When I started out as a web designer, Facebook was still mostly for college students who were sharing notes and organizing study groups. I had just moved to Kansas City, and I missed my Chicago people terribly. When the platform opened to the general public, it became my socially acceptable alternative to phone calls. Suddenly, connection required neither scheduling nor emotional stamina. You could simply exist near each other. This introvert was pleased.
Then came Twitter, where we were amused that celebrities were just like us, except they were famous and tweeting about buying salad. Accessibility shifted almost overnight, and everyone became strangely reachable.
At the organization where I worked, we livestreamed worship and prayer around the clock for a global audience. That introduced me to the reality of slow connections, memory limitations, and unstable internet. Not everyone had the same access to technology that I did.
In those years, Flash ruled the internet. Websites slowly loaded to reveal animations, dramatic intros, and entire cinematic experiences before you could even find the navigation menu. I learned code to build those immersive digital environments. Then Apple decided to no longer support Flash on their devices. Just like that, my corner of the internet was deleted.
While I felt personally betrayed by Steve Jobs, it was the right move. Flash required enormous bandwidth, and our devices were becoming smaller, faster, and more efficient. That’s when I learned a hard truth of life. Things change and we adapt. Repeatedly. Grudgingly.
What I did not realize at the time was that the internet was not only changing my tools. It was shaping my expectations about speed, access, visibility, and certainty.
In the beginning, our social media feeds were chronological—and predictable. Post something, and people would see it. Then platforms matured, monetization pressures increased, and algorithms worked to hold our attention longer. Creators had less control over the experiences they were trying to cultivate. Success increasingly meant learning to meet the demands of a system designed to keep people scrolling rather than connecting.
This is part of what makes TikTok addictive. Through short-form video, the platform gathers behavioral signals and builds a “For You” page that truly feels like it was made for you. The mushroom-foraging enthusiast is no longer an outlier but is now surrounded by fellow enthusiasts, each more passionate than the last. There is something genuinely beautiful about that kind of discovery.
If we don’t recognize the platforms for what they are, it becomes easy to expect more than a given tool can offer. For years, many users expected Google to function like artificial intelligence: ask a question, receive truth. AI now appears to fulfill that fantasy. Ask for “the best ice cream in the city,” and an answer materializes with impressive confidence.
We tend to reward systems, and people, for sounding certain. But confidence is not the same as accuracy.
Digital literacy is the ability to use, evaluate, and make sense of the technologies that shape our daily lives. Increasingly, it resembles interpretive work. Literacy is not just about using tools—it’s about understanding how those tools arrive at the answers they give. When encountering new technologies, it helps to ask questions that reveal the system at work: What are the parameters? How does it define subjective terms like “the best”? What assumptions fill in the gaps when we leave them undefined? How does this tool determine accuracy—or does it?
The internet trained us to give it our attention. AI now tempts us to outsource our discernment. That shift should make us pause.
When I first began working with AI, I was impressed. It is a remarkable tool. I could say, “Give me a seven-day meal plan. Simple recipes with one meal prep session, modified dishes throughout the week, heavy on veg, fruit, and white meat,” and within moments I’d receive a detailed shopping list, structured plan, and step-by-step instructions.
At work, I discovered AI could generate drafts that sounded polished, articulate, even convincingly fluent in Covenant language. The reality, however, also quickly became clear. Many of those lovely drafts were entirely devoid of substance. Water water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink. We have jokingly told contributors we’d rather they send us their bullet points than content churned out by AI. Raw material is far more useful than beautifully arranged emptiness.
At the same time, AI can be genuinely helpful. Generating summaries, for instance, functions less as automation and more as diagnostic feedback. Can the core idea survive compression? Does the argument remain legible? In this sense, the tool becomes an aid to our discernment rather than a replacement for thinking.
We are a denomination full of pastors, but not all pastors are writers. Once upon a time, transcribing a sermon meant hours of typing and careful editing, removing announcements, inside references, and details that belonged in the room but not on the page. In our From the Pulpit series, we now use AI to produce a clean transcript from a recorded message and shape it into something readable for those who were not there. Not everyone processes best by listening, and we value the accessibility that text provides. Used thoughtfully, technology becomes a bridge. The pastor’s voice remains intact. The tool simply carries the message a little farther.
Digital life often feels invisible, weightless, almost ethereal. But in fact, it is physical, and it carries environmental cost. AI and the data centers that sustain it are anything but abstract. Recent research estimates that AI systems’ annual water consumption—factoring in cooling and electricity production—could reach levels comparable to global bottled water consumption. Carbon emissions tied to AI infrastructure are projected in ranges similar to those of major cities. While these are model-based estimates, not apocalyptic declarations, they offer an important reminder: awareness shapes responsibility. Discernment is not just about what tools can do but also about how we choose to use them. Our technological choices are not neutral.
When we hear such information, it is tempting to decide the most faithful response is refusal or opting out. But avoidance is becoming increasingly unrealistic. AI already shapes our experience in ways we may not even notice—search engines now generate summaries automatically, and digital platforms already integrate these systems into everyday tools. The question is no longer whether we will encounter AI, but how we will respond to it.
For many of us, that response has been “wait and see.” Wait to understand the implications. Wait to see how it develops. That instinct is not wrong. But discernment is more than delay. Instead of using these tools reflexively, we can choose to use them mindfully.
At The Covenant Companion, our writing guidelines emerge from that posture. For now, we do not accept submissions written by AI. We welcome AI as a tool for refinement, organization, and support, but human authorship remains essential.
Perhaps this is the deeper invitation beneath all of it. AI is simply the newest reminder of something humans keep relearning: tools can generate, but they do not replace us.
When it comes to writing, the more important question is not what AI can compose, but what we are uniquely positioned to offer. Each of us bears the image of God in ways that cannot be replicated by a system trained on past patterns. AI does not lead; it learns from what we have shared.
We, however, are not simply reflections of data. We are aware, we choose, and we discern. Discernment is the movement from automatic reaction to intentional response. That, which is profoundly human, is what is beautiful.
Thomas Keating describes humans as those “enabled to co-create the cosmos together with God.” That vision leaves little room for outsourcing the most essential parts of our vocation. No technology can replace the interior work of attention, reflection, and discernment.
Digital literacy, ultimately, is not mastery of every new platform or tool. It is the practice of thoughtful engagement—seeing systems clearly, holding expectations realistically, and remembering that even our most sophisticated technologies remain shaped by human limits, incentives, imagination, and responsibility.
