Culture Friday: Discerning the digital spirits

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MYNRA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 28th of November.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday! Joining us is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, John, The New York Times published a piece this week on the rise of so-called “Jesus bots.” These are A-I chatbots offering on-demand spiritual guidance, for a monthly fee. That article pointed to a big study from The Gospel Coalition that looked into the accuracy of seven major AI platforms.

And the TGC findings were along the lines of what you might expect. Some AI models tended to reinforce Christian teaching. Others leaned skeptical. Several of them defaulted to an “all viewpoints are equal” approach. But the report says that the real differences come from what it called alignment, meaning the human guardrails that tell an AI what it can and cannot say. So that’s why you’ll have one model giving a clear Christian answer, while another pushes everything toward equal viewpoints.

And the point of the TGC study is not that Christians should avoid AI, but what they should avoid is uncritical use of AI. So what do you think about that, John? Is there a place, for example, for AI tools for Bible study or personal devotions? What do you say?

STONESTREET: I think there’s absolutely a role for it there. But I think almost all of the questions around artificial intelligence, whether we’re talking about its use here, or whether we’re talking about all kinds of other uses—I mean, we had a study coming out that came out this past week, which said the majority of young people are ready to give over government authority to AI. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?

But the fundamental question is: Do we know what makes humans human? Are we clear about what is distinctively human? Because that order of creation is very clear in the text of Genesis. In the creation account, there is God. He creates everything, and then he creates his image-bearers. And his image-bearers have a hierarchical authoritative relationship with the rest of the world—not for their own ends, but for the ends for which God created them. And their responsibility is to steward it toward that end.

So as far as technology serves that, absolutely. The problem is that we’ve just kind of thoroughly demonstrated—and not just through AI, but even previous than this—that we haven’t taken seriously the biblical order of creation. There’s just so many examples of us (a) missing what it means to be human, and (b) missing the church’s responsibility to speak outside of issues of personal spirituality. So what we are essentially is Gnostics. We have a disconnected, disembodied faith. And then when it comes to real issues, we basically say, well, as long as we have good intentions, then that should be okay.

That’s not going to cut it. It never has, really, but it’s certainly not going to cut it with tools that are as powerful as the kinds of tools that AI is bringing to us.

BROWN: I had to think twice about following up with this next question because I have heard you say before John, you know nothing about Contemporary Christian Music. But I don’t think you have to be a fan of the genre to comment on this story.

AI Ray: Lord, I’m tired from all this stressing, too weak to count my blessing.

So you’re listening to the number one Christian artist. This dude can sing, except he’s not a dude.

EICHER: (Laughing) He’s not a dude

BROWN: He’s not a dude. His name is Solomon Ray. AI-generated.

That’s what we’re talking about, right?

So real quick: Forrest Frank, who is a human chart-topping CCM artist, argues AI Ray doesn’t have a soul, and therefore Ray’s songs don’t count as art. He goes on to say, I think it’s weird to be opening up your spirit to something that has no spirit. The hip-hop artist Christopher Townsend, the man behind the machine, fired back, and he says, This is an extension of my creativity. So therefore, to me, it is art. It’s inspired by a Christian. It may not be performed by one, but I don’t know why that really matters in the end.

So John, who’s right?

STONESTREET: I have no idea, and I do not have any idea about CCM. And I think there’s pre-existing conditions here, you know, because Christian should, I think, in the best-case scenario, apply to people, not to songs, and certainly not to technologies.

And I think fundamentally the question comes back: what were humans created to do, and what can only humans do? And I think it is interesting that there are limits that can be put on AI in terms of the amount of data that they can access, and so we can kind of keep it in the fold. And then at that point, it’s an extension of collating and curating information, and can be very helpful as a tool.

But are we ready to say it’s creative for me to design a prompt and that’s artistic in what I’ve asked for from the AI? That seems to be a pretty dumb-down definition of art and creativity. So I think, yeah, there’s a lot of morally complicated questions here, and that still doesn’t solve the question that’s been around probably for 40 or 50 years, which is: do we need Christian music?

BROWN: (Laughing) Oh, I’m not touching that. Well, moving on. Moving on.

Interesting article coming out of Semafor Media about President Trump shaping popular culture. A big factor in that equation is Trump’s relationship with Larry Ellison, who owns Paramount and is a big Trump financial supporter. And reportedly, Ellison is on the cusp of taking control of Warner Studios, and insiders are speculating about how Trump’s influence, through his relationship with Ellison, could shape the types of movies being produced.

So my question would be: how do you think Neil Postman would frame what appears to be the blurring of political authority and cultural celebrity?

STONESTREET: I think Postman’s concern was the other way around. I don’t think it was politics informing entertainment, arts, and media. It was entertainment, arts, and media influencing politics. He talks extensively there. Basically—I mean, the whole thesis of Postman’s book is entertainment makes us sillier. In other words, if our politics then become entertainment-driven, then our politics become, well, sillier.

Look, there’s two things you need to know. President Trump influences everything. That’s been part of his thing from the very beginning. So let’s stop being surprised by this. Second, it’s not inappropriate, by the way, for him to do that.

But the fact of the matter is, we do have these blurring of what Abraham Kuyper would call spheres of culture. And a reality of contemporary culture is that politics is taking a lot of air out of the room. It’s filling a whole lot of empty space. Now, one reason that it’s filling an empty space is because it can. The other reason is because entertainment first influenced politics. And another reason is because these other areas of culture have become pretty weak, and politics tends to push into areas that are culturally weak.

And so that’s going to be the analysis of the 21st century. There is an integration with technology—certainly an integration with communication technology and entertainment and media and so on. But the story of the early 21st century is just how much space politics takes up in American culture. It wasn’t always that way. It’s not healthy when it’s that way. Politics isn’t big enough to handle human creativity or storytelling or relationships or certainly marriage and having babies, or all the other things that it’s creeped into and pushed out other influences.

So I think that is an interesting thing to consider. But there are consequences, and the consequences are going to be for art and entertainment, as well as many other areas of culture.

EICHER: Well, John, tomorrow we are running a full 30-minute interview with your co-host from the Truth Rising documentary, Os Guinness. We covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes—the crisis of truth, the roots of Western cultural drift, the difference between the American and French visions of freedom. Good conversation.

But I wanted to draw out one theme that I think has a nice tie to the documentary: Os’s argument that the West is not doomed to decline and fall. Biblically, the pattern is exile and return. And he says the turning point there is repentance.

So here’s a brief excerpt from that part of our conversation. Let’s hear that.

GUINNESS: The West will decline. The American Republic will decline—unless there’s a return to the Lord.

But freedom means a freedom even in repentance. There are, sadly, some evangelicals who have such a heavy view of predestination, they’re almost theological determinists too. You can see in the Bible there’s a freedom to repent. And as the Lord says—or rather Moses says in the Lord’s name, and many other prophets too—“If you return to me,” says the Lord, “I will return to you and restore your fortunes.”

And that, of course, in Christian history is the story of revival. Think of how the First Awakening led to the American Revolution. Think of how the First Awakening saved England, as historians have said, from the French Revolution. The Second Awakening—an incredible impetus for reforms, including slavery.

In other words, we are realists. We look at reality unblushingly and realistically, and we will decline unless there’s a massive return. …

But the awakening is something when the Word speaks in power and conviction, and the Spirit comes down in power and conviction, and there’s an incredible transformation.

Well, John, I love the hopefulness in that. It’s really what the doctor ordered. And, you know, on Thanksgiving week, what a great thought.

STONESTREET: It’s a great thought. And Os is a Gandalf for our generation. Certainly it’s been such an honor to work with him on this project, and we’ve been thrilled at the response. The aim is to call people to this cultural moment as if it’s part of their understanding of their vocation and their calling, because it is.

And part of the Christian’s toolkit—in fact, fundamental to it, what shapes their perspective—is this idea of hope. But our hope isn’t just that redemption and renewal and repentance are possible, although they are. And Os is exactly right that the Bible talks about that, and the Bible lays these options out.

But our ultimate hope—and this is something that’s laid out both in the documentary and in the study—is not in what happens in our cultural moment. It’s what we know to be true about the whole story of the world, and that is that it’s centered around the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And now human history is secure. And the whole point has always been to see the chaos and the seriousness of the civilizational moment that we’re in in light of what is ultimately true, with a capital T, of the whole story of the world.

Our freedom is something that is God-given, and the way that God has made us—somehow God is supervising the flow of human history, and our actions really matter. So the opportunity here for Christians is unbelievable. Os is exactly right—not just for people sharing with other people, but also in making our decisions and then letting God bring about the results.

I mean, we tell the story in the film of Jack Phillips, and I’ve just remembered over and over and over how many people told Jack he should just bake the cake, because that’s what Jesus would do, and he should just bake the cake, as if God wasn’t able to use Jack’s obedience to make an incredible difference in a lot of lives and our understanding of free speech and our nation—the most important nation in this civilization we’re talking about.

Listen, Os is right. Do what’s right. Make the choice. And we leave the rest up to God.

EICHER: Well, be sure and listen to our Os Guinness interview tomorrow. You’ll find it in your podcast feed for The World and Everything in It.

John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center. He is host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, and we will catch you back here next time.

STONETSTREET: Catch you next time. Thank you, both of you.

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