First, what is church? What is church for? There are endless ways to answer, but I’ll try to stick to a short simple one; church is the community of people gathering to follow Jesus. The church exists to work with God in building the kingdom of God on earth by growing in love of God and neighbor.
The question is then; how does the church do this? Again, there are endless ways to answer, but I’ll try to stick to one relevant to A.I. One way we grow in love is through moral formation. The church has a prophetic role in the world to interpret Jesus’ teachings for our present time.
However, I think the church has ceded some of its moral authority. Partially because the church has been morally wrong before; for example, SMU is Southern because it was founded by the Methodist church that split off to support slavery. Yet, it is also because the church is rightly seen as a place of unity under Christ, which has led to an aversion to controversy. Which means the church often chooses to avoid controversy for the sake of unity, and we have grown comfortable avoiding controversy in church, while at the same time the church’s purpose demands we occasionally address controversial topics.
Thankfully, I think A.I. has not hit peak polarization yet, so I think addressing it before it does so would be good. I also think the path to unity in Christ is to not obscure our differences and disagreements, but to learn to love each other anyway. So here is my bias; I do not like A.I., but I think we should talk about it. I’ll be trying something new for the next several weeks; writing a series of columns on one topic. I cannot promise to be unbiased, but I promise to do my best to be kind and fair, and I would love to hear your perspectives.
If the church has been wrong before in dogmatically issuing moral proclamations, or avoiding the topic all together, maybe the way forward is to help one another think through things with Jesus’ teachings in mind. Ultimately, that’s what I hope this series will be; us learning to think more deeply about how Jesus shapes the way we live, together.
Blessings,
Pastor Luke