(~2,200 words, 12 minute read time)
The Colson Center for Christian Worldview hosted an important conversation on August 6, 2026, called, “Staying Human in the Age of AI.” Leading Christian experts Dr. John Lennox, Dr. Gretchen Huizinga, and Abdu Murray shared helpful insights from their vast experience.
(Note: the recording of this event is an unlisted YouTube video. If it becomes public, I’ll link to it here. The timestamps in quotes below are from the private recording that the Colson Center shared with attendees.)
Dr. Huizinga was probably the least well known on that stage, but in my opinion, she stole the show. Her message was filled with powerful truth and brilliant turns of phrase, including new words like, “AIdeology” and “AIdolatry.”
But her counter-cultural message was unpopular with some attendees. So unpopular, in fact, that John Stonestreet (whom I’ve appreciated and supported for decades) posted a new Breakpoint commentary on August 12th in what appears to be an attempt to unruffle some feathers. But the commentary mostly disregards Dr. Huizinga’s prophetic and powerful message.
Let’s first see some of Dr. Huizinga’s message, review the Breakpoint pushback, then consider some takeaways.
Some of Gretchen Huizinga’s Mic Drop Moments
Early in her presentation, Dr. Huizinga helped the audience understand how all GenAI products are sold. She surveyed the purpose statements of the top AI labs, condensed their declaration of human frailty, and described their solution:
You’re not fast enough. You’re not nice enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not productive enough. And you don’t understand reality.
In case you didn’t notice the not so subtle implication in each of these statements, GenAI is your savior, not God. In fact, GenAI is not so subtly being positioned as a sort of God itself, proposing a technical eschatology rather than a spiritual one. Mired in our human limitations, we must look to AI for deliverance. (1:00:50)
This is precisely what GenAI is designed to bring about. Today’s AI chatbots are tools created as part of a plan to usher in an atheist, transhumanist plan of salvation. The promises of efficiency and productivity are in pursuit of a secular, utopian vision. They really believe they’re creating god.
Dr. Huizinga masterfully frames the Christian Worldview issues in contrast with the transhumanist vision of Big AI:
We cannot forget that our Christian understanding of what it means to be human is rooted in our identity as God’s creation, not evolution’s accident or Silicon Valley’s upgrade. We can agree with the AI makers that there’s something profoundly wrong with us. But we know as believers that the root cause is sin, not poor evolutionary progress. And the root cure is putting our faith in Jesus, not the AI singularity. (1:03:40)
But this makes some Christians uncomfortable, especially those who have an AI product of their own to sell. Nevertheless, Dr. Huizinga continues to make some audience members squirm with another truth bomb:
Stop relying on the artificial intelligence of a handful of powerful tech companies and start relying on the righteous intelligence of God, also known as the mind of Christ, in whom we have hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The makers of GenAI are trying to sell us a bootleg version of this for a monthly subscription fee, but we get a free site license when we become believers. (1:09:17)
This is such a clever way to make this point. Big AI has “bootlegged” a digitized version of the world’s words and artwork, and has repackaged it deceptively as intelligent (when it never will be). But by our embrace of the artificial, we shunt our connection with the real, true, “righteous intelligence of God.”
Dr. Huizinga shows how we should not use GenAI to avoid the hard work of thinking, writing, and creating for ourselves. And the Bible, from Solomon to the apostles to Jesus, encourages us to persevere in doing hard things. Who wants to tempt us with the quick and easy “efficient” path? The evil one:
GenAI is tempting us to circumvent the very qualities that God desires for us. I want to say, I’ve heard this workaround offer before. I think it was in Genesis 3 and Matthew 4, but it was the same sales guy. (1:10:28)
So the audience won’t miss her bottom line, she clearly answers her question, “To GPT, or not to GPT?”
After much prayer and reflection, I’m leaning more toward no, or at least not much. From a spiritual perspective, I think we really need to address this idolatry issue. We’ve all been worshiping at the altar of the god of productivity for too long. While the pressure to be productive is real, God calls us to be fruitful. They’re not the same thing. One is a result of our work. The other is a result of God’s work. (1:10:48)
“No” is Hard to Hear
The distinction between productivity and fruitfulness is so profound. Promises of productivity can become an idol, where we pursue power, abundance, and pleasure, on our terms, and on our schedule. We’re so reluctant to wait for God to bear fruit on his terms, and on his schedule. In John 15, Jesus promised fruitfulness, not productivity, if we abide in him. But GenAI is perfectly crafted to cause the branches on the vine of Christ to be cut off, and thrown into the fire.
In my many conversations about whether to use GenAI, I’ve received powerful resistance against the idea of “no” or even “not much.” I think Christians are so reluctant to appear Amish or out of touch. They are afraid of missing out. So they bristle at any limit, and quickly run to justify their choices with the idea of “redeeming” technology.
And as a result, they quickly embrace every new thing Big Tech sells them, leading them farther and farther away from the Lord. And now, they risk being dehumanized by their adoption of GenAI in ways they may not perceive until it’s too late.
“Get Off My Lawn”
Dr. Huizinga’s wisdom was too much for a “longtime friend” of John Stonestreet. His friend said the AI Symposium was like “an old man yelling, ‘Get off my lawn.’” So Stonestreet proceeded to try and “redeem” AI in his commentary.
The “Get off my lawn” argument is so common against anyone who pushes back against popular technology. I hear it all the time. People accuse me—a software engineer—of being a Luddite and anti-technology. It’s the default, fallback statement of a person who doesn’t want to engage in thoughtful conversation and offer a substantial argument in response.
And the lie that an “old man” isn’t credible to speak against technology doesn’t come from a Christian worldview. Our culture worships youth; the Bible does not. Instead, Bible exalts wisdom, and links righteousness with gray hair. It connects foolishness with youth.
Stonestreet’s friend “had great success incorporating AI into an already successful business.” This tells me his friend has big money at stake. If he were to take Dr. Huizinga’s wise pushbacks to heart, it might affect his bottom line. Biblical warnings about serving God or money should set off alarm bells.
This reminds me of other “Christian AI” companies like Gloo or Pray.com, who offer sanctified chatbots to attract the Christian market. Pray.com is happy to provide you with a cyborg pastor who will pray for you 24/7. Paraphrasing Dr. Huizinga, these “Christian” chatbots are sold by saying that our human efforts, powered by the Holy Spirit, are just not getting God’s work done fast enough. Christian teachers aren’t nice enough, but sycophantic GenAI always is. And mature Christian believers aren’t smart enough, but the chatbot, trained on the right “Christian” resources, can be.
Stonestreet’s commentary goes on to justify a more “balanced” approach to AI with what I call the “tool trope.” He says, “The most important difference is not the technology itself, but who is using it and why.” He tries to show that there are good things we’re doing with AI that balance out the evil things. He even says that there are examples where “God is using [AI] for His glory.”
But, with respect and honor for all Stonestreet stands for, he got this one wrong. He’s not basing his ideas on a Biblical worldview like Dr. Huizinga did. Because there are some technologies that cannot be “redeemed.” That’s no more clear than the story of the Tower of Babel—the ultimate high-tech ziggurat of that age. There isn’t a version of an idolatrous temple-tower that will glorify God. God isn’t glorified in idols.
The three examples in Stonestreet’s commentary fail to make the case that GenAI is being “redeemed” for God’s glory.
- Health Care: Stonestreet first cites the Rare Genomics Institute, a company that is using “AI” for specialized health care. But this is a misunderstanding of the term “AI” and therefore a non sequitur. They aren’t using chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude to find cures to genetic diseases. The fact that there are rare, focused, narrow uses of “machine learning” that are helpful does not justify ignoring Dr. Huizinga’s warnings against Big Tech’s idolatrous GenAI.
- Bible Translation: Stonestreet highlights an alliance of Bible translators who are becoming more efficient at translating Scripture. I think this is extremely dangerous. Translating the Word of God using a technology that has no idea what any words mean risks changing the sacred message in consequential ways. Plus, many of the language groups who lack a Bible don’t have a written language at all. Using LLMs for English, the most popular digital language, is already fraught with falsehoods and inaccuracies because the statistical relationship between words is ungrounded from truth and reality. How much more will languages that have nearly no digital footprint be misrepresented in an LLM? We risk worshiping idols of efficiency and productivity even in a quest as laudable as translating the Bible.
- The Apologist Project: This is the most disastrous example of the three. It’s a chatbot trained to answer questions of Christians apologetics. Spiritual guidance from a bot. It’s sold with the promise to “Meet them where they are.” But what is meeting them? A deception, from top to bottom. The company claims that their chatbot is trained on high quality content. But that is irrelevant. Like all chatbots, theirs is fundamentally untrustworthy. Not only that, but it’s also designed to form an undeserved trust relationship. That means that anyone who seeks spiritual guidance from a chatbot, even one trained on Christian content, is being discipled to trust something they should not trust. It leads Christians astray, and leads nonbelievers to trust in the worldview of Big AI, not the Biblical worldview. I make this argument in more detail when I push back against Gloo’s chatbots here. But everything Dr. Huizinga said about the enemy’s temptation in Genesis 3 and Matthew 4 applies to companies who would sell “Christian” AI products.
Conclusion
Dr. John Lennox concluded his presentation at this event with a story of how he had been deepfaked on the internet, and that 7,000 people had watched an AI-generated video of him appearing to teach something he’d never say. He said he was reminded of Matthew 24:24, of Jesus’ warning that Christians, his people, “the elect,” would be deceived by false christs (saviors) and false prophets (Big AI CEOs and their faith-forward counterparts).
Barna says that 51% of practicing Christians say that “AI understands me.” That’s 12% higher than the general population. This shows that more than half of Christians are deceived by AI, and Christians are more likely to be deceived than non-Christians. So this isn’t an edge case. It shows what all GenAI chatbots are designed to do: to form an undeserved trust relationship. Even those with a fish sticker on the back.
Like in many subjects, Christians are not unified in our view of artificial intelligence. My debates have shown that. But I’m convinced that those of us who risk being unpopular, who are disregarded by flimsy “get off my lawn” pushbacks, are grounded by a more Biblical worldview than those who are trying to take Big Tech’s idolatrous, transhumanist-inspired products and “use them for God’s glory.”
I wish John Stonestreet would have listened more carefully to Dr. Huizinga. He might not have discounted her message under pressure from his uncomfortable friends.
I’m going to give Dr. Huizinga the last word. Here’s how she ended her presentation:
At this inflection point, I’m taking a page out of Paul’s playbook in 1 Corinthians 6:12, where he says, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.” Or to paraphrase Kent Brockman, the Simpsons news anchor from Channel 6 in Springfield, “I, for one, do not welcome our new AI overlords.” (1:14:06)