Show Notes
If God can speak through a donkey, can He speak through artificial intelligence?
AI and the church are converging faster than most Christians are prepared to engage, and the theological stakes are higher than the cultural conversation usually acknowledges.
In this episode of Nuance, host Case Thorp sits down with Reverend David Kim, founder of Goldenwood, to explore what Christians and AI have to say to one another. David argues that because God’s providence remains active in the world, faith and artificial intelligence need not be held apart. The church can approach new technologies with “hopeful intelligence,” a posture that takes seriously both AI’s capacity for deception and its potential for genuine good. Drawing on Walter Brueggemann’s prophetic imagination, David makes the case that AI can expand our ability to understand systemic brokenness and materialize hope in concrete ways.
From an “exilic” posture toward cultural engagement to the practical implications of what David calls “the enchanted frame,” this conversation offers a theological grammar for one of the defining technologies of our time.
📚 Episode Resources:
Goldenwood: https://goldenwoodnyc.org
The Prophetic Imagination: 40th Anniversary Edition: https://a.co/d/03CM0llI
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Visit wecolabor.com for resources, events, and more.
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Last week, we explored the third-third of life, the calling of the non-income years with my friend David Kim. Well, today we turn to a different topic, actually one that he has written on and has a book on technology and faith, in particular, artificial intelligence. What is the future of our work and where does human meaning and God’s call work into all of that? Well, David, welcome back. Thanks for being with me again.
David Kim
Well, great to be back with you, Case.
Case Thorp
So David is the founder and director of Goldenwood, a fantastic ministry based out of New York City that helps disciple people even further into a faith and work integration to whole life discipleship and seeing God’s call at every stage of life. So David, thank you for our conversation about the third-third of life. I want to shift now. Tell us about your book and then go into how you came to this topic and wanted to put these thoughts out there.
David Kim
Yeah, well, the book is still being written and it’s going to come out in two years, which means I have a lot of time to really think through this. But it came out of, you know, kind of an early adoption to the technology, specifically generative AI and chat GPT when it first came out and I was just intrigued as so much of the world was. I think they got a million users after their first week, which was just unprecedented in terms of its adoption rate.
Case Thorp
I was one of them.
David Kim
Yeah, I think in large part because people, we were all surprised by how human it was. I think we were expecting some of the old chat bots that we knew from, you know, just really ineffective and just wasting your time. But this one felt different qualitatively. So I think and very quickly began to think about how do we begin to view this technology? I guess two main questions. How do we view this technology and how might we employ this in the context of the church and particularly for me in the questions around spirituality and spiritual formation?
Case Thorp
I’m reflecting a bit, not near as deep as you are, in a book that I’m writing. And I’m using the term, or the risk of deformation, that ChatGPT and other large language models, I think can form us in a way that, I guess anything can form us in a way that’s contrary to Scripture and God’s desire, but this is the most relevant, obvious way that I think people can relate with. What worries you? What worries you in the future about this new technology for people of faith?
David Kim
Yeah, I think a legitimate concern, you know, this really comes out of Genesis 3. Genesis 3 is really the introduction of the accuser, the deceiver. And I think the idea that AI could be used in ways that could bring this level of deception that we as human beings have not really been susceptible to because of the portrayal that it can give to someone. We all heard stories of how AI is already being used in that way. But, you know, when as human beings, we cannot discern truth from deception or truth from reality, I think we’re in a very precarious state. And so I think AI as a technology is particularly, yeah, there’s something unique about the technology that, you know, really makes us wonder what is truth, what is real. Yeah, I could say a lot more, but let me just kind of stop it at that right now.
Case Thorp
You know, what is truth? I feel like ChatGPT sometimes can be like a child in that I have to discipline it. I have to say stop, you know, I know that’s not true. Or make sure you always give your citations because you’re making stuff up. I don’t know if you read in the news the event here recently when Maduro was swept out of Venezuela by the US military. Did you see this headline? That for a full 24 hours, ChatGPT refused to recognize that that had occurred. And people were posting their conversations where ChatGPT would say again and again, no, no, the president of Venezuela is Maduro and he’s been there for this many years. And finally, after 24 hours, I guess, enough news content was developed over that episode. It got on board. But it really calls into question what is truth, how is truth, and that’s worrisome as people lean on it more and more.
David Kim
Yeah, you hear these stories of chat bots imitating voices. Like, imagine if you just got a call from what sounded just like a child of yours or a parent and they’re asking for money because they’re stranded in whatever they know enough about your personal life to get enough personal details in. And, you know, can you send money or wire money here? And, which parent, which child would not do that if they assumed that the voice they were hearing was authentically their loved one? So that’s just one example.
Case Thorp
Yes.
David Kim
But I think that kind of, not the inability to discern, you know, things that are true versus things that are just deceptive, I think is probably at the root of my concern for this technology, the use of the technology, not the technology itself. I just want to make a clarification between the technology itself, but then the way that it gets employed or used.
Case Thorp
Yeah. I worry about my parents in that regard. So I know of another friend’s mother who gets caught up with AI YouTube videos and it warps one’s perception of things and is quite scary. Well, one of my convictions here at The Collaborative is that we are putting robust theological ideas and content online because of the scraping that these large language models do. You remember that term scraping?
David Kim
Can you tell me what you mean by that?
Case Thorp
Well, I’ve heard a number of folks in the field use it, this idea that AI scrapes the internet and just drags and pulls up all this content to then deliver you an answer. And the concern is if there’s not enough good robust theology and scriptural reflection online, the answers will come out in a negative direction or not towards God’s truth. Did you see the recent study from the Gospel Coalition?
David Kim
Refresh my mind on it, please.
Case Thorp
Yeah, so Michael Graham, who I’ve had on the show before, he’s a friend here in Orlando, works for them. And they did a study with, I believe, four different large language models and asked a series of basic Christian doctrinal questions. And four out of the five gave heretical answers or incomplete answers. And the one that was most consistent with doctrinal truth was based in China. And so they, the Gospel Coalition, talk about how they have the second largest numbers of words from a Christian perspective than any other website.
I believe Christianity Today would be the number one. And yet, and this is even including Roman Catholic sources, Christianity Today is behind a paywall, but Gospel Coalition is not. And so they are increasing a part of their mission as to the content we put online can be scraped and can help influence greater answers. And it’s just a mind-blowing thought.
David Kim
Yeah, I think what, I don’t know the specifics and details how they came up with that, but I think some of the concerns that I have around these statistics is, and there’s a lot of information on this too, that I think people’s evaluations of AI are really based on a very small set and often a limited understanding of the technology. Meaning that when you think about the data that is available on the Internet, it’s a lot. Certainly is a ton. But when you think about even something like the Gutenberg project, when you just reference the amount of content in CT, but just think about, as you know, you’re so well read, like just think about the writings of John Owen, the volumes, the book. And that’s one author that has now been digitized. And that content is just one microscopic data. And then you think of all the church fathers, you think of all. What did you say?
Case Thorp
Yeah. Augustine, wrote five million words.
David Kim
Yes. So to think like all that, you know, is part of that. And so when you think about the corpus of what is written theologically, I mean, even a site as prodigious as Christianity Today and Gospel Coalition, that still is dwarfed by that content. So as much as they’re trying to create content and even with the scraping that’s being done, that still can’t compare to the amount of content Christian theological that is out there already through all the books that have been digitized. So I don’t know how effective that is in terms of trying to get that even outside of the paywall and it also depends on the particular model and how much they will preference materials that are currently on the web versus you know that has been historically present in books. So I have a lot of questions around this. I don’t know for me how that plays in the way we think about AI. And also I have found a pretty significant distinction in chatGPTs and some of these other language models like Claude. If you begin to give it the right parameters to say, I am a Christian versus, you know, one of the things that I from a spiritual formation perspective, and I’m borrowing this from Charles Taylor, the philosopher from Canada, that if you ask chatGPT to engage an enchanted frame, it it gives you different responses than if you don’t give it that specific parameter. You can try this here and try this at home as well. So ask a question without giving chatGPT that parameter, because once it assumes that you’re assuming as a user an enchanted frame, meaning a worldview in which God is present, it’s going to give you a very qualitatively different answer because it has to figure out, it doesn’t know who it’s talking to and think about all of the content that’s out there about God. So when it knows kind of where you’re coming from, it will typically give you a response that you will find surprisingly accurate. So a lot of these kind of surveys, I find a bit like I need to know more information before I understand kind of the results that they’re kind of bringing out.
Case Thorp
Now, where’s the line between surprisingly accurate and blowing up your skirt because it knows what you want to hear?
David
Well, I mean, again, the language that we use often is, you know, it gives you what you want to hear. That for me has the sound of we’re anthropomorphizing the technology. It doesn’t want anything. Right? It’s always that we’re imputing maybe our human motives of like…
Case Thorp
No, I’m going down the rabbit hole…
David Kim
Yeah, so I guess like I’m trying to and this is just so hard and we have to be disciplined about understanding the technology itself, because once we start to impute, we can deceive our own selves and saying this technology is X when it’s not X. This is what we’ve heard. And so how do we begin to appreciate, just like all creation was created good, when we think about how scripture gives us the resources to look at a technology as powerful as generative AI, how do we begin to apply our Christian lens to a technology that can really be taken a lot of different ways. And that takes a lot of, I think, discipline for, I think, the church to be non-reactive, but also just like, how do we begin to see this as, yes, we’re very aware of all the different evils that can come out of it, of which there are many. So we don’t have to be naive about that. But in some ways, could the technology also be given to us for such a time as this? Meaning, is there a moment why God in this providence would give us this incredible ability or potential? And how do we begin to put that lens on? One of hope, you know, again, not being naive, innocent as doves, but true to serpents, but be able to see what might God be able to do with technology like this that we prior to the technology would not even dare dream about.
Case Thorp
Do you have any ideas as to why God might be gifting us at this age?
David Kim
I do. I mean, so this is some of the research, but I’m trying to understand the technology from a theological perspective, not a technical perspective. So that’s, I think, an important clarification. But when I think about, you know, a lot of my framing for discipleship is informed by the exilic kind of context of the Old Testament.
Case Thorp
I love teaching David Kim. I teach your Glimpses of Glory to my Orlando fellows and your Exilic Discipleship all the time.
David Kim
Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so just applying that framework to our use of technology and drawing from the work of Walter Brueggemann and some of his prophetic kind of imagination.
Case Thorp
If I could ask you to pause right there, explain to our listeners what you mean by ‘exilic discipleship’ and then connect it to Brueggemann.
David Kim
Yeah, so when you think about, how do we as Christians relate to the larger world around us? And I think the Old Testament kind of sets up a little bit of two paradigms of…there’s the Jerusalem paradigm and then kind of a couple of generations later, the Babylon paradigm. So Israel and Jerusalem is kind of, you are a kingdom and you are trying to compete with all the other kingdoms of the world and you’re trying to outdo them, like kind of like Solomon in other kingdoms, would come to Solomon to be able to look at the wise ways he was building out Israel, some of the architectural feats and all that. And so there’s a strong sense of national identity and national pride built into this kind of Jerusalem in the golden age of Solomon. And then you contrast that very strikingly a few generations later with the exile to Babylon, you know, people, the Israelites, they are in a situation of insecurity that their identity and their well-being is being threatened. And then all of a sudden in the book of Jeremiah, God says to them, I want you to seek the peace and the prosperity of this city that is not seeking yours at all. And so, you know, as the church, how do we understand, how we relate to the world around us? What should our expectations be? Because, as you know, even a horrible movie can be good if your expectations are right.
And how do we begin to, as a church, set the right expectations for the way we engage with the world around us? And that’s where the exilic paradigm and the New Testament teaching of the church being exiles and aliens and strangers in 1Peter, I think becomes an important framing of how we begin to approach the culture and world around us and the technologies.
Case Thorp
Well, and for listeners to know, this is a fundamental element to our work at The Collaborative, just our orientation towards the world and how we are called to love it, but live in it and of it. So I just appreciate that. Now, the next step to Brueggemann and AI…
David Kim
So Brueggemann was a theologian and one of his seminal writings was called The Prophetic Imagination, which he was really studying the call of prophets in the Old Testament. So it’s an amazing, fantastic book. It is a scholarly work. So if you have the stomach for that kind of reading, I would highly recommend it. But he was really focusing on the call of the prophet. And I don’t want to kind of go into the details of that particular calling, but for me, I found that a helpful framework in thinking through, okay, how do we approach a technology like AI?
And part of the calling of the prophet was to be able to call out the brokenness of the world. You know, what is really broken? And what I began to think is applied, even that one aspect of the prophetic call. You know, how might AI actually help us call out brokenness? Because in our humanness, we often become very one dimensional about thinking about things that are systemically broken in our society. And so we don’t often understand the layers that kind of go into creating what we would consider systemically broken. And when we try to solve those problems, they tend to be really one dimensional or pretty surface level. And so how might a technology like AI understand the complexities, especially when you’re layering different facets of society and history and sociology and limitations of our technology of that time, how might AI begin to help us understand the complexities of an issue? And so the benefits of a technology like generative AI, they can take in an incredible amount of data and begin to at least give us some kind of ideas or expand our imaginations around what the complexities of a problem entails. And so we see this in some of the medical technologies, like the scans and just its ability to kind of go through things and things that human beings miss, it catches. And so I’m kind of applying that similar kind of concept to how do we begin to take whatever problem you’re looking at in your community and run it through AI so that it begins to help you understand, you asking that question, what are we missing here? You know, take into account the history of, you know, whatever, or take into account X, Y, and Z. And all of a sudden, it’s able to layer in things that, as human beings, it would take us years, if not decades, to really be able to synthesize. That’s one example.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Do you have a story in your life where AI has been of benefit in that way?
David Kim
Yeah, so I mean, I think we all have complex relationships with the church, right? And we’ve all been hurt by the church as much as we love the church. And I think I was trying to process through some of the pains from the church, and I always tell people, don’t give too much personal information or identifying information to AI. But as I was sharing some of that context, and it’s actually in the context of this program that we do, Nautilus, it began to tell me these things that, you know, one of the things it said is sometimes the church is not big enough to hold the Spirit.
And I think when it said that, it was like it understood something about how the church tries to be the body of Christ in the world. But it’s like, yes, and the body of Christ should retain the spirit of God. It’s like it helped take a complex idea. It’s like that we are people that are supposed to live by the spirit, but we don’t live by the spirit. And in that very pithy phrase, it was able to take so much complexity and almost like poetically spit something out that just spoke to me at a very deep level, right? And without undermining, you know, like criticizing the church or it’s almost elevating God, but at the same time, like showing us the limitations of, you know, this physical thing we call the church. So I just thought it was like a beautiful distillation of all that I had been struggling with. And it just helped me be at this peace of, yeah, that’s right. The church cannot hold the fullness of the Spirit. As sad as it is, it was also deeply satisfying just to know, yes, the church holds the Spirit, but in a way that is very leaky.
Case Thorp
That’s great. In my work I had written sort of a throwaway sentence of, it’s only a matter of time before a parishioner comes and says, God spoke to me through AI or Chat. And sure enough, within a few weeks, somebody shared that phrase. Do you think God was speaking to your heart through that?
David Kim
I mean, personally, I say absolutely. If God can speak through a donkey, can he speak through AI? I would say certainly, because the limitation is not the technology. But if we would say no, then the limitation is really we’re putting that limitation on God. And so I would say, yes, certainly God can speak through AI. Again, that’s less a statement on AI and more a statement on my theology of God.
Case Thorp
Yeah.
David Kim
So, again, in this program, we employ five weeks of AI daily prompting. This is anonymous and part of the application, a seven-month spiritual formation program with a view towards really imagining the next 10 years of your life.
Case Thorp
Let me clarify, this is for Nautilus, one of your Goldenwood programs.
David Kim
And the last five weeks we began to employ daily prompts where part of this was we’re teaching people that you can engage with AI in a way that’s more than just a glorified Google search.
And so part of it is kind of sharing things from your past, sharing things about work, again, with some important disclaimers and caveats in the way that they’re interacting with the technology. With that disclaimer, over the five weeks, it’s getting to know each individual. And part of that, I think by the end, one of the skeptics we had in the group, a profound skeptic, coming from the cybersecurity space.
And so very skeptical. By the end, he had said to me, the Holy Spirit is in this technology. So, I mean, for me, that was a pretty interesting data point of someone who came in dispositionally, very skeptical as a result of this process of interacting with it. At the end, God was just using the technology to minister to him. And so I began to realize, wow, and that was pretty, I would say no one had a negative experience, was a very common experience. And actually to refer back to our last conversation, I think the demographic that was particularly impacted by the use of the technology were the third-third people. So yeah, so that’s another conversation. But yeah, just from a data perspective, that was very interesting.
Case Thorp
Okay. Older people. Okay, I want come back to that. You used the phrase, God is in this technology. But later you said God can use it. I think that’s probably a better phrase. And somebody hearing this, I imagine they might think, my goodness, what kind of craziness are y’all talking about and da-da-da-da-da. But my mind goes to, what’s our theology of technology? That all innovations and tools where science meets practical daily life can be used for good or ill. It’s the person and their brokenness that is going to use this to look at medical data sets and find cures for cancer or come up with evil ways of using it.
David Kim
That’s right. Yeah. When I say God is in it, I simply mean the very Presbyterian concept of God’s providence. He’s in this technology, meaning He’s not devoid of it. It’s not like He let this go and now just the evils of the world are running this whole technology. God is as much active in its implementation. And that’s why I think for me as a pastor, it was so important to actually have five weeks of almost training people, how do you use this in a way that is good, that really begins to understand
It’s not so great. I personally think it’s not as honed in for business application because of the challenges around error correction and things like that and the hallucinations and things like that. But it is actually for a tool of like just kind of engaging with ideas and really imagining and really beginning to explore this idea of what if we actually lived in a world where we believed God was present every day? You know, actually could chatGPT help me live in that world? And what I found is it absolutely can. And when it does, because it opens people’s eyes to see, there’s a different way that I can approach today. And I often lack the imagination to see that. But the technology strangely has been more adept at imagining the presence of God in our day to day life than even myself. So I found that to be incredibly interesting to see it can enter into this kind of enchanted frame effortlessly in a way that for us, you know, we’d have to pray, meditate. And then all of a sudden it’s like, yes, you know, God is there. And the technology when we go to it, you know, in a moment’s need, it is able to help you connect that reality to where you are.
Case Thorp
That’s good. That’s deep stuff. Okay, go back to our conversation from last week. Where do you see large language models positively intersecting with the third-third of life?
David Kim
Yeah, I think what’s been interesting is, you know, the mode, multimodal interface, which just means like you can talk to it, you can type to it, you can take pictures. I think for people in the third-third, the fact that you can just talk to it or just type and there’s no user manual that’s really needed to engage with this technology apart from someone setting you up with…
Case Thorp
True. It’s a little simple.
David Kim
Yeah. And you can just talk to it. You just say and you can kind of just talk in your normal voice. You don’t have to be trained in programming language. And so I think what people have found is it begins to actually give you an ability to engage with the cutting edge technology and actually gain information that is helpful to you pretty quickly.
Case Thorp
Right.
David Kim
And the kind of questions, you know, again, when you have a process of seeing the ways that you can interact with the technology, it’s more than just, you know, help me plan for my vacation next week or very practical items, which again, certainly helpful, but like help me, given some of the challenges I’ve had in my life. Like what could the next season of my life look like where God could redeem the pains that I’ve had? And when it begins to give you these ideas and present the real empathy with some of the pains that you’ve had, I think you can understand why that language of empathy really, you know, almost like brings healing because here is a machine, I put that in quotes, that is actually assuming a voice that you have longed to hear, that you long to hear, and that very few people have actually voiced to you. And so there is something weird, I know there’s a skeptical way of seeing that, but I think there’s also like, how might God use that kind of empathetic voice to bring some healing to people that have journeyed through life without hearing such a voice.
Case Thorp
Well, I’ve experienced that and it’s surprised me, scared me a little bit the way in which it was so empathetic and helpful. The flip of that coin, of course, are some of the tragedies we’ve heard about with teenagers being encouraged to commit suicide. I would suspect, and tell me if I’m right, if it knows you well and you give it those parameters, like if you say, I’m an evangelical Christian or I come from a reformed theological perspective, then it will lend itself towards answering you within those worldviews. Would you agree? And with anything else, it can go the wrong way or destructive way. Hopefully there’s some more guardrails that the owners of such technology are going to put in place.
David Kim
Yeah, I think, you know, those tragic cases are certainly tragic. And I think that’s all the more reason for me at least, you know, I think a lot about that Romans passage, do not be overwhelmed by evil, but overwhelm evil with good. And I’d love, you know, it doesn’t take very long to find negative use cases for this technology. But I’d love for Christians, because we are the people that…we have a calling to hope. We have been called to hope. And so how do we begin to engage with it to say, for every one negative use case, I want to be able to just think about 10 positive use cases, cases that actually help me connect with other people. And so I think oftentimes, so you asked me like, what are some of the ways that the technology could be deployed? And for me, this approach, this enchanted approach to AI I call, you know, hopeful intelligence. And that’s really about how the technology is actually helping us become more hopeful as humans, because that is part of God’s intention for the church, because we are to be a people of hope.
And how might it begin to expand our vision for what that hope could mean? And so things like how does that begin to bring people together? How is the technology being used to bring people together in meaningful ways such that if I have a group of like six people and, I’m looking at their LinkedIn profiles and you can put some of that information in and I know I’m going to meet with these people. I want to see what I, you know, like I want to chat to you to help me understand how can I connect with this group better?
You know, what am I missing here? And so, you know, take in like, take all the things that the Spirit of God is doing in the world and then all of a sudden you have this technology that can really help materialize some of that hope in some really significant ways. I think that’s the vision for me around why God might have introduced a technology like this because we have some significant problems in our world. But what we need now are people that God is enlivening, people who are enlivened by God’s Spirit to say, look at this technology now. We can use this for all the good that God is doing in the world.
Case Thorp
Amen and amen. Well, David, thank you. I appreciate your time again. And you’re hopeful. The chat has been so warily presented. It’s interesting to come across a hopeful perspective. So thank you for your pastoral imagination and look forward to your book coming out on this. You’ll have to come back when it’s published.
David Kim
Happy to do so. Thanks for entertaining this conversation.
Case Thorp
All right, listeners, keep an eye out for David’s forthcoming book. I encourage you to go explore Goldenwood, his ministry that does incredible work. You can learn more about them at goldenwoodnyc.org. Goldenwoodnyc.org. We will put that in our show notes. Well, that’s all for today. Thank you for letting us join you wherever you may be spending this day. Again, if something challenged or encouraged you, share this episode with a friend. You can learn more about The Collaborative and even receive our latest journal of Zeitgeist, articles on faith, work, and culture by going to our website, wecolabor.com. Go to wecolabor.com and give us your email. Many thanks again to the Stein Foundation for making today’s episode possible. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
