BIBLE STUDY: Vocation and AI
"In the beginning, work was good. No toil. No Monday dread. Just humans creating alongside God What happened? And can work ever be good again?
CREATED TO CREATE
Vocation, Technology, and Human Flourishing from Eden to AI
A 10-Week Bible Study
Artificial Intelligence is here. It's writing emails, diagnosing diseases, creating art, and—increasingly—doing jobs humans used to do. The headlines scream both utopia and apocalypse. Workers are anxious. Parents wonder what skills their kids should learn. We're all a little overwhelmed. But here's what's strange: The church has been oddly quiet.
We shouldn't be. Christians have been thinking about work, worth, technology, and human flourishing since Genesis 1. We have a deep theological tradition on vocation. We know something about what makes humans irreducibly human. We've seen technological revolutions before—and we've learned from our failures.
This 10-week study brings that wisdom to bear on our AI moment.
What We'll Explore:
• Biblical Foundations (Weeks 1-4): Eden's good work, the Fall's thorns, Pharaoh's exploitation, and God's alternatives—Sabbath, gleaning, Jubilee
• Theological Core (Week 5): Lutheran vocation theology—your worth is NOT your work
• Historical Wisdom (Weeks 6-7): The church's Industrial Revolution failure and 500 years of technology patterns
• Global Perspectives (Week 8): What Orthodox, African, Asian, and Latin American Christians teach us
• AI Directly (Week 9): Theological reflection on algorithms, personhood, and faithful engagement
• Hope and Warning (Week 10): Soviet utopianism as cautionary tale; Christian eschatology as foundation
This is not a tech class. You don't need to understand how AI works. This is a theological study. We're asking: What does it mean to be human? What is work for? Who are we if machines can do what we do? And how do we navigate this faithfully?
Sundays, 9:30 – 10:30 am
Multi-purpose room
Come ask the questions that are keeping you up at night. Let's figure this out together
