AI Jesus Can't Replace Flesh-and-Blood Faith Communities

Commentary

by

A United Methodist Reporter Special

Science fiction took hold of me in my early teens. Like so many impressionable youths living out our conflicted, confused emotions, I found science fiction gave me a safe way to encounter unconventional speculations and fantastic, even dangerous, visions.

Today, many science fiction devices from the 1960s and '70s – think cell phones that look and work like "Star Trek" communicators – have become fact. Some of these have been beneficial, some annoyingly mediocre, and some downright scary. I refer, of course, to the two-month "art experiment" of a Swiss church hosting a Jesus mural created with artificial intelligence.

Each headline I see about AI Jesus ignites a specific memory. "Star Wars" creator George Lucas' project while still a USC film student depicted his lead character THX 1138 seeking spiritual guidance from a digital figure of Jesus, who responds with platitudes. That was AI Jesus nearly 50 years ago, and to date, it hasn't changed all that much.

I rebel, utterly and completely, at the specter of AI Jesus.

It's not just the creeping sensation of ontological danger from artificial intelligence about what it means to be human. It's rejection of the idea that the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity can be domesticated into a punchbowl of pixels with algorithmic answers.

I can't prove the reality of Jesus, the Christ, for all people. As the late Frederick Buechner wrote, I can't prove a thing about Christ. What I do know without equivocation is that Jesus is real for me and for millions of other Christians because of direct personal encounter through God's Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Sustainer.

John Wesley's encounter with Christ – when his heart was "strangely warmed" – gave birth to a spiritual renewal movement that became known as Methodism. Sometimes we Wesleyan descendants forget that the "methods" we cherish from our founder aren't the end, but merely the means, guideposts on our journey toward union with God.

Author Anne Lamott's encounter with Jesus saved her from death by alcoholism. She was fortunate to perceive a manifestation of Jesus, squatting by her bedside, in the depths of her addiction. To hear Anne tell it, Jesus didn't say anything, just sat beside her sharing in her misery. But he was relentless, she said. He kept coming back. Those encounters provided an anchor for her derelict soul and a ladder on which to climb her way out of certain death. She has remained a committed Christian ever since.

For me and for many, Christ comes to us today in the form of human relationships in which each party cares first and foremost for the other person or persons. Good congregations are like that. Rather than seeking whatever power one might get, true disciples care more about the spiritual, physical and yes, financial health of the faith community.

True love does that for a person. And that's the most important thing about AI Jesus – there's no genuine love in an encounter with a digitally animated poster-personage. That makes AI Jesus not wondrous, but blasphemous, for it seeks to supplant Jesus with a human-made idol.

One of the most horrific science fiction stories I ever read was the late Harlan Ellison's short story, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." Ellison, who died some years ago at age 84, was a science fiction wunderkind when he wrote the tale. The plot of the tale is simple: a computer mind has taken over humanity how it lives, eradicating revolution, by subtracting whatever voluntary action a body can make. The title is also the last, terrifying line of the story. Wikipedia cites the story as "critically acclaimed for its exploration of the potential perils of artificial intelligence and the human condition."

AI Jesus represents the first step in those potential perils. Delegating our spiritual health to machines means we've taken a deadly detour on the road back to God.

The solution to this menace, from my perspective, comes in committing ourselves to more and stronger relationships with God and our sibling humans. Anytime we acknowledge one another's full humanity, rather than turning ourselves into the objects of mechanistic trivialities, we manifest God's Holy Spirit. It is the "I-Thou" mutual relationship described by philosopher Martin Buber, but it goes beyond the dyad to "We."

It is "We" who connect with the spirituality that transcends our material existence. "We" creates community. "We" lifts us from our self-centeredness into the communal life that Africans conceive as "ubuntu" – I "succeed" only when and because you "succeed."

This is what an encounter with AI Jesus can't now and never will provide, despite more recent science fiction such as the film "Her," when the protagonist falls in love with a cyber consciousness. Only real flesh-and-blood sentient creatures, formed by God in creation, can create real relationships. Otherwise, we deny our God-given lives with their mysterious self-awareness.

AI Jesus is the contemporary form of temple prostitution, when we're using an "object," such as a woman's body, to importune the holy for guidance and blessing. We think such acts are holy when in reality they profane the sanctity of life.

This Advent, we still have mouths to proclaim the coming of someone whose life and teachings draw us onto a path toward God. We need not scream (although in some cases it might be necessary to get past the noise of contemporary life). We can speak, write, converse, discuss and even whisper the coming of the Christ Child in the face of American corruption.

What matters is that we tell the tale of the true Jesus, whose Light enlightens the world. No flickering digital image can match him. Nor should we allow it.