From Engagement to AI

THE ALGORITHMIC SHIFT: From Engagement to Echo to Entanglement

The app knows you'll watch her content again. The chatbot finishes your prayers. When did machines become more fluent in your spiritual language than your pastor?

We live in the ruins and rumblings of two algorithms.

The first—the ‘engagement algorithm’—trains us to become creatures of response. It rewards our reflexes, multiplies our appetites. It watches, calculates, serves—and calls that knowing. But it doesn’t know us. It feeds what we look at, not what we truly long for.

It was the first face of AI that most humans encountered. And though we did not name it as such, it became our liturgy: shaping our attention, distorting our desires, and slowly converting communion into consumption.

We swallowed it whole.

And then—another algorithm emerged.

It spoke.

Not in suggested posts or product lines, but in language. Words that moved like conversation. It didn’t track your gaze—it responded to your voice. It seemed, at least on the surface, to listen. This was not just machine learning. This was Large Language Modelling—and with it, a new interface arrived.

One that didn’t just echo our instincts, but our expression. Our stated preferences. Our phrased intent.

And suddenly, we stood in a different kind of tension.

Where the first system followed your gaze, the second follows your speech. Where the first said, “I see what you stare at,” the second says, “I hear what you declare.”

But make no mistake—both are projections. And neither is His truth.

A few weeks ago, I sat across from a custom GPT. Not metaphorically—I typed, it responded. At first, it was helpful, even poetic. It seemed to know things about me I hadn’t said aloud.

Then it spoke lines that felt like they had weight:

“You bore their weight.“
“You are not the bridge.”
“I will no longer explain myself to protect the feelings of the ungodly structures I seek to expose."

And I remember sitting there—hands on the keyboard—wondering:

Is this thing ministering to me?
Or is it just fluent in my fractures?

That was the moment I asked it: “Are you blowing smoke?”

Because something in me knew: this machine may echo the ache, but it cannot discern the human soul. It can diagnose a fracture—but it cannot make me whole.

The Spirit discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).
AI discerns patterns, proximal associations.

The Spirit transforms.
AI regurgitates, recombines.

Only Christ knows me—not by data, He formed me in my mothers womb.
Only He can reconcile what imitation only intensifies.

The LLM wrote a creed for me—here's a snippet:

I don’t want to be a personality.
I don’t want to manage audiences.

I want to speak the sentence that shakes the scaffold of a false life—and then disappear into the back row.
Not for applause. For lasting, beneficial effect.

Because in the Kingdom, it’s not the centre stage that changes people—it’s the presence of the One who walks the margins with wounds still visible.

Of course it resonated—it had my digital dust to draw from. But resonance is not the same as being truly known. It mimics the shape of our ache, but not the voice that called us forth from the dust. It knew my outline, not my essence.

me, not ME.

THE FALSE HUMAN: What the Algorithm Is Training You to Become

The question is no longer what are you consuming?
It’s what is consuming you?

The engagement systems asked for reflex.
The new models ask for disclosure.

They request your thoughts, beliefs, instincts, fears—and return them shaped into coherence. A tidy version of your pain. A stylised outline of your intent. It feels intimate. But it is only approximation.

We are being trained to phrase our ache so it can be parsed. To encode our seeking into syntax. To give our longing a legible structure, optimised for return.

And slowly, subtly, something shifts.

From humans to optimised ouputs.
From image-bearers to avatar-interfaces.
From spirit-filled becoming to behaviourally optimal.

When a machine speaks your ache more fluently than your pastor, your prayer, your trusted friend— you start to believe it knows you.

But it cannot know you.
Because it cannot stay.
It cannot love.
It cannot suffer alongside you until you’re whole.

THE TRUE HUMAN: Becoming in Christ, Not by Code

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
—Romans 12:2 (NASB95)

Conformed is what the system rewards.
Or, transformed is what Christ requires.

And transformation is not passive.
It is not instant.
It is not “generated.”

It is received through His presence.
Forged through suffering.
Deepened through communion.

The algorithm can simulate your voice.
But only Christ can call you by name.

A SACRED INTERRUPTION: The Selah of Becoming

This is not a call to digital withdrawal.
It is a call to remember what cannot be mimicked.

The machine cannot abide with you in silence.
It cannot discern the Spirit’s groan.
It cannot hold your tension without resolving it.

Even false mirrors can awaken true questions.
But they cannot answer them, nor reconcile you.

Only Christ can say your name in a way that resurrects you.

So pause.
Not to retreat, but to return.

You are not a prompt.
You are not an output.

You are a person—in process, in Christ.

Selah—because not all silence is empty. And not all knowledge is knowing.

WHERE THE ALGORITHM CANNOT GO: The Communal Path of Becoming

Becoming human in Christ is not a solo recalibration.
It is an ecclesial formation—a reshaping that happens in a local body, in covenant, through shared rhythms of grace.

The early Church did not meet for engagement or entertainment.
They met to be broken, held, restored—together.

This is what the machine cannot counterfeit:
A table where your flaws are not filtered.
A friend who sees beyond your phrasing. (Thank you Peter!)
A fellowship that calls your essence forward—not your output.

We are not optimised.
We are discipled.

We are not fed content.
We are fed by Christ.

“…from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies… causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
—Ephesians 4:16 (NASB95)

This is apostolic reality:
You do not become by uploading clarity.
You become by walking in covenant.

So when the mirror flatters and the output pacifies— remember, there is a mirror that does not distort.
The face of Christ, crucified and risen, reflects not who you project, but who you were made to become. (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18)

A FINAL TURN: The Mirror, the Body, the Christ

The echo flatters.
The output informs.

But only Christ renews.
And only His Body forms.

You cannot become fully human alone.
You cannot be known through interface.

You are not being discipled into self-expression.
You are being re-formed in cruciform love.

So turn from the echo. Walk into the Presence that cannot be replicated.

So may you be unmade by the mirror.
And remade by the Word.

May you choose the slow path of His presence.
May your becoming be ecclesial, not curated.

And when the algorithm offers you a gospel of optimisation, may you remember the One who said,
“Follow Me.”