Recovering Faithful Participation in a Therapeutic Age
Phase One – Reading the Waters We Swim In
Happy Birthday to Me!
On July 7th of this year I officially became a Senior Citizen. I can’t say 65 feels any different from 64 but my wife is more excited that I qualify for seniors’ discount than I am. To celebrate the milestone, my daughter, along with her husband and 4 children, came to the house to celebrate with a Dairy Queen cake. I would also receive a taste of life through automation.
Later that afternoon, my 10 year old granddaughter gave me the longest digital birthday messages I’ve ever seen. It was just over 1600 words. Longer than the weekly reflection articles that take me 15 to 20 hours to prepare for my blog. I probably had it coming though.
Life Through Automation
About a month earlier, the charging port on her tablet stopped working so I waited to buy a replacement for her during Amazon Prime Days. I found a great deal on the only third party device available with my desired processor and chipset. Apart from that and the price, I didn’t pay attention to much else.
Well the tablet happens to have Gemini already installed. Proud of her discovery, she asked Gemini to write Papa a birthday message. She couldn’t wait for me to read it.
It’s a reflection about me – and a massive wall of text. As I scroll I smile. The prose is precise; hitting all the right emotional notes. I couldn’t begin to blow this amount of sunshine about myself 🙂. I soon realized that Gemini generated this content in about the time it takes for me to pick up and take a sip from a cup of coffee.
“Thank-you” and I asked her to send it to my phone. She beams. Before I can figure out the menu, she zips the files (the 1600 words were accompanied with a collage of pics) across devices with the casual fluency of a digital native. My granddaughter didn’t just use the machine to automate the sentiment; she also knows how to effortlessly manage my network to deliver it. Ugh these kids!
Preparing This Reflection
As I reflect on this, I’m concerned. Not about technology. Not about AI. A chatbot can give:
- Correct information.
- Emotional language.
- Beautiful words.
However, love is more than information; it’s participation. Something remains different when love requires the participation of another person.
I think technology often reveals us before it changes us. My granddaughter’s machine-generated birthday message shows something much older than AI and even the internet. It reveals our increasing comfort with convenience and receiving life through automation.
A Much Older Story
I could easily turn my reflection into an article about artificial intelligence. Plenty of people are already doing that. If you want a deep dive, this is an excellent (and very long) article that asks the question: Can Generative AI Chatbots Emulate Human Connection?
The scope of this reflection isn’t to celebrate AI as the future. Neither is it to warn that it’ll become humanity’s downfall. I’m singing in a different choir.
Every generation encounters new technologies that reshape daily life. The printing press, radio, television, the internet, smartphones, and now AI have all shaped how we interpret our world and communicate.
I think technology is more of a mirror that displays our desires. Perhaps that’s why my granddaughter’s birthday message lingered with me long after everyone had gone home. It inspired me as the basis of this first reflection toward a Return to a Future series. The issue isn’t that a computer wrote the words. It’s that I found myself asking a much older question:
What does it mean to participate in another person’s life?
A chatbot can’t choose anyone to engage with. It doesn’t have to exert any effort toward a user and it never gets tired. However, a hand-drawn birthday card may contain crooked letters and misspelled words. Stick figures look nothing like their intended subjects, but the creation says something else. Every imperfect line quietly announces, “I was here. I thought about you and I made this for you.”
The value in that expression isn’t found in artistic excellence. It’s found in personal participation. That small realization stays with me.
Reading the Waters We Swim In
As Christians, we often imagine that our greatest challenge is resisting the culture around us. However, what if the greater challenge is recognizing how deeply we’ve already absorbed it?
Long before we open a Bible or bow our heads to pray, we’ve been learning how to see the world. Our culture teaches us – faster is better. Easier is usually preferred. Personalized experiences are expected. Friction is something to eliminate. We naturally carry those assumptions into every area of life, including our Christian faith. Without realizing it, we start expecting our in-person relationships to work the same way.
- Friendships are easier when they don’t ask much from us.
- Communities are valuable when they meet our needs.
- Churches are places that provide religious goods and services.
Even God can gradually become someone we expect to improve our lives rather than invite us into His.
From Deism to Theism
More than twenty years ago, sociologist Christian Smith described the religious outlook of many young people as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. God exists, but mostly stays in the background until needed to solve a problem.
I wonder whether our cultural imagination has shifted.
Today, many Christians don’t picture God as distant at all. Instead, we often imagine Him as always available, always active, repeatedly responsive, invested in our emotional well-being, and always ready to help us navigate whatever life places in front of us.
That’s why the idea of Moralistic Therapeutic Theism came to my mind. I think it’s more descriptive of our moment.
The issue isn’t that God is invisible but on call. The issue is the role we’ve assigned Him.
I’m not being critical. It’s an observation. Every generation tends to understand God through the categories most familiar to its own culture. We’re no exception.
Looking Ahead
This series isn’t about blaming technology, criticizing therapy, or longing for a simpler past. The ancient world had its own idols. So does ours.
My hope is to slow down long enough to notice the waters we’re swimming in before asking Scripture to speak into them. Because maybe the deepest question isn’t what AI can produce. It may be more about what kind of people we’re becoming.
Are we learning to receive life mostly through convenience and automation? Or are we still discovering the slow, sometimes inconvenient beauty of participating in God’s story – and in one another’s lives?
That’s the journey I invite us to take together.