Somewhere this evening, a Christian is pausing over a keyboard. Perhaps she is a manager who just watched an AI tool draft the difficult email she had been dreading all afternoon, and the draft is good, maybe better than what she would have written. Perhaps he is a student whose chatbot tutor has patiently explained algebra for twenty minutes, and he has just realized it will also simply give him the answer. Perhaps it is a pastor staring at a sermon outline the software produced in eleven seconds, wondering what he is supposed to feel about that.
The pause is the interesting part. Something in each of them senses that a real decision is being made, even though no rule has been broken and no one is watching. They are right to sense it.
Two Answers That Fail Us
When Christians talk about artificial intelligence, the conversation tends to run to one of two places. Some of us resist it, because the technology feels foreign to faithful life, and so we feel that the safest response is to keep it out of our lives entirely. Others of us embrace the technology, citing its usefulness in saving hours of our time with impressive output.
Both answers fail for the same reason. Each one settles the question before asking what the tool is actually doing to the person using it. Refusal treats AI as if nothing it offers could serve our neighbors, while adoption treats it as if the thing it replaces does not matter. Both responses focus on the wrong question, "What can this technology do?" Neither response asks the question that Scripture calls us to ask, "What kind of person is this technology forming?"
That formation question is what sits at the heart of the matter. When does AI remove a burden that need not remain, and when does it remove work through which God develops understanding, judgment, love, skill, and Christlike character?
Using a tool in a way that lifts a genuine burden is a blessing, but using a tool in a way that lifts the very struggle God is using to mature us is a loss. Telling the difference is the work of discernment, but discernment cannot be downloaded.
A Framework Older Than the Technology
The good news is that Christians are not starting from scratch. Long before anyone trained a language model, Paul wrote to the Philippians about what believers should allow to occupy and shape their minds. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, think on these things (Philippians 4:8 ESV).
Paul was not writing about technology, yet he was writing about what technology now touches. AI generates language, recommendations, and images on our behalf. It sits precisely where Philippians 4:8 tells us to stand guard.
My colleague and I have spent the past couple years translating those six virtues into six questions for the age of AI. We call the framework ENGAGE, and each letter guards a different room of ordinary life.
Exact asks whether I am whole before God. When AI helps me produce work, does the result truthfully reflect my knowledge, my effort, and my formation, or am I presenting a version of myself that outruns reality?
Noble asks whether I am trustworthy toward my neighbor. When someone receives my work, my judgment, or my word, can they rely on it?
Genuine asks whether I am handling truth with care. AI speaks with fluency whether it is right or wrong. Am I verifying before I believe, and believing before I repeat?
Admirable asks whether my relationships remain human. AI offers attention without the demands of mutual love. Is it moving me toward actual people or letting simulation satisfy a hunger that belongs to them?
Gracious asks whether my words are truly mine. AI can produce patient, warm, even repentant language without forming the person who sends it. Are the words true, loving, and genuinely mine?
Exemplary asks what others are learning by watching me. My children, my students, and my colleagues are taking notes on what I treat as normal. Is my pattern of AI use worth imitating?
Try It This Week
You do not need to master anything to begin. The next time an AI tool offers you something, whether a draft, an answer, or an image, pause long enough to ask one question from the list above. Just one. Then choose your response from four faithful options rather than two.
- Receive the help with gratitude.
- Accept it with limits, such as disclosure or verification.
- Refuse it because it would replace something God means for you to carry.
- Wait, because wisdom or safeguards are not yet in place.
Receive, limit, refuse, or wait. That vocabulary alone will change more decisions than any policy your workplace publishes this year, because it travels with you into rooms no policy can reach.
An Invitation
My colleague and I are professors at Cedarville University, and we have watched AI provide meaningful assistance to our students and other colleagues. We have also watched assistance become substitution. Out of that experience, and out of the conviction that Christians need a response deeper than fear and wiser than efficiency, we have written Engaging AI with Biblical Wisdom, a book that develops each of these six questions and guides the reader through the application of the framework in daily life.
The book is coming soon, but the questions are available to you today. We would be glad for you to start asking them, because the tools will keep improving, but the kind of person you are becoming while you use them is the one thing no machine can generate.
John Delano and Alina Leo teach at Cedarville University. Their ENGAGE framework received a Best Paper Award at the 2025 Christian Business Faculty Association conference and was featured in Cedarville Magazine.