Technology has a disproportionate influence on the world. We do not view it as a sector or an industry as much as a societal operating system influencing all other cultural arenas.
Modern technology systems, particularly artificial intelligence, are radically reshaping individuals and realigning tribes. They are restructuring communities and the world at an unprecedented level and pace.
Part of the reason is how technology moves. Technology often moves from novelty, to utility, to environment, to formation. First we marvel at it: What can this do? Then
we use it: What can this do for me? Eventually it becomes so woven into everyday life that we barely notice it as technology at all. But what fades from our attention does not fade from influence. The technologies we live within shape our habits, relationships, desires, and expectations—forming both the world around us and who we are becoming.
One of these great restructurings is the ease with which anyone can now create powerful products, systems, and media.
In the same way the smartphone democratized publishing and social media democratized influence, artificial intelligence is now democratizing the ability to build digital products and systems.
Now, anyone can create software, generate media, automate decisions, or shape culture.
The rapid global adoption of AI has meant that the days of the engineer holding great power and control by merit of their unique ability to create the tools of society are gone. Creatives can now build the tools they imagine, just as a pastor with no formal engineering background can build genuinely useful digital tools. They are becoming builders—people capable of creating tools and systems that shape the world.
What comes with this newfound power is newfound responsibility. A responsibility to create faithfully. To build redemptively. Then take responsibility for the very tools you share with the world.
For some, this change means a loss of a craft. For others, this means the gain of an art form. While some are naturally leaning in, others are retreating and questioning.
May we simply say this: Herein lies an enormous opportunity for us as redemptive builders. We have an opportunity to present a different way in which we build and work in this new era. We pray you lean in and go the way of Jesus.
Nearly a century ago, British scientist and futurist J. D. Bernal imagined a technological future in which humanity would overcome what the ancient Christian tradition called the three enemies of the soul: “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” His vision helped set a course for modern technological thought: the conquest of nature, the transcendence of the body, and the remaking of humanity through technology. We see echoes of that vision today in transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and the persistent belief that our greatest limits are technical problems waiting to be solved.
The biblical tradition tells a different story. The world, the flesh, and the devil are not limits technology can conquer. They are spiritual enemies that distort our worship, desires, habits, and hopes. Technology may amplify our power, but it cannot redeem the human heart.
To build redemptively, we must first see clearly. We must look beneath the surface of our technological practices, products, and systems and discern the spiritual currents shaping this disproportionately influential human activity.
In the AI age, these ancient enemies are taking new technological forms we call the Magic Machine Myth, the Limitless Self, and the Killer App Trap.
The Magic Machine Myth
Futurist Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
The Magic Machine Myth is the belief that advanced technologies—and the people who create them—possess a god-like power to transform us. The machine or system feels invincible, intimate, and alive. We begin to treat it as more than a created thing. We treat it like a god. We treat its creators like magicians—if the magic they produce is what we want. Slowly, often unconsciously, our awe shifts from the rightful Ruler, the Maker, to the magical machine or even its creator.
At its core, the Magic Machine Myth is what happens when technological wonder turns into worship.
The greatest danger is not that our machines become too powerful, it is that they become too easy to worship. We begin to believe the machine is wise, the maker is magical, or even worse, that the machine can love us back.
We see this whenever we build AI systems that act like companions, prophets, priests, and long-time friends. This shows up in product choices: When we design for dependence instead of agency, simulate intimacy instead of strengthening real relationships, or let the product become the voice users trust most.
Most builders have good intentions: how can I help people, solve real problems, or build useful tools? They are not trying to replace God. But products form people. Every design choice trains users toward some kind of trust, dependence, attention, and love. That is why redemptive builders must ask not only, “Does this work?” but also “What kind of worship does this form?”
This is the ancient danger of the golden calf. Israel did not just make an object. They made an object, called it god, credited it with producing deliverance, bowed down to it, and sacrificed to it. The tragedy was not that the calf became powerful. The tragedy was that the people became deceived. The calf did not need to become divine for Israel to become idolatrous.
This does not mean technology is evil. Tools, machines, and systems are created by image-bearer and can be rejected, received, or reimagined. The golden calf reminds us that idolatry rarely begins with something obviously wicked. It often begins with something made, useful, visible, and impressive becoming ultimate in the human heart. This is how evil often works: not by making bad things look bad, but by making good things look like a god.
This is why Scripture takes deception so seriously. The devil does not need to make a created thing evil to use it. He only needs to make it look like God. He is the father of lies. He distorts what is good by making it appear ultimate. In an age where machines can simulate intelligence, intimacy, creativity, authority, and love, we must wake up spiritually and reject the lies we’ve been believing.
A redemptive builder should ask: Are we building a tool that serves people before God, or a presence that slowly replaces Him?
The holy counterpunch is rightful worship. We refuse to worship the machine or the magician. We return our wonder to the Maker of the heavens and the earth.
The Limitless Self
The Limitless Self is the belief that our tools and technological power can help us escape the limits of being human.
We see, feel, and experience the magical powers of technology and it changes us. We begin to ask, “What could this make me? What could this get me?” We may not set out to be worshiped, but the technological imagination quietly trains us to desire a kind of god-like agency: to astonish, control, transcend, and be needed. We want to become the inventors of the unexplainable. We want control. We want power. We want to become like God.
By doing so, we produce a false sense of ourselves and misplace our desire.
Tech culture screams at us to upgrade, upsell, optimize, scale, and push beyond every limit. New versions, faster processors, more features, infinite storage—there’s always “more” to achieve. The race for AI dominance is dizzying, to say the least.
The ultimate promise of AI is that it will solve or overcome our limits. It promises to make us faster thinkers, more intelligent, less dependent on human labor, and increasingly capable of comprehending reality itself.
The promise is that with every upgrade, we become better, stronger, faster, more efficient, and more capable.
The illusion is that limits are failures to be erased.
This mindset seeps beyond devices into how we live: work longer hours, consume more content, take on more projects, expect more output, and never say “no.” Our identities become wrapped in growth and expansion, convinced that limits are to be broken, boundaries are barriers, and rest is wasted time.
On one hand, the pursuit of innovation is grounded in a limitless posture. “We can do anything” has brought us great feats as a civilization. It takes courage to invent and try things unimagined by yourself or humanity. There is something beautiful about that.
Yet, there is a naivety and arrogance for one to believe that with enough power, might, wealth, or smarts, one can do anything. That “nothing will stop us” posture is horribly sinful.
We crave the power, control, transcendence, and gratification technology promises. Disordered desire amplified by technological power. It is the refusal of creaturely limits. Sin hides beneath good things and seeks to rule the heart.
The Magic Machine Myth says, “This machine is almost divine.” The Limitless Self says, “Then maybe I can become divine too.”
The killer App Trap
The Killer App Trap is the belief that technology will solve our deepest problems. The belief that we as humans can engineer our way to salvation.
If people are dying, technology can solve that. Is the political system broken? New tech will take care of that. Society is increasingly lonely, depressed, and sad? There’s an app for that.
It is the good news Silicon Valley evangelizes. The Gospel of Silicon Valley.
For builders and creators, the Killer App Trap invites us to put our faith in the products and systems we build. The danger is the deceptive ways that belief moves our hearts away from faith in Jesus Christ. When we fall into the trap, our hearts, our work, and our end products look less and less like Jesus.
Another term for this is “solutionism.” The Australian pastor Mark Sayers, summarizing journalist Evgeny Morozov, says that solutionism is “the largely arrogant belief that we have the resources and smarts to, under our own steam, solve any problem that confronts us. All we need to do is discover the Killer App, and the discomfort we feel, the obstacles we face, will disappear.... Solutionism is ultimately a belief in novelty, and a lack of patience and faith.”
Put another way, we put our faith in ourselves and our creations over faith in God as Savior and Creator.
By doing so, we produce a false salvation and misplaced trust.
The Killer App Trap tempts us to accept a posture to solve first, solve quickly, solve selfishly, and solve without account for the repercussions. Because solutionism is a deeply held belief shaping the everyday decisions of the technology industry, for us to live faithfully within it requires a countercultural way.
Artificial Intelligence is on a pathway to become the Ultimate Killer App Trap. We blindly believe that AI will end scarcity, injustice, and ignorance once and for all. It will end our need to toil and work. It will usher in the return of Christ. Essentially, AI becomes our functional savior, absorbing humanity’s misplaced hope. The Ultimate Killer App Trap finds its final form in the belief that if only we build the right AI, humanity will be saved.
The Killer App Trap produces false salvation and misplaced trust.
The Three Enemies Together
These three enemies rarely work alone. The devil deceives our wonder, the flesh distorts our desires, and the world normalizes our misplaced trust. In the AI age, this pattern becomes especially powerful. Our machines begin to feel magical. Our hearts begin to crave limitlessness. Soon an entire culture begins to believe that if we build the right tool or technological system, humanity will be saved.
Put another way, the Magic Machine Myth deceives our wonder, the Limitless Self distorts our desires, and the Killer App Trap normalizes a false gospel of technological salvation.
We are convinced there is a countercultural way to think, live, and build in this tension.
A redemptive way.
Reflect and Discuss
Choose one product, platform, industry trend, or personal practice and consider how the Magic Machine Myth, the Limitless Self, and the Killer App Trap may be shaping it.
- Where has technological wonder begun to resemble worship?
- What does this invite people to trust, desire, or hope for?
- Where are tools and technological systems being asked to solve what is ultimately a spiritual or human problem?
- Which of the three enemies is most visible, and how might the others be reinforcing it?
.svg)
.svg){kind=small}
