AI Didn’t Replace You. You Stepped Out First.

AI can learn everything you do, but it cannot learn what you’ve lived. And the one place it can’t replace you is the exact place the harvest needs you most.

Back in April, Reuters reported that Meta (formerly Facebook) was installing software on employee’s work computers to record their mouse movements, their keystrokes, and, every so often, a screenshot of whatever was on the screen. They called it the Model Capability Initiative. The stated purpose was to teach AI agents to do what the employees do. As you can imagine, latent anxieties about layoffs and AI replacement only grew.

When I read this, my first reaction wasn’t outrage, it was recognition. I’ve seen this pattern before. As a researcher I’ve watched a version of this happen in the church for twenty years. I’ve watched as experienced believers systematize their beliefs, put them in a curriculum or a program or an app, and then step away from the work, letting the books and the programs handle it.

It sounds fine at first, but there’s a hidden cost. Think about what Meta’s software actually captured Clicks. Keystrokes. Patterns. Everything that happens on the screen. But what it could never capture is what was going on in the employee’s mind that led them to actually click or type something.

I’ve put a name on this unknown: Scar tissue. Let me explain.

I can prompt a machine to write me a prayer for a friend with a cancer diagnosis, and it will be a good prayer. Better worded than anything I could write. But the machine doesn’t know the pain—it doesn’t have the scar tissue—of losing a loved one to that same disease. The pain that says that what my friend needs now is for me to just sit with them at 2 AM not saying anything because my presence means more than any words.

The machine doesn’t have the scar tissue of eleven long years waiting for an answer to prayer that allows me to empathize with a friend also praying desperately. The machine has never blown up a relationship and then had to humbly ask forgiveness. It has never wrestled with its own sin and come face-to-face with the awesome amazing grace of God our Savior.

You have. All the experiences of life, all the tragedies and triumphs, make their marks on our soul and leave behind the scar tissues that allow us to empathize with others in their pain and joy. And the older you get, the more you know. And the more you know, the more you have to give. Yet so much of that experience is being wasted.

And the data says this is not theoretical. In our most recent State of Christianity in America work, and in Barna’s recent Faith & AI research, the direction is clear: nearly one in three American adults now say spiritual advice from AI is about as trustworthy as advice from a pastor. Among Gen Z and Millennials, it rises to about two in five. And roughly four in ten practicing Christians say AI has already helped them with prayer or Bible study.

I’m not here to tell you the machine is evil—I use it. But I want you to understand the tragedy of so many people getting spiritual direction from software that, well, has no scar tissue. And the number of people turning to AI isn’t growing because the guidance they get there is better, the number is growing because AI is available, and we often aren’t.

So let me say the hard part to those of you over 50, because it’s the part I had to say to myself in the mirror.

At some point we were told the future belonged to somebody younger. And a lot of us believed it. We stepped back and called it humility. We called it letting the young people lead. And now this new technology comes along that can give great sounding advice and the young people turn to it rather than to those with real practical experience.

If we’re feeling left out and ignored, it’s not because we’ve been replaced by artificial intelligence, it’s because we gave up our seat at the table a long time ago.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:4: “…who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

That verse is scar-tissue theology, and it tells us what we’ve lost. Paul isn’t saying your suffering was pleasant. Of course it wasn’t. But he is saying it has a purpose. Paul is saying that God comforts us to be a comfort to others in their need.

So here’s your assignment.

This week, pick one person under 40. Tell them one story—just one—of a time God showed up for you when you didn’t deserve it. Don’t turn it into a lesson, just tell the story. Then ask them one question: “What are you carrying right now?” And then do the thing the machine can’t. Shut up and listen.

Meta wanted to record everything its people did so it could stop needing those people. God recorded everything that happened to you so somebody else could be comforted by it.

If you want help knowing where to start, go to bttb.org/sunday. My book The Over-50 Advantage is still free there, and it exists precisely for this moment.

Still in the fight with you,

This week on Spiritually Fit Today, I talk with Samuel Chiang, and John Rinehimer about what it really means to answer God’s call—whether across the globe or right in your own neighborhood.