FOMO on AI? Here's the One Thing You Should Truly Dread.
AI's Million-Dollar Mirage: Awakening to the Holy Spirit's Call in a Digital Age
It’s hard not to live in a constant state of FOMO.
People who don’t know how to code but learned how to speak are auto-dictating ideas to AI-powered coding tools like Claude Code which transforms the idea into digital products, apps, systems. They will be billionaires. Supposedly.
The fear of missing out on future wealth because you’re not vibe coding all day and night, creating products with a few prompts using the latest, break-out AI-driven platforms or tools seems to permeate online communities.
Look at social media. There are so many trends, pitches, and offers on platforms right now. People selling courses on “how to” do anything under the sun. Write a book. Make a course. Drop a digital product that makes you money while you sleep.
Add the sales power of social to the automation and output of AI. We can basically print our own money, is the impression we get when we scroll. “I bought my private jet by selling this $8 PDF that helps people shampoo their bath mats.”
I have secondhand embarrassment for my future self who scolds me for not taking the time to learn the key, secret AI prompt that would have changed my life and financial trajectory. This impoverished, agitated, washed up version of me feels the fool that I missed (and am missing) all the opportunity.
AGI: Artificial Gnostic Intelligence
This promise of secret knowledge by gurus with the inside edge, dangled like so many digital carrots, has a first century echo to it. The Gnostics promised as much, blending worldviews, including Christianity, with a catch: there were secret levels of knowledge you could reach if you followed their guidance, as you were led further and deeper into unknown truths all the way to the top echelon of revelation. Only some could get there.
They were liars. Or, at a minimum, deceived themselves. Either they were:
Swindlers with no problem hoodwinking people who longed for more and looked for a way out of their troubles with sin or hopelessness; swindlers willing to take advantage of that desperation.
People desperate not to miss out on salvation who, like multi-level marketers got in just a little too late and might never get to the top where the benefits really kick in.
There will always be the promise or fear that there are essential secrets to miss out on. Opportunities so good and so true that will evade us. Promises made that turn out to be a gold-glazed bucket o’ lies.
But that’s not the worst of it.
Ben, AI’s dominance, and the Holy Spirit
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying people using AI tools are all scoundrels trying to rip you off. Some are. Some aren’t. People certainly are making millions developing tools.
Ben Affleck is one of them. This week he sold his AI company to Netflix, a tool that will help filmmakers hasten their edits. (Turns out he’s not on a smoke break lamenting the cussedness of life. Rather, he’s savouring the sweet success of making millions more through AI.)
Because it’s inescapable, I continue to think and write about AI. I mean, just last week the US government signed a deal that puts us on a pathway toward becoming permanently spied on and looking down the barrel of AI controlled laser guns.
Whether you use AI to go after billions of dollars or to take out your enemies, or whether you choose not to learn it (and so miss out on the opportunity to bank bills or bodies), you won’t leverage it all. You’ll miss out on something.
Consider this your reminder that there’s opportunity to be had, traps to fall into, dangers and wonders abounding. But there’s something else that we should be even more worried about.
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All the power we don’t avail ourselves to
Recently I explored how AI will do everything for us, and yet we’ll all still be stuck with ourselves. It’s something to definitely consider. I also explored how people are consulting AI more than God in their daily habits.
Something that I’ve been kicking around this week is a thought, that started out as a sinking feeling in my stomach. I may or may not be one prompt away from a million dollar idea that turns into a billion dollar empire, but I certainly am one prayer away from receiving the power and outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
David, in one of the most challenging seasons of his life, prayed this heart-wrenching prayer:
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
~ Psalm 51:11
His great fear was that he’d lose access to the power and presence of God. He was terrified that he’d miss out on all the opportunity and blessing the Spirit provides.
In these times, I think this is a healthy kind of FOMO to have. We shouldn’t dismiss it. Perhaps we should all have a little more of it. I know I need to.
I want the occasional flashes of anxiety that I’m being a fool for not leveraging AI to make me millions while I sleep to be replaced with an urge to access all the power and presence of God available to me.
We’re in a time where humanity is obsessed with prompts. What’s the magical arrangement of words we can use to get AI to develop something unique and new that will improve our waking lives, change everything?
The digital tech is available for us to explore, learn, leverage to potentially change our digital and financial realities.
But there’s another kind of prompt, more significant, with eternal implications. In the noise of this AI moment I want to awaken to it: the nudge of the Holy Spirit.
As I continue (slowly) to read through Acts, it’s striking how this prompt that comes from heaven to earth, from the “cloud of God” to the mind of humanity, changes history.
The Spirit instantly live-translated a sermon into every language represented in Jerusalem at Pentecost, requiring no batteries, devices, and with no lag time.
It dropped embezzlers to the ground, dead for their lies, without the need of weaponry.
The Spirit teleported Phillip from one location to another, to interpret Isaiah to a travelling emissary who was praying for wisdom. The self-driving tech of the Spirit navigated the apostle in an instant and didn’t ask for a tip or a starred review.
Through multiple push notifications to the heart of Peter, the Spirit activated a vision that transformed the way the future of the gospel would go into the world, upgrading the platform, giving free access to God—Jew and Gentile alike—through the use of animated 3D animal avatars, projected deep in Peter’s psyche without needing a Neurolink.
All of that just in a matter of a few chapters.
Don’t worry about missing the AI wave; worry about missing the Spirit’s tsunami
I don’t know if I’m lazy, skeptical, lacking an essential fire to really leverage AI. Perhaps I’ll catch the bug or spark someday. Maybe it will be out of desperation due to all the market changes that push me into the new world of automation and generation. Or maybe AI-powered overlords will force me to innovate and get on that bus.
We’ll see. Until then, I can live with the fact that I may experience occasional flashes of fear and regret for not becoming an AI-made millionaire while I lounged in silk pajamas.
But, God forbid, I miss out on the prompts of the Spirit, directed to me from an all-knowing, all-loving God. Prompts that could change history, my life, and the lives of those around me.
Thank you for this encouraging essay! I have such a strong aversion to AI that I cannot bring myself to use it for even the most mundane of tasks. I feel deep in my gut it is always going to take more than it gives. The way you flipped the script and showed us the tsunami of the Spirit's movement in our lives gave me chills. God wants to give us His very self. Come, Holy Spirit, move in power.
And the justice of God.