I noticed a young artist’s face drop as she watched the projected AI-generated animation playing at the front of the church. It was a quick, fun animation made as part of a children’s talk. Most people hadn’t noticed it was AI, but the subtle tells were clear to anyone familiar with image creation.
AI-generated images and videos are increasingly appearing in our social media feeds, in advertisements, education, publishing and media – and now, it seems, even in our churches. And while we discuss how much ChatGPT should shape sermons or Bible studies, the use of AI in the artwork and design we use is often overlooked. It makes sense – when budgets are tight and time short, it’s tempting to use a tool that can turn a prompt into an image in moments. But what do we lose when we are too quick to do this?
From the beginning, the Bible shows that God spoke all things into being (Gen. 1v1). As we come to know Him through Scripture, we see that He created not out of need or compulsion, but out of His own good pleasure and delight. In creation, God reveals His goodness, truth, and beauty – working with rhythm and order, colour and diversity, precision and design. Yet within His creation, He built in potential for growth and development, entrusting the task of cultivation to those made in His image.
Human creativity is a sacred responsibility and calling, yet it was never meant to parallel God’s. Humanity was always to remember its creatureliness. In Adam’s first recorded act of creativity – an expression of poetic praise at seeing Eve (Gen. 2v20, 23) – we see that, like God, Adam creates with his voice. Yet unlike God, Adam can only respond to what has already been made, relying on lungs, vocal cords, breath, and rhythms that God had crafted. By design – even before the Fall – human creativity is derivative. To create and steward God’s world, humanity must wrestle with the material around us.
This is where I begin when teaching art students about God and creativity. We reflect on how the artist’s task is often hard – a struggle to bring order and form to materials under our control to bring forth its potential. But it is a joy to consider how theologically rich and important this process is. Yet many share how sidelined they feel – in society, in universities, and even in the church. Their work is dismissed as a luxury, their process as indulgent – something to be enjoyed only after the “important” things are done. The growing dependence on AI to bypass artists and designers only adds to this. By relying on it, we too easily value what is measurable, holding efficiency and utility as the standard of success. Art resists such measures, and when creativity is invited into wider conversations only as a tool for other goals, we risk losing sight of its intrinsic worth.
By inviting humanity to join in cultivating His world, God shows that His priority is not efficiency. Value lies not simply in end results but in the careful toil itself – it is an invitation to enjoy our privilege as image bearers. AI tools that short-cut creativity can hollow out process in favour of outcome, reflecting our desire for utility and our reluctance to embrace the friction of the creative process.
It would be simplistic to claim that AI stops us from flourishing in our God-given creativity, but our dependence on it to generate quick results can rob us of something deeply human. It tempts us to forget our creatureliness and resist God’s invitation to thoughtful cultivation. Artists are trained in slow looking and slow making, setting aside utility to meaningfully and intimately engage the world around them. In our growing dependence on AI, we need artists at the heart of the church more than ever – bearing witness to God’s gift of creativity and the importance of toil at its heart.
