Ideally, specialists are equipped with expertise and positioned for action in ways that the general population lacks. King David’s “mighty men,” your church’s janitor who has the special cleaning tools, and the biblical language scholar who can tell you why the aorist form of verb is significant in a particular a New Testament passage—all these are specialists in their own fashion. Because of their equipping and position, they can do things that others cannot.

When it comes to public policy, it seems like specialists are a dime a dozen. In the United States—where every registered voter is a governor in some sense—we all like to think we’re experts. Political punditry is a national pastime precisely because we’re all involved to one level or another in politics. But punditry goes only so far, and when the rubber meets the road, most of us don’t have time to pore through massive legislative bills to find threats to religious liberty. Nor do most of us have the expertise to find hidden government efforts to fund abortions overseas or to determine the best way to combat an oppressive executive action.

That’s where Christian public policy organizations come in. If they’re doing their specialized work in the right way, they can maximize effectiveness in protecting and advancing public policy issues important to Christ’s church.

A Disclaimer

Every morning as I drive across the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol Building, I remind myself that while I’ve seen a lot, I certainly haven’t seen it all.  I’ve worked in Washington, D.C. in Christian public policy sphere since 2006, primarily in various roles at Family Research Council, an organization whose mission is “to serve in the kingdom of God by championing faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview.”

My tenure in Washington has witnessed the Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump (again) administrations, the House of Representatives and the Senate exchanging hands multiple times, and a shifting of the balance of the Supreme Court. Each of these changes had a significant impact on issues and how our organization postured itself—sometimes on offense, sometimes on defense. While this article can’t help but be flavored by my own experience, my aim is to delineate the broader principles to which Christian advocacy organizations should aspire.

A Proper Grounding

Politics can be a dirty business, and its reputation is perhaps even dirtier. When even the Gospel narratives speak of the government tax collector as a pejorative (e.g., Mark 2:5), you know that getting into politics will have its moral challenges. That’s why a Christian advocacy organization must have strong grounding before getting off the ground.

Paul writes to the Corinthian church, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.” (2 Cor. 10:3). If politics is exemplary of walking in the flesh, the admonition to not wage war according to the flesh is all the more important. A Christian public policy organization should be made up of believers who are daily walking according to the Spirit, even as they labor in the flesh-and-blood world of politics.

Washington, D.C. is teeming with public policy professionals. Throw a stone in the capital city without even looking and you’re sure hit an attorney, a lobbyist, or a media specialist who is willing to do any job for a paycheck. Sadly, the ‘Christians’ in these fields are often hard to tell apart from the rest. I’ve interviewed many job applicants over the years who may have been well-qualified by the world’s standards but seemed more enamored that the work might be conservative than that it was Christian.

The “Swamp” contains many hazards, and a staff whose roots are anchored in the good soil (Mark 4:8) is necessary if there is to be any differentiation between uniquely Christian public policy and the policies of the world. Morton Blackwell’s adage “personnel is policy” applies doubly here. Knowledge of political processes without knowledge of and devotion to the Scriptures will eventually result in public policy that is anything but Christian.

Neighborhood Rules

Be it in the nation’s capital or the local town council, any advocacy group must play by the rules of the neighborhood. Politics is an insider game, and even the occasional outsider who makes inroads does so by using the insider framework.

Christian public policy groups are no exception to this rule. While Jesus did say that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:38), the triumph of the cross of Christ happened within the context of a corrupt political system. The corrupt mechanisms themselves were used by God to accomplish his purpose. Likewise, the apostle Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship (Acts 22:5) and highlighted the legitimacy of the state as God’s servant (Romans 13). 

In Washington, working within the political context means working in coalition. Many voices advocating for an issue is more powerful than merely one, and this means sometimes making otherwise strange alliances. For example, a Christian organization may argue alongside a feminist group for policies that protect women in women’s spaces (e.g., bathrooms and showers) from men who pretend to be women. More frequently, an organization will align with other Christian and conservative groups to maximize (and not duplicate) efforts. Coordination requires relationships, and any group that tries to go it alone will find itself on the margins.

Christian Advocacy Must Be Uncompromising

If politics is a pressure cooker, then Washington, D.C. is a hyperbaric chamber. Pressure to conform comes from all sides. Gentle nudges to “get with the program” morph quickly into violent shoves. Christian public policy organizations can quickly be tempted to water down or otherwise discard core principles for the purpose of getting along. Such compromises may keep them in coalition, give them the right photo-ops for donors, or the continued ear of a public figure. But in gaining this whole world, they lose their soul.

A Christian public policy group must be uncompromising on its core principles. It needs to clearly delineate where the lines are that shall not be crossed. Typically, those lines are on the most controversial issues—issues such as the sanctity of life, biblical sexuality, and religious freedom. For example, a Christian group who says at any point that marriage is defined as anything other than the union of one man and one woman is a group that has made “Christian” merely (and falsely) adjectival. There should be no compromise on the fact that human life begins at conception and is therefore worthy of protection from conception until natural death. There should be no compromise on the exercise of religion free of coercion from the state.

Christian Advocacy Must Be Compromising

Once these core lines are firmly drawn, Christian public policy organizations must focus on protecting and advancing their core issues, even making compromises when necessary to accomplish those objectives. While politics—and Christian political action especially—should be visionary, we must still seek to make progress in the fallen world (and fallen political order) in which we live.

The Rolling Stones sang, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and this slogan is never truer than in politics. The more votes you need, the more people you must court who are not in 100 percent alignment with you. This might mean agreeing with a coalition on a less-than-favorable policy that is sure to pass and leaving behind the more robust policy for another day. Politics in a democratic republic is woven in compromise. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.

For the Christians, such compromise can never transgress their core principles. Prudence, patience, prioritization, and prayer all play a role in determining by godly wisdom which compromises are acceptable at a particular time.

The Specialist Must Not Be at Odds with the Generalist

If a Christian advocacy group is not representative of Christians and Christian belief, it is as valuable as a screen door on a submarine. If my orthopedist had treated my foot instead of my aching shoulder simply because he was treating feet that day, I’d still be in pain. Even as they may take the lead due to their expertise, Christian advocacy groups must stay tethered to the issues that matter to the churches they serve. They must address first and foremost those issues that most threaten or most enhance the church’s gospel witness. In other words, Christian public policy organizations should support and be accountable to the churches they represent, not run far afield of them.

Thankfully, specialists can and often do provide significant aid to those they serve. Following 8 weeks of physical therapy, I regained 95 percent of my shoulder’s mobility. I didn’t get 100 percent healing, but I was far better off than when I had 30 percent mobility and constant pain. A Christian public policy organization that’s anchored in God’s truth is much the same. Such specialized organizations won’t be able to do it all on their own, but Lord willing, they’ll serve believers by helping protect and advance Christian interests in the public square as we all strive together to build a society that reflects the King of Kings.

Nearly twenty years ago, during the advent of the mobile phone’s adoption of Bluetooth, a strange phenomenon began to happen. You’d begin to see people walking by themselves on the street talking, having animated conversations. In the years before, such behavior was attributed to mental illness. A person just didn’t have an out-loud conversation with no one in their vicinity. It took a few years of getting used to, but now it’s commonplace. People talked into the air daily, but they were talking to another real person somewhere on the other end of the relays of bits of radio and telephone data. We weren’t talking to ourselves, and we certainly weren’t answering ourselves.

These days, I’m not so sure. We now inhabit a world where people talk routinely to small bricks of metal, glass, and plastic. And not only are we having words with these silicon wonders—the silicon wonders are talking back. We ask questions, directions, and give orders to these bricks, and the bricks reciprocate. We form relationships of a sort, we make conversation, and increasingly trust what they tell us. But where will this take us?

Intelligence and Words

Words tie humanity and history together. God spoke words as he created the world. Creation is replete with words and communication. The Bible is God’s word, and his word is the source of all wisdom (Prov. 2:6). As the author of Hebrews declared, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). God speaks to his people, and his speech culminates in the revelation of his son Jesus, himself the word of God.

God is not the only speaker in the cosmos, of course. Humans began saying words in the garden—and it wasn’t just to each other. Mankind has a long history of talking not only to God, but also to non-humans. Adam named the animals (did he tell them their names?), and Eve’s consequential conversation with the serpent reminds us that humans don’t always reserve their speech for other people. Balaam nonchalantly spoke with his donkey, and in Revelation, an eagle cries woes and warnings (Rev. 8:13) to whomever would hear. Even after biblical times, it was reported that St. Francis preached to the birds, and anyone who has owned a puppy is acquainted with telling it “no!” It’s not the same as talking to a person, but most animals have some semblance of a personality. They’re not persons created with the imago dei, but their ability to understand communication on some level—intelligence—lends a rightness to conversing with them. We can tell Lassie to sit, and then reward her with a “Good dog!” without betraying the natural order of dominion.

Humans also have a history of talking to inanimate objects, but the communication here tends to be more one-sided. The futility of small-engine repair has been the occasion for this writer’s own unkind words to his string trimmer, and when my truck began to break down on the interstate, I spoke many words of encouragement for it to make to the next exit. Moses was told by God to speak to a rock, and his disobedience cost him dearly. People talk to things all the time, but things we talk to lack even a hint of personality, much less intelligence. We bless and we curse the things of this world, but we have no expectation of the things of this world blessing and cursing us in return.

A New Personality

Enter artificial intelligence (AI). Neither human nor animal, AI is categorically a thing of this world—a machine. But it is not a machine in the way a bicycle is a machine, nor is it even in the same vein as a calculator. A person inputs manual instruction to a bicycle, and the bicycle predictably moves through space and time. A person inputs numbers and commands into a calculator, and the calculator outputs a predictable result. The AI large-language models of today certainly receive input, but the output AI generates using the infinite possibilities of language is far from predictable.

Modern AI ebbs and flows from a near-infinite stream of words. Continually learning, it can interpret natural language better than your trained Springer Spaniel, and sometimes better than the people working your local drive-thru. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we’ve begun to attribute personality to AI. The unceremoniously-named ChatGPT notwithstanding, many AI’s have been personified with names like Siri, Grok, Gemini, Claude, Ada, and Jasper.

But names are just the beginning. The Channel One news agency, set to launch in 2024, takes personification far beyond chatbots by presenting a newscast populated by AI-generated news anchors who look and sound like real people, giving new meaning to the phrase “talking heads.” In 2023, the Hollywood SAG-AFTRA strike addressed the looming specter of AI replacing both writers and actors. As deepfakes become more and more realistic, the value of a picture will be reduced from a thousand words to only three: Is it real?

We can only expect the artificial personalities of AI to become more and more lifelike. Right now, physical presence may be lacking, but the behaviors precipitated by the COVID years showed us that physical presence has been devalued to the extent that many in Western culture deem it unnecessary. The increased comfort with living virtually has opened wide the door for people to replace personalities they find less interesting with artificial ones who conform to their desires. The advent of physical artificial intelligence—the pending rise of the robots—will only deepen the dependence upon personality for human interaction with AI.

The Image of God and the god in the Machine

Humans tend to personify that which they deem intelligent. The psalmist noted this tendency of the idol makers in Psalm 135:15–18:

¹⁵ The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
¹⁶ They have mouths, but do not speak;
they have eyes, but do not see;
¹⁷ they have ears, but do not hear,
nor is there any breath in their mouths.
¹⁸ Those who make them become like them,
so do all who trust in them.

Now, we have the inverse. Today’s artificial intelligences aren’t silver and gold—they’re silicon and copper. They don’t have mouths, but they speak. They don’t have eyes, but they see. They don’t have ears, but they hear everything.

Everything may be turned upside down, but it all has a familiar idolatrous ring to it. This is not to say that all artificial intelligence is idolatry. It is not. But when we begin to interact with AI as we would another person—when we attribute personality to that which isn’t a person—we bring ourselves dangerously close to an ancient folly wrapped in a modern setting.

In 2023, Elon Musk launched his AI company, xAI with the goal to use AI “to understand the true nature of the universe.” This is a tall order. Failing to exhibit the imago dei, AI perfectly fulfills the role of deus ex machina. It is an all-too convenient solution to humanity’s problems, especially when it reflects the real intelligence shortcomings of its creators.

Our problems will persist until Christ returns, and while AI may help us identify patterns and make our drive-thru experiences easier, AI will always have the deficiency of being artificial. As Psalm 135:18 warns us, we become like those in whom we place our trust. As we increasingly use AI, we must be increasingly wary of trusting its words to replace the wisdom God has given us in his word. Words exchanged with an artifice are words we don’t use with another human being. Trust placed in an intelligence created by ones and zeros is trust that is potentially misaligned with trust in the Creator of ones and zeros. Let us trust in what is real. We won’t find the answers to the universe in AI, because in the end, we’re simply talking to—and answering—ourselves.

We are awash in communication, and there is virtually no quarter in which to hide from it. No 5G tower near you? No problem. On our satellite-blanketed planet, you’re only without coverage in the depths of the deepest caves. The effect of this all-encompassing blanket of coverage can either be comforting (knowing you likely can’t get lost), or suffocating (knowing that someone can likely always find you).

This isn’t, of course, the first major technological sea change in the history of mankind. But if the advent of the scroll and the codex were torrential downpours of technology (with Johannes Gutenberg’s moveable type press only raising the water levels), then the internet and all its children are an overwhelming tsunami upon civilization.

Before the rise of the internet in 1985, Neil Postman wrote in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television at that point had become so deeply embedded into the consciousness that it was invisible. He said, “Twenty years ago the question, ‘Does television shape culture or merely reflect it?’ held considerable interest for many scholars and social critics. The question has largely disappeared as television has become our culture” (p. 79).

If television was our culture then, how much more is internet our culture now? And we need not bother asking, “What has been shaped by the internet?”—it’s better to ask, “What has not been shaped by it?” Even those of us who wish to be off the grid know that as close as we can get to freedom from the Net, we still retain a wink and a nod’s connectedness to it. From the way we consume media, to the way we shop, to the way we (re)search, to the way we educate, to the way we visit the doctor—behold, the internet is making all things new.

Or is it? As Solomon reminded us, “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us” (Eccl. 1:10). All the wonders and newness of the internet age didn’t close the door on the evil and sin that preceded it. In fact, it seems to have billowed new life into humankind’s depravity, sometimes accelerating it at a breakneck pace. It has made the peddling of pornography, child sexual abuse material, and all manner of other sexual deviancies flourish as industries, legal or not. The new technology has accelerated the old sin that was creeping at our door.

Amid these more egregious negative outcomes of our digital age, there is also the pernicious numbing effect that internet culture has on our minds. Writing in The Atlantic in 2008, Nicholas Carr asked “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” It was, he concluded, and he lamented:

What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

More than a decade later, if you’ve read the previous 600 or so words, kudos to you. The internet’s summary culture doesn’t favor longform because you absolutely must get to the next thing that’s always lurking, promising to be better than the last thing. TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) has become a rallying cry for the abrupt communication in which we live.

So here we find ourselves drowning in this Flood 2.0, which has reshaped the face of the earth—not destroying wickedness, but amplifying it, and numbing our minds along the way. Therefore, it is worth asking: Is yet another website needed—even if it is focused on a biblical approach to life, thought, and practice? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

In writing about the Areopagus of Athens, Luke said in Acts 17:21, “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” As far as we can tell, Luke didn’t have a Twitter account, but his observation about Athens tracks remarkably close to our own modern-day public squares. As Luke tells us, Paul went into the Areopagus, and brought strange things to their ears. In response, some mocked, but others wanted to hear more.

The many words of the Areopagus couldn’t save sinners—they couldn’t even save Greek culture in the long run. But the strange word Paul was introducing in this venue was indeed that word, the word above all earthly powers, the Word made flesh, now seated to reign in glory— no thanks to them abideth. Christ was over the Areopagus, and he is over any internet that could ever be fathomed, even if it is a network of darkness and death.

Something good can come out of Nazareth. And something good can be made of the internet. Speaking light into darkness is God’s business. He did it at creation (Genesis 1:3), he did it at the incarnation (John 1:4-9), and he did it in the hearts of his redeemed (Ephesians 5:8). Bringing life out of death is his business (Ephesians 2:1-10).

The spirit of the age that would have reign over this network of darkness is one of deconstruction. Tearing down is its business, leaving the carnage of both body and soul in its wake—a culture that leaves cancellation as its ultimate end. But Christ is a creator, and we as his followers have before us the opportunity to follow his lead. We cannot create ex nihilo, but under his power, we can build within this network of nihilism. We can speak light into the darkness of this flood because the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Lord willing, Christ Over All will be a beacon that reflects the light of the world upon this technological flood. If we remember, the greatest technology in our salvation is a rudimentary device with two intersecting wooden beams. It was a device of death, but the man who died on it is the Christ who is over all. Of the making of many websites there is no end, and it is left for us here within this tempest to keep answering the age-old question, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” That same Christ speaks, “Peace, be still!” to the torrent that floods us today. May he make the flood cease that we might be filled with his Word.