The Irreplaceable Value of Presence

I was very taken by an article I read recently. It was entitled "Why AI Can't  Replace God's Plan for Community" by Dr. Katie Fruge.  She wrote about recent studies which examine this current trend where people look to AI not only for knowledge and answers to their questions, but for emotional support and close relationships.  Dr. Fruge writes, "There’s a new type of friendship available. It’s free, and it costs you nothing because it never gets tired of you, asks nothing back, never has a bad day, and is always, always available.
It remembers everything you told it last week. It validates your feelings without judgment. It doesn’t need you to care about it or show up for its problems. Need to vent at 2 a.m.? You can wake it up without feeling guilty about having your problems inconvenience someone else. It’s always awake and there for you. We have figured out how to manufacture emotional support at scale, frictionless and on demand."

This is most frightening. She also shares a story of a fourteen-year-old boy who turned to Chat GPT as his best friend and trusted confidant, and eventually committed suicide when motivated and encouraged to do so by his ChatBot. 

In thinking about this terrible trend, I came across a page in my own journal dated February 9, 2022.  I wrote, "It is fast-moving technology that is now overwhelming me. Google runs our lives and surveils our every move. I want to disconnect from this evil, satanic world, Father. I want to disconnect, and yet people are my life. Communication with others is my joy! I long for what was: an old corded phone for a conversation with a friend that is private and not connected to a vast, global network; a real letter written by someone's hand, that I can touch and smell. Help, Abba! Help me to find a simpler life in YOU!"

Perhaps that is the cry of your life as well.  My generation remembers when loneliness and sorrow were alleviated by neighbors, family members and brothers and sisters in the faith, who truly cared, and who took the time to call or to visit.  Before the advent of computers, community was a real thing, and it was a very Godly thing as people ministered to one another face to face.  So Dr. Fruge's words touched me deeply as she wrote about this:
"We were created in God’s image for mutual bearing of burdens, of witness, and of one another’s humanity. When the apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 6:2 to “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,” he’s not describing an inefficient system in need of optimization; he’s naming something essential about what it means to be human. 

"We bear God’s image to one another. Reciprocity isn’t a bug; it’s the whole point.
AI cannot bear God’s image back to me. It can only mirror what I already am. It can soothe me, affirm me, perhaps even reduce my symptoms. But it cannot know me. It cannot be inconvenienced by me. It cannot choose me when choosing me costs something. 

"God didn’t solve our loneliness problem by becoming more efficient; He became flesh. He didn’t scale compassion; He entered into suffering. The incarnation is God’s categorical rejection of the idea that presence can be optimized away. It is incumbent upon Christians to help disciple and train the next generation to understand that true connection and relationship are not something you consume but something you can only create in community with fellow image bearers. 

"We must remember what God Himself showed us about the irreplaceable value of presence. When humanity was isolated, broken, and desperately in need of connection, God became one of us. He took on flesh, lived in a specific place, knew hunger and exhaustion, wept with grieving friends, and let a woman’s tears fall on his dusty feet. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us because love requires presence. Jesus sat at tables. He touched lepers. He let children interrupt Him. He made Himself available. If we claim to follow Christ, we cannot outsource the very thing He embodied.
 
"We are called to be present to one another, not perfectly but faithfully. To show up when it’s inconvenient. To sit with someone in their pain without trying to fix it. To create spaces where people can be known, not just affirmed. To practice the slow, costly, irreplaceable work of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

"The algorithm will never get tired of you. But it will never choose you, either. Only embodied presence can do that. Only incarnational love can bear God’s image back to a lonely world."

​Amen.