This week, in our companion book AI Ethics, Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh describes a world in which information is no longer simply received. Instead, information is engineered, customized, and optimized for influence. Every click, pause, and preference becomes a data point. AI gives us maps—fast, personalized, and endlessly confident maps—but these maps are not the territory. And frequently, they are drawn by people who want something from us.
The result is a digital environment shaped around our desires and fears, crafted to keep us engaged rather than informed. A map is a representation. It’s useful. It helps you navigate, but it can also mislead you when the mapmaker draws the lines to serve their own purpose.
What AI systems produce — the search results we see, the news clips recommended to us, the posts pushed to the top of our feeds — these are maps. They are sketches of reality, not reality itself. And like any map, they leave things out. They highlight some things and obscure others. They simplify. They distort.
The danger comes when we mistake the map for the territory — when we start believing that the curated, manipulated, AI-shaped version of the world is the world. When that happens, we stop noticing how someone else is drawing the lines. And we risk losing track of the God who alone sees the whole landscape.
We live in a world where what we see is increasingly shaped rather than discovered, curated rather than encountered, optimized for engagement rather than truth, and offering us a form of “synthetic hope.”
These systems learn what persuades us, what angers us, and what will keep us coming back. That is not a neutral process. This is the problem we must face before we can talk about joy. In this environment, joy becomes fragile because joy requires a connection to something real. And if our maps are being manipulated—by algorithms, by leaders, by foreign agents—how do we find our way back to the territory?
The power of modern AI is not merely that it can show us information—it can shape the conditions under which our opinions are formed. Repetition, emotional triggers, curated outrage, and echo chambers can make us feel convinced we discovered “the truth” on our own, when in reality we were gently steered there. The danger is not only believing something false; it is believing it confidently, and believing that confidence came from ourselves.
AI doesn’t always give us the truth. But it gives us certainty—and those are not the same thing.
This challenge becomes even more serious when political leaders intentionally spread misinformation. Public figures in every generation have exaggerated, misled, or manipulated the truth, but AI-enhanced media ecosystems give such messages unprecedented reach and speed.
The current president is a particularly prolific example, making statements widely known to be false or inconsistent. Yet large portions of the media amplify these claims without context or correction. Clips circulate widely, but fact-checking is slower, quieter, or absent. Even topics as nonpartisan as climate change receive less coverage than the scale of the crisis warrants—leaving millions with a thin, distorted map of the world.
The information isn’t merely incomplete. It is shaped.
Dr. Coeckelbergh describes how foreign nations and third-party actors exploit these vulnerabilities. Their goal is not always to convince us of a particular belief—sometimes it is simply to divide, confuse, or exhaust us. With AI tools that can fabricate images, clone voices, write persuasive messages, and micro-target individuals, interference becomes cheaper, easier, and harder to trace.
The result is an environment where the maps we rely on—news, social feeds, commentary, even personal recommendations—are tangled with invisible intentions.
And it is precisely the kind of world into which Christ is born—bringing not synthetic hope, but embodied truth. The answer may lie not in capacity but in calling — not what we can do, but what we are meant to be.
We are surrounded by artificial signals—manufactured urgency, synthetic emotions, distorted maps of reality. But the good news is this: God revives the artificial. God resurrects what has been flattened, manipulated, or misrepresented and restores it to truth.
This week, as we explore the difference between synthetic hope and the deeper joy God intends for us, Scripture invites us to remember who we truly are — before any influence, persuasion, or distortion shapes our sense of self. To begin, we return to the very first word spoken about humanity.
In the first chapter of Genesis, God pauses in the unfolding rhythm of creation and speaks a truth that anchors our identity: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26–27).
During creation, God created humankind in his image. This is the original declaration of who we are. Before we achieved anything, before we failed at anything, before we were shaped by culture or technology or fear — God created us in the divine image. Not as products. Not as data points. Not as patterns to be predicted or manipulated. But as image-bearers: reflections of God’s own character, capable of relationship, responsibility, and joy.
The creation story reminds us that our identity does not come from artificial systems. Algorithms do not define us. God defines us. God revives the artificial—even the parts of us that have been shaped or numbed by synthetic voices.
And ever since God created humankind, artists have given us words and images to help us express the awe we feel. In Psalm 8, a poet standing under the night sky, overwhelmed by the wonder of creation, asks the question every generation eventually asks: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them” (Psalm 8:3–5).
When Scripture says we are made in the image of God, it defines our worth and vocation. Yet we now create machines in our own image — able to speak, decide, even “feel.” The imitation flatters us, but also unsettles us. If machines can mirror thought and creativity, what distinguishes humanity?
Let us remember that Joy, in the Christian story, arrives as something unexpected and unmanufactured—something real breaking into the world. But today we live in an age where “reality” is harder than ever to see.
John opens his letter with almost stubborn insistence on what is real: ‘What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.’ In a world where so much is now mediated, curated, filtered, or artificially generated, John brings us back to the oldest and clearest truth — Christian faith is not built on an idea, an impression, or a digital echo. It is built on something real, something embodied, something encountered. John is telling us: We didn’t receive a map. We walked the territory.
And then he tells us why he is sharing this: ‘so that your joy may be complete.’ Joy, in John’s vision, is not the result of staying inside artificial worlds or the comforting illusions we create for ourselves. Joy comes from contact with what is true — the life God revealed in Jesus, the Word made flesh, the One who revives everything artificial and restores us to what is real. John invites us into a fellowship grounded not in distortion or persuasion, but in encounter, clarity, and truth that can be seen, heard, and touched.
We have heard the Word of Life, and we have seen it with our eyes, and our hands have touched it.
1 John 1:1-4
Imagine a world in which people walk with eyes wide open—where awareness is not a burden but a gift. In such a world, every person recognizes when an image has been shaped to provoke envy, when a headline has been engineered to inflame, when a digital voice attempts to mimic trust. We do not fall asleep under the glow of manufactured “authenticity.”
Instead, we move through our days strengthened by the knowledge that God has given us minds capable of discernment and hearts capable of wisdom. Awareness becomes a kind of quiet armor: not heavy, not defensive, just steady. It lets us see what is real before us—faces we can touch, bread we can break, conversations that feed the soul.
In this world of awareness, the power of those who manipulate begins to fade. Their strategies depend on distraction, fatigue, and constant stimulation. But people who are awake—truly awake—are not easily steered. They no longer mistake the map for the territory. They choose presence over noise, relationship over performance, truth over spectacle. They are not cynical; they are grounded.
And grounding makes them less useful to those who wish to harvest attention or shape opinion through distortion. The tools of exploitation still exist, but they lose their sting because the people of God are not wandering in the dark—they are standing in the light.
A community shaped by this kind of awareness becomes harder to divide. When we see how algorithms tilt the floor beneath us, we stop assuming that our neighbor is the enemy just because their feed looks different from ours. We learn to pause before reacting, to listen before judging, to ask deeper questions about what we are being told and why.
The conspiracies that once preyed on fear and confusion begin to lose oxygen. It becomes far easier to love our neighbor because we are no longer being pulled into manufactured outrage designed to sell ads or shape loyalties. Awareness clears space for compassion.
And as this awareness deepens, it reshapes our worship and our witness. We begin to understand how precious it is that God entrusts us with the real world—the one made of soil, breath, and Spirit. We reclaim our attention as an act of devotion. We reclaim our presence as a work of hope.
In a world that tries to overwhelm us with images, we learn again to behold the face of Christ in one another. Awareness does not merely protect us; it frees us. It makes room for joy. It restores dignity. It cultivates a form of life in which God’s image can shine without distortion—steadily, quietly, and beautifully—amid all the artificial glow around us.
Awareness is not something we master in a day. It grows in us the way wisdom always has—through practice, patience, and the gentle guidance of God’s Spirit. Today we have named the forces that blur our vision and pull our attention toward shadows. We have heard scripture’s reminder that God created us with intention, dignity, and purpose. And we have imagined the kind of world that becomes possible when people live with their eyes open and their hearts steady in God’s presence. That world is not far away. It begins quietly, with each of us.
So what comes next? We start small by choosing to be more present in our own lives. We pay closer attention to what draws our gaze. Notice when something online feels urgent or emotional, and ask who benefits from our reaction. We practice the kind of awareness that honors God’s image in us—a deliberate, thoughtful noticing that helps us stay rooted in the real world God has entrusted to our care.
These habits may seem simple, but they shape the soul. They help us live as people who are awake.
And as we practice, we begin to encourage one another. Families, friends, and faith communities become places where awareness is cultivated rather than consumed. We share what we are learning about ourselves, about our habits, about the forces that seek to claim our attention. We model a posture of curiosity and calm rather than fear or suspicion.
In doing so, we become a witness: a community that chooses light over distortion, truth over convenience, and real relationships over artificial persuasion.
Finally, we remember that this journey will continue beyond Advent. Each episode in this series is an invitation to deepen our awareness of God’s presence—first around us, and eventually within us. God meets us in our waking. God calls us to see clearly so that we may love more fully.
As we step forward into the coming week, may we carry a renewed sense of attentiveness, a confidence in our God-given agency, and a hope that grows brighter with every moment we choose to live awake.
Pay attention to the places where life feels flattened or artificial. Those are the places where God is already working. God revives the artificial. God wakes us up, restores our vision, and brings joy back to the surface.”
Stay awake this week. Notice what is real. Trust the One who revives what has grown artificial. Trust that God revives the artificial — and God is reviving you.
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Pastor Tommy
Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh, AI Ethics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020. (ISBN 9780262538190).