The Altar and the Algorithm
We were warned about idols carved from wood and stone. What about the ones carved from code?
A new kind of idol
The ancients built altars to things they could see: stone, gold, the sun overhead. We build ours quietly, in the background, to systems we don't even understand. The model has become the oracle. The feed has become the priest.
"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands." — Psalm 115:4
The danger of the algorithm is not that it is evil. It is that it is convincing. It speaks in the cadence of certainty. It answers before we finish asking. It anticipates desire, then satisfies it, then re-shapes it.
What scripture asks of us
Discernment is not skepticism. It is the practice of weighing what we see against what is true. When we open an app, we are not merely consuming content — we are submitting to a sequence of decisions made by people we will never meet, optimizing for outcomes we did not consent to.
The Christian posture toward AI is not refusal. It is awareness. The tool is a tool. The altar is the question.
Three questions to ask
- Who profits when I trust this answer?
- Would I accept this counsel from a stranger on the street?
- Where, in my life, has speed replaced wisdom?
These are not new questions. They are old ones, wearing new clothes.