Bearing God's Image in a World Being Rewritten

Human Is A Verb Podcast

0:00

-13:08

Bearing God's Image in a World Being Rewritten

Human-ing in an Age of AI (Part 2)

Julene Tegerstrand, Ph.D.

Jul 02, 2025

Transcript

Image created by ChatGPT, Genesis 1 — Formless Void

Dear Human Is A Verb Community,

Here is what you can expect in this (long) essay:

What's left of our humanity when AI can do everything?
Why "bearing God's image" matters in the age of machines
How the Creation and ancient exile stories speak to a people facing disruption
Why emotional intelligence, empathy, and courage are our superpowers

This essay is for you if

... have you ever wondered what it means to be human in a world where machines seem more capable than we are.

Since the essay got long, I made an audio version so it can be listened to ‘on the go.’

I hope this essay gives you hope in the midst of great uncertainty and change.

Peace,

Julene

Facing Our Own Exile

"In the beginning... the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:2)

Artificial Intelligence is ushering us into our own our own formless void.

Like the people of God who became exiles and lost their temple, we're watching the unraveling something important to us….human cognitive supremacy. The sacred center of what made us unique is being rewritten by new technologies.

Like those who lost their homeland, many will face displacement from familiar territories of work, learning, and creativity. We're going to have to navigate the strange new empire of algorithmic decision-making.

I welcome some of this. And I still believe that even if machines do the work, humans need the skills of discernment.

The Day AI Got Personal

My first time hearing about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) was in March 2025, when Ezra Klein interviewed Ben Buchanan, special advisor to the Biden administration on A.I. policy. What’s important to understand about AGI is that it marks a shift from narrow, task-specific intelligence to flexible, general-purpose intelligence.

AGI will be able to reason, solve problems, and create across a wide range of fields without needing to be retrained for each new task.

Buchanan warned that systems capable of replacing humans in cognitive work are coming, "quite likely during Donald Trump's presidency," and that today is "the worst it's ever going to be."

We're talking about the end of work as we know it, the end of rational human dominance, and potentially the end of the world as we've always known it.

This was a mic-drop moment.

All of a sudden, I felt like I'd been living under a rock, unaware that a technological renaissance was already reshaping our world.

I’ve lived among a community of people who’ve lost their jobs and in some cases, their very sense of vocational identity. I’ve seen how deeply disorienting and painful this can be.

So when I heard that our entire society might soon face something similar, my heart dropped for all of us.

If AI becomes better at logic and language, what do we still have that’s truly sacred and truly human?

Why Faith Has to Be More Than Thinking

We've unconsciously built so much of our faith around the very thing AI now does better than us: rational operations, logical arguments, systematic theology.

In Part 1, “What if a Robot Prayed the Sinner’s Prayer?,” I shared how this question exposed something I’d been feeling for a long time. Faith, especially discipleship, had been treated like a cognitive download. If you learn the right things and think the right thoughts, you're formed.

But I’ve been longing for something more embodied. I want a faith that doesn’t just live in my head, but shows up in my relationships. How I listen. How I show up. How I love.

What Makes Us Human—Still

Zack Kass, a former OpenAI executive, describes what will remain uniquely human when machines take over as “negative space.” In other words, when AGI becomes commonplace, the real question is: what’s left for humans to do?

Negative space is not a loss. It is an opening. Like a photographic negative, the image becomes visible through the contrast of light and dark. In the same way, negative space reveals what remains human after our cognitive abilities have been outsourced or commodified.

Kass suggests the future will depend on distinctly human capacities like:

Adaptability
Courage
Curiosity
Wisdom
Empathy
Emotional intelligence

I would add ‘spiritual intelligence’ to the list.

What struck me is that humans have been in this negative space before.

Walter Brueggemann (1982) argues that the “In the beginning” passage in Genesis 1 was written to a displaced people, the Israelites living in Babylon. They were facing their own kind of “negative space.” Of course, we know it as the “formless void,” or tohu va-bohu. Everything that once gave their lives structure and meaning had dissolved.

But in the great uncertainty of exile, they remembered: God had worked in the chaos before. God brought beauty and order out of mess.

What gives me hope is:

God didn’t eliminate the chaos. God created in the middle of it.

When I read about the Israelites in exile, disoriented and unsure if they’d ever return to the life they knew, I thought to myself, “I’ve seen this too!”

I’ve watched institutions dissolve, and with them, the sense of identity people had built over decades.

I know what it’s like to sit in that formless void and wonder if anything good could come from it.

That’s why this story matters to me. It reminds me that God has worked in the chaos before. And maybe that’s exactly what’s happening now.

The Radical Meaning of “Image of God”

At the heart of the Creation story is a radical declaration: Humans are made in the image of God.

Though I’d gone to seminary and done doctoral work, I had forgotten Genesis was written in part for people in exile. The “In the Beginning….” was written to a people who needed a new beginning! And needed to remind themselves of who God had been and was for them in exile.

And remember, the Creation story isn’t science or history. I know this continues to be hotly debated. It’s theology and poetry for people who had been traumataized and facing great disruption.

The image of God in the Creation story wasn’t about rationality or intellect. It was about exercising power the way God does: through invitation, not coercion.

Brueggemann (1982) describes this image as "power that invites, evokes, and permits" (p.32).

Betty Pries (2020) calls it our "deeper self" — "the same love-infused, life-force energy that breathes in and through each person" (p.92).

AI can simulate empathy. It can generate beauty. It can offer comfort.

But it can’t touch the mystery. It can’t connect with the love-infused energy that binds us to each other and to the divine. (At least not yet?)

Sacred Skills for an AI Age

When I heard Kass’s list of humanistic qualities companies need to ‘optimize’ for — adaptability, courage, curiosity, wisdom, empathy — I laughed out loud.

These are not new skills. They are the sacred capacities we’ve been called to all along.

Negative space refers to the sacred human qualities that AGI can't replicate.

It’s good news for the people of God.

When I heard that list, I realized: these are the things I’ve been drawn to, developed through teaching and ministry, and tried to embody as an image bearer shaped by the life of Christ. And I know many Christian leaders who similarly embody these capacities.

We may be entering into a period of great disruption and greater uncertainity, but we have what the world needs. Not only this, we have what the world will value!

What the world is going to value are sacred skills.

Reflecting a Relational God

The image we bear is God’s. And the Genesis story isn’t mainly about us—it’s about who God is.

Brueggemann (1982) points out that in the ancient world, kings placed statues of themselves across their empires to signal their rule, even when they couldn’t be physically present (p. 32). So when Genesis says that humans are made in God’s image, it’s not just a nice thought. It’s saying something radical! Humans are meant to represent God’s presence on earth.

But what kind of God are we imaging?

Brueggemann’s (1982) reading of Genesis 1–3 gives us a clear picture. God isn’t portrayed as a distant, controlling force. God is personal, generous, deeply relational, respectful of human freedom, faithful in pain, and creative in chaos.

Now, this is a God I’m drawn to be in relationship with! And so different from the powers that are ruling today! Right?!?

What I love is that God’s characteristics match what today’s AI experts are saying machines can’t replicate.

The list of “negative space” capacities we are going to need when AGI is common place aren’t just human strengths. They reflect the very characteristics of God we were made to bear.

Here’s how they line up:

Adaptability mirrors the God who created order from chaos—not by eliminating the dark, but by shaping something good out of it.
Courage reflects the God who gives humans real agency, even knowing they might choose against him.
Curiosity shows up in God’s first questions to humans: “Where are you?” “Who told you that?” Not condemnation, but honest engagement.
Wisdom is God declaring creation “good,” forming a world not just to function, but to flourish.
Empathy is God allowing freedom, showing up in our pain without control, and choosing presence over punishment.

So no, this isn’t about filling the “negative space” with more doing or performing. It’s about recognizing that the space itself is sacred. These are the exact qualities the world will need more of... and that the people of God can offer.

Living into these capacities is what we were made for. We just need to remember who we are in the chaos.

We bear the image of a God who creates without coercion, who shows up with presence, who honors freedom, and who stays faithful even in pain.

The “negative space” may feel uncertain, but it might just be the clearest place where we reflect the One who made us.

Becoming Human in the Space That’s Left

AI experts are already telling us that humanistic skills will define the future. But Christians have a different name for them: the image of God.

The “negative space” machines can’t fill is sacred space—where human fragility, presence, and faithfulness matter most. It’s where God does some of his most beautiful work.

We don’t need better algorithms. We need a better anthropology.

We need to remember what it means to be human in God’s image—capable of love, freedom, presence, and responsibility.

This is the kind of faith the world will need. And it’s the kind we were made for.

Maybe the question isn’t “what will be left for humans?”

But…

“Who will I become in the space that’s left?”

I’m curious, who are you aspiring to become in the ‘space that is left’? What capacities have you already cultivated? What capacities do you need more of?