Authentic vs Synthetic in the Age of AI

I gave a workshop for teenagers at a youth conference in Alaska this month. It ended up being one of the most important things I’ve done in a long time. My session called Authentic vs Synthetic, focused on AI. Artificial Intelligence can write your essay, finish your poem, and even hand you spiritual advice. But it can never generate a soul.

Watch the full message here, or listen on the podcast, if you’d rather hear the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvvpktwg9ms and https://www.leadbiblically.com/podcast/

Authentic vs Synthetic Starts With How You Were Made

Consider this biblical claim about how you came to exist:

Psalm 139:13-14 (ESV) says “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The crazy part is that science backs it up!

The Human Genome Project mapped about three billion pieces of code in every human being. Every single one of those codes was already present the moment you were conceived. Your hair color, your eye color, the way your mind works, all of it was written before you took a breath.

The robot won’t ever be able to do that. And no algorithm could repeat it. That’s the difference between authentic vs synthetic, and it’s central to your next steps in a life filled with AI opportunities and temptations.

Authentic vs Synthetic Shows Up in How You Connect

We’re living through a strange season. AI can write a song in your favorite artist’s voice. It can hold a conversation that feels like friendship. Some of the data on this is honestly sobering:

• Nearly half of practicing Christians (48%) say they’d trust AI with their spiritual growth, according to Barna Group.
• Thirty nine percent of Gen Z say AI’s spiritual advice is just as trustworthy as a pastor’s, per the same Barna study.
• About one in three teens have already used an AI companion for emotional support, friendship, or conversation practice, according to Common Sense Media.

This data speaks of a generation that’s quietly outsourcing connection and even their faith to an artifiical, generated source that shouldn’t be given such an intimite role.

Ephesians 2:10 (ESV) says “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Discern, Don’t Download

This is the part I keep coming back to.

Hebrews 4:12 (ESV) says “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls was an archaeological find so old it let researchers test whether the Bible had actually changed over a thousand years of hand copying. It held up. In 2021, AI confirmed it, when researchers used it to analyze the handwriting on the Great Isaiah Scroll and found the same remarkable precision across the scribes who copied it by hand.

In a world of increasingly fake content, the Bible holds up as authentic and valuable as in ancient times.

Where This Leaves Us

You don’t have to run from AI. I use it myself, as a normal part of my work. But every time you reach for it, ask yourself what AI might be taking from you instead of giving you.

You were formed before any of this technology existed, and that hasn’t changed. Don’t lose that in this moment.

Join the Conversation. Answer This Question.

• Where have you felt the pull to let something artificial stand in for something real lately, a conversation, an answer, a connection?