Yesterday we introduced the excellent essay AI and All Its Splendors by Jeffrey Bilbro where he observes that AI seems to offer “ease and justice” – a utopia by which tech “…will make “everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.”

What’s wrong with that, you say? Bilbro argues that it’s the same temptation Satan offered Jesus: “All this I’ll give you if you fall down and worship me.”

Then Bilbro transitions to how Jesus lived and how we should live, also. Here are the paragraphs that startled me:

It is significant, I think, that Jesus never tells us to love the world. God so loves the world, but Jesus tells us to love our neighbor. And the parable of the Good Samaritan, which he tells to identify our neighbors, reminds us how tempting it is to avoid the personal work of love (Luke 10:25–37). 

The priest and the Levite could rationalize their lack of concern for the wounded man in terms of efficiency and abstract justice. They had more important work to do, work that would make a bigger impact than helping one man. But our obligation isn’t to maximize our efficacy; it is to care for the sufferer who lies before us, just as the Samaritan did. 

When Jesus concluded the parable by telling his hearers to “go and do likewise,” he was commanding us to love our neighbors in the slow, difficult, sacrificial manner of his own earthly ministry.

“Our obligation isn’t to maximize our efficacy; it is to care for the sufferer who lies before us…” Then Bilbro transitions to talking about the 3mph ministry that I have written about before.

Our vocation as Christ followers, then, is to follow the path that Jesus trod, to walk slowly with others, to suffer, and—ultimately—to become capable of embodying God’s presence to others. The means are essential to this calling…

Jesus did good things slowly, and so must we. As the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama writes in Three Mile an Hour God, “God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster.” Jesus didn’t jet around the world; he walked around Judea. He didn’t proclaim his message instantly across continents; he slowly discipled fishermen and tax collectors. As tempting as ease may be, we must refuse technologies that promise to automate our relationships with the world and with one another. 

The essay concludes:

If we follow in Jesus’ steps—if we live slowly, do good things however inefficiently, and share the extravagant grace we’ve been given—the temptations of AI, like all false promises and demonic temptations, will grow dim and unconvincing. 

“…live slowly, do good things…inefficiently…” It’s a good word.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5.16, NKJV)

And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful. (Titus 3.14, NKJV)

You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2.1, 2, NKJV)