🤖 The Robots Are Taking Their Jobs Back

We were made for something richer.

Seacliff State Beach, Aptos, CA

Since everyone has a hot take on AI, I figured it's time for me to jump on the dogpile. I'm not a tech futurist or Silicon Valley prophet—just a village theologian trying to make sense of what it means to be human when the machines start overstepping and existential dread creeps into the zeitgeist.

They used to say the robots were coming for our jobs. But I think they just came to take their jobs back.

Think about it. Coding is pattern recognition and logical sequences. Spreadsheets? Pure computational thinking. Content writing? Following templates and formulas. Even some creative work turns out to be sophisticated remix and recombination. The robots didn't steal these jobs so much as reveal what they always were: mechanical processes that humans happened to be running in their heads.

But maybe this is less a tech story and more a spiritual one.

Because here's the thing that's keeping us up at night, scrolling through LinkedIn at 2 AM: If my skills are digitally replaceable, what am I at my existential core?

Younger folks are drowning in student loans for careers that ChatGPT can do in its sleep. Older folks are being laid off in a world they no longer recognize. The grief is palpable. The psychic confusion runs deeper than mere economics.

It's not just about paychecks. It's about identity. About what it means to be a person in a world moving faster than any of us can keep up with.

Not Our First Rodeo

Theological memory matters... Displacement isn't new—it's just our turn to walk through the desert.

The Israelites knew this rhythm. Egypt was predictably awful, but at least it was predictable. Stack the bricks, make the quota, and survive another day. Humans operated like machines there, but they knew their place in the system.

Then came Babylon and along with it, disorientation. Loss of home. Sitting by foreign rivers, weeping for songs they could no longer sing.

But something happened in exile: they discovered a deeper belonging and learned that God wasn't trapped in the Temple back home. The Divine was portable, present, and closer than their own breath.

The pattern repeats throughout Scripture: the end of certainty becomes the beginning of soul.

Maybe that's where we are now. Our Egypt jobs are ending, and we're sitting by the rivers of Silicon Valley, wondering how to sing the Lord's song in a strange algorithmic land.

The Church as Humanizing Space

This is where the Church comes in. As a training ground for re-humanization.

And yes, she's always there—the woman in the third pew, wearing the same perfume she's worn since 1963, singing the alto part by memory, handing you a peppermint that might be older than you are.

There's the guy who insists on reading Scripture even though he stumbles over every third word, because "God uses broken voices too."

There's the kid coloring during the sermon, her crayon squeaks echoing through the sanctuary like an accidental amen.

Maybe this is why the Church still matters in the age of AI: In a world outsourcing soul to servers, the Church insists on your actual presence.

Your real self. Your morning breath, unresolved grief, and tendency to sing woefully off-key—all honored.

The liturgy doesn't care if you can code
and the Eucharist doesn't check your resume.

The Fear Behind the Fear

But there's a deeper terror lurking: What happens when AI writes better poetry than we can? When it creates art that captivates us without ever having experienced being human?

I'll admit, some AI-generated content is unsettling in its competence. It can mimic tone with eerie accuracy, and synthesize information with lightning speed.

But here's what I've noticed: I’m automatically getting better at telling when something is written solely by AI. It smells like a pattern. It might look clean, even insightful, but it has no fingerprints on it. It’s askew in a non-human way. It lacks blood. There’s no contradiction. No story that couldn't have happened to anyone else.

AI doesn't know longing. It doesn't understand jealousy so sharp it cuts, or joy so full it makes you dizzy. It can replicate symptoms of human experience without ever catching the disease of being alive.

The poet's job isn't in danger. It's being revealed as more sacred than ever. In a world flooded with content, the job of the poet isn't cleverness. It's truth.

We Started Outsourcing Our Humanity Long Ago

Here's my confession: AI is just scaling what we already started.

I copied ample amounts of homework as a kid. As a copywriter, we all lifted headlines from each other, swapping out nouns. I wanted to look good without doing the vulnerable work of being original. Most of us have spent years trying to optimize ourselves into productivity machines, measuring worth by output rather than authenticity.

Look at Hollywood if you want proof we're already living in a copy-paste culture. Everything's a remake, reboot, or sequel. Superman again. Lilo and Stitch again. Another Freaky Friday, another Naked Gun. We keep recycling the same stories because they're safer, more predictable, easier to market. (And I have to say, I enjoy watching them!)

The familiar is comfortable, but it doesn't feed the soul. We're gorging ourselves on narrative Soylent while starving for a real home-cooked meal.

And bummer we spent decades closing liberal arts colleges and gutting humanities programs just when we need poets and philosophers most. We treated literature and philosophy like luxury majors. But my prediction is that pretty soon, the poets and philosophers might be the only ones with jobs the robots actually can't do.

But Christ doesn't meet us in our polished copy. He meets us in our trembling, honest voice.

Originality was always the calling.

Jesus Came to Make Us More Human, Not Less

Christianity got off-track when it started trying to make us angels instead of humans. We built a spirituality of escape—getting out of here rather than getting deeper in.

But Jesus ate. Wept. Slept. Bled. Got hungry. Felt tired. He laughed until his sides hurt. Got frustrated with his friends. Felt the particular exhaustion of loving people who don't understand what they're asking for.

The Incarnation was God choosing embodiment, meeting us in gloriously messy flesh.

The real problem? Our fear of being human.

Salvation means Christ taking his place within us so we can become more ourselves than we ever imagined possible.

The Cross is the collision of love and flesh, the place where God refuses to love us from a safe distance.

Jesus doesn't erase your humanity. He gives it back to you.

The Church as School for Grace

This is the opportunity at hand for the Church: to be a sanctuary for sinners and a rehearsal space for resurrection.

A place where we practice the kind of humanity that can't be automated:

• Practice receiving forgiveness from the Ground of Being made flesh—so we learn how to forgive.

• Practice confession—because we need to hear each other's real stories.

• Practice crying in public, trusting that tears make us reachable.

• Practice singing together, even off-key, because harmony means blending broken voices into something beautiful.

• Practice passing the peace—looking another human in the eye and saying, "The peace of Christ be with you," even when they vote differently than you do.

• Practice communion—taking bread and wine into our bodies because the spiritual life transfigures the physical.

What Can't Be Automated

We don't know what's coming. Probably something between utopia and dystopia. The government is ignoring the implications and there’s a lot to do to prepare the way for human life together going forward. AI may bring beauty and terror in equal measure. The disruption is real, the displacement painful.

Our task isn't to become more machine-like. It's to become more human.

Here's what can't be replaced:

• Prayer that's presence, breath, the space between heartbeats where the Divine lives.

• Eye contact across a hospital bed, across a dinner table, across the church aisle where somebody is crying for reasons you'll never know.

• Honest storytelling that reveals something true about what it costs to be alive.

• Blessing—the ancient art of speaking life over death, hope over fear, grace over performance.

• The particular way your voice sounds when you're trying not to cry.

• The weight of your hand on someone's shoulder when words aren't enough.

You Were Never Meant to Be the Machine

Here's what I want you to remember when algorithms feel overwhelming: You were never meant to be the machine.

You were always meant to be the soul inside the world.

The Church has always known this. We gather around water and bread and wine because they're true. We light candles because they're beautiful. We tell old stories because they're alive.

In a world racing toward artificial intelligence, maybe the most radical thing we can do is practice authentic humanity. In a culture obsessing over productivity, maybe the most subversive act is simply showing up as ourselves.

So, I guess... the robots can have their jobs back. We were made for something richer.

We were made for love that doesn't compute, grace that doesn't make sense, and resurrection that refuses to stay dead.

We were made to be human.

And in a world forgetting what that means, there may be no holier calling.

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P.S. If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What has AI displaced in your life? Have you found human ways to work with it? Where are you discovering deeper humanity in the midst of digital disruption? Hit reply (or comment below) and let me know.