Posted September 17, 2026
The debate over the dangers posed by artificial intelligence continues unabated today, a trend Fareed Zakaria calls “AI’s ‘Doomer Turn.’”
By now you’re either as worried as the “doomers,” convinced that they are fearmongers, or hoping I’ll discuss something else today. So I will pivot from one more AI-related news item to a topic that is relevant to us all, whatever our AI-related beliefs.
In a new survey by Elon University, nearly two-thirds of Americans agreed with the statement, “By replacing human beings in most tasks, AI will undermine our sense of purpose and meaning in life.” Only 36 percent believed that “by freeing human beings from most routine tasks, AI will allow us to find greater purpose and meaning in life.”
However, the pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren alleges that “without purpose, life is meaningless.” In his view, “A meaningless life is a life without hope or significance.”
How, then, do we live with transcendent purpose in a secularized culture that conspires against such significance?
I just read the new book by Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz and commend its very practical insights. In Simplify: Do 50 Percent More with 50 Percent Less, they report:
Microsoft found that today’s worker gets hit with 153 messages and 117 emails per day. The average worker loses 10 hours per week—25 percent of their workweek—on wasted time, useless meetings, or worthless tasks. . . .
And that was before AI flooded our world. AI tools, getting more powerful and ubiquitous by the day, are already generating summaries, drafts, reports, and “helpful suggestions” at a pace no human can process. The irony is brutal: Tools designed to save us time are creating new mountains of content we feel obligated to review.
In response, the authors describe as a “universal magic trick” the fact that “the more unimportant stuff you make disappear, the better you do and feel.” They assert:
Here’s the secret that took us twenty years to learn: Simplicity isn’t really about productivity. It’s about clarity. It’s about freedom. It’s about spending your finite days on Earth doing things that matter, with people you love, in ways that feel true to who you are.
One key is to focus on magnifying strengths rather than improving weaknesses. The authors cite a study showing that when managers focused on fixing weaknesses, performance declined by 26 percent, but when they focused on amplifying strengths, performance rose by 36 percent.
For a follower of Jesus, the “strength” we can amplify most effectively is our connection with our Lord. This only makes sense: The closer we are to Jesus, the more he manifests his omniscient purpose and omnipotent power in and through us. We think with the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), act with “all his energy that he powerfully works within [us]” (Colossians 1:29), and find that we can say with Paul, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).
To this end, philosopher and theologian Dallas Willard encouraged us to embrace what he called the “golden triangle” of spiritual transformation: (1) trust our challenges to the Lord, (2) depend daily on the Spirit, and (3) practice spiritual disciplines. He noted:
No one of the three will give us a heart like Christ’s without the other two. None can take the place of any other. Yet each, connected to the others, will certainly bring us to ever-increasing Christlikeness.
To maximize our relationship with our Father, it’s not enough to avoid the things that displease him: “God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Philippians 2:13 NLT, my emphasis). As Oswald Chambers noted, “It is a question of being united with Jesus in his death until nothing ever appeals to you that did not appeal to him.”
How do we do this?
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Intimacy with our Maker is by his invitation and initiative, as Hopkins observed: “the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
Our role is to position ourselves to experience him with intention and purpose: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Jeremiah 29:13–14; cf. Hebrews 11:6).
Sitting recently on my favorite bench by my favorite pond, this simple thought came to mind: The stiller the water, the less people see it and the more people see what it reflects. But a still pond is the exception, since its surface can be so easily disturbed by winds and rain from above and by turtles and fish from below.
With regard to our souls’ reflection of our Savior, we tend to think more about external storms of temptations and trials and less about internal storms of discouragement and distraction. But Paul David Tripp is right: “Every time you ask for forgiveness, you recognize that the biggest problems you face in life exist inside you, not outside of you.”
The good news is that, as Amy Carmichael wrote,
“Our loving Lord is not just present, but nearer than the thought can imagine—so near that a whisper can reach him.”
What will you “whisper” to your Father just now?
“Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.” —Washington Irving
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