Our Hope Is in the Cloud (Not The AI One)

Also: I’m enrolling in summer school

A “Mark of the Beast” poster, 1972’s A Thief in the Night

It’s funny how it still creeps up. When Whole Foods introduced palm payments in the Seattle area several years ago, ie, a “scan your palm instead of using a debit card at checkout” feature, a thought arrived in an old corner of my mind. Is this the mark of the beast? It was an absurd thought, of course, but a real extension of the same catastrophizing I did as a kid, when I was told the world would end before I had a family by my End Times Dad.

Some people would take the mark of the beast, and they could only buy groceries if they showed the checkout person their hand with 666 on it, Dad said. Tracing 666 on my forehead is one of my first memories, proclaiming to my mom in the backyard that I was going to hell after doing so.

A lot of folks raised in the evangelical tradition are thinking about the apocalypse these days. AI is such low-hanging End Times fruit.

Some AI futurists predict that in early 2027, automated coding will be complete and accelerate, eventually leading to what could be the apocalypse and annihilation of the human species at the robo-hand of cunning superhuman AIs.

After I heard Kokotajlo talk on a podcast, I read a bit of AI 2027 and woke up in the middle of the night, anxious. That part isn’t new for me, the waking up anxious. But the ruminating had shifted from my usual shortlist of sandwich generation worries, most recently, the logistics and emotions swirling around moving my mom into memory care. Instead, my thoughts found their way to the end of the world yet again, and I was wide awake but instantly emotionally tired.

What if AI is the great bear of the north, the enemy that will rule with the antichrist to desolate? The absurd thought was less of a complete sentence and more like residue from an old narrative I’d heard for decades. Then I got up to pee, and I laughed. It’s still in me: The end of the world was a part of my malformation as an end-times kid. Of course, in anxiety, I’d glom onto generative AI.

I pulled out my phone and left a few voice memos to self before going back to bed. An idea: Is AI my generation’s premillennial dispensationalism? Is AI our impending digital antichrist? Or is it another thing to get worked up about instead of remaining called to the present?

AI and climate change may be a secular apocalypse, but both bring the same heightened sense of fear and grasping by some for a secret knowledge that the end of the world will soon arrive.

I felt a new and strange tenderness toward my dad then. It’s easy to be swept up. His thread was reading Late, Great Planet Earth. Maybe mine is listening to podcasts with futurists.

A gentle call to the present

Dad may have been wrong about seeing the rapture before he dies (although there is still a chance, he would argue to this day in his very ill body). His conviction is a product of his time. One that took him away from the service of others or care for the world again and again.

Elizabeth Oldfield

notes a resonant reason why she is “AI Sober” in a recent Substack. One factor? Laziness.

Ah! How I relate to this! I was on a panel a couple of years ago about church and culture. The last question, which was supposed to be a softball, asked the panelists to predict how AI could show up in church.

I flubbed it, waving off the question with a half-assed joke about being a luddite. I am skeptical of AI because it’s too popular (classic enneagram 4), and it comes too easy, encouraging mental laziness. I suppose I’m also concerned that if I start normalizing the use of ChatGBT, I’ll be less discerning. Will I use it to write books? Nope. Will I use it to save time — to condense outlines, format sources in APA style, and organize marketing contact lists? You better believe it.¹

Beyond the practical and back to the existential: Maybe the worst will happen and AI will blow up the world, ala AI 2027. As a person who believes God exists outside of time, it is not a big leap to believe that the love of God does not end. If we have souls and spirits that transcend any Terminator 2-style nuclear annihilation, then in a strange way, none of what is to come truly matters.

I don’t mean it’s not for anything, a real or theoretical suffering. The freaky desolations that current-day kids would have to live through before are enough to make anyone worry after reading an AI forecast.

But I am saying that Christians must guard ourselves from being swept up in a vision of a terrible future that screws our kids up, screws us up, and scars our souls along the way.

As Leif Enger says, I cheerfully refuse.

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Introducing…Book Publishing Summer School

My friend

Drew Brown

and I have been hard at work on a summer series for folks on a path to book publishing that starts next week. When I had the idea for Orphaned Believers, I was overwhelmed with what to do next. I could hire a book consultant for big $$$, join a membership community that felt pretty sales-y, and get lost in Reddit forums. There were also existential questions about platform and care for my spiritual and emotional health along the way. The process was lonely and overwhelming.

We wanted to lower the cost barrier around book publishing classes and bring in some of our favorite voices in the field to encourage writers at all stages, including:

• June 19 – Digital Hospitality for Writers
  

  Alexis De Weese
  , Senior Marketer, Zondervan Reflective/HarperCollins

• July 10 – Writing and Selling Your First Book
  

  Rev. Joash P. Thomas
  , Author, The Justice of Jesus (Brazos)

• July 24 – Growing a Healthy Platform on Substack
  

  Will Parker Anderson
  , Senior Editor, WaterBrook Multnomah

• August 7 – Finding an Agent and Pitching Book Proposals
  

  Morgan Strehlow
  , The Bindery Literary Agency

• August 21 – Emotionally Healthy Writing
  

  Chuck DeGroat
  , Therapist and Author

Tickets are $60 for the series of 5 workshops—you can attend live at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET or watch later—or $12 a class. Scholarships available. Hope you can join us!

1. I wrote this post, but AI wrote the headline because I thought it would be a fun eye-roll. After a few prompts, ChatGBT said: “Here are some deadpan, ironic headlines crafted for millennial Christians (think: biblically aware, meme-literate, slightly jaded but still hopeful)” What didn’t make the cut:

• AI Is Definitely in Revelation Somewhere

• Jesus Take the Algorithm

• We’ve Read the End—AI Doesn’t Win