A friend recently pulled me aside after an event and said, half-jokingly, "I'm afraid to Google things now. AI is going to take my job, my kids' jobs, and probably my sanity."
He's not alone. I hear some version of that conversation quite often these days. Artificial intelligence has arrived with a kind of cultural velocity that leaves most of us feeling slightly breathless. And the response, as it almost always is with a genuinely powerful new technology, has split in two: unbridled enthusiasm on one side, and low-grade panic on the other.
As Christian Homeschoolers, we don't have to choose between those two responses. We have a third option that is better than both.
Creation, Not Confusion
What I find remarkable about this moment is that the anxiety people feel about AI is, at its core, a kind of inverted awe. They're stunned by what human minds have built. They should be. But that stunned feeling points somewhere.
The biblical story begins with God creating, and then commissioning His image-bearers to continue that creative work. "Fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) is not merely a farming instruction. It's the foundation of every library, every bridge, every medical breakthrough, and yes, every algorithm. The drive to discover, build, and solve is not a secular accident. It is the image of the Creator showing up in the creature.
Artificial intelligence is, at its core, a tool; a remarkably sophisticated one built from human ingenuity, mathematical structure, and the God-given capacity for language and pattern recognition. To treat it as something alien or threatening is, in a sense, to be surprised that human beings are extraordinarily capable. But we shouldn't be surprised because we were made to create.
The Real Danger Isn't the Machine
None of that means the concerns are imaginary. They're just misdiagnosed.
The threat posed by AI is not that it will "take over." Machines don't have souls, ambitions, or moral agency. The real danger lies in how we use it. Will we deploy it with wisdom or with laziness, with discernment or with abdication. And that, frankly, has always been the story with every powerful tool humanity has ever built.
Think about it this way: the same printing press that spread the Reformation also spread deceptive propaganda. The same internet that connects missionaries to unreached peoples also fuels addiction. The tool doesn't determine the outcome, the person holding it does. And the character of that person (their integrity, their loves, their sense of vocation) is the thing that matters.
This is exactly why a Christian education is precisely the right place to form the next generation of AI users. We don't just teach how to use tools. We teach the why, and the why not. We teach that truth matters, that words carry weight, that integrity can't be outsourced, and that the image of God in every person is irreducible by any algorithm.
What We Owe Our Children
Our children will graduate into a world saturated with AI. Shielding them from it entirely is neither wise nor possible, and honestly, it misses the point. The goal was never to raise children who avoid powerful things. It was to raise children who use powerful things well for the glory of God.
That means teaching them to think, not just to prompt. To evaluate what they read rather than simply accepting what a machine generates. To understand that their creativity, their conscience, and their calling are irreplaceably theirs. Such are gifts that no language model can duplicate or replace.
It also means teaching them something that the broader culture rarely gets around to: that work itself is a sacred thing. Markets, labor, and the products of human creativity are not religiously neutral, but are part of how we love our neighbors and participate in God's ongoing work in the world. AI doesn't change that. It just raises the stakes on who we're becoming in the process of using it.
We want graduates who bring wisdom, character, and theological conviction into their careers, whether they become engineers building the next generation of these tools, teachers thinking carefully about how to use them in the classroom, or business owners discerning which efficiencies are worth pursuing and which ones quietly erode the human relationships that matter most.
Easter and the Confidence to Engage
Christians around the world recently celebrated Easter, and that's not incidental.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the hinge on which everything turns. Not just our eternal hope, but our present posture toward the world. Because the tomb is empty, we know that creation is not abandoned; it's being redeemed. Because Christ rose bodily, we know that matter, work, creativity, and culture are not obstacles to the Kingdom, they are arenas for it.
That's what gives Christians permission to engage a technology like artificial intelligence without fear and without naivety. We are not people grasping for meaning in a world that might be swallowed by machines. We are resurrection people; citizens of an unshakeable Kingdom, called to bring wisdom, truth, and love into every corner of the world God is redeeming.
The angel's words at the tomb were simple: "He is not here; he has risen." That announcement didn't just change Sunday morning. It changed the whole story, including the chapter we're living in right now.
A Marvelous Thing, Rightly Held
Artificial intelligence is a marvelous tool. Used wisely, it can amplify human flourishing in ways that genuinely reflect the cultural mandate God gave us from the beginning. Used without wisdom, it becomes one more way we substitute efficiency for virtue, and speed for depth.
Heritage Christian School exists to produce the second kind of graduate who is wise, not just capable, and grounded in the gospel that makes all the difference. That mission hasn't changed, and no technology will ever change it.
He is risen. Engage the world accordingly.
By Brian Hendry, HCS Board Member