By Robert Maginnis

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Apostle Paul arrived in the Macedonian city of Berea and began preaching in the local synagogue. The people who heard him were, Luke tells us, “more noble than those in Thessalonica” because they “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11 ESV). Rather than accept what they were told, they tested it against the standard of truth and formed their own conclusions. It is a discipline America is in danger of losing.

Over the past year, I have spoken with church groups, educators, parents, and radio audiences across the country about artificial intelligence. Most questions focus on jobs, national security, or the race with China. Few people ask the more fundamental question: What happens when a generation grows accustomed to accepting answers without examining them?

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have given that concern a name: “cognitive surrender,” the tendency to adopt AI-generated answers with minimal scrutiny, bypassing both intuition and deliberate reasoning. In their experiments, participants frequently followed AI recommendations even when those recommendations were wrong. As researcher Steven Shaw describes it, cognitive surrender occurs when AI “is not just doing a specialized task but making the decision, and the person adopts that decision as their own without recognizing the transfer has occurred.”

New research from Oregon State University makes the classroom consequences concrete. Graduate researcher Rudrajit Choudhuri and faculty advisor Anita Sarma found that students who rely heavily on AI begin using it as a replacement for learning rather than a support for it. The declines they measured were striking: a 66% drop in reflection, a 41% decline in critical thinking, and a 21% drop in students’ belief that grasping the underlying concepts was even necessary. Sarma called the pattern a “cognitive crutch.” One finding challenged common assumptions: tech-savvy students were more likely to experience the negative effects, not less, suggesting that familiarity with AI accelerates dependence rather than moderating it.

For centuries, literacy meant far more than reading words on a page. It enabled people to evaluate ideas, compare arguments, and discern truth from error. The Protestant Reformation itself depended upon ordinary believers reading Scripture for themselves. The AI age presents a quieter temptation in that same tradition: why wrestle with a difficult problem when a chatbot provides an instant answer? Why read an entire book when software summarizes it in 30 seconds? The convenience is real, and so is the cost, because every time the reasoning is outsourced, the capacity for it quietly diminishes.

That diminishment carries strategic consequences. In “The New AI Cold War,” I document how China and other adversaries are deliberately cultivating human analytical capacity while investing in AI, not as a substitute for it. A nation’s long-term position in the AI competition depends not only on the sophistication of its systems but on the judgment of the people directing them. Machines optimized to automate thinking can weaken the very human faculties that give those machines their strategic value. A workforce that has learned to prompt rather than reason cannot reliably catch an error, contest a false conclusion, or exercise the independent judgment that military and civilian leadership require across every professional domain where consequential decisions are made.

A Spiritual Obligation

Christians should recognize that this concern is also a spiritual one. Scripture commands believers to exercise discernment, and those commands assume an active mind. Paul instructed the Thessalonians: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21 ESV). He urged believers not to be “conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2 ESV). Solomon warned that “the simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps” (Proverbs 14:15 ESV). Each of those passages assumes a believer who reads, evaluates, questions, and judges. The Berean model, in other words, is not a personality type. It is a scriptural expectation.

Artificial intelligence can be a genuinely useful instrument. I use it regularly in my own research and writing. But usefulness and faithfulness are different standards. No AI can fulfill the biblical responsibility to test, examine, discern, and judge. Those remain uniquely human obligations, and they are not optional. The believer who outsources his thinking outsources part of his faithfulness.

What Families, Churches, and Schools Must Do

That discipline is formed at home before it is exercised anywhere else. Parents are not simply moderating screen time when they require a child to think through a problem before reaching for a chatbot. They are practicing what the Bereans modeled: receive, then examine. Ask children not only what they believe but how they arrived at it, and whether they can defend it without the AI open. Applied consistently, that practice shapes the kind of mind that can hold its own when the machine provides a confident answer that happens to be wrong.

The church has a particular responsibility here because the Berean model is not only an intellectual virtue but a congregational one. Bible studies that reward passive consumption are not producing Bereans. Pastors who encourage their congregations to search the Scriptures and question what they are taught are forming people who can resist manipulation and hold fast to what is genuinely good. Congregations that practice active examination are better equipped for an age that makes intellectual passivity easy.

Schools should take the Oregon State researchers’ findings seriously. Their proposed remedy, “useful friction” built into AI tools that requires students to engage with a problem before receiving an answer, points in the right direction. But it is not enough to redesign software. Schools must deliberately teach critical thinking, logic, and source verification as core disciplines, not elective enrichment. The goal is students who know how to examine, not just how to prompt.

The Bereans were praised because they did not surrender their judgment to others, not even to an apostle. They listened carefully, and they verified. That discipline built strong believers and, in turn, healthy communities. America’s deeper challenge today is that a generation may gradually surrender the habit of thinking for itself without recognizing what is being lost. If AI displaces the God-given obligation to reason, discern, and pursue truth, what is exchanged is not merely a skill but a birthright. The AI age has not diminished the need for Bereans. It has made them indispensable.

Robert Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, senior fellow for National Security at Family Research Council, and the author of 15 books. His latest, “The Final Algorithm,” releases in July 2026.

This article originally appeared here.