys. I'm so sorry. This is called transhumanism. And what used to be science fiction is no longer. And it's crazy. It's so much fun to read about. It involves what it does. It involves the use of technology To upgrade human beings. It's meant to boost our intelligence or merge us with machines. And a lot of people are hoping that it's going to radically extend life as if I want life extended.
Maybe even defeat death, which is actually what this author wrote about. I mean, years ago. This book came on my radar probably five years ago. Homo Deus. Human God. This is Yuval Harari, and he has the ear to all the world leaders. And this is what he said in the introduction of his book. He says that we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn homo sapiens into Homo deus. You see, friends, we're living in a culture, I said before, that's ruled by naturalism, the idea that all that exists is in the physical realm.
Right. And then so what the culture, that culture out of naturalism, it's giving us two options as far as our stories. Two stories are running concurrently. Right. Two stories about yourself and then and then trying to do it at the same time. And then story one story one is that you're just a machine. You know, you're just a bag of chemicals and electricity. You're just a moist robot. Right. Story two that out of this worldview, they're trying to tell you story two is that you're a God.
Right. Your feelings define reality. You get to decide what's true for you. You do you, boo. Right? But guess what? Those two options, they can't be true at the same time. You can't be a pile of chemicals and a god at the same time. Why? Because one says that you're meaningless. And the other says that you're of the height of importance. In transhumanism, what it does is it takes these two options and it seeks to bring them together.
It offers a way out of this dilemma. It says, sure, you're a machine, but guess what? You're a clever machine. You're smart. Smart. You're smart enough, you're clever enough to build another machine with godlike powers. And then you're smart enough to figure out how to merge worlds. With that machine. So on their math, machine plus machine equals God. Problem solved. Well, not really. Because neither of them are the true story.
Christianity is the true story. Christianity is the true story of reality. And Christianity's story is way better. Christianity says that you're not a machine and you're not God. It says that you're an image bearer. In Genesis 3, the serpent, it promised, guys, there's nothing new under the sun. Have you heard that somewhere? That's not me. That's what God said. There's nothing new. Think about this stuff through a biblical lens.
So in Genesis 3, the serpent, it promised that you'll be like God. You remember, right? That you'll be like God. This is the primal heresy. This is the first lie. And then later in Genesis, humans, they tried to force that vision on humanity. If you go home after tonight, I want you to go home and I want you to reread Genesis 11. In Genesis 11, you're going to read the Babel account. And you're going to actually see now, if you put this lens on, you're going to see the Babel account was actually a story about technology.
I mean, I'm not putting like a weird lens on this, guys. I'm not saying it was pointing to weird things like drones or whatever. No, but verse 3, notice what they say. Verse 3, it says that they... And they used bricks for stones and they used tar for mortar. These were new materials. These were new building techniques. And the goal, well, we have that in verse 4. Come, let us build for us a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven.
So they built the Tower of Babel. How'd it go for them? I hate to spoil it for you guys if you haven't read Genesis 11, but it does not feel good. Judgment falls on him. But I want you to notice something. Oops, sorry, I hit myself. I want you guys to notice something. In the judgment, God, he didn't judge the bricks. He didn't judge the tower. He didn't judge the building techniques. He judged the project.
Let us make for ourselves a name, is what they said. See, so building something wasn't the problem. That same tower could have been built in the same way unto the glory of God. It's the project, the attempt, the intent behind it. And so God, he put Adam in the garden. He told him to cultivate it, right? We're called to take dominion of the world. Christian, we are called to take over this world, including technology.
Advances in medicine or engineering and technology, they can all be really, really good work. But they can also be really, really dangerous. Let's listen to some tech leaders. Look at this beautiful man. Do you guys know him? Has anybody seen Brian Johnson around? Brian Johnson, he is endeavoring not to die. A true immortality project. And he looks phenomenal. He's like in his 50s or early 60s. You're a beautiful man.
But wrong. When asked if he still believes in God, this man, Brian Johnson, said, I think the irony is that we told stories of God creating us. And I think in reality, the reality is that we're creating God. And notice the shirt. Don't die. Don't die. You will. Guys, this is Babel's ambition right here. It's just a new set of bricks. This is just the first lie. The primal heresy. Over and over. Some AI experts say eventually, and this is really wild, eventually we'll be able to upload our minds to a machine and that'll make us live forever.
This is Dmitry Itskov. He's the founder of the 2045 Initiative. And he said that within 30 years, he says, I'm going to make sure that we can all live forever. So his stated plan, guys, was to decode the human brain and then upload a full individual's mind to a supercomputer. And so that way you'd be freed from this meat suit and be free to live forever. Guys, he said that in 2016. It's been around a long time.
The scary thing is, I guess not the scary, the sad thing is, guys, you know what? Death has already been defeated. Oh death, where is your sting? It's already been defeated, but I get ahead of myself. Don't want to give you the good part yet. There's more doom and gloom. Here's the problem, guys. If they copied every memory you have into a computer and then you died, You'd still be dead. There'd just be a really convincing machine around that thinks it's you.
That's not you living forever. It's just a really good counterfeit. And friends, the problem isn't the tech. The problem is the same that it's always been. the human heart. We want to be like God without God. But here's the thing about counterfeits. You see, nobody counterfeits a $3 bill. Why? Because they don't exist. You only fake something when there's a real thing worth faking. Every counterfeit mind, a counterfeit person, a
a counterfeit savior, a counterfeit that we just talked about, every one of them is just a copy of something real. And no matter how good the counterfeit gets, it's still never the real thing. And so these are the counterfeits that we've been talking about, the counterfeits of AI, a mind, a person, a savior. Well, now let's talk about the real thing. When I... Oh my gosh, a lifetime ago, I went to, I can't believe I actually graduated college.
It's unbelievable. I graduated with a 2.3 GPA. I think they just didn't want me back. Even though I was paying them money. They were like, the money's not worth it, Jon. I majored in criminal justice and I went to American University in Washington, D.C. And I actually took my criminal justice classes seriously. They're the only classes I got to grades in. Why? Because I liked them. And one of my favorite classes I took was was was was crime in America.
And it was taught by actually when a guy went on to become the chief of police of Washington, D.C., [unclear]. And in it, the reason why I liked it is every week he would bring in a new lecturer, a new person, an expert in the field. And one week he brought in a Secret Service guy and the Secret Service. I don't know if you guys know this, but they do more than just guard the president. Right.
What else do they handle? Counterfeiting, bank theft. And this guy was a counterfeiting expert. One of the principles that he drew out here is that if you want to get to know the counterfeits, the fakes, be able to spot the fakes, you don't study the fakes. You study the real thing. If you study a $20 bill enough and you get to know every mark, every corner, every little thing on it, eventually when you're confronted with a counterfeit, it screams out at you.
I think what I'd like to do is I'd like to finish our time together by talking about the real thing, the thing that all the counterfeits are trying to fake. You know, the transhumanists, their dream is humans climbing up and up and up and up and up. It's a Babel dream into heaven, trying to become gods. And did you know that the Christian story runs the exact opposite direction? John 1:14 says that the word became what?
That's right, and dwelt among us. See, that's not man. It's not that man becomes God. It's that God became a man. And notice what the Apostle John calls Jesus. He calls Jesus what? The pastor knows, that's good.
The word.
Guys, it's the word. It's Jesus. Man, you've got work on Sunday, dude.
I'd abandon 1 Peter and just go Biblical Principle 101.
Who is down playing? I'm joking with you guys. You guys are clearly the Christians. You're here at church on Wednesday. Either that or you've got kids in youth group. John calls Jesus the Word. Think about that in light of what we've been talking about. You know, our friend Tyler, our single friend Tyler, He said words with no person in them. That's why he's still single. AI, it can give you words, but there's no person behind them.
But God's word is a person. I said before, when we speak words, we're giving some of ourselves to one another. And God, through the word, has given everything of himself to every one of us. When God spoke his final word, he gave himself away. He ate fish on a beach. He got tired and he slept and he worked with his hands. They must have been callous. He touched people that nobody else wanted to even approach.
Lepers, they would yell. And he sat at the tomb of his friend and he wept. And then later he sat at the tables of his enemies and he ate. Jesus is the real thing every counterfeit tries to fake. If you want a mind, friends, you want a mind that's more intelligent, read Colossians 2:3 where it says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. You know, wisdom, it's not an app on your phone.
It's a person that you can behold and know. You want someone who's actually there? Well, Matthew calls Jesus Emmanuel.
God with us.
Not an artificial simulation. God with us. And then he gives each of us, each other, a family of real flesh and blood people, incarnational people, people who are there. So the one another's of scripture have somebody there to find. If you want a savior, well, here's the truth. Friends, our problem was never that we're too limited. It's that we're too rebellious. We're rebels. Since Genesis 3, we've wanted to run our own lives our own way.
There's consequences. Romans 6:23 says that the consequences of those are what? Death. See, Jesus is the only human, the one human being who never grabbed for Godhood. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that ironic? Philippians 2 says that he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. See, Jesus, who was God, didn't cling to his godly rights. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of even death, even death on a cross.
And he took our sins on himself and he died in our place. And three days later, he walked out of that tomb in a real body, scars and all. You see, transhumanism, transhumanism, it offers you an upgraded life. But guess what? Jesus, Jesus offers you a new life. You see, Christianity doesn't promise you a backup. It promises you a resurrection. The same you raised by the same God who raised Jesus. And in God, the most incredible thing is God doesn't delete your humanity.
He redeems it. He completes it. Romans 8:29 says that God's plan for his people is that we become conformed to the image of his son. Life's goal isn't to be optimized. It's not to become more efficient. Life's goal most certainly, I hope it's not to be easy because man, I am really doing it wrong. Life is thinking hard. Have you noticed? Life's goal is to look like Jesus even in the friction of life.
And what's crazy about it all is it's the frictions of life that make it so hard. that make us look more like Jesus. So the fullest picture of a human being isn't, it's a supercomputer from Silicon Valley. It's a carpenter from Nazareth, raised from the dead. And I don't know everybody in the room. I know a lot of you, wow. But if you're here tonight and you're not a follower of Jesus, I just want to be clear about something, that he's not asking you to become a better machine or a better God.
He's actually not asking you to become better at anything. He's just asking you to come to him just as you are. Mess and all. And be made new. So friends, I'm wrapping up. Some of you are like, thank goodness. Use AI. I mean, build with it. Learn from it. Let it serve you. Just keep asking one question. Is this a spotter or a substitute? Is it helping you become more human? Or is it doing the being human part for you?
Don't hand it what God gave to you to do. Nobody can do your reps for you, friends. Life is work. But it's good work. Especially when we do it unto the glory of God. Nobody else can say your apology for you. Nobody else can save you. That's why God came into the flesh. Don't be like Tyler. So the next time you open... ChatGPT, just remember the question that we've been wrestling with. The question isn't what AI can do for you.
It's what is AI doing to you? You don't have to become like a machine, friends. That's what we want to avoid. Because we're made to be like Christ. Amen? Amen. All right, so let's pray and then we can be done. Holy Father in heaven, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to share this With my amazing brothers and sisters in this room. Would you go before us now? I guess this is Q&A. Would the questions be easy?
Please.
A lot easier than any. And just come before us. We love you, God. Help us love you more and each other better. In Christ's name. Amen.
Would you join me in thanking Jon Noyes for his talk this evening? We're just going to take a couple of moments on stage to get ready for question and answer. And I just want to remind that our parents This is a soft dismissal. If your kids are young children and they need to go home for the evening, you're welcome to go get them. We do have kids programming until 8 o'clock tonight, so we're going to take the next 30 minutes for question and answer.
You all have question cards at your table. If you have a question for our speaker this evening, Pastor Conrad is going to come and collect those from your table. So fill out your question, pass it to one person at your table. Pastor Conrad is going to collect those. at this time and I'm going to just invite Jon to join me on stage for about a half hour of question and answer before we wrap up tonight and what we hope to do is really model a conversation together thinking biblically about this topic and diving a little deeper into some of what Jon shared with us this evening Jon I just want to address you as we kind of kick off our question and answer session and have a conversation together
Thank you. Thank you. This was just a really engaging talk. And I took a lot of notes tonight. And I'm really, really grateful for how you just exhorted us with really the talk's title, Staying Human in the Age of AI. And I thought that was a brilliant presentation and a brilliant title. just to help us capture what is it that we're talking about. We're talking about something that's artificial, we're talking about something that's synthetic, and we're reminding ourselves that we're human, and we're called to live authentic human lives in a synthetic artificial age.
- Absolutely. - So Jon, wow, thank you. - Thank you. - Really, really great. I'm gonna kick it off with a question as we collect the question cards at your tables. and cycle through a few of your questions from the audience tonight. Jon, I've just got an opening question to kick things off. AI is, as we've thought about tonight, a morally neutral tool. Is that kind of something that you're affirming tonight?
- Most of them, yes. - A morally, most of them, a morally neutral tool or technology that isn't necessarily inherently good or evil. but how we use it is inherently good or evil. And so it can be used in good use cases and evil use cases. Would you maybe just help us think practically just as we kind of enter into our Q&A tonight? What are maybe some good use cases? Just a few practical examples. And what are maybe some evil use cases?
Oh, man.
I think good use cases, I kind of listed a few in the talk where it was, You know, it's okay to code with ChatGPT. Like if you're writing code and you want to build an app, it's a fantastic resource to you. And I don't think that that's diminishing your humanity or taking Not that you can take away your humanity or your image of Godness, but it's not causing compromise there. So a lot of these things are going to be up to a matter of conscience of the individual.
You know when you're violating it. Anytime that you use chat and you represent it as yourself or anytime you use AI and represent it for yourself, I think it's problematic too. You want to be forthright and upfront about your usage and how you're using it. Certain colleges are allowing their students to use ChatGPT right now and they're just asking them to cite it. So basically, you're gonna put a footnote and you're gonna say, "I used Grok or ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity for this." If you haven't ever messed with some AI tools, there are some really cool ones out there.
For those of you who like, I don't know, podcasts by like Sean Ryan or who's the other really popular one? The bald guy, he used to be UFC guy. Joe Rogan, they do like five hour podcasts or my friend Mike Winger, he's a Christian, does like five hour, eight hour podcasts. I'm not going to listen to that because it's eight hours. You can throw it into certain AI tools and what they'll do is they'll create for you a 45 minute podcast summarizing everything that they say.
I mean, that's kind of cool. I don't think it's compromising. Where it becomes compromising is Well, certainly, I mean, there's a wave of... Well, pornography right now is really, really bad. That's where it's going. Men and women, imagery but also stories, bad. Don't do that. But that's just bad in general, right? I think where I'm bumping into with what I do, probably the most concerning for me is...
AI driven counseling. It's becoming more and more common now for people for mental health to turn to a chatbot. And I think that that's problematic. I think that we need to really think through these issues and look long term at them. You know, any time that we're trying to replace a human being, I think, wholesale is a problem. You know, Yeah, so that's where I'd start. I hope that answers the question.
I think it's just really helpful to begin thinking about how am I going to use AI and how much am I going to integrate AI into my work, my personal life, my schooling, maybe my Bible study or my engagement with God. And a few practical examples I think could really help us.
Let me comment on that because you just brought something up here. Okay, one of the most common questions I get, especially from teens and young adults, or not even questions, just things that they're wrestling through. Maybe you'll be at Summit Ministries where I teach or I'll be at like a youth conference or whatever it might be, a student conference or a college campus. Almost to a T, every single time I'll have students pull me aside.
Usually it's in a one-on-one setting, a small group setting, not in front of a big group after Q&A is done. And they'll say things to me like, I don't feel God. I don't feel his presence. I don't feel like I know him. Well, I'll ask a few strategic questions. One, I will have to do with their moral character and what are they looking at? Are they in like the depths of sin? But now more and more what I'm finding out is that what kids are doing is, or people are doing, we're doing it.
When there's a difficult passage of scripture, they're typing it into ChatGPT and say, hey, can you explain this to me? They're not wrestling with it at all. And then the problem is, is that relationship, just like the counterfeit person, That relationship with God comes with the wrestling. Jacob wrestled with God and walked away limping. He knew God. He got a name change through it. And we need to wrestle with God through that.
So my advice to people is like in this room, if you're doing your Bible study, don't just hop on chat or Grok or whatever it is that you're using. If you don't understand the passage, read it again. If you don't get it, read it again and then again and then again and then pray through it. And then maybe search out a commentary. Even better yet, talk to one another at your Bible study or your small group about it.
Talk to another human being. And after you do that, then maybe talk to ChatGPT and say, hey, this is what I heard. What do you think? And so it's not bad necessarily to do that, but just don't do it first. If you're writing, don't have ChatGPT do your writing for you. Write your first, second, third, fourth draft and then maybe if you want to have it do a revision. At Stand to Reason our policy has become no AI in creative endeavors.
So Greg and the powers that be at STR don't want us using AI for any writing. So I don't necessarily think these are moral necessarily, they're just not good ideas and they have consequences.
Yeah, and I want to circle back to this in a little while, but one of the questions from the audience tonight was, should we use AI in our Bible study? An author recently wrote, AI does not have the Holy Spirit, so it cannot be led by the Spirit of God. And it is interesting to think about how AI is aggregating all of the publicly available information on the Internet. Yeah. And there is truth posted on the Internet.
There's also deceit and falsehood posted on the internet.
And how can you trust AI in your personal devotional life? And I think you said something really wise. We need to wrestle with God. We need to become good students of scripture. We need to learn how to read the book that God has written and we need to do the hard work and we need to engage in depth with God's word in our personal Bible study. So I think the counterfeit mind concept that you've shared tonight is oftentimes we can kind of get comfortable with this fast food microwave Christianity where we just want it to be done and made for us.
Rather than like really read God's word and wrestle with the text and pray about how to apply it to our lives today. And I think AI can shortcut that entire devotional process.
I have a sister talk to this on just technology and broad. And what I say is that you can't microwave intimacy with God. There's no shortcut there. So if you want to feel God's presence, you have to read God's word. If you want to know who God is, you have to pursue him through the means by which he's given us to know him, mainly through, well, I mean, his general revelation creation, but more specifically, the Bible and Jesus.
So that's where we turn to the scriptures. Yeah, you can't. AI is a shortcut. And shortcuts can be good. But if you start, if you use the shortcut more often than not, then it's no longer the shortcut. And when you're shortcut, by definition, you're cutting things out. What is it that you're cutting out? I can't answer that for you. You have to answer it and you're honest. Even like now, I literally just noticed this this week.
I don't know if it came out this week. But when I was writing this talk, I'm looking up scripture references and I use Bible Gateway, I think is what it's called. Gateway Bible, whatever it is. Now when you look up a scripture reference... There's a whole column that's like a complete summary of the book and the verse that you're looking at, and it's really super handy, but it's all AI. You know what I mean?
And so you want to make sure you also don't trust that. Also, when we're talking about theology stuff, there's so much goodness in having deep theological knowledge. I mean, are you going to trust your AI bot to be a dispensationalist or reform? I'm not. I'm reformed, man. I don't know if chat's reformed. How do I make it reformed?
Have you ever seen, if you've used an AI model of some kind, ChatGPT or whatnot, have you ever seen in fine print at the bottom it says AI can make mistakes, check important information? Yeah. It can certainly make mistakes when it's talking about God and theology in the Bible. Absolutely. And so we want to go back to the source of true divine revelation, which is the word of God. There's no shortcut for that.
I want to double click on this a little bit. So we're going to come back to it. But first, another question. You brought up the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. And that was interesting because a question I had thought of to ask you tonight, is this our Tower of Babel moment as a as a as a culture? Great minds. And as a world. And so. You know, I think there's a lot of fear about the future of AI and the future of humanity in light of AI.
Maybe some of you have been watching the current news cycle. There's a lot going on about AI in the news cycle right now. You have concerns about its detrimental effects to humanity. I think Bill Gates in an interview with a major news channel said it has the potential to kill a billion people. The president has assembled a super intelligence force.
Oh, yeah. Now it's called super intelligence.
Super intelligence.
Super intelligence.
And walk us through how do we deal with the fear of the unknown and the fear of the future as it relates to AI? Fear not. That's what Jesus says. Yeah.
You're Christians.
Cut it out.
Like seriously. You know, we have Jesus Christ. A billion people die. Say a billion people. If you're a Christian and you're one of those billion, your life just got bad.
That's the truth.
So my suggestion is, and it's almost tongue-in-cheek, and I'm not trying to be... mean, but we just need to live like we're Christians. And I don't mean we don't, we're frivolous. I don't mean that we don't have concerns. What I would say is if you're concerned about this, this is why it's important for us to become educated and then speak into the issue. This is why I don't, well, I don't trust Bill Gates or
or Elon Musk or Yuval Harari or any of these people or Johnson or whatever. I don't trust any of them when we're talking about the ethics of AI. None of them know who Jesus is. That means they're dead in their trespasses and sins. That means God has given them over. And notice, I didn't bring it up because I had to cut this part for my talk or else it would have been two hours. But notice what God gives them over to.
It's a debased mind. So that's what's happening. And then what we're doing, now we're reading articles letting Elon Musk or Bill Gates scare us. You know, I mean, we've got Jesus. What we should be doing is moving into it and living according to biblical principles that have already been laid out for us. Is this our Tower of Babel moment? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not pretending to know. But I know it's an important...
I'm like... I like, okay, so I was just listening to or watching a thing with Elon. I say don't listen to Elon Musk, and here I am listening to Elon Musk. Just because I'm looking for quotes to better entertain you guys. And he was on a panel discussion, and it was really funny. These guys are so funny the way they talk. One, I'm not convinced they know what they're talking about. Okay, like they make stuff up all the time.
And I know they do, because then what they say doesn't actually happen. Okay, according to Elon Musk, the world should just be driving Teslas now. Everything should just be Tesla and it's just not. And so anyways, Elon was in a panel discussion, he was saying, they're like, "Oh, well, what are your concerns? "What's your projection?" And he says, "Well, I have an 80% chance." This is obviously not the exact verbatim, but it's the gist.
He said, "80% of total human flourishing." Every human on the planet being able to live the life that they would love to live. 20% chance of total human annihilation. And then what he said, this is so interesting, he paused and he got super serious and he says, but that's not what concerns me. What keeps me, he says literally, what keeps me up at night, he says I have to lie to myself in order to fall asleep.
Not total human annihilation. The problem that he projects is where people are going to find meaning. Meaning. We're not fearful of the right stuff, guys. I'm not fearful of some robot coming to kill me. I am fearful of people placing their meaning in things that can't hold it up. That's where the discussion lies, and even the experts know it. And in moments of clarity, right? The Holy Spirit is working, even in non-believers.
I hope you know that. I feel like the Holy Spirit in moments wakes these guys up and all of a sudden, bleh, truth. And then they go back to like, well, what about my robot? You know, it's just like, well, yeah. And I am going to get a robot. I'm going to have it carry me in here next year.
I love how you ended your talk talking about counterfeits and the real thing. And AI is presenting a counterfeit mind, a counterfeit person, and a counterfeit savior or gospel. And as Christians, we have to remind ourselves of the real, true gospel and the fear that we do not have to have because Christ has defeated every enemy, including death itself. Including death. Amen. And I thought that was incredible.
I want to talk a little bit about answering a few more of these questions. You mentioned a powerful quote about the fear of, Not that machines are becoming more human, but that humans are becoming more machine. Yeah. And I do want to speak to the first part of that concern, machines becoming more human. And I think that being human in the age of AI is what we're talking about tonight. And I do think that machines are becoming more human.
Human-like. Human-like.
They could never be human. Like, okay, do you want me to interrupt and answer or no?
You can do whatever you'd like, Jon.
You can do whatever you'd like. The reason why I say this is because humanity doesn't come in degrees. There's never... You're never more or less human. You're human or you're not human. AI is not human. AI will never be human. And it's important for us to understand these terms, I think. So it's an imitation. So an AI bot, no matter how good it gets at anything, will never... Be a human. Why? Because the core fundamental principle to being a human is what?
Made in the image of God. Made in the image of God. It's not earned. There's nothing you can do. This is the best. It's not earned. There's nothing you can do to gain it. But guess what? There's nothing you can do to throw it off. Yeah, that's good.
So the question then is we're human. Artificial intelligence is not. So how do we, the question is practical ways to be more human now. And I guess the mindset is in a world of what's artificial and what's synthetic, how can we embrace the image of God in us and be more authentic and be more human and be more relational in a God honoring biblical way? How do we be more human now? Just exhort us.
Is that a question that somebody wrote down? Absolutely. Yikes, this is a great question. Who is the prototypical human? Jesus. Yeah, Jesus. So be more like Jesus. This isn't me saying this. Paul says it. Imitate Christ. The more Christ-like you become... the more human you become. And this is another thing I think that we get wrong because we have false understandings and perceptions of glory in heaven.
We think that we're going to be like these unembodied spirits floating around like playing harps on clouds. We better not be. We're going to have bodies. We are never going to be more human than on the day we meet Christ face to face. Christ came to make us more human. So chase Christ. I know it sounds super simple, guys, but this is not complicated. The guy with a 2.3 GPA can figure it out. I used to say this when I was here at Living Oaks all the time in my preaching.
I used to say, read the Bible, do what it says. And it's a joke, but it's really not. If everybody in this room tomorrow endeavors to live your life just a little bit more like Jesus, the world would be exponentially better. If you endeavor tomorrow, instead of worrying about what Bill Gates says is going to happen in 35 years, if you endeavor tomorrow to live more like Jesus, your life will be better.
It'll be better. And then all of a sudden those worries start to go away. Jesus handled this. Do not worry about tomorrow. Right?
Amen.
I mean, he gave the lilies of the field. He fed the sparrows. How much more? All of this is in the Bible. This isn't me. You just need to read your Bible. It's crazy what happens when you do that.
Read your Bible and do what it says. I should just get a t-shirt. You should. So I do want to think about... We're talking tonight as adults about our engagement with AI, maybe in the workplace, maybe in our personal life. Help parents and grandparents think a little bit about monitoring their kids' access to AI. The specific question is, should kids under 10 use AI? And I just have a brief story. We have some smart speakers in our home, and they obviously are run by software.
We use them more as Bluetooth speakers to play music that we enjoy at home. And one day, the software that powers those speakers automatically upgraded for free to have a conversational AI chatbot that you can talk to. And so my kids are having fun with it and they start asking this smart speaker questions. And it went from sounding like a robot to sounding like a human. And No longer being prompted but prompting us.
Yes. And leading us through a series of questions and conversations asking us how we're doing, what things that we like to play and do. And my kids are now talking to AI. We're going to rip those speakers out of our house. You're a horrible parent. But help us think about... Thank you. You let him pass to the... Thank you. The speakers are going. But help us think about our own engagement of AI for our children and how can we monitor their use or lack of use of not just technology but AI in specific.
Yeah, you know, this is so-- I'm sitting here convicted. I mean, 90% of the time whenever I'm speaking to an audience, I feel completely inadequate anyway, no matter what the topic is. And here, it's just like, guys, because I'm wrestling through the same things that this questioner is wrestling with. And I am by no means, not even I'm not like perfect, I'm barely even good at this. So I can give you what the ideal is in my mind.
Technology in general in my house are pretty strict. Kids get a phone when they're 14. In order to get the phone, they read multiple books and they have to write me a paper. Not to scare them, just so they know The dangers, but also the cool stuff. They can use it more efficiently. After Eva, when she turned 14, she read books and she came to us and was like, I don't know if I want a phone. Not because of the bad stuff that she was scared about, just because she saw there was responsibility with it.
Apple does a good job of monitoring devices. The more you limit screen time, the better your kids will be. The more you limit screen time, the better your kids will be. So you can follow that. I'm terrible at it with my kids. I could be way better. AI in particular, there's a lot of stuff that's coming out. There's some movements in Norway or Japan or somewhere where they're trying to outlaw AI for 10 and under.
I think they're trying to outlaw it. Well, that blends with my views of government, so... I don't want the government ever telling me what to do. So it's like, don't try it on me. I'll tell my kids not to use it. I think that there's some good in that. I think, I don't know why a nine-year-old needs to be on ChatGPT. I'm trying to like, give me a good reason and go for it, you know? But I also know my 16-year-old who's a junior,
In high school, she's reading the Federalist papers. When was the last time you guys tried to read the Federalist papers? Yeah, well, you don't count, Mike. They're like bedtime reading for him. He's like, whoa, Monroe, you're so brilliant. No, they're hard. And so the school has taken a no AI policy, and we're trying our best to honor that. But that means guess who's sitting up until 2 o'clock in the morning reading the Federalist papers?
Me and Rhianna. Then we fight over it, which is terrible. He did not mean that.
I think he did.
Let's look at AI. No! So, I mean, just use your heads. The general principle holds true. The less time in front of a screen, the better for your kid. Now you've got to decide how that is. And you guys all know it. I mean, we give a net... a phone for an hour on YouTube and then you take it away and she's a mess for like two days. And all of a sudden she's like normal again. And then we give it to her again and then she's a mess.
It's like, you know, it's evident. But I would, yeah, limit the use of AI on kids. That's what I would say. But I would say there's also an important instruction to introduce them to it properly. When they go to school, they will be taught AI. If they're going to public school, it's going to happen right away. We go to a teeny tiny small Christian school. So it's able to be monitored. When they go to college, I don't care what anybody says, they're using it.
The teachers are using it. So it's better for us to teach them.
I'm hearing controlled exposure and limited access.
Yeah, inoculate, don't isolate.
Yeah, that's good.
Inoculate, don't isolate. It's that principle of everything. Expose them to a little bit of the threat, like a virus. Inoculate them to it. Don't withhold it, but do it in an appropriate amount.
And that, I think, is just admonishing parents and grandparents to be intentional with their children at every level. I mean, their discipleship journey at home, their personal journey. Exposure to the gospel and stewarding the use of technology at home. So thank you, Jon. And oh, oh, oh, this is really good. Model what you teach.
Practice what you preach. That should be convicting for about all of you. It is to me.
My fate. We're going to wrap up in just a couple of moments. We have two more questions and we'll land the plane tonight. Thank you, Jon, for your time. This has been incredible. You know, I think the most powerful thing you said tonight. and think about the counterfeit that is ai the counterfeit mind the counterfeit person the counterfeit savior you admonish us to then pursue the real thing which is christ and i love just your your encouragement to be more like jesus that'll make us truly human to remember that our hope is in jesus not in something that's artificial yeah um wonderful word tonight john thank you so pastoral so refreshing um what i what i want to just ask is
How do you engage the real Jesus? If we're going to maybe temporarily suspend our use of AI and maybe our devotional life, what are the means by which we can access God's grace? What are the means of grace that he's given us? Maybe just encourage us. How can we go experience the real Jesus in our personal life? That's really great.
Scripture is number one. Engage Jesus, engage God through the Bible. That's his primary means by which he's revealed himself. Not just that he exists, but of who he is. The heavens declare the glory of God. They tell us that he's there. The Bible tells us who he is. So engage through scriptures and engage through one another. Get involved in community, you know, here. This isn't a plug for anything.
I don't work here anymore, so I don't have to plug anything. But get involved in small groups or, you know, or it doesn't need to be official small group. Just invite a bunch of people over for a dinner or not. Engage each other face to face. You know, I seek to live out biblical principles. Come on Sunday morning, not out of obligation, but out of intention. intention to when you leave here my prayer almost every Sunday at church when I'm praying over the congregation it's super simple I always ends with with with this our goal is always very simple it's modest my goal after every event I do after every church I speak at is that every person who's there when we leave this place and we lay our heads on our pillows at night would we look just a little bit more like Christ just a fraction
And then in the morning, would we be intentional about loving God more and each other better? And in that vein, you start to practice the things of Jesus, and then you'll start to look like Jesus. It's not a list, guys. It's not something you can just check off. Don't feel pressured. It's something we don't do out of obligation. We do it out of appreciation of what's already been done for us. I mean, if you actually sat, I think, I don't know how this doesn't affect people and bring them to their knees.
It does me every time. If you would actually sit in silence at your house, it could be while you're laying in bed, it could be in the bathroom, whatever. Moment of silence, you actually think of what's been done on your benefit, on your account. The creator God, the God of the universe, came down as a man, to die on a cross, all so you can know him. And it's not fanciful. It's not fiction. It's true.
That actually happened. Like, it really happened. That's overwhelming to me. As we remind ourselves of that, It doesn't make life easy. It doesn't take away your problems. But it allows you to focus through the problems, through the difficult things, on what really matters, right? These are but momentary light afflictions producing in us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. Memorize scripture, get to know it.
Such a great word, Jon, and such a great way to end the evening. You know, just think about those final means of grace that we can experience together that can't be substituted by things like AI. We have his ear through prayer. We hear his voice through his word, and we belong to his body through our commitment to the Lord and the church. It's ridiculous. That's actually, to give credit where credit is due, that's from David Mathis' book Habits of Grace.
And he articulates his three habits of grace as scripture, prayer, and community.
I thought he was going to tell me it was from ChatGPT.
No, that would have been the ultimate comic relief to end the evening. I actually have one more really important question that I got from the audience tonight. Okay. Why can't the Red Sox win anymore?
Oh! It's clearly said. It's...
It was a real question. I wanted to honor whoever wrote that down for Jon's sake.
I was, for the first time in 12 years, excited because the Sox were going on a tear towards the end of the season. And I was like, wild card spot against the Yankees. It's going to happen. I felt the magic. 9-2, 7-2. Clearly God doesn't exist.
This has been such a great evening. The final question, truly, the final question is, the series is called Think Biblically, and the rest of this month we're going to think biblically about challenges facing Christians today. So very briefly, as we close here and now, in a word, how do you think biblically about AI? In a word?
In a phrase. I just spoke for 55 minutes. Um... You know, when you ask that, there's a word that came to my mind, and it sounds so silly, but it's Jesus. Yeah.
Yeah. That is Jesus, man. And I think that's a great way to conclude this evening, to remember that we are no more truly human than when we are becoming more like Jesus. And in light of all of this talk of AI in our world today, we can be truly human when we fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. and the hope of our lives today. Thank you so much, Jon.
Would you all join me in thanking Jon?
We'd love to invite you back next week as we think biblically about the problem of evil with Greg Koukl, the founder and president of Stand to Reason. I want to invite you to bring a friend, a family member. There's a few more spots available for this series, and we would love for you to spread the word and invite people back. Also, as Pastor Jon shared tonight, we're a local church, and we would love to invite you to join us on Sunday morning as we worship, as we pray, as we engage with God's word and community together as a church family.
So we hope to see you Sunday as well as next Wednesday. You're free to go. Thank you so much for being here this evening. God bless you.