Written by Dr. Wayne Cordeiro
Artificial Intelligence is on a fast track. It is advancing faster than the Covid pandemic. However, it is both good and bad. Let’s take a closer look at it as students of New Hope Christian College.
AI can help assist with research, organize your ideas, summarize meetings, and even refine essays. But discipleship—what happens in Ignite Groups, sitting beside someone who is grieving, worshipping, praying together, and developing a healthy culture in our school—will be totally dependent on presence and relationships.
I think we need to continue learning AI aggressively—but all the while, we must distinguish between using AI to increase capacity and allowing AI to replace calling. It can help prepare and organize, but it cannot carry spiritual authority, character, compassion, or the presence of a friend.
Increasing AI intelligence doesn’t necessarily bring increasing wisdom. In fact, we may eventually discover that intelligence without character is one of the most dangerous combinations on earth. I personally think that the danger isn’t that AI itself will necessarily become evil. I would describe AI systems as “amoral” rather than immoral.
- Immoral means acting in a way that violates moral principles.
- Moral means having principles of right and wrong and acting according to them.
- Amoral means having no sense of or adherence to moral principles—regardless of whether something is right or wrong.
The real danger will be that AI, an “amoral system,” will be placed in the hands of morally compromised people who use it for immoral purposes.
Technology may make ministry faster, but it can simultaneously make relationships thinner. The wise leader will therefore use AI while fiercely sticking with the things only we, as God’s people, can do. Screens offer the illusion of mastery while delivering passivity. You scroll, you watch, you “like.” But you rarely wrestle, retain, or create. The result is what some call intellectual obesity: vast access and zero digestion. Students submit AI-crafted essays they barely understand. Creativity atrophies into knowing certain prompts. We risk producing a society of “elegant parrots,” fluent in borrowed language but empty of comprehension. (I was like this in Greek class. I could read Greek but had little idea of what it all meant.)
ORA ET LABORA ET LEGE! Stay close to Jesus. Serve willingly! Study diligently!
Read deeply. Rebuild the forgotten pathways in our minds that screens have outdated. We have already surrendered too much to the “glow.” Computers and iPads will keep advancing, but our edge lies in what those things cannot replicate: the spark from personal discovery, the beauty of your presence, and the staunch refusal of wise students who refuse to outsource their souls.
Dr. Wayne Cordeiro
ORA ET LABORA ET LEGE! Stay close to Jesus. Serve willingly! Study diligently!
