By Brae Sadler · Staff Writer
“We must therefore learn to use powerful tools without outsourcing our intellectual or spiritual formation to them.” — President Brad Lingo
AI influencing our intellectual and spiritual development is unavoidable and can even be good.
During commencement, President Lingo advised professors and students to use AI wisely. AI can be a tremendous tool, but its use should not come at the expense of the education of the human soul.
President Lingo is right that Christians must be wise when using AI. LLMs can dull our minds and lead us away from God if used unwisely. At the same time, the relationship between spirituality and technology is not as simple as the decision to “outsource” or not.
Technology shapes our spirituality. In fact, the spirituality Grove City encourages — seeking the presence of God — is the result of advances in technology.
Before the invention of the printing press in the 1450s, books were a status symbol. Back then, new books had to be copied by hand. For big books like the Bible, copying could take weeks to months. The time-intensive production process meant books were always in low supply. So much so that most people had little use for reading — the majority of Europe was illiterate.
The implication: most people did not encounter the Word of God. Today, we take the Bible for granted. We can pray the Psalms or read the Gospels anytime we want. All Christians value devotion to reading Scripture. Grove City requires all students to take Bible classes so we can understand it better.
Back then, personal study of Scripture was impossible. Imagine a world where most people could not read. Before the printing press, commoners did not study the Bible. They never read of Jesus’s birth, ministry, death and resurrection. The average person never studied God’s Word.
The printing press changed the equation. Movable type reduced the time to produce a book from months to hours. Books became cheap and commonplace. Literacy rates steadily climbed over the next 300 years. By 1800, 54% of Britain and 85% of the Netherlands could read.
The implication: hosts of people could read the Bible. The printing press changed Christian spirituality by making Scripture accessible to most believers. Today, the full Bible has been translated into 807 languages. None of that would be possible without the printing press.
The printing press demonstrates that technology can improve Christian spirituality. The outsource-or-not dichotomy is false. There is a way to integrate new technologies into our spiritual lives that deepens our relationship with God.
The question is: can AI do that? Yes, AI can improve our spiritual lives by being a modern-day printing press. It can decrease the barriers to information and make spiritual truths more accessible.
One promising area is biblical translation. 1.5 billion people — one in five — do not have a Bible in their language. AI improves biblical translations by providing early drafts. AI is enabling people to read the Bible.
Another area is scholarship. In the developed world, we can access the Bible at any time. Still, the academic scholarship that helps us understand Scripture can be too technical for non-specialists. AI can distill academic articles into lay-friendly insights.
Far from diminishing Christian spirituality, AI can improve it. As with the printing press, the innovation of AI is here to stay. We cannot turn back time to before AI. Christians should seek to integrate this new technology as they did with innovations in the past. Technology is not the enemy of Christianity; it’s a complement.
