By Robert Maginnis

For centuries, Christians have spoken of having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Today, for a fee, people can continue conversations with an artificial intelligence version of Jesus. A growing number of AI-powered Bible companions, prayer assistants, and virtual spiritual advisors now promise guidance once sought from pastors, mentors, and Scripture itself. What seemed unthinkable only a few years ago has quietly become another technology marketplace.

Most Christians naturally ask whether these tools are ethical. Can artificial intelligence strengthen ministry or help people study God’s word?

Those are reasonable questions.

But they are not the most important ones.

Artificial intelligence is not merely forcing Christians to answer new ethical questions. It is forcing the church to revisit much older theological ones: what it means to bear God’s image and which responsibilities can never be delegated to a machine.

In other words, the church has spent years preparing for AI ethics just as artificial intelligence has handed us an examination in AI theology.

That realization exposes a larger problem.

For generations, Christians have developed rich theologies of work, marriage, government, stewardship, and creation. Yet we have devoted remarkably little attention to a theology of technology. We have treated technology as a morally neutral collection of tools whose value depends entirely upon how they are used.

That assumption made sense when technology simply extended human capabilities.

Artificial intelligence is different.

The printing press multiplied books. The automobile expanded mobility. Television reshaped entertainment. The internet democratized information.

Artificial intelligence reaches beyond what people do into how people think.

We no longer ask machines merely to calculate faster or retrieve information. We now ask them to judge, to create, and to decide — work that once belonged exclusively to human beings.

Every previous technological revolution expanded human capability.

Artificial intelligence invites us to surrender human responsibility.

That distinction is profoundly theological.

Genesis tells human beings that we are created uniquely in the image of God. We alone possess moral agency, conscience, spiritual awareness, and the capacity to know, worship, and glorify our Creator. Our creativity reflects His creativity. Building sophisticated tools is therefore not sinful in itself. God commanded humanity to cultivate and exercise wise stewardship over His creation.

But Scripture also explains why every human achievement exists within a fallen world.

Genesis 3 reminds us that every gift God gives can also become an occasion for misplaced trust. Human beings repeatedly turn blessings into substitutes for dependence upon God. Every technology therefore reflects both humanity’s creativity and humanity’s rebellion.

Artificial intelligence simply magnifies that timeless pattern.

The deepest danger is not that computers suddenly become conscious. The deeper danger is that people gradually surrender responsibilities God never intended them to delegate — judgment, discernment, wisdom, and moral accountability.

Machines can process astonishing quantities of information.

They cannot possess biblical wisdom.

Unfortunately, our culture treats intelligence as life’s highest virtue. Artificial intelligence only accelerates that temptation. We celebrate systems that optimize, predict, calculate, and outperform human cognition while quietly forgetting that Scripture measures human greatness very differently.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).

Notice what that verse does not say. It does not say knowledge begins with intelligence, or with data, or with processing power. It says knowledge begins with reverence for God. Fools, however sophisticated their tools, still despise wisdom and instruction.

The Bible consistently elevates qualities no algorithm can reproduce: humility, faithfulness, repentance, and self-sacrifice.

History confirms the point.

Nebuchadnezzar built an empire admired across the ancient world, yet the moment he took credit for his own greatness, God brought him low until he learned who truly rules (Daniel 4:28-33). Herod Agrippa accepted the crowd’s praise as though he were divine and was struck down before he could finish savoring it (Acts 12:21-23). Neither man’s downfall came from a lack of ability. Both came from a heart that outgrew its dependence on God.

Human brilliance has never guaranteed moral wisdom. That explains why artificial intelligence represents such a revealing moment for the church.

AI did not create a theological crisis. It exposed one that was already there.

The question is no longer whether Christians should use artificial intelligence. Most already do — often without realizing it. The more pressing question is whether Christians possess a biblical framework capable of governing its use.

Can we explain why every person bears unique dignity even if machines someday exceed us in many intellectual tasks? Can we explain why conscience cannot be automated, and why no algorithm can repent of sin, love its neighbor, or stand before a holy God?

Those are not engineering questions. They are discipleship questions.

The church therefore needs more than ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence. It needs a biblical theology of technology.

Pastors should teach not only what AI can accomplish but also what it cannot. Parents should help children distinguish information from wisdom and efficiency from faithfulness. Christian schools should devote as much attention to forming character as they do to teaching digital literacy.

Technology always shapes the people who use it. The only question is whether that formation conforms us more closely to the image of Christ or quietly persuades us to trust the works of our own hands.

The greatest danger facing Christians is not that machines become more like human beings. It is that human beings gradually begin thinking — and eventually living — as though they were machines.

The church prepared for AI ethics.

The time has come to recover something even deeper: a biblical theology of technology that keeps our most powerful inventions in their proper place — as useful servants, never trusted masters.

Artificial intelligence will reshape our economy, our culture, and our daily lives. Whether it strengthens or weakens the church, however, depends less upon the sophistication of our technology than upon the depth of our theology.

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.