The fact that we need to pose the question “why is it wrong to marry a chatbot?” tells us our culture does not possess the kind of robust anthropology needed to withstand the coming AI deluge into our lives. If we don’t know what a human is, or what a human is for, we won’t see any problem with giving in to the Machine. In order to ensure that we do not become something less (or greater, apparently) than human, we must first understand what it is we are fighting for. That territory has always been the church’s domain to cover: celebrating the imago dei present in every human life, endowed with purpose by their Creator and created to worship Him with all they have.
If the church has any hope to remain faithful and relevant in the modern world, she will have to reckon with the crisis of meaning many are experiencing as a side effect of allowing the Machine to exercise total control over their lives. In a world that increasingly believes in hyper-efficiency at all costs, a world that will continue to develop at breakneck speed in the coming years, we cannot resort to being a Jesus-flavored version of the Machine and expect our friends to find that notion intriguing. You cannot win the world by mimicking the world. We need something more radical to counter what the Machine offers: a vision of life that is grounded in reality, saturated with hope, and fiercely tethered to the world God made.