AI Is Weakening Pastors’ Authority
... Can a chatbot pray for you? (No.) Can it know you? (No.) Can it be trusted to tell you the truth when the truth costs something? (No.) ...
Cost? Did someone say "cost"?
When you can hardly find a real pastor who will admit that the cost of discipleship was selling everything and giving it to the poor, what difference does a lying AI pastor make?
So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
-- Luke 14:33
Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.
-- Luke 12:33
The gospel was supposed to be good news to the poor for a reason (Matthew 11:5; Luke 4:18; Luke 7:22).
Now it's mostly good news to the middle class.
The median pastor in America makes about $60,000 and the people regularly in the pews are concentrated among the middle classes, just like him.
