Growth in Faith and the Challenge of AI

Dear Friends,  

What, if anything, do these words mean to you? 

                        Form         Deform         Reform         Transform 

Give up? They are stages/periods/phases each of us goes through over our lifetime. 

"From my mother’s womb you knit me together." (Psalm 139.13) My parents, too, formed me, as did my siblings, my neighborhood, my church. I became someone. But along the way, I encountered deforming moments – people who violated me in some way, situations that stole my dignity, my sense of wellbeing. But then, inspired by the power of the Holy Spirit, I became re-formed. Maybe closer to my original pattern, maybe quite different. But I came to recognize myself again. The deformations faded into perspective, and I valued who I am and who I was becoming. Along the way, I became conscious of something at work in me that was beyond me, what the spiritual writer Jan Richardson calls “unaccountable grace that enter in unseen …” Divine grace transforms us into the likeness of God in ways beyond what we could imagine.  

There it is. The work of a lifetime. Welcoming formation, guarding against deformation, honoring re-formation and allowing ourselves to become transformed. 

Not once and for all, but over and over again. 

If that were all we had to deal with, it would be more than enough. But in every age and every time, including ours, unexpected challenges arise. Challenges which are initially seen as benign. In our time and in our world, a clear challenge is Artificial Intelligence. Yes. AI. Certainly a tool for enhancing life but a dangerous one.  

AI lives in our smart phones. It offers us immense control over how we spend our time. With the single-minded control it offers, the theologian Ilia Delio reminds us that AI weans out of us generous thoughts of others, and compassion for them. As AI encroaches on our lives, Ilia Delio says we have no room for the grace of conversion, no room for the many transformations in God that lead us to a deeper humanity. Religion may make us promises of eternal life, but technology claims to fulfill that promise. The love of another is endangered. 

Isn’t this overreaction? Joan, aren’t you anti-progress? No and no. One day, in the not too-distant future, AI will not need humans to advance its course. It will do it itself. Humans will be left behind. Instinctively, we don’t want that, but we have work to do to guard the human heart and spirit to continue being engaged in divine transformation. 

As we live and grow, we are called to put technology into perspective and to continue to hold God consciously close, our first love.

“Who are you God and who am I?” St Francis cried out over and over again. Words worth imprinting on our hearts and repeating over and over again.  

~ Sister Joan Sobala