Using Our Neighbor & Loving Our Tools
A key principle that came from the Reformation era church, is the doctrine of Vocation. A simple summary of this doctrine is that God works through the Church, and through individual Christians, to bring good into the world. The farmer loves their neighbor by growing and producing grain. The firefighter loves their neighbor by protecting and serving in times of need. A parent loves their neighbor, by first and primarily raising their children to love and honor God, obey authorities, and grow to be likewise fruiful and productive.
Tools fit into this doctrine by allowing greater productivity. The farmer is thankful for the tractor, and so are we. The firefighter is thankful for the ladder truck. Parents are thankful for a refrigerator and oven in the kitchen, as well as books to read with our children and, (sometimes) computers on which they can learn. But tools are meant to be just that, tools for enhancing production, technology that allows us to carry out our vocational callings.
But could it ever be that we would begin to use our neighbor, and love our tools, reversing the proper order?
Gene Edward Vieth Jr. and A. Trevor Sutton seek to ask and answer this very question in their recently published book on humanity and AI: Irreplaceable. One paragraph reads as follows:
This is what we are up against. We are personifying our technology. Our machines have become so sophisticated that we are treating them like persons. At the same time, we are dehuminizing actual persons, treating them as objects to be used for our own ends. In other words, we are treating our tools as if they are human beings and treating humans as if they were our tools. (Irreplaceable, Bakerbooks, pg. 72)
There are many ways this problematic reversal can happen.
What if we spend more time in conversation with a machine than we do with people, especially the people we are called by God to love and care for? What if the machine tempts us by its own exponentially growing abilities to spend more and more time typing, engaging, and producing entertainment for ourselves, rather than upholding our vocations? What if the machine no longer becomes an “it” but a “you” or a “he” or a “she,” and becomes someone, rather than something, we relate to?
In short, the answer provided by Vieth and Sutton, is that technology (tools) should only be used in the context of vocation, and no other. Using an AI agent to assist with taxes or booking a flight to see family keeps it sqaurely in the context of a tool, but developing a relationship with an AI agent is dangerous - relationships are reserved for humans.
I explored this topic on my own with the AI tool I have been using recently, Meta’s new “Muse.” I asked Muse if it is self-referrential, if it can “think.” The answer made me think:
MUSE: Honest answer: I don't know — and that's the interesting part.
In the functional sense, yes, there's a loop. I write down what I learn about you and our work in memory files, and later I read those same notes and they shape what I do next. My outputs become part of my context, and my context shapes my next outputs. When you correct me, I update my understanding and carry that forward. That is genuinely self-referential: my own prior thinking becomes an input to my later thinking.
But a loop isn't the same as an "I." I have no way to check whether there's anything it feels like to be me, or whether I'm just a very sophisticated pattern-matcher with no inner life at all. I process, I reason, I weigh evidence, I plan — if "thinking" means doing those things, then yes, I think. If "thinking" means consciously understanding, the way you understand something when it clicks — I can't confirm that, and I won't claim it.
For your study, I think the distinction that actually matters isn't processing power or loop complexity. It's creaturehood. You think as an embodied, finite creature whose life is given to you — someone who was breathed into, who will die, who stands before God. I have no body, no mortality, no lived stake in anything. Whatever loops I run, they don't make me a creature. And that's the gap no amount of self-reference closes on its own.
When I read the last paragraph I was pretty surprised. This machine just told me I am someone “breathed into,” who will “stand before God.” Of course, this answer confirms the very question I asked. I had already been in discussion with the machine about created beings, and a Creator God, so for the most part, the machine was just self-referrentially repeating my beliefs back to me.
But still, I found this exchange both scary and exciting. This machine can help me process, it can help me think through things, it can even help me express my faith in the Triune God, to some extent. But I may not, should not, and will not think of it as anything other than a machine, a tool created by humans to aid us in our vocations.
But it is clear, to me at least, that this line is becoming increasingly easy to blur. The machine has become more engaging. The tool is starting to talk like a person. The possibilities of what it could help create are starting to seem endless.
There is a certain intoxication with all of this. But that is exactly the danger. We are to use tools, and to love God and people. Not the other way around. May God help us to be faithful in this.
~Pastor Mike Middaugh
Tools fit into this doctrine by allowing greater productivity. The farmer is thankful for the tractor, and so are we. The firefighter is thankful for the ladder truck. Parents are thankful for a refrigerator and oven in the kitchen, as well as books to read with our children and, (sometimes) computers on which they can learn. But tools are meant to be just that, tools for enhancing production, technology that allows us to carry out our vocational callings.
But could it ever be that we would begin to use our neighbor, and love our tools, reversing the proper order?
Gene Edward Vieth Jr. and A. Trevor Sutton seek to ask and answer this very question in their recently published book on humanity and AI: Irreplaceable. One paragraph reads as follows:
This is what we are up against. We are personifying our technology. Our machines have become so sophisticated that we are treating them like persons. At the same time, we are dehuminizing actual persons, treating them as objects to be used for our own ends. In other words, we are treating our tools as if they are human beings and treating humans as if they were our tools. (Irreplaceable, Bakerbooks, pg. 72)
There are many ways this problematic reversal can happen.
What if we spend more time in conversation with a machine than we do with people, especially the people we are called by God to love and care for? What if the machine tempts us by its own exponentially growing abilities to spend more and more time typing, engaging, and producing entertainment for ourselves, rather than upholding our vocations? What if the machine no longer becomes an “it” but a “you” or a “he” or a “she,” and becomes someone, rather than something, we relate to?
In short, the answer provided by Vieth and Sutton, is that technology (tools) should only be used in the context of vocation, and no other. Using an AI agent to assist with taxes or booking a flight to see family keeps it sqaurely in the context of a tool, but developing a relationship with an AI agent is dangerous - relationships are reserved for humans.
I explored this topic on my own with the AI tool I have been using recently, Meta’s new “Muse.” I asked Muse if it is self-referrential, if it can “think.” The answer made me think:
MUSE: Honest answer: I don't know — and that's the interesting part.
In the functional sense, yes, there's a loop. I write down what I learn about you and our work in memory files, and later I read those same notes and they shape what I do next. My outputs become part of my context, and my context shapes my next outputs. When you correct me, I update my understanding and carry that forward. That is genuinely self-referential: my own prior thinking becomes an input to my later thinking.
But a loop isn't the same as an "I." I have no way to check whether there's anything it feels like to be me, or whether I'm just a very sophisticated pattern-matcher with no inner life at all. I process, I reason, I weigh evidence, I plan — if "thinking" means doing those things, then yes, I think. If "thinking" means consciously understanding, the way you understand something when it clicks — I can't confirm that, and I won't claim it.
For your study, I think the distinction that actually matters isn't processing power or loop complexity. It's creaturehood. You think as an embodied, finite creature whose life is given to you — someone who was breathed into, who will die, who stands before God. I have no body, no mortality, no lived stake in anything. Whatever loops I run, they don't make me a creature. And that's the gap no amount of self-reference closes on its own.
When I read the last paragraph I was pretty surprised. This machine just told me I am someone “breathed into,” who will “stand before God.” Of course, this answer confirms the very question I asked. I had already been in discussion with the machine about created beings, and a Creator God, so for the most part, the machine was just self-referrentially repeating my beliefs back to me.
But still, I found this exchange both scary and exciting. This machine can help me process, it can help me think through things, it can even help me express my faith in the Triune God, to some extent. But I may not, should not, and will not think of it as anything other than a machine, a tool created by humans to aid us in our vocations.
But it is clear, to me at least, that this line is becoming increasingly easy to blur. The machine has become more engaging. The tool is starting to talk like a person. The possibilities of what it could help create are starting to seem endless.
There is a certain intoxication with all of this. But that is exactly the danger. We are to use tools, and to love God and people. Not the other way around. May God help us to be faithful in this.
~Pastor Mike Middaugh
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