We are all neck deep in AI right now. should we be afraid of it, we should be discerning. we should go into this with eyes wide open. Should we be concerned? not to be dystopian, but I, I think so. I think we should be concerned, but we should as Christians be mindful and discerning, as we should with everything. it is here, it's powerful. it's growing exponentially, and, beyond exponentially.

Can artificial intelligence deepen your faith or quietly replace it? episode, I'm joined by Dr. Drew Dickens, a theologian and expert on AI's impact on spirituality with a doctorate in theological anthropology and groundbreaking research on how technology shapes our connection with God. Drew offers a powerful perspective on the risks, rewards, and realities of AI for faith-driven leaders. If you're curious or even a little cautious about where faith and tech collide, this is a conversation you don't want to miss. Dr. Drew Dickens, welcome to Seek, go Create.

Incredible opportunity and thank you for the privilege, Tim. It's um, really, we've already had a fun conversation

I

I'm looking forward to it continuing.

I'm concerned the good stuff might be off recording, but we will, do the best we can. Hey, first

Absolutely.

First question. It's like a deep question. Would

Okay. rather answer what do you do or who are you? Pick, pick it and start answering whichever one you want to answer. Who are you?

Okay, go.

Who are you? I am a, follower of Christ cleverly disguised as a husband of, 43 years. A, father of two amazing men, and a daughter-in-law and two. Amazing. What my highest honor, is I'm a grandfather of two grandsons, so that's the badge I hold closest to me. So cleverly disguised, but a follower of Christ.

Yeah. I believe that you might agree with me that the best thing described, eh, we don't wanna take away from the follower of Christ, but being a grandparent

Oh my gosh.

is the best thing ever. Now I've got two granddaughters,

Hmm.

I don't, I don't know if we need to connect down the road or stay away from each other, but, but

That, that must milk you. I know what I spend, but that must milk you dry. yeah. I

it is phenomenal.

That's why you're homeless.

Well, yes. I mean, 'cause we travel towards them. I think you shared with me you're three minutes away from yours,

Yeah.

be phenomenal. You know, we did FaceTime with ours. they're in Colorado Springs. We're in Atlanta right now. But joke with people, I used to say, and I don't, I don't know that I've got real good scripture for this or theology or anything like that. I used to say that parenting was, when you learned how God looked at us,

Hmm.

Vince and some people, this could be dependent on how they look at the nature of God.

Hmm.

that grandparenting is the real deal

Yeah.

you've got the unconditional they can do no wrong love for them,

Yeah,

and you don't really have to raise 'em. they still have to go get raised and all on their own. Is that, is that theologically sound? Do I need to, do I need to repent of that?

it's in third Hezekiah two eight, uh, is scriptural basis for that. I mean, I love that analogy 'cause we are the embodiment of grace as grandparents. Right.

I,

And yes, Very, very much so. I've heard someone say it's the only thing in life that's not overrated. it has been fantastic. our younger son is about to get married in, three weeks and, we're hoping they get pregnant right away but they're out of town. we are all in on this. it's been a dream. We love that.

We've either endeared ourselves to some of the audience or chased a few away.

Or just everybody, just like you can see,

Yeah, I've gotta ask something right out of the gate here, since I've found out who you are and the most important things, everything else becomes secondary to that grandparenting thing, theological anthropology. Is that a real thing or are we making stuff up here?

that's a real icebreaker at, parties. Right?

you

if you wanna,

You are.

if you wanna shut down a conversation really quick, people are like, oh, so nice to meet you. it's not as bad as it sounds. So, uh, theological theos, the study of God, anthropology, anthro the study of humans or man. theological anthropology is a study of, Our encounter with God. So our relationship, that's in a tight nutshell, theological anthropology is a study of, how we engage with the divine.

Hmm. Have you, is that something you did early in life with that study, or is it something later or, this is probably my way of sort of diving into your journey a little bit before we into Whispers of the Spirit. Great book that you've got out right now, and also your

Mm.

on ai. we'll get to the exciting AI stuff here in just a second. But tell me, is this a later in life journey for you, or have you always been a theological anthropologist?

Well, back in seventh grade, we won't do that story again, but, I came to Christ, I became aware of Christ, in God's calling, me to him, in eighth grade and bit hard and early and ran with that. And I, was surrounded early by some amazing teachers and people that discipled me well and loved and cared for me, through some really difficult for all of us if you're an adolescent, and really navigated through some of those. So, I was walking the path fairly early and never really strayed, of course, but, never really had one of those moments where I, walked away from God. And, he and I have had, definitely have some, some con conversations after, college, went into business, went into advertising, went into vocational ministry about 30 years ago. my joke was, I would hire people that went to seminary, but, I didn't go I was running an organization for the Billy Graham team actually. And, and so, being in Dallas, knew everybody over at Dallas, theological Seminary. And was talking to them one day and they said, oh my gosh, you should really do this. And, I went to seminary relatively late. I've always been a bit of a tech nerd, so a lot of my writing early on in seminary was the crossroads of theology and technology. Current, but even ancient technology and theology, how we've all through scripture, in fact, leverage various forms of technology, whether it's the printing press or back further, even the, arc of the covenant or, casting of lots and things like that. And so I wrote extensively on theology and technology, getting my doctorate, you have to kind of narrow down that. And at the time, decided to focus in on, ai, which was nuts because it didn't exist. It had open AI hadn't even launched yet. But early on, about five years ago now, I started working on, AI specifically, and its effects on spirituality. Couldn't get a return phone call. Um, and now I'm on podcasts all the time. So it's, the timing has been amazing. I need to send a thank you note to Sam Altman. But, yeah, it's been a, it's been a fun ride.

Yeah, I will say, I mean, as I did my research, there's so many other cool things about you. However, that AI and spirituality topic was the hook that drew

Sure.

I spend a few hours a day plus

Mm-hmm.

with ai, different technologies, doing different things, and, you know, we'll get into the spiritual aspect of it. But, so how was, how was, um, seminary and, and I wanna preface it by saying, first of all, we're not gonna throw anybody or anything under the bus. However, I went to a bible school, which is not seminary, by the way. I, I, I do know there's a difference between those. And I went a little bit later in life. My wife and I were probably 50 in our early fifties.

Mm-hmm.

And I tell people it was, for me, it was a dickens tale. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times because it was, you know, I loved being around some of the people that were kind of going after just learning more about Jesus. But Christians are some of the toughest people to be around. And I'm wondering in seminary if it's like Christian squared or you know, super Christians and, I'm sure there's a lot of love and things like that, but I'm sure there's a lot of jockeying for position and people that are ambitious. What's, what's that like? I, I prefaced it with a lot of things to, to hook you into saying some things. But if it was awesome, say it was awesome.

It gave me a lot of things to get me in trouble. Right. Okay. There you go. Just chumming the water. I don't know that it's that much different than Bible, college. I mean, I went to Baylor University, so, I, I'm familiar with the, the, the archetype that you're referring to. it, it depends. One of the things I, I still find myself doing is, is cautioning people, that want to go to, Bible college or I guess more specifically seminary, which is more, I guess, singular in focus. You're not having to take chemistry, but, you know, or math or whatever. But, I, I caution them to answer the question of why, why, why do you wanna, why do you wanna do this? And, because it's. It's not a Bible study. It's a really expensive Bible study. there are better Bible studies for free, so be careful about that. I've got nothing but glowing, reviews for DTS, but some of the early, early professors I had, the focus wasn't so much to teach me theology, but teach me how to think about theology. the very first class I had was, St 1 0 1, systematic Theology 1 0 1 with Dr. Glenn Kreider. the very first assignment I had was to write a personal definition of theology. it went on from there to write a definition of infallibility and inspiration and things like that. And so it really taught me how to think like a theologian, which involves blowing a lot of things up, you know, is just word after word, just the exegetical study of why, why, why cross-referencing, why, why, why. And, really, really enjoy that. quick story that one of the papers I had to write for him was, a review of a book of a pastor, a professor, that had been let go from DTS because of his theological views. And I won't mention who. And so I had to read the book and review it, and I'm thinking, what do I do with this? 'cause obviously I can't agree with the book 'cause, you know, he was let go. So but I'm reading the book going, man, he's making some really good points. I don't know what to do with this. And so I meet with a professor and I'm like, I just don't know what you want me to do with this because, and I told him why. And he's like, ah, that's so disappointing, drew, because I was really hoping this startup guy who doesn't have a master's degree yet could help me, who has like five PhDs could help me decide on my view on the, he said, drew, I know where I am on this topic. You're not gonna convince me one way or the other, but I want you to try, I want you to show me that you know how to process this. So that really to me is seminary along the way, you bump into a lot of people who are just trying to get some letters after their name so they can get a better job, keep a job, get a better one. Sure all that's in place, but, to me, I always start with why do you wanna go to seminary? And then, what is it you wanna get out of it and be prepared to have your world flipped upside down because a really good professor's gonna do that. And, just to make you stop and go. But I thought I always, you know, whatever. So, anyway, that's my experience

What's interesting and

and a magnitude, when you get your doctorate,

Oh

it just.

magnified even more so. So one of the things that we noticed after spending a couple years, you know, with four or five hours a day doing classes, and then the studies, literally I heard, I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard people at the end of those two years say, oh my, I'm glad I'm finished with that so I could, you know, dig in and get closer to the Lord again. And I'm, I'm wondering if you saw any of that in seminary. You know, it becomes more of an exercise the relationship. And maybe I'm in a place in my life where that relationship is, is, is maybe more critical than it has been. But, uh,

Oh yeah, I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for those feelings to end. I still early on started struggling. I, I, I've read, so many research articles on what percentage of us as believers, whether it's through the Aversion Bible app. They do some amazing statistics and research on, how much time we spend with the word. I love, was it, is it moody? that, I spend an hour a day in prayer unless I'm really busy. Then I spend two. and I really felt convicted by things like that. and I would look back at my day and realized, heck, too, I spent five hours today in the word, you know, and thinking, boy, check, check, check, check. look how great a Christian I am. Until I really realized, no, I really didn't. I spent five hours studying for an assignment or preparing for a test, but just me sitting down with the word under a tree and just soaking in the present, ah, no, that's different. And I still fight that daily. whether it's prepping for a podcast or writing this book or whatever, and thinking, boy, look at how great I am. Look at how much time I'm spending with the Lord. But there's a difference between writing a book and spending time with the Lord. I struggled with that. I recognized it early, but it's still something I fight all the time.

Well, I think we have, and this probably is gonna start leading into some technology discussions, most people lead a very distracted life. There's so much going on. I notice with myself, we sometimes pride ourselves on multitasking and doing eight things at once

Mm-hmm.

doing any of it very well.

Mm-hmm.

rewarded in the workplace if you can do a few things, you know? Okay. And, and I've come to terms over the last few years, and some of it was related to my father. My father passed away a few years ago with cognitive decay and I, and I

So sorry.

I started thinking more about what is all swimming around or whatever in there. And I'm going, you know what? I think I wanna start creating some space. You know, if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I, I, I don't know, I just wanted

That's a great thing.

to think. Pause, be still, and, and I think, and this will start probably merging us again into a technology, you know, internet, phones, ai, maybe. I think those things be the distractions to the nth degree that you and I when we were younger, you know, we had 10 things coming at us. Now we've got a thousand things

Yeah.

at us.

Mm-hmm.

a little bit about just distractions and how that is maybe a little bit of foundational as we start moving into, you know, technology and what it can do well and what it can problems with.

Well, I'll help you bridge into technology by, what I mentioned a moment ago. But this isn't new. It's, there's a magnitude of scale. Correct. I agree with you on that. of the things that, you and I used to, fight against, it was a lot easier to disengage maybe, back when we were kids, but I'm also a hundred percent confident that our parents and grandparents had that same conversation. So I don't know that the conversation is new. perhaps, it scaled. I'm sure it has scaled. if I could sit down with my grandparents and show them my day, I'm sure it would melt their brain on the things that we're navigating. But I'm quite confident they felt distracted by radio. what interests me is with technology is, how often, and this isn't as big of a leap as it may sound, but, I've always been fascinated with the use of technology, which we might have dismissed as secular distractions that we tend to use to engage with God. One of the first things that I came across, and it's in, a lot of the writings of the early kings and the minor and the major prophets, you see it first in Exodus is, in the priestly garments, they wore an, orum, which is not a verse, it's on anybody's coffee mug. it's often mentioned in context of inquiry. So, whenever now we're going back 2000 bc but in those days when they were being distracted, they were aching to inquire of God just like we do. And so this Orman tum was some kind of device. We don't know what it was, but there's an and in the title. So the general idea is it was some sort of binary. Stone perhaps, but a front and a back of something. But they wore it in an ephod in a pocket on their vest as the priests did. It had 12 stones covering the front of it. and so there was this device, and all through scripture in the early scriptures, when it talked about them inquiring of God about a battle or whether to go to or who to or whatever, they would consult this orman tum. So this, a basic device, a stone that you would see on the ground. they would use it as a divine tool, in scripture where you know about the laying out of a fleece, whether it was wet the next day, would be an inquiry of God. The arc of the covenant, and we know this from, not from scripture, but from Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? is a means of communicating with God. and so we have these devices and, up until Acts two, all through scripture, we see the use of casting of lots. so we see basic things that might have been used as games or, devices for gambling or a rug in front of your door. all these things that would be distracting to us, we have seen in scripture being able to use them as means of inquiry. And that's always really fascinated me. So yes, the distraction's always there, but, I've always been interested on how we use those distractions, as a means of engaging with God. And, and, and think of it. We, we do this even now. How many times a day do we say something like, man, the Lord just told me to give you a call. Well, boy, now I'm Isaiah. Right now I'm a mouthpiece of the living God. Uh, and words are important. Um, or how many times have we said, boy, that song came on the radio and just spoke to me or look at that sunset and what that did to me. So we're always about things that might be distractions, but we find the Holy Spirit finds ways to, engage those devices to inquire and to an encounter with God.

Yeah, and I just, as, as you were speaking there, I was thinking to myself, I said, you know what? One of the things we typically don't have consuming us is survival, you know, which is quite the distraction. you know, how, what am I going to eat? How can I stay alive? You know, something is attempting to kill me, eat meat, something like that. So, you know, could be, I, I. I used to joke with people, there was someone a while back that they were speaking to their grandfather and they asked their grandfather the question of, you know, Hey, you know, grandfather, what was your, what was your purpose in life? What do you think your, what were your, your meaning in life? You know, they grew up in the twenties or thirties and he goes, meaning, purpose. I got up every day and went to work so I can make some money and come home.

Right,

about meaning or purpose. we've

right.

extra time to fill with things like that and we've got time to think and all that.

Yeah.

at what point did you move from just what we'll call, you know, internet, technology, phones, whatever things, and this ai I think earlier you said you kind of got into that before AI was on the tip of everybody's tongue. Right?

apparently because I couldn't get a return phone call from anybody about it. so when I finished.

like, you look like an early adopter. you've got an early adopter look about you,

I,

you

I should have my Facebook hoodie on right now or something. when I speak to groups, I always feel tempted to wear a hoodie. I think they're disappointed when they see this granddad get up on stage. what does this guy know? so boy, when did that, great question. I need to do some research on that. there was, I wanna avoid nerding out on this too much. there was some early, developments in, Ai AI really begins as we understand it now, in World War ii. Alan Turing, in World War ii, but it went through a couple of winters. they call 'em AI winters. We may be in one now. It really started to flourish again, in the, 1980s. But it, but again, in the 2000, about 10 years ago. and a couple of things all hit at once that really grabbed my attention. I'll focus on one of 'em really quick. there's a game called Go, if you're familiar. Are you familiar with it? think, chess, but at a magnitude of scale beyond that, it's the most difficult strategic strategy board game known to man. It's been around, invented in China some a thousand years or so ago. Incredibly simple to play, but impossible to master. if you remember Deep Blue, which was IBM's, supercomputer that beat, Casper off in chess about 20 years ago. it was, always assumed a computer would never win at the game of Go because it involves a lot of sacrifice, not unlike chess, but more so and so I thought it can never comprehend that. So Lee Al was, the world champion, go Player. Google had just come out with a division called Deep Mind, their first AI division. they went to task to develop an AI system. this was about the time I started doing some more scholarly research into AI the ethics around it, the philosophy around it. they built this program and they played Lisa Dole, a set of four matches, one match, four games. and your listeners can actually look this up. It's called Move 36. just Google Move 36 and the 36th move of the first game of Deep Mind. they eventually call the platform Alpha Go. Of playing Lee, it's worth to watch the video because Lee is very stoic anyway. he makes no mistakes. World champion and AlphaGo makes a move. and the entire room just gasps. They think it's a mistake. It's just the dumbest move you could ever play. and they thought, See, alpha go AI's made a mistake. It was a legal move, but it made no sense. And Lee starts looking at. And starts to weep and leans back and leaves the table. He actually goes outside and smokes a cigarette that's on the video, comes back in and is shaking. four moves later. He concedes the game. He called the move the Hand of God. He said, because a human would never have thought of making that move. It wasn't just some brute force programming where, it was a completely innovative move that a human would never have thought of. That got my attention, the hand of God. God. And so that's, I think probably what started my journey is what happened there.

what was the timeframe? Tell me what years that was.

when did Alpha go start?

I

I'm gonna Google that.

10 years. 20 years.

10.

I I'm sitting here thinking about my first, you know, when open eye hit, I think it was November of, it 22, 21, where it really, when I jumped on, you know, my wife and I jumped on it before

Yeah, 10 years. 20, 20 16 was the, was the game was the match. So 10, yeah, 10. 10 years.

Okay, good. So, 10 years, things have changed quite a bit.

Yeah.

is AI the right, this is something that bothers me at times. Like, uh, let me, I'm, I'm just gonna give a pet peeve right here that we don't have to get into. It

in.

it bugs the heck outta me every time there's some scandal and they add gate to the end of it.

Of course,

mean anything about scandal in all of that, but are we really talking about artificial intelligence or are we talking about machine learning, or do we have a misnomer here that's also messing with people?

great question. so, AI is a branch of machine learning. So machine learning is the, is the root of all of this, that, again, that takes us back to World War II and, and Alan Turing. if your listeners have never watched the movie, the Imitation Game, is, what, did I get that right? Game of Alan. Imitation game.

yeah.

there was another movie, I didn't wanna confuse it with, imitation Game. Alan Turing is the scientist in World War ii that hacked the Enigma, which was the German, the Nazi code machine. and he broke it, with AI essentially. so it started there. so that was really the birth of machine learning. So it was learning this coding system that changed every day, every morning, every night at midnight. and, so that was machine learning. AI is a derivative of machine learning. And really, you can break it down just by the words. so is it learning? you can, could do a very philosophical conversation about intelligence. but It is, I, I think, I think the word to to camp on would, would be imitation, artificial rather. so it is artificially, and there's another, just, just out in the last couple of days and a, a, a new term called, uh, SCI, seemingly conscious ai, which I'd love to get into in a moment. but it's artificial. It's, it's, it's artificially creating an encounter, meant to simulate, the divine human, creation of, of our, of our brain. So, it, it artificially creates neurons, neural networks, to artificially simulate what intelligence looks like as we engage with it. So that was a long answer. It's a great question. I think it is a bit of a misnomer. A lot of people have tried other ones, but AI is here. AI was coined. in a paper, written, at Stanford in 1950, and it's stuck, so AI's not going anywhere, but, it is a bit of misnomer and intelligence may be misleading. Artificial isn't, it is definitely artificial, but I'm not sure it's intelligent.

There are times, even today, I'm a fairly heavy user. I

Mm-hmm.

documents, I review legal things. I actually do a lot of Bible study

Mm-hmm.

my tools.

Mm-hmm.

the, the spiritual and the Christian aspect of this shortly. But are times when I am so wowed and amazed.

Mm-hmm.

I don't believe, you know, sentient or anything like that. I'm not super concerned about that. Maybe you are. We'll talk about it shortly, I am like going, oh my gosh, this is incredible. And we are in trouble as humans. then shortly after that, something will happen and I go, nah, we're good. We're fine. it'll just totally wig out and start, you know, just flopping on the pavement or on my screen and it'll be, you know, overloading or whatever. I'm with a. Company now I'm COO that, uh, see what information I can give here. We're, we're of the data center, craze that's going on,

Mm-hmm.

you're aware that there is an insatiable appetite for handling all of this data. And I don't believe we're keeping up and I'm not sure that we can. We're trying and, we are riding that wave with some of the things we're able to do. there's big money that's being thrown around. But I say all that to say are, are we heading towards, this is like going to deep question here. Are we heading towards something that we need to really be concerned about? Or is it just another technology and there are people that are up in arms and all whatever. So, what say you.

we can go a hundred different directions there.

Pick the

let me first touch on, let me first touch on something about power, which you alluded to a moment ago with data centers. Here's an interesting stat, uh, currently, and I'm in Texas currently, AI data centers, comprise 10% of the Texas power grid. in the next five years, that's estimated to be 35%.

Yeah, They want it

uh, yeah. Yes. Just for, just for training the, for training these language models. they won it all. in fact, meta Facebook, just bought a nuclear power plant, just south of Chicago. It had been mothballed for some reason, regulation. They just bought a nuclear power plant just for AI data centers. So, there's a lot going on just with the infrastructure of ai. you mentioned, is it just the next technology? another direction I would love to go on is one of the things that's frustrating me is how, and I applaud you for having this podcast today, and listeners to this podcast, I applaud him for having this, for the boldness of having this conversation. Because for the most part, I think the church is, is crickets silent right now on, on ai. And that's, it's sad, but it's dangerous right now. And we can get into why in a moment. so thank you for having this conversation. It's, it's bold of you to even have the conversation, but one of the things that I hear about when I speak at churches is, oh, it's just the, oh, it's just the next blank. And you know, I'm thinking back in the. 20. Oh, when did cell phones? 20? Was that 20 years ago? In the two thou, early two thousands. And how, what cell phones did to the church, you know, back I was teaching high school, senior Sunday school, and what that did, to my world. so is this just the next cell phone? Is this the next internet? Is this the next, you know, whatever. and, and, and in a bold, all caps? No, just because of the. Capital expenditure just because of the infrastructure around it, how embedded it already is. It's not a consumer product that we can just, oh, it's the next video game and we can wait a minute. It'll be onto something else. It's not really a consumer product. I mean, consumers engage with it. Sure, you do. I do. We all do, frankly, and we can talk about that. But, it's not really a consumer product that we're gonna come out with, like the the 2.0 version, and we're all going to throw the other ones in it. But the infrastructure, the corporate, use of it, no. This isn't just the next thing. should we be afraid? I mean, biblically, no. we're not to be a people of fear. God didn't, it's like, oh, wow. Didn't see AI coming. So this isn't a surprise to anyone. He has engaged with technology, since Genesis one, Genesis two. and, so it's nothing new, but we need to, the word I always use is discerning. we need to be all eyes open. it is affecting. We're affected by AI every day. I get questions all the time about, well, I've just chosen not to be, not to do it, not to use it. Well, that ship has sailed. If you go onto Netflix tonight and it says, suggested movies. Welcome to ai. If you get onto Facebook and it says, suggested friends, welcome to ai. it is everywhere. The ship has sailed. We are all neck deep in AI right now. there was a great article that came out a year or so ago called, AI Will Be Invisible in the Year 2025. And what it meant was it's just gonna become ubiquitous and, we're there. should we be afraid of it, we should be discerning. we should go into this with eyes wide open. Should we be concerned? not to be dystopian, but I, I think so. I'm nervous for my grandkids, and the world that they will grow up in. they're both in early elementary school and what their world will look like in education, careers, job loss. we're already seeing that, so I think we should be concerned, but we should as Christians be mindful and discerning, as we should with everything. it is here, it's powerful. it's growing exponentially, and, beyond exponentially. So I saw a graph the other day. It looked like a wall instead of a up into the right. and, but I think, I think we need to be concerned and discerning.

one thing that's interesting, let's, go into the way the church and

I.

specifically Christians may be looking at this.

Mm-hmm.

I'm part of an organization that's the Christian Podcasters Association

Hmm.

almost didn't wanna mention their name, but anyway, we've, you know, we at times get together and talk and have mastermind little sessions and stuff like that. And, the leader of the organization asked me to lead something one time and discuss ai. This was about two years ago.

Wow.

I've been a fairly heavy user since day one.

Mm-hmm.

you know, my wife and I are in our sixties but, but we are, we're not early first adopters, but we look for things that can, uh. our lives, I guess is the way of saying it. And man, I noticed this could do it right away. So I, I get on this call and I'm leading a group of podcasters and I'm pretty darn amazed at the anti

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

sentiment

Yes.

even more drew some people that were offended and quite upset that I told them that if you take the transcript from your podcast instead of writing notes out by hand, you could run it through a tool to script. We talked about that before we, and it'll spit out a transcript and then it'll tell you what three of the best titles are you could pick it or you could let it pick it or you can make up your own. They were really bothered

Mm-hmm.

what is up with that?

my grandfather in-law was a pastor. My wife is like a fifth generation, Baptist preacher's kid, my mother-in-law, amazing woman. She's 91 and sharp as attack. she still has her father, my grandfather in-law's, pastoral library. And, and on one of the shelves is, a series, it's about two feet long, this series of sermons, on every topic, on every scripture. this was a resource he could go to, 70 years ago, for sermons, we thought nothing of that. but now we have a digital, digitized, intelligent version of that. but no doubt, 70 years ago he got pushed back for having those books, that were pre-written sermons and whatnot. He's a brilliant man. multiple, doctorates, and I'm sure he used it as I'm sure he didn't just pull one out and read directly from it on Sunday mornings. or maybe, I don't know, never talked to him about it. but I don't think this is anything new we've always pushed back at, technology. It's interesting we talk about the printing press in Gutenberg and 500 years ago, we talk about printing the King James Bible. but he also published some pretty controversial, racist publications. so there was a lot of blowback pushback early on the printing press about, I'm not gonna read this because it also printed this, we saw that with, oh my gosh. The internet, the phones, when I was teaching in our youth group, we had a sign up on the wall, turn your phones off. Guess how well that worked. but you know, we, the church has always been cautious of technology, so that, that doesn't surprise me. I thought you were also going to say, I. Again, which it is a hot button for me, but how the people in that group you spoke to were upset that you had been using it. I also get upset when I hear how little people are using it or aware of it. One of the things I, unfortunately is we will hear people say, oh yeah, ha ha ha. I went to, I used grok and had it, make a picture of my dog eating, you know, drinking outta the toilet or whatever. and we show the picture around everybody giggles and we move on. And I'm just like, it's, AI is not just a meme generator, but we find goofy little things that it does and we laugh about it and dismiss it and move on, and we don't take it seriously. So I think that's one of the many obstacles. Two of them are, not taking it seriously. and then secondly is the fear and the anger, around it. which is very shortsighted because we felt that about everything that's come around, and not seeing it as the, things that now we take for granted. using a projector, on a screen. still upsets a lot of people, but, that's what we do now. microphones, having an electric guitar, in the orchestra. so we've always had some pushback, definitely on the internet. but now every church has a website, Yeah, we get angry, we push back and then we engage. But unfortunately AI is moving so fast that by the time we wake up to this, it's gonna be, you know, five years down the road. I heard someone say that they don't bother getting a PhD in AI right now, because by the time you finish, I mean, what's AI gonna look like? I listen to podcasts that are updated daily, and then sometimes are still out of date by the time that the, episode airs. So those are two of my concerns are fear, anger, like you said, and then not taking it seriously.

The fear and anger I want to talk about in just a little while 'cause it feeds into, the eschatology that we were talking

Sure.

record. You've got an episode out with that. I, I, you know, one of the things about embracing it, I mean, this is something that I, I've had some people, and they may, this may be an anger thing too. I mean, this morning I spent probably 45 minutes, on a study where I'm studying the first century in as much depth as I could possibly get into so that I can understand the context of the New Testament and when it was written, who it was written to, et cetera. I was on chat GPT this morning. incorporated the writings of Josephus. I incorporated the scriptures, new Testament as many different versions as I can incorporate into it. incorporated some Old Testament prophecies that spoke about what was going to happen in the first century, and I just pulled in a lot of stuff. I don't have all the writings of Josephus. I don't have Tacitus, I don't have all of those things. But boy,

It does

in 45 minutes I wrote what could be a book. I'll probably be posting some of it on Facebook and tweaking it wrote a timeline of, Roman. Jerusalem, new Testament book of Acts, timeline history going through each decade,

Hmm.

a 10, 12 chapter of episodes. It was off the charts exciting. I was bouncing off the roof all day

Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah.

on.

Yeah.

See, some people would think I'm cheating or dealing with the antichrist. That's a topic we'll talk about in just a little while, and they But, right.

now you're gonna get me all cranked up here. Is it, is it cheating? what would you have done five years earlier? you would've gotten on your bike and gone down to the library? no, you would've gotten on the internet, and Googled that. and then on Google, you're gonna get. A hundred websites that you've gotta then go to individually and navigate your way through all that. Before that, you go down to the church library, you get on your bike, you go to the library, then you go to the World Book encyclopedias, So is that cheating? Is it cheating to go to the school library? You know, so, I, I think we need to be careful of something. There's a great word I stumbled across, I don't remember studying it in my Greek, called aia, A-C-E-I-D-A, Ceia, D-I-A-A-C-E-D-I-A. And, and it's first started being used by the Desert Fathers, of, of old, St. Augustine. everybody uses this phrase, but it means spiritual sloth. Is that awesome spiritual sloth and I fall victim to it a lot. one quick example of this, a dear friend of mine, a couple, we knew them in college. He was a attorney brother. she was my roommate's, sister and I've known them for 50 years. And she, was diagnosed with cancer and struggled for a couple of years and died recently. we were out of town. We weren't able to make the funeral and so I sent a text to, my friend just to tell him we wouldn't be able to come. And I was struggling with the text. You probably know where this is going, and, just couldn't find the words. It all just sounded so shallow. Like, Hey, sorry to miss the funeral. it was just so empty and I thought, ah, I know. So went into chat GPT and fed it. All the details I could think of and said, Mo, give me 20 words. And it made me cry. It was the most beautiful, poetic, warm, compassionate, caring text I could never have written. Okay. And I copied it, pasted into my phone and went, I can't do it. You know, they're just some things that are supposed to be hard. Okay, so I have done everything that you just said, man, I've put to, I've chased rabbits with AI and just had a blast and just thinking, how did I end up here, man? and you know, give me 10 verses and get me, oh my gosh. And I just have such a blast. But you know what? There's just some stuff that's supposed to be hard and I need to watch for that because it's easy to just say. And we can get into this with pastors, it's just easy to say, oh my gosh, look, it's Saturday night. I'm beat, I've got a sermon in the morning, I haven't written yet. And you know what? Give me 2000 words on Romans three and I'm gonna go to bed and just read it. And pastors have done that. I know. 'cause I, I've read, you know, blogs about it with great results by the way. but there are just some things that are supposed to be messy. There's some things that are supposed to be hard. I agree with you and it's fun, but I think a seedia, spiritual sloth is something I think we need to be mindful of. we spend so much time talking about the products. You mentioned a script earlier. There's so many AI based products that are designed for efficiencies. and no doubt, a magnitude of scale, you can do so much more in your day by using ai. but I think we need to be careful of those products. and that's a different line for everybody. I'm not gonna tell you what yours or mine should or shouldn't be, but I think we need to be careful. I think we need to embrace the fact that, and we know that from scripture it's hard to carry across every day. but AI makes things easier. But I think we need to be careful of that.

Well, there's a word you brought up earlier discernment,

Mm-hmm.

and it probably needs to be injected here because it sounds to me like you use discernment before you push send on that text. And here's the thing that we. It may have been akay, you know what I mean? It may have that person to weep. I had to send a very email yesterday in the business setting where we had somebody some money and they didn't perform, and needed to word something and I had a relationship with them, but I need to say, Hey, listen, we're gonna demand that money back because you didn't perform in the way you

Hmm.

to.

Yep, yep,

emotion be injected in that I needed to remove the emotion

yep.

and it did an excellent job.

Yeah.

I read it. And, and you know, with mine, I wrote a 70,000 word novel, so I've trained mine. it sounds. It's a better me than me much of the time. I hate

Beautifully said. Beautifully said.

but it is so, so here's, I wanna say, I wanna, I want to kind of start getting to things and I wanna discuss briefly the whispers of the spirit, because I think it relates, I, thoughts. I will just say this and then I'm gonna let you just, expand on it or agree or disagree. I believe that tools like this are phones, the internet. 800 numbers back in the day. I would, when I first went to work for Bell South, we got this group together in 1989, and they used, they got some of the young people, I was a young person then, and they said, Hey, we're gonna talk about this new thing coming out with the internet. And one of the things we deduced was that, the porn industry was gonna be one of the most aggressive with the internet, because that's what they did with 900 numbers, 800 numbers, et

VHS.

At VHS and all that kind of stuff. and I think that repels or offends Christians and they don't embrace it like they should. But to me, what we're seeing with these items is someone with character, that their general makeup is, let's just say their soul is healthy. And I don't know how to define that, that this tool will magnify

Hmm.

if there's an unhealthiness.

Hmm.

It

Okay.

magnify that I'm not pretending to be able to judge that or discern it. I just have observed that. is that with the doctorate and the studies and theological anthropology, is that valid or is there a better way to say it or another way to say it that you might wanna help us? For the person that might be sitting here going, man, this is like eating away at me or like me, you could tell, man, it is nourishing me. I am like digging

Mm-hmm.

able to do with these tools. And I call 'em tools by the way.

and I wanted to, not push back on that, but it, it's an interesting ethical discussion. I get into a lot with my dissertation, but I still find myself is, I accept that it's easiest to define AI as a tool, but I wanna push back against that. I've started to, in my mind, differentiating between the pew and the pulpit. I think a lot of what's going on right now, which is very little, but a lot of what's going on right now in the pew, in the pulpit is the use of AI as an efficiency tool. So I can use this to instantly translate my sermon into 150 different languages and I can create you know, podcasts and use it for on the script. And you, it's amazing. no pastor went to seminary. In order to create social media posts, right? they're drawn to be pastors and to shepherd people. So they need to be in the hospital visiting and caring and counseling and premarital work. and so when I talk to pastors it's a time saver. Yes. But what are you doing with the time you've saved? And so more than just a tool, which is easy to grab onto, if we focus on that as a product. And there a huge number and growing number of AI products that can help with efficiencies and that's great. I also like focusing on the pew. 'cause they don't care about efficiencies. They don't care that it saved the pastor 15 minutes of this, or he or she was able to do this or that because they didn't have time and whatnot. They don't care. What they care about is I'm sitting here listening to a sermon about the Imago day and how God, knit me together in my mother's womb and wrote my name on the palm of his hand. But you know what? I can't be that special because I just lost my job to an AI chat bot. Okay? So if, if what it means to be human are things like language, voice, rational thought, depending upon how I define what it means to be a divine creation of God. If AI is starting to, to check each of those boxes, then what am I. How special am I if AI can now meet all those criteria? And I just lost my job to it. I think if we only look at it as an efficiency tool, which is tempting, and I do it just like you do, I think we miss a greater danger of not taking into account the ethics of what this does to us spiritually. what's, what's this? How's this going to affect me when, I no longer see myself as an image of God, but in his extension of this technology, one of the favorite questions that I ask it, and you mentioned this a second ago, and I wanna make sure your listeners, are, you know, comfortable with, with the concept, but you clearly have history turned on, on chat GPT, on, you're using five now, I suppose, I'm guessing so, Each of the language models, and there're really not many of 'em, which is, I think most people find interesting. I mean, there's, you know, anthropic, there's C Claude, there's OpenAI, which is chat, GPT. And shameless plug, if you go to, any of the show notes of my podcast, I have all of them links to all the, the major language models there. you said you wrote a, how many words was it your book?

I wrote was 70,000 words with my two fingers typing that out. Like really what wrote it. You know what I mean?

But it has read it, no doubt. Right.

it has.

So It knows you pretty well. It knows you. It's a better version of you. which you said is a throwaway funny comment and it was, but man, there's a lot to unpack there.

yeah.

but what you're doing to it is you are fine tuning that language model,

Mm-hmm.

taken this massive language model that's eating up 10% of the Texas power grid, and you're fine tuning it even more narrowly, to know everything there is to know about Tim. and so one of the favorite questions that, and the other word that's important there is alignment. You are having that language model aligned. With your worldview by fine tuning it with what you have given it as representative data of who you are. You know, one of the, and I've got history on mine. we had a tragedy in our family a year and a half ago. we have two grandsons. We have three. One of thems, in the lap of, Jesus, but he was called home, in his sleep a year and a half ago at 18 months old. I've never experienced grief like that, and I've lost, I'm at the top of the food chain. I've lost, all my parents, parents and grandparents never experienced grief like that. and the book that I wrote, I dedicated it to William. and so somewhere along the line, it knows about William. And so, sometimes when I'm talking about it, about grief, it will say to me, are you drawing on what happened to you and your wife when you lost William? And that just makes me weep. That just, you know, and 'cause I'll get into some serious conversations, with it over that. so alignment. But one of my favorite questions is aligning it based on a conversation I want to have with it. So I will start a conversation, answer me as if it's my favorite phrase. Have all your listeners write that down. Answer me as if, answer me as if you are a, you've got 10 doctorate degrees in grief counseling, and 30 years as a pa, blah, blah, blah. And I create this profile, this cv, this resume, this ideal. You know, if you could talk to anyone right now with a specialty in this field. How would you define that person and tell AI to be that person and then have that conversation? That is amazing. So anyway, to come full circle, I try to be careful referring to it as a tool. I think that misses the full weight of what we have, at our fingertips right now.

And again, you know, an engineer like myself would use a term like that possibly more often than not. I do wanna say something annoys me about ai. We're on kind of, I can't, I don't

Just one

I think this is our 300 and something episode

amazing, congratulations.

the 300th episode. I thought it would be really cool because, uh, they had just come out with some

Mm-hmm.

interview chat GPT and do a voice conversation with it

Yes.

And I usually, like, we've gone here, we're pushing the hour plus mark, we need to get off here short. And I've got a couple things I wanna bring up before we jump off. And I'm like going, man, I'm gonna do a long form interview. Not, you know, Joe Rogan or anything, but I'm gonna go long form with ai. Well, about at the 30 minute mark and I had a bunch of deep questions and stuff like that. I started getting bored. And let me tell you why I got bored.

Yeah. I know where you're going.

Ai, it's no stuff. It's got access to stuff. It could pull from a lot of things. It lacks conviction.

Yeah.

just hit me with something you just, pushed back, on a term I used calling something a tool because you have conviction. I would much

Hmm.

interact with Dr. Drew Dickens for an hour.

Yeah.

four minutes now than ai. What's up with that? What, what do we need to really be watching out for with,

what you're referring to is, it being a syco font, which, it got accused of being maybe a couple of months ago. and I think everybody took it seriously, but, it pretty much still does it. no matter what question I ask, its response is, drew, what a brilliant and insightful question. From such a handsome man,

I

know,

Look at all that hair on your head and

What a charming,

gosh, you're

handsome man. No one in the history of the world has ever thought to ask. and so, yeah, it won't, it won't push back. It won't disagree. It won't say wrong, you know.

unless you say, talk out of this.

Absolutely.

prompt

Yeah.

be good at prompting.

And that's a, that's a science and an art form. And I really encourage people, it's not, I wrote a phrase down when we started, I said, just like humans, because you, you, you were saying something about, something you were engaged with and it was getting messy on something and I wrote down, yeah, just like humans, a lot of the same complaints we have about ai, we can have about each other, you know? 'cause I know people that will, no one's referred to me as what a charming, handsome man, what my wife does. But, um, uh, so it, it acts like we do because you know what, Hey, we trained it. Uh, so it's trained on human data. but, yes, that's a very real thing. But I really think, an art that we all need to continually practice on, whether it's for AI or just in business or in life, is knowing. How to ask the right questions. I didn't even, anytime you find yourself, I didn't even think to ask that or, 'cause I'll come back from an appointment. My wife will ask, well, did you, I didn't even think to ask that. I just had a, my annual physical and my doctor and I talking about AI and, and I took all my blood work and ran it through AI and, and, and said, give me a, you know, give me a 300 word. And then I asked it, what questions should I ask of him, you know? So, I think learning how to prompt learning how to ask questions, and even asking it to ask what questions should I be asking you, ask it to prompt itself, are all important skills I think we need to explore.

So one thing, and this is, gosh, this could be like a whole nother episode, so I'm gonna ask for a, hopefully a

Did your users know this is gonna be a 10 hour podcast today?

Yeah, probably, short-ish answer because we we're just

Yeah, sure will.

me doing, some episodes talking about just a spiritual journey of maybe purging some eschatological es

Okay.

thoughts

There you go.

and moving from maybe thinking one thing to another and all. And you brought up, in fact, I've listened to the episode about how we believe or think about what we will affectionately or in affectionately called in times how it impacts our views on ai. Say a couple of things about that, maybe tease the episode. We'll send people over that way. And,

Thank you.

got a link that we might want people to jump in and take advantage of, with, some surveying you're doing there.

sure. and anything you wanna know about anything we've been talking about today? my website is drew dickens.com and you can find links to the book and the podcast and everything there. eschatology really fascinates me and I was curious, and I've got a survey, I haven't really sent it out to the mass yet in the wild. But curious about how we view, in times and how it might be related to how we view, AI and how we use ai, but more specifically how we see its growth and whether, how measured that growth should be. So if you have kind of a left behind series. View of, the rapture and, the, tribulation period, the seven, three and a half years, the thousand year literal, reign of Christ. And, if that makes some sense to you, what you can nerd out and call a pre-millennial dispensational view of end times. I think you bring to AI some fear. I think you bring some marks of the beast to conversations to ai. You can see AI being a fulfillment of some of those dystopian, philosophies. So I wanted to explore that. I wanted to see if there's any correlation between, my view of in times and how I view ai. And so I'm really super excited about putting that survey in the field and seeing what the results of that might be.

Well let, we will let people check that out and probably my views of in times and my views of AI will give people a clue on what I believe about those things. This is where I'm gonna tie things together. We're gonna put an exclamation point on this conversation. I firmly believe,

Put a scroll here.

Yeah, they always see a scroll. I've got it on my. Kendall, but it looks so good personally there a 40 day guide to

Shiny.

And let me tell you what I read through and I do want to tell you, I was reading this in bed the other night I actually shared with my wife the dedication to, I think it was

Okay.

grandson, which, actually spurred a very unique and interesting conversation for us talking about our grandkids. So

Mm-hmm.

I am, I can't imagine what that has been like for you and your family. So, anyway, we, I guess you could say, we said a prayer for you.

Mm-hmm.

maybe we felt some small semblance of grief.

Thank you.

dedication.

you.

I was reading through this book and as I was thinking about our topic, which is ai, and of course I think it's sexy. I love to talk about it and things like that. In my mind, I was thinking that if someone does. spend time and quiet. And you've got so many sections with each one. just reflective prayer, listening, breathing and things like that, that if they spend time doing that, then it goes back to that soul becomes healthy that I talked about earlier, and it allows them to participate with this technology a healthier way. And I don't think I'm connecting too many dots there, but

Hmm,

wrote about here is foundational,

hmm.

want to say it's a tool again, so you don't jump on me, but it allows you to use these things in a healthier way if you have that foundation. Am I making too much of that, or is that

No, tha and thank you for making that bridge. I tried to figure that out myself because my day job, is, I have two podcasts, the AI and Spirituality, but I also have Encountering Peace, which is kind of the foundation behind Whispers of the Spirit. when I started, 10 years ago, with a mobile app called, abide, which is a, prayer and meditation app, they needed to hire an old guy with a seminary degree. So they brought me on board to oversee content. I left there and started encounter just in kind of a retirement. But I was I've always been fascinated with the ancient traditions of contemplative prayer in the church that the Western Protestant church has kind of stepped away from. but, the, Lectio Davina and the imaginative contemplation and Ignatian spirituality are, are ancient traditions back to the first century church. And so wanted to incorporate some of those, and I do in my daily life. But there's a term among, programmers and gamers specifically, called touch grass. and they will accuse each other of being two heads down in programming. and they will say, Hey, go touch grass. Literally. Stop what you're doing, leave the keyboard, go outside, take your shoes off, and sit in the grass for a minute. and that's really kind of what prompted whispers of the spirit is to encourage people to go touch grass, to engage Contemplatively. and so one of the things I always caution people with AI in anything, is, you know, set some time limits. just be discerning and at some point, no matter what, step away from the screen and go touch some grass. and that's what Whispers of the Spirit is a bit of an outline, to help you, do that over 40 days. So there's guided meditation, there's breathing exercises, there's imaginative contemplation, which is one of my favorite practices. so all that is encompassed, every day, for a 40 day devotion on intimate prayer and intimacy with God.

Yeah. And like we were talking, I think before we hit record, Broadtree published it and they

And you can find it on Amazon or at Bucky's,

Bucky's. Yeah, that's the, on all the big spots there. So

Exactly.

got it on my Kindle,

They really do.

when you hold it up there,

Yeah.

so people can find it anywhere. Um, go ahead and let people know where they could find you and get all your stuff and the podcast and everything. 'cause I think they want to connect

Mm-hmm.

and then we'll start wrapping up here.

Yeah, just really easy. Drew dickens.com. and from there you've got a link to the book. You've got a link to the AI podcast. You've got a link to encounter. drew dickens.com drew like a picture dickens, like Charles drew dickens.com, and you can find out all about, everything we talked about today.

Definitely check things out. I enjoyed the podcast, AI and Spirituality. I've enjoyed the first few sections that I've done with Whispers of the Spirit, so check all of that. Dr. Drew Dickens, what a great conversation we could have kept going I'm

I had a blast.

I believe it's been fun and, this is what happens when you get a couple of grandfathers together and just talking technology and spirituality and eschatology and just all the cool stuff. I know that,

Next time, let's do this from your trailer by a fire ring.

Absolutely. So, hey, I hope you've enjoyed this. We're seek, go, create, make sure you check out all of, Dr. Drew Dickens stuff. We have new episodes, on YouTube. We're growing so fast over there. Make sure you're

Hmm.

We are, doing some cool things over there. The podcast is doing well. thank you for listening in. I appreciate all of you listening. until next time, just keep seeking, going, creating and, we'll see you next week on Seek Go Create.