Should Christians Use AI?

Dave Kiehn
Aug 7
11 min read

Should a Christian use AI?

Recently, as part of a series addressing questions Christians commonly ask, I was asked, “Should Christians use artificial intelligence?” It is a question pastors and churches increasingly need to consider. Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of everyday life. Students use it to study. Employees use it to write and research. Doctors use it to analyze information. Pastors use it to prepare. Parents use it to answer questions. Increasingly, many of us use AI without even realizing we are using it.

In thinking through the question, I found Aaron Menikoff’s approach helpful. Rather than simply asking whether Christians should or should not use AI, he encourages us to ask a series of questions that help us evaluate our use of it. I have adapted and modified that approach here, developing ten questions that I believe may be particularly helpful for pastors as we think about our own use of AI and shepherd our churches through these issues.

After all, “Should Christians use AI?” may be too simplistic a question. AI is a tool, and like many tools, it can be used wisely or foolishly, for good or for evil. A better question is, “How can we use artificial intelligence in a way that glorifies God, loves our neighbor, and helps rather than hinders our growth in Christ?”

Here are ten questions I believe Christians should ask:

1. What exactly is Artificial Intelligence?

Before we decide how to use AI, we should understand what it is. Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT are built using large amounts of data and sophisticated mathematical models. They identify patterns and use those patterns to generate likely responses to prompts. They can summarize information, analyze data, generate language, identify patterns, and assist with complex problems.

AI also extends far beyond chatbots. It can help researchers analyze enormous amounts of medical data, help doctors interpret images, identify patterns in weather data, and assist researchers as they examine possible treatments for diseases. It can process amounts of information that would take human beings enormous amounts of time to examine. That can be tremendously useful.

But we must remember something important: AI is not God, it is not human, and it is not wisdom. It is a human-created tool processing information. Therefore, we should neither fear it as though it were sovereign nor trust it as though it were omniscient.

2. Does my use of AI glorify God?

This is the most basic Christian question. Paul writes, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). “Whatever you do” certainly includes how we use technology. So the first question is not, “Will AI make me faster?” or “Will AI make my life easier?” The first question is, “Can I do this to the glory of God?”

Follow up questions may be:

Can I thank God for this use of AI?
Can I use it for this purpose with a clear conscience?
Can I be open about how I am using it?

A useful test might be this: If I feel like I need to hide the fact that I used AI, I should probably examine why.

Am I using it deceptively?
Am I taking credit for work I did not do?
Am I violating someone’s expectations?
Am I using it to avoid a responsibility that actually belongs to me?

Christian ethics begin with the glory of God. So am I using AI to glorify God?

3. Is AI helping me love God?

Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That means technology should serve our love for God rather than replace it. AI can provide information about God. It can summarize a theological argument, compare interpretations of a passage, or help us locate resources. Yet always remember information about God is not communion with God.

There is a significant difference between asking AI, “Summarize Romans 8 for me,” and sitting with an open Bible, praying, reading slowly, thinking, wrestling with the text, and asking God to conform your heart to His Word. AI can give you information quickly, but spiritual maturity usually happens slowly. We should therefore ask whether this technology is helping us know and love God or replacing the habits through which God has ordinarily formed His people.

4. Is AI helping me Love my Neighbor?

Jesus joins love for God with love for neighbor, so Christians should ask whether AI can help us serve other people. And clearly, sometimes it can. In medicine, AI can analyze enormous amounts of data, assist doctors in reading medical images, identify patterns, and help researchers investigate treatments. Weather and geological data can be analyzed to improve predictions and potentially warn communities about dangerous conditions. In ordinary life, AI can help translate between languages, make information more accessible, assist people with disabilities, and help people communicate more clearly.

Those can be genuine expressions of neighbor love. Technology is not inherently opposed to loving our neighbor. A tool that increases our ability to serve other people can be received with gratitude. Christians should therefore resist the temptation simply to demonize new technology. The better question is whether we are using it in ways that genuinely promote the good of the people God has placed around us.

And yet, we should also ask, “What does AI cost my neighbor? Loving our neighbor also means thinking about the hidden costs behind the technology we use. AI can feel almost weightless, you type a question into your phone and an answer appears seconds later, but there is an enormous physical infrastructure behind that answer.

There is an environmental cost. The massive data centers that power AI require enormous amounts of electricity and water, particularly water used to cool the servers running these systems. As AI expands, those demands can place additional pressure on local electrical grids and water supplies, especially in communities already facing scarcity. Again, this does not make AI inherently wrong, but it reminds us that the digital world is not weightless. Our pursuit of greater convenience and efficiency still consumes resources from the world God has entrusted to our care. Creation belongs to God, and Christian stewardship should cause us at least to consider the environmental cost of the technologies we increasingly depend upon.

There is also a human cost that is easy to overlook. AI is not built entirely by machines. Behind many systems are human beings who label data, evaluate responses, and review harmful content so that the systems become safer. Some of this work has been outsourced to lower-income countries, where concerns have been raised about low wages and workers being repeatedly exposed to disturbing material. In one widely reported example, Kenyan workers helping make an early OpenAI system safer were paid less than $2 an hour while reviewing material that included graphic violence and sexual abuse.

That gives us another neighbor-love question: Who bears the cost of my convenience? Christians do not need to respond by rejecting technology, but we should resist using it thoughtlessly. We should care about responsible companies, fair treatment of workers, wise stewardship of creation, and whether our desire for greater speed and convenience creates costs that are largely borne by people we never see.

5. Is AI replacing relationships God intends me to have?

God did not create us merely to exchange information. He created us for relationships. Imagine a new mother struggling to get her baby to sleep. She can ask AI, “How do I get my baby to sleep through the night?” and receive ten helpful suggestions in seconds. What does she lose by going to AI first? Before AI, perhaps she would have called an older mother in the church and said, “I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me?” They might talk, pray, and develop a friendship. Wisdom would pass from one generation to another, and that simple question might become the beginning of years of discipleship.

AI can transfer information without creating a relationship. That is simultaneously one of its strengths and one of its dangers. The same applies to a young Christian with a theological question. There may be times when asking AI is useful, but if every question that once would have taken us to a pastor, parent, friend, elder, teacher, or mentor now goes immediately to a machine, we may become more informed while becoming more isolated. Efficiency may hinder friendship.

6. Is AI helping me think, or is it thinking for me?

There is a tremendous difference between using AI to assist our thinking and using AI to avoid thinking. God gave us minds, and part of Christian maturity involves learning to reason, discern, study, meditate, evaluate, and exercise wisdom.

Suppose you are studying a difficult passage of Scripture. You could immediately ask AI, “What does this passage mean?” and perhaps receive a reasonably good answer in three seconds. But what have you missed? You may have missed reading the passage five times, noticing repeated words, comparing Scripture with Scripture, praying, or struggling with a difficult sentence until suddenly you understood it. Sometimes the struggle is part of the formation.

A better pattern may be: Think first. Read first. Pray first. Wrestle first. Then use AI to test, expand, challenge, or verify your thinking. Use AI as an assistant, not as a substitute for your God-given mind.

7. What is AI forming me to become?

Perhaps one of the greatest dangers of AI is not merely misinformation but misformation. In other words, we should not only ask, “Is AI giving me the right answer?” We should also ask, “What kind of person is AI training me to become?”

Every technology forms habits. AI trains us to expect speed, immediate answers, less difficulty, and the ability to outsource tasks. Over time, it can make us impatient with anything slow. Beloved, much of the Christian life is designed to be slow. Sanctification is slow. Learning Scripture is slow. Building relationships is slow. Raising children is slow. Developing wisdom is slow. Learning to pray is slow. God frequently forms His people through patient, deliberate struggle.

We therefore need to be careful that a technology designed to eliminate friction does not cause us to eliminate some of the very struggles God uses to make us mature. The question isn't merely whether AI makes something easier. Sometimes easy is good, but sometimes the difficult process is precisely where God is doing His work in us.

8. Is AI teaching me to reject my God-Given limits?

Isaiah 42–45 repeatedly emphasizes the absolute uniqueness and sovereignty of God: “I am the LORD, and there is no other.” God is unlimited. We are not. And that is not a design flaw. You need sleep. You can only be in one place at a time. You can only read so many books, maintain so many relationships, and accomplish so much in one day. Those limitations remind us of a fundamental truth: I am not God.

Yet our culture prizes productivity and efficiency, and AI promises to expand both. We can write more, produce more, answer more emails, create more content, accomplish more tasks, and process more information. Greater efficiency is not inherently sinful; in fact, it can be a tremendous gift. We should ask whether we are using AI to steward our limits faithfully or attempting to escape them.

Sometimes God's answer to “I cannot do everything” is not a better productivity system. Sometimes His answer is simply, “Correct. You cannot do everything. I am the Lord and there is no other.”

9. Is AI increasing my dependence upon God or my confidence in myself?

One of humanity's oldest temptations is self-sufficiency. We want knowledge without dependence, power without limits, and achievement without weakness. We want to live as though we do not need God. Scripture calls that foolishness. One danger of AI is that it can create an illusion of extraordinary competence. Suddenly I can write about subjects I barely understand. I can produce work outside my expertise. I can generate answers immediately. I can appear more knowledgeable, productive, and capable than I actually am. That can quietly feed pride.

So we should pay attention to our instincts. When I encounter a problem, where does my mind go first? Do I pray? Do I seek God’s wisdom? Do I ask other believers? Do I acknowledge my limitations? Or has my immediate instinct become, “I'll just ask AI”? A useful tool can slowly become a functional crutch. Christians should be careful not to allow a machine that promises answers to weaken our instinct to depend upon the God who possesses all wisdom.

And this is where we need to remember that AI has not created a new human problem. It has simply given an old human problem a new opportunity. From the garden onward, humanity has wanted wisdom, knowledge, and power apart from dependence upon God. The serpent promised Eve, “you will be like God” (Gen. 3:5), and humanity has been reaching for life apart from God ever since. Our deepest problem is not that we have the wrong technology. Our deepest problem is that we are sinners who want to live as though we do not need the God who made us. As Paul writes, although we know God, we are naturally inclined neither to honor Him as God nor give thanks to Him (Rom. 1:21).

And that is why our ultimate hope is not learning to use AI better. Our hope is Jesus Christ. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), but God sent His Son into the world to do what we could never do. Jesus lived the perfectly righteous life we have failed to live, died on the cross in the place of sinners “the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18) and rose again from the dead. Everyone who turns from sin and trusts in Christ is forgiven, reconciled to God, and given new life (2 Cor. 5:17–21).

And that new life changes even the way we think about technology. The gospel frees me from having to prove my worth through how much I know, how much I produce, or how efficient I can become. My identity is now in Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). I can admit that I don't know everything. I can embrace my limitations. I can ask for help. I can rest. I can use technology without needing it to make me feel powerful or sufficient, because my confidence is ultimately not in what I can accomplish, but in what Christ has already accomplished for me.

So if Christ is our Savior and Lord, that brings us to our final question,

10. Can I use AI as a tool without allowing it to become my master?

I don't think the Christian response to artificial intelligence should be fear or rejection. There are extraordinary ways AI can serve human flourishing and help us love our neighbors. We can use it to organize information, brainstorm ideas, identify blind spots, improve communication, analyze information, help us learn, and accomplish good work more effectively. So how should Christians use AI?

Use it as a tool, not as a replacement for the things God has called you to do.
Use it to brainstorm, organize, research, translate, edit, and handle lower-value tasks so you have more time for people.
Let it sharpen your thinking rather than replace it.
Be especially careful in areas where the process itself is important
Sometimes deliberately refuse the shortcut.

Perhaps one of the most important questions to ask is simply: What is AI replacing? Every new technology replaces something. The car replaced the horse for transportation. And with it created the opportunity to travel longer distances and live farther from where you work. Think of how many people now spend hours in the car before they traveled a mile or so on horseback. You don't always need to do things the old way, but you should know what the new way is displacing something.

I use AI a lot, and I find it incredibly helpful, but that is precisely why you and I need to ask these questions. The greatest danger for me may not be that AI gives me a terrible answer. It may be that it gives me a good answer so quickly that I miss something God intended to do in me or through another person, in the process of finding the answer. So don't outsource to AI the things God has given you to do. Don't outsource your thinking. Don't outsource your relationships. Don't outsource your prayers or Bible reading. Don't outsource your responsibility, your wisdom, or your dependence upon God.

The goal of the Christian life is not maximum efficiency. The goal is faithfulness.

AI may give us more information, but information is not wisdom. It may give us answers in seconds, but speed is not maturity. It may increase our productivity, but productivity does not equal faithfulness.

So the ultimate question is “How can I use this tool to help me love God, love my neighbor, fulfill my responsibilities, embrace my God-given limitations, and become more like Jesus?” So use the tool. Receive the good it can offer. Make sure the tool is serving your calling to be more like Christ rather than slowly reshaping you away from him.

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