The Pour Over Today - Should Christians Fear AI?

Episode Date: September 19, 2026

The Pour Over is a Christ-first, politically neutral news podcast. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we cover the day's biggest stories in ~10 minutes, and pair the biggest headlines with brief biblical reminders. Every Saturday, TPO Explains does a shallow dive into your most-asked questions. Today, we are doing something a bit different. This week we're doing something a little different — instead of our usual TPO Explains format, one of our writers, Peter, sits down with Tony Reinke, author of God, Technology, and the Christian Life, for a deep dive into how Christians should think about AI, technology, and God's role in it all. On today's episode: Should Christians Fear AI? Available to watch on Spotify and YouTube here. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠here⁠. Thanks to our sponsors: The Voice of the Martyrs: Get a free copy of Tortured for Christ | vom.org/TPO Wild Alaskan: $35 off your first box | code: TPO Safe House Project: Give now | SafeHouseProject.org/TPO New Living Translation: Get your copy | https://links.thepourover.org/NLT_Pod Quince: Free shipping | quince.com/tpo AdelFi: Apply for the Harvest Bundle | https://adelfibanking.com/pourover Upside: extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas | code: TPO Life Recovery Bible: Get your copy | https://links.thepourover.org/Tyndale_Sept2026 LMNT: free 8-pack with purchase | https://links.thepourover.org/LMNT_Podcast Serving Orphans Worldwide: Give a gift to feed a child for a month | https://servingorphans.org/thepourover MORE FROM TPO: ⁠Free newsletter⁠ ⁠Watch TPO on YouTube⁠ ⁠Download the TPO App⁠ Unless otherwise noted, all scripture references are from the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) translation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, we already told you what AI is a couple weeks ago. Today, we're asking a bigger question. Should Christians actually trust AI or fear it? Or is that even the right question? Let's find out. Well, hi, I'm Peter. I'm a writer here at The Pourover. And, you know, normally you'd be watching Kathleen and K.A.

walk through our Saturday explainer. But this week, we're doing something a little bit different, a lot bit exciting. A few weeks back, we ran a newsletter, called AI Explained in parentheses by a human. And one of the resources we recommended in it was a book that was written by today's guest. So instead of our trademark shallow dive explainers explaining AI, we thought, why not talk to someone who's, you know, done the deep dive and written an entire book on how Christians should think about technology. And so joining me today is Tony Rankie, author of this book, God, Technology in the Christian Life.

Tony, thanks so much for being here and thanks for writing this book. I appreciate it, Peter. Thanks for having me on. You bet. Can't wait to chat. And so I'd love to start here. You know, your book doesn't just get into questions of should I, should I not use technology? And in this case, AI, is it good or is it bad?

But starts much broader asking questions like how is human technology related to God in his world and creation. And so could you talk a little bit about the, just the importance of those questions and where you land on them? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, actually, when I sent my book to the publisher, the first cover that they designed for me

was like this shattered glass, like God technology in the Christian life and everything was like, like broken iPhone screen. And I was like, no, no, no, no. Like the vibe is way off. You know, I want like a 70s poster vibe. You know, you show the cover again. Like I want it to be like,

like creating. like creation and rockets and greenery like farming and like let's talk about all of this. And that's really been my heart. You know, in 2020, I was in Seattle doing a series of conferences in the spring and COVID broke out. And like the city was shutting down. And so I was like, I was calling my wife, you know, March Madness was shut down and, you know, all sorts of sporting events were being canceled. And I was like, you know, is the airport going to get canceled? Am I going to be able to get home?

and I had one last meeting in Seattle in March of 2020. I'll never forget it. A friend of mine came to my hotel lobby where I was staying, and he showed me artificial intelligence for the first time. Wow. He worked for Microsoft, and so he had access, and he was showing me sort of the newest models they were working on.

And my mind was blown away. I knew AI was coming, but I didn't know how powerful was going to be. And so I went home and, you know, COVID shut down everything. And I was like, you know what? I really need to write a book. on technology in the macro picture. Like, what has God's relationship to it?

Let's talk about creation. And so that's where it all kind of came from. And for me, as a technological optimist, I'm a techno optimist, I just started looking at, does scripture give us any hints, any trajectories that we can trace into the tech age? And that just then opened the door of just thinking through creation, thinking through all the things that God has given us to invent with. his relationship to inventors. And it just, from there, it just one thing led to another.

It's like I was opening up a door to a new room, and then that room led off to three new rooms, and each of those rooms went to three new rooms. And so it was just, it was unbelievable. Those years of COVID were just a season of discovery for me, like I've never experienced before. Yeah. It's so interesting because so many people, I think, feel a little lost, looking, trying to get wisdom from the scriptures because our tech world feels so different than the agrarian world that we're reading about.

But your experience is like actually there was tons of wisdom and doors opened when we're looking to the scriptures to see how technology is related to God in his world. Yeah, that's right. In natural revelation, I think natural revelation is where I started to realize that this creation is loaded with a periodic table of elements,

rare earth elements. We're talking about vital metals, elements like uranium and aluminum and iron and copper and silicon and cobalt and nickel and titanium and hydrogen. Yeah. And you have all these mineral deposits, including, you know, high-grade phosphate rock, lithium for batteries. You've got diamonds, silver, gold, obviously. But then you've also got natural gas. You've got oil.

You've got coal. You've got all of these powers. Uranium, atomic power, how the sun is burning. And I just started to realize like all of these powers, all of these potencies, all of these elements were in the creation that God designed for us to inherit. And so that led my, you know, that's kind of where I started is just realizing that everything that we can invent is there precoated into the creation that God gave us. And that was my first aha moment really in this process. And then from there it led to me meditating more on God's relationship to the Silicon. Valley of the Old Testament, which is the sword makers in Isaiah 54 and really looking at,

okay, what do we do with the most dangerous human technologies? Is God somehow there and present, or is he just vacated the premise and left us to our own devices? Yeah. And so can you tell us, kind of, can you follow that a little bit longer? And what do you think? Has he left us? Is there some technology that he's hands off with? Yeah, that's, I mean, this is great. I mean, this is like a kid in a candy store. Yeah. But like, the Tower of Babel is the story

that everybody goes to. See, God hates technology. He's going to squash it, squelch it. Just, you know, just, if we try to build a skyscraper, he's just going to destroy it.

You know, he doesn't like technology. But the more I came back to the Tower of Babel story, what I realized is that there's a lot more going on than just, it's God versus humanity. And that is that you had this

coalescence of all human intelligence in one place, building one, one city, building one skyscraper, seeking to overthrow God in his sovereignty. Basically, let's build a tower up into the heavens so that we can basically take over as the sovereign reiner over creation. And so God let this, you know, happen for a while. They built this big tower. They coalesced all human engineering and intelligence into this one mega city. And then at the right time, God came down and he smashed it. He didn't just,

smash it. What he did is he hacked it. His design was not one big megacity, this totalitarian sort of center of all human intelligence and design. His design was 10,000 cities spread all across the globe. And so what he did is he splintered all of humanity using languages. So he gave this race instinct. That's where race instinct comes from is in the Tower of Babel response. And he spreads people all across the globe. He's like, I don't want one city. I want 10,000 cities. I want Tokyo and Shanghai.

And I want cities, Sydney, Tokyo, Phoenix, New York City, wherever. You know, God wants 10,000 cities. So the idea was, yes, cities, but not one. And so what I started to realize is that all of human engineering and all of human engineering prowess, everything that we have, spent together in the same design towards one human hubris accomplishment, God can squash it in a second. And not only can he squash it, he hacks it to use it. So what they intended for evil, God intended for good. He intended to give us 10,000 cities. And one of the things that he did by giving so many languages is he brought a disunity into humanity that will protect us going forward.

And what I mean by that is if you talk to someone from Tokyo and you talk to somebody from Shanghai and someone from Paris and someone from Istanbul, if you ask them, how do you build a house? They're all going to think different ways. Yeah. Because what's the best meal that you can cook for dinner? It's all going to be different, right? Because of this race instinct, because of these languages, we all think of the world differently. And one of the things that that does for us is that it means that we're all going to think of AI different. We're all going to think of electric cars differently. We're all going to think of different things differently so that there's an inbuilt disharmony within the created order that's going to protect us from just overadopting on one thing like they did at Babel. So that's a grace that God has given us in making those languages and in giving us those 10,000 cities. Yeah. So I mean, you can really build a whole theology of cities. That's what a theology of technology is. It's basically,

just following the storyline in the Bible of what God thinks of cities and human engineering. And it's a more surprising story than I think just seeing the Tower Babel, God hates human innovation, squashes it, and that's that. There's actually quite a bit more to the story. Yeah. So if you describe yourself as a tech optimist, right, and these are your starting presuppositions. Like these are your starting questions and the questions animating your theology and thinking. How connect the dots between how this, these questions and these answers are coming to you being a tech optimist and then maybe even to focus it even more in the realm of AI. Are you still tech optimist even with this new AI world and maybe sort of connect some of those dots? Yeah, I'm a tech optimist not because I trust the technology makers. I'm a tech optimist because I trust the God who is actively involved in our society, in our culture. And this, you know, for me, I think, and this goes, I think, does. is a discovery I made 15 years ago in Isaiah 5416, which is probably, I think, the cornerstone of my entire theology, and that is realizing that the most dangerous technologists in any

given society have been put there by God who gave them their skills and their gifts to do what they do. Isaiah 5416 blew my mind, and that is something, it took me a while to understand what it was saying. But once I grasped that idea, it was a Copernic. and revolution for me. And what I realize is that I think a lot of Christians just assume, like, we live in this world, God is vacated, he's left, maybe he'll come back and do something in the future, kind of

the Tower of Babel kind of model, you know, the people building Babel are just kind of doing all of this work on their own. And God was sort of like a grandfather who just kind of senile and not really paying attention until all of a sudden he says, oh, what are they doing? You know, and then tries to fix it. But if you read the broader storyline of scripture, it's not that way. God is actively involved in society at every step of the way, and he's here and he's present. So my technological optimism is not optimism in the AI companies.

It's not an Elon Musk. It's in the God who makes men like Elon Musk to be Elon Musk. And if God makes men and women to do what he's called them to do in the world of tech, then we fear him not the tech maker. And that became clear to me in Isaiah 54-16 when it comes to sword makers. Don't fear swords. Don't fear sword-makers. Fear the one who makes the sword-maker.

That's the takeaway. You know, if you watch the House of David TV series, there's a whole episode called the God of Swords in season two. It is so good. I hope everybody can see this. Because Abner leads David and Jonathan, and they sneak off to end. Indor, which is this unholy, sort of smoky, sooty place of witchcraft and devilry and things

like that. And they're trying to find the guy who made Goliath's sword. Because these are like the best tech in the Old Testament. Whoever made Goliath sword, we need him to make our swords for Israel so that, you know, we have this power. Will dominate. Go into Endart. Exactly. Exactly. And so the sword makers are really like the, that's the Silicon Valley of the Old Testament. And what you see in Isaiah is that the god of swords is not is not the guy who makes the swords. It's the God who makes the sword maker. And so that for me blew my mind. You have a scary technology, which is swords, Goli's sword.

Whoever made that is superior. So him, he's the god of swords according to that episode. But then there's a God over the sword maker who is the God who makes the sword maker. Yeah. And so Isaiah is using this trick, which is it just blows my mind. He's like, don't be afraid of the sword or the sword maker. Be afraid of the one who made the sword maker to be the sword maker who makes the sword. Yeah. Wow. It took me a while to grasp this. This is not an easy thing. I'm not saying that you just opened your Bible, read it once and come away from it. You've got to let it sit with you for a while and really understand what this means for our age of technology. And what it means for us is that Elon Musk was made to be Elon Musk. He is not just some random, freak of nature, some cream that rose to the top, and every generation has a Tesla or, you know, some guy who kind of comes to the top, some woman who is just inventive above all other people. No, no, that's not how it works. Elon Musk exists to be Elon Musk because the maker of Elon Musk made him to be Elon Musk.

And then once you see this, how centrally located God is in the development of Silicon Valley and technology, then you can become a tech optimist, not in. the technologists, but in the one who makes the technologists. Yeah. So what I came to realize in this book is that there's nine limiters that God is put in place to limit human innovation in every generation. And you see that in the Bible, and I think we see that today. I was fascinating.

Thanks for that answer. When you were chatting, I was wondering, does this, this being a tech optimist for you, then it doesn't sound like it means this technology is inherently going to make things better. It means maybe a broader scope of what it would mean to be an optimist is that God is going to win. Sort of no matter how strong this technology is. But if a sword does, yeah, if a sword does hurt and it does cause pain, any technology might hurt and might cause pain and might be a detriment to society. But that story going that way doesn't necessarily mean that God's story is being disrupted. Exactly. 30% of the power I'm using right now from Phoenix to connect with you is made with nuclear. Nuclear sources.

Yeah. Now we go back to World War II and say like let's just not invent nuclear weapons, not invent anything like, you know, you know, let's just shut it all down. Humanity should not have this dangerous technology because we can do really dangerous things with it. We're going to hurt one another really badly with this. And yet we see within the patterns of creation that nuclear power is something that God invented. We can look to the sun and see nuclear fusion, which is something that we can't do that yet. Maybe someday, probably not in my lifetime, but maybe in the lifetime of my grandkids, maybe nuclear fusion will be something that we can replicate. But that technology is so far beyond us in the sun of what God created and patterned for us. We're so reaching towards that.

So again, what I want is I want people to realize when it comes to nuclear power, we're not inventing something that is just sort of like some abstract. Extracted evil thing that we concocted. We're just following the patterns of creation in seeing what's available and how we can use it. Now we're going to create dangerous things. We're going to hurt one another with those things. But we're also going to learn how to adapt and use those technologies in ways that are beneficial and positive as well. And so what it comes down to is like, I praise God for nuclear power because in the desert I can have clean energy that I can use every day.

Like, that is an incredible gift from God. That is not a gift from Tesla or whoever invented all that, you know, Ben Franklin, the first guy who sort of, you know, like, captured a lightning bolt, would be kind of what of the digital age, the electric age begins. It was with, you know, Ben Franklin is his knuckles touching the key hanging from his kite. You can trace all of these things out. But at the end of the day, God made the lightning bolt. He made electricity.

It was his idea. He taught us how to harness it. And now in our smartphones, we've got, you know, lightning harnessed in our phones. So we've got lightning harnessed in this world of electric cars. And so what I want people to see is like God's generosity is behind all of this. Are we going to use technology to harm one another? Yes, but God has also put limiters in place, things like coming out of Babel and just a disagreement on one, what's the best use of things, which is a gift that we all need. But there's also several other limiters that means that not.

everything that we invent is going to work. Yeah. And so there's safeguards in place that God has put, and he's here with us. That's, I think, the thing that I want to leave with Christians is that. Somewhere in America, a kid is waiting for a way out. Last year alone, the National Cyber Tip Line logged more than 113,500 reports of possible child sex trafficking. Reports come in every day, but identified is not safe. someone still has to get them out.

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or tpo or tap the link in the show notes to give now. The age of AI is not some world in which God has been stiff-armed and pushed out of the picture. He's here. He is present with us. He is worthy to be praised for giving us the most technologically advanced society the world has ever seen. Like, do you praise God for this? This is amazing that we get to live in this age. We are spoiled, spoiled with the amount of gifts that God has given us. And we just let those sort of go and we forget about them because we think, well, it's just what humans do.

Humans are just inventors and that's what humans do. Instead, what I want Christians to see is, no, this is a gift from God. And he is here and he's with us. And my optimism is not in Elon Musk. My optimism is in the God who made Elon Musk to be Elon Musk. Yes. That's beautiful. You know, I'm thinking about you get a gift for.

Christmas. Maybe it's a scooter or something like that. There's a way to use a scooter wisely and a way to use a scooter unwisely. And so I wonder, just to speak practically for, you know, our audience who is many of them using chat GPT, Claude every day and also wondering, should I be using this? How should I be using this? How much should I be using this? I'm wondering if you could just take us through your process of what you sense are green lights for this technology. Like thumbs up, this is a blessing from God. Use it and give him. gratitude for that. What might be yellow lights and are there any red lights where it's like, hey, let's pump the brakes, you know? Yeah, that's a great question. So most of my time writing on technology was spent in the age of the smartphone, you know, digital media and learning, you know, how much smartphone is too much smartphone? How much social media is too much social media? And I think it was really a grace that God led us through that decade of all of us asking those questions, because those are the identical questions that are back on the table when it comes to AI. When it comes to, you know, what's the role of embodied relationships?

What is the role of Scripture? What is the role of the local church? What is the role of preaching in my life? All of those things come back. And it's like we thought through all of these things when it came to the smartphone. And really the takeaways are still relevant to this day. And so, yes, limiting what you think technology can do. I remember in 2015 when people were like, I'm going to be an influencer on Instagram.

and I'm going to make millions. And, like, everybody had this kind of impulse, like, I'm going to use social media to, you know, become a celebrity or to make money or to be an influencer or something like that. And then you realize, eh, that's not such a fun life. It's a lot of time spent editing and filming. And that's not for me. And so, like, everybody had, whenever we adopt the technology, we have to adapt to it or make the technology adapt to us. And so we went through that whole era with smartphones and social media. And now we're doing the same thing.

with AI. For each of us, we're going to find ways that AI can automate the boring parts of our lives. There are things that AI can't do or will never be able to do for us, which is pastor our souls, give us life coaching on spiritual side of things. It can help you with a lot of things, but it's not going to help you. It's not, it doesn't serve a place where pastors and friends and other people are going to play a critical role in your life. And so I think we're learning a lot. And we're going to have to learn a lot very quickly about what AI can do and can't do what it should do and what it shouldn't do. Yeah. What's interesting is about every year for the past three years, I've been running a poll on Twitter just among my peeps. And I basically said, you know, do you trust technology

to give you a devotional every morning based upon your daily Bible reading? And for the first year, it was like 60% people said the technology won't even make that possible. Like you can't, you know, this is three years. On Trear. Yeah. Not possible. 25% were like, oh, yeah, I'm all in. You know, I'm going to generate it and be edified by it.

And then 25% were like, no, based upon my internal convictions, I'm not going to use AI in my spiritual life. The third time I ran it, and this was just recently, the numbers totally flipped. So the number of people who think AI can't do this was down to 25%. So it basically dropped over by half. Wow. So most people can see like, oh, yeah, AI can do this. You know, if you ask AI for a 500. word sermonette on your Bible reading, it can generate it. The 25% I've said, yeah, I'm all in. I'm

going to use it for this. I'm going to be edified by it. That stayed the same. So over all three years is 25% I've said, I'm going to use it for this. The biggest change now is now 60% of people say, I believe that it can happen. It can create this kind of content. But out of a theological conviction, I'm not going to use AI for this purpose. I'm not going to use AI in my private devotional life in my spiritual life. Yes, I'll have to use it for work. My boss is going to expect me to use it. But when it comes to church, when it comes to devotions, I'm intentionally not going to use AI. And so that's the biggest number, that's the biggest jump that I've noticed in the past three years of people realizing, okay, yes, the technology can do this or give

the appearance of creating a devotional, creating a sermon, whatever like that. But I'm making a conviction. I'm not going to use AI for that purpose. And so I think that's going to be a demographic that's going to continue to grow. Yes, the technology is powerful. Yes, it could do certain things, but I'm intentionally not going to use it in my private devotions. And so, yeah, I think that's the trend of where things are going. And it goes back to just this self-aggrandizement.

Like, do I want people to worship me for how smart they think I am, how intelligent, how attractive, whatever it is you're using filters for or AI for? It gets at a lot of the heart issues that even we saw with a smartphone as well. Yeah. Yeah, how would you articulate why you wouldn't or maybe you're not saying you wouldn't, but yeah, how would you articulate why using it for devotionals or preaching or something like that would be, like maybe there'd be some wisdom to stop in that, but it's fine for work or for research or for, is it the content? Is it the formation that happens in us? Is it something out? Yeah, what might be the articulation? Well, I think it's partly the formation that has to happen in the person's life who is then going to share the work with us. I go back to Ezekiel's calling in the early chapters of Ezekiel where God says, here's my scroll. I want you to eat this scroll. Digest it.

It's going to be sweet to your mouth and then go and speak. And I think that really is a metaphor for all preachers and teachers. And that is we have to digest the scroll. We have to eat the word. We have to ingest it and let that work. of digestion of God's word play itself out in an embodied life and then see you know just how this changes us and works in us and then we begin to have the words back to you know regurgitate to give that word back to God's people and so that's the process that that has to happen in preaching and in meditation

for for the people of God to be edified and so you can't just create a sermon that's using the tricks of mathematics to give the appearance that, you know, the pattern of sound doctrine was there in a teaching when in fact the digestion hasn't happened. And that's got to happen in our own lives. And it's got to happen in the lives of our preachers and teachers. Yeah. And then would you distinguish that between a lecture? Could you do a lecture that way? Or is there something special about it being spiritual content, you know? Yeah, that's a good question. I think we're still trying to figure out what kinds of content do we trust. I mean,

we're going to read books that are entirely generated by AI. Not this one, baby. Not that one. No, not that one. And so I've got friends of mine who are writing books that are purely AI generated. And they're super technical. And the process that they have in place for making those books is incredibly sophisticated. And the output is wildly interesting.

But at the end of the day, you know you're reading something that was just generated by AI. It just does not carry this sort of weight that a book has that is more imperfect that was written by a human. And so there is a lot of embodiment going on here. And I think there's going to be a lot of limitations. I think with any technology, we adopt a smartphone and we think, oh, this is going to make my life so much better. I'm going to be so much more connected to my friends and my grandparents and my nieces and nephews. and then you realize, no, it doesn't work that way. It actually makes you more distracted, more depressed.

Playing a lot of candy crush. A lot of candy crush, Angry Birds. You know, like hours of Angry Birds is not good for your soul. And so, like, every technology comes with these promises. Like, oh, we are going to change the world. We're going to, you know, AI is saying we're going to take all the jobs away. Everything is going to be different in the reality is once the reality sets in, is you see that there are severe limitations to all of our technologies,

limitors that God has put in place for our good, but the technologies never live up to the hype. Yeah, yeah, it's well said. I have a thousand more questions. We're going to land the plane here talking a little bit about Scripture. When we wrote the newsletter a couple weeks ago about AI, we landed on Isaiah 28 and a passage about the maker, you know, telling us how to cultivate the civilization,

that, you know, pushes forward for the common good. And so I'm just curious how you see Isaiah 28 and how it's relating to this conversation. Yeah, I think more of a more of a general comment that would probably make is that when I was studying scripture Genesis to Revelation to write that book, what I realized is that a theology of technology is basically a theology of the city. So what you're looking for in the Bible is the storyline of the city. In the early chapters, God is like, don't live in the city. go pitch a tent out in the plane and be godly.

You know, like it's very clear. God's godly people do not live in cities. And then that changes over time. And then you have the cities of refuge that come along. And then you have God's people living in Babylon. It's like, don't destroy the city, live within the city and develop the city, marry and have businesses and things in the city. And then we get to the seven letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, which I think is really fascinating. because now you see that there are churches that can thrive.

They need some help. They need some correction. But they're churches that can thrive inside of godless pagan cities. And so what that tells me is that there's a long trajectory when it comes to city building in the Bible that you want to pay attention to. But what it also shows me is that we live in cities that have idolatrous biases built into them. Here in Phoenix, plastic surgery is a big thing. having a nice tan is a big thing, golfing a lot, boating a lot, like playing with your toys a lot, going out in the desert on four-wheelers. Like that's the bent of this city. It's recreation.

I think a lot of cities are like this. And I have to be aware of the idols of this city that drive the city so I can live a Christian life that is an opposition to those idols. And that's what the seven churches and the seven cities has to be, they have to be taught this. You can live in the city in a godly way. And what that tells me is that when we talk about AI or we talk about nuclear power, or we talk about social media and smartphones is we're not talking about a neutral technology that we're trying to steward. We're talking about things that may have an internal bias that are actually wired towards a specific end that we don't endorse. And yet, because we live in cities, we are already aware that we live within places that have an idolatrous bias built into them and we can live a godly Christian life

in those cities if we're careful. So I don't want people to come away from this conversation thinking, oh, he thinks technology is neutral. I don't. And I don't believe my city is neutral either. But if you can trace out that storyline of God's relationship to human city building, which starts off really bad with Babel, ends up in fire and ashes in Babylon.

But within it, there's an interesting story to pick up on and to see that even within the biases, we can live godly lives and we can use technologies to cultivate and we can use technologies to innovate and to build if we're careful and we're thoughtful about what we do with them yeah and revelation ends in a city right Jerusalem you know the walls are open and um that's where we're headed so he was designing a city the whole time that's right that's right that's the that's the sort of like that's a spoiler alert. It's like God was intended to build the city the whole time. That is a powerful image and maybe a good place to end. Tony, would you mind putting you on the spot a little bit? Would you mind praying to close our conversation just in your own words based on how we've chatted?

I'd be honored to you. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for this incredibly technical and and rough ride through Genesis Revelation and how you relate to cities. We pray that you would give us discernment to live in our city. city in a way that serves and loves the lost in our cities. Help us, Lord, to be protected from the idols of our cities. Help us to see those idols, see how idolatrously bent each of our cities are in their own ways. Give us a vision for that. Help us to push against those things as we see to cultivate and build local churches. We pray for pastors who feel intimidated right now by what's coming. We pray that you give them confidence in your word. And we thank you, Lord, for your word. We need absolute rock-solid truth in an age like this. And that's what your word is. Thank you for your

word. Thank you for our friends in our local churches, those embodied relationships that you put into our lives, people very much unlike us, people that we wouldn't naturally hang out with that are maybe older than us, younger than us, different in so many different ways. Thank you for putting them into our lives so that we could grow in the way that you want to shape us and that we can shape others by your grace. So Lord, thank you for the local church. Thank you for pastors. Thank you for your holy precious, infallible word. And most of all, Lord, thank you for being with us. You are present. You gave us electricity. You gave us batteries. You gave us the technology for smartphones, for AI, for everything that's ever been made is all here latent within this creation. You gave us.

It is not childproofed. This world is not childproofed. It's dangerous. And so we need wisdom and we need you to lead us as we develop and cultivate this creation in wise ways. Oh God, be big in our eyes. Let not Silicon Valley be big in our eyes. You be big in our eyes as the one who invents inventors. Thank you for your son, Jesus, and the forgiveness that we have in him and in his death.

And in his name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Tony. It's so great to chat with you. So thanks for spending some time with us. But thanks even more for digging into this, doing the hard work of putting your thought and your fingers to work to type this out. And so if you are interested more on this topic or anything in the world of technology, God and all that, God technology and the Christian life. The link will be below. And if you've enjoyed this, like and subscribe. You can find all of our explainers, our Monday, Wednesday, Friday summaries on YouTube. in Spotify and Apple Podcasts wherever you listen. So thank you, Tony. And until next time. We've all gone through seasons where we want to study the Bible deeper and, if we're honest, enjoy scripture more. The new living translation is designed to capture the deep layers of meaning in God's word, make them clear and vivid, and help Bible reading be as engaging as it is accurate. Plus, the NLT's attention to cadence and rhythm make it one of the most enjoyable translations to read and listen to. Check out the New Living Translation for yourself. Just

click the link in the show notes or go to New Living Translation.com forward slash TPO.