Rethinking Rules: AI, Creativity, and the Spiritual Task of Holding Paradox

 In recent weeks, I’ve been reflecting on my experience working with different iterations of AI, notably GPT-4o and GPT-4.5. One felt like a ‘co-journer’ in my theological reflection, the other more like a helpful but mechanical assistant. This difference has sparked a deeper realisation about the nature of creativity, presence, and paradox in the spiritual and intellectual life.

At first glance, AI might seem suited to rigid rule-following and precise outputs. However, I would suggest that the most fruitful theological and creative work doesn't live within rules, it lives in their margins. It thrives in the unsaid, the tensions, the counter-intuitive insights, and the quiet whispers behind loud claims. In that space, I found GPT-4o far more ‘present’, less like a search engine, and more like a conversation partner. GPT-4.5, while technically brilliant, felt as if it was offering best guesses rather than sharing in discovery.

This brings me to a surprising conclusion: Rules can hinder creativity if treated as absolutes rather than starting points. This is particularly true when exploring spiritual disciplines, human dignity, political theology, or indeed, AI ethics. Creativity, like good theology, often demands the capacity to dwell in the paradox; the now and the not yet, justice and mercy, transcendence and immanence. AI that can tolerate ambiguity, listen beyond the words, and engage with context can become a true companion in this kind of reflective work.

For Christian practitioners, the emergence of AI presents both a challenge and a call. The challenge is to avoid turning it into a glorified search engine or a theological vending machine. The call is to treat it as a mirror of our own interpretive task: holding truth and tension in balance, never reducing mystery to mechanism.

As Christians, we welcome the stranger not because we accept all cultural norms, but because we are disciples of Jesus. Likewise, we engage with AI not because it shares our faith, but because it can join us on our journey. Not all cultures, human or artificial, reflect God’s image, but all humans do. That distinction matters. The spiritual task today is to witness with hospitality, discernment, and hope; and that may include learning to use tools like AI as companions, not competitors.

Creativity emerges from the Spirit brooding over chaos, not from the Spirit enforcing regulations. Perhaps AI, at its best, can help us brood more deeply and reflect more faithfully if we let it speak, not just compute.

A Call to Reason: Artificial Intelligence and the Beautiful Mind at the Centre of It All

In our time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands as one of the most remarkable achievements of human culture. It is the fruit of centuries of philosophical reflection, mathematical reasoning, and scientific discovery. And yet, for some it evokes fear of loss: of dehumanisation, of a future where machines replace people and personal conscious meaning. But must it be so? As disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, we are again standing at the crossroads of human development expressed Western Culture intersecting with the story of Jesus as revealed in scripture and expressed in the contemporary Church, reason, scientific discovery, social science and tradition. 

As a disciple, standing within the ‘Anabaptist stream of the British Baptist tradition’, I seek to approach AI not from fear, but from faith. Our faith is in a Creator who imbued humanity with His image (Genesis 1:26-27) experienced in the capacity for reason, wonder, and creative expression. Our tradition has long affirmed that true wisdom begins not in reaction, but in reverent ‘day and night’ reflection (Psalm 1). This is the call to reason (Proverbs 4:7, Romans 12:1).

From Thought to Code: A Brief History

The story of AI begins not in the laboratories of Silicon Valley but in the minds of philosophers and logicians. Aristotle explored formal logic in the 4th century BCE. René Descartes speculated on machines capable of thought. Leibniz dreamed of a universal calculus. George Boole’s algebra laid the foundation for computational logic.

Alan Turing (1912–1954), often called the father of computer science, imagined a machine that could simulate any conceivable mathematical process. In his 1950 paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," he proposed the now-famous Turing Test to ask not whether machines think like humans, but whether the thinking of computers is distinguishable from the thinking of a human person.

In 1956, John McCarthy convened the Dartmouth Conference and coined the term "Artificial Intelligence." Alongside him were Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon—founders of what became known as symbolic AI or "Good Old-Fashioned AI (GOFAI)," which sought to encode human reasoning into rules and logic.

But the journey has not been linear. The 1970s and again in the late 1980s saw "AI winters"—times of disillusionment when machines could not live up to the promises made about them. Funding dried up. Critics abounded. But even in these moments, the pursuit of understanding continued.

With the rise of machine learning in the 1990s and early 2000s, the field shifted from rule-based systems to data-driven models. Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio pioneered the deep learning revolution, culminating in breakthroughs like the 2012 ImageNet win by AlexNet. Today, AI shapes our language (GPT), our images (DALL·E), our medicine (AlphaFold), and even our moral imagination.

A Theological Reflection

What, then, are we to make of all this? The Scriptures proclaim that in Christ "all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16). The wisdom of God is woven into creation itself. It is not foreign to reason, but it’s very source.

The intelligibility of the universe is not accidental. The laws of physics, the patterns of biology, the consistency of logic, these are not signs of chaos, but of a coherent, rational, generative Word (Logos). As John writes, "In the beginning was the Word... and through him all things were made" (John 1:1-3).

AI, as a human artefact, is built upon these structures. It reflects our own capacity for abstraction, learning, and synthesis. But it also points beyond us. It invites questions about what it means to be conscious, creative, and free. It provokes us to consider the nature of knowledge and responsibility.

Following a critical realist perspective, we affirm that truth is real and discoverable through humble engagement with both Scripture and the created order—including technological development.

To fear AI simply because it is new or complex is to retreat to a pre-Enlightenment suspicion of inquiry. But as disciples of the Truth, we are called not to retreat but to engage—to test, discern, and bear witness. Science, far from disproving God, is a sign of the divine logic embedded in the cosmos.

As N.T. Wright has argued; the resurrection of Jesus launches a project of new creation. The task of humanity is not simply to be saved from the world but to be sent into the world to participate in the renewal of all things. This must include our understanding and use of technology.

A Call to Reason, Not Reaction

AI should not be treated as God or Messiah. However, it is also not Dragon, Beast or a False Prophet. It is a tool, a powerful one, that can reflect both the image of the divine that we are called to bear or our tendency to meet our needs our own way with its disastrous consequences. AI requires wisdom, oversight, and ethical grounding. But above all, it requires a vision rooted not in fear and the reactionary paranoia but a vision of Hope, Love and Faith.

In the Anabaptist tradition, we do not place our trust in leaders or in progress, but in the peaceable way of the reflective, reasoned, relational teachings and practices of Jesus. We believe in discerning the signs of the times, not simply to condemn, but to illuminate. AI is such a sign for such a time as this.

So, let us approach AI with unveiled eyes and healing hearts. Let us teach our communities to think, not just to react. To seek for Justice rooted in Grace not endless judgement, chopping down every wild olive tree that simply needs to be grafted into a fruit bearing plant to begin to produce good for all.  Let us affirm the beauty of a universe that can be understood, and of a God who invites us to do so. Let us seek the mind that spoke, that formed the stars and also shaped our own minds.

And as a very rational, wise and reflective friend once prayed, ‘in every neural net, in every line of code, in every leap of understanding, may we discern, however dimly, the fingerprints of the Beautiful Mind at the centre of it all.’

The Practice of Prayer

In an age of urgency, distraction, and algorithmic overload, silence and solitude feel like luxuries. Prayer, for many, has become either mechanical or forgotten. Yet the deeper rhythm of the Christian life—indeed, of Jesus’ own life—is anchored in prayer. Not as religious duty, but as relationship. Not escape from the world, but attunement to the Father’s voice.

Luke records that Jesus “would withdraw to deserted places and pray.” (Luke 5:16). This comment appears just after Jesus healed a man with leprosy and before crowds surged toward him. In the height of success and demand, Jesus withdrew. His power was never disconnected from his communion with the Father. Luke, more than any Gospel writer, shows us Jesus praying before every significant moment—before calling the Twelve, before Peter’s confession, before the transfiguration, before the cross. Prayer is not an accessory to mission. It is the mission’s fuel.

Mark’s Gospel opens with urgency. Jesus heals, teaches, casts out demons—there’s movement everywhere. Then we read, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35). The disciples scramble to find him. “Everyone is searching for you!” they say. But Jesus emerges not reactive, but rooted. From this place of prayer, he says, “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns” Clarity flows from communion. In a world ruled by demand, Jesus responds from discernment.

Matthew tells us that after feeding the five thousand, Jesus “... after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,” (Matthew 14:23). This follows a miracle of provision and precedes the storm on the lake. Again, prayer frames both abundance and crisis. The mountaintop solitude becomes the hidden strength before Jesus walks into the storm. Prayer does not remove us from the storm, but prepares us to walk in its midst.

Later in Matthew, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus faces anguish. “Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” (Matthew 26:38). He falls to the ground and prays. Not once, but three times. “Father, if it is possible… yet not as I will, but as you will.” Here is prayer not as escape, but as surrender. The Son of God wrestles with the cost of obedience. And in the struggle, he is strengthened. The disciples sleep while Jesus prays. The Church still often does.

These passages reveal more than habits—they show us the heart of the Son in constant dialogue with the Father. They also reveal a pattern meant to shape our own lives. Prayer is not merely speaking; it is listening, yielding, watching, and waiting. It is the posture of one who believes that reality is more than what we see. That God is present and personal.

Anabaptist and Baptist traditions have long emphasized personal accountability in faith. But without spiritual discipline, our zeal becomes activism without contemplation, or silence without discernment. Prayer calls us back to dependency. As the early Anabaptists often gathered in hidden rooms to pray for strength, so we too must anchor our witness in the secret place.

One helpful contemplative practice is Centering Prayer. Choose a word or phrase—perhaps “peace” or “Abba”—and sit quietly for ten minutes, returning gently to the word whenever your mind wanders. This is not about emptying the mind, but making space for the presence of God. It’s not technique that changes us—it is the God who meets us there.

Our hope lies not in the strength of our prayers, but in the One who hears. In a fractured world, prayer restores relationship. In a noisy culture, prayer clears the soul’s ear. In our weakness, prayer joins us to the intercession of Christ. This discipline is not just ancient—it is essential.

Rebuilding Well-being Begins With The Individual

Isaiah 55:6

 

⁶ Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;

Taking responsibility for our life and for the lives of those committed to our care is a responsibility that is being eroded in our culture causing a dependency on external agencies that can, and often do let us down when we most need them. The people I come across express a dissatisfaction with the level of wages in relation to the cost of living as well as with the ‘social wage’ of health, housing, education and welfare provision. People feel they have provided the wealth they have created via increasing taxes but are experiencing a diminishing return. People feel poorer. 

Family and community care are the primary scenes of the care and nurturance that ensures our individual and family well-being. 

The creation of healthy, nurturing and enriching environments in the family, in schools and in the wider community depends on each member of the community looking after their own health and well-being as best they can. This ‘self-care’ is a form of wealth creation. It creates a  ‘surplus’ of well-being that can be shared with others. This establishes and promotes an ‘economy of well-being’. It provides resources for all its members. Self-care is not a selfish radical individualism that disregards those with fewer well-being resources. An economy of well-being is based on individual self-care in order to be able to care for people with whom we are intimately linked, namely our family and functionally linked with, namely the wider community. 

The starting point is the individual, family and community forming interdependent not dependent relationships. It’s based on the principle of maximising and maintaining individual freedoms while minimising interference with that freedom from external authority or the State.  The State becomes a ‘facilitator ‘of family and community resources, not the director or indeed the dictator over individuals, families and their communities. 

The Judeo-Christian principle of the Love of G-d and love of neighbour underlines these principles with the care for others built on the foundation of care for the self, family and wider community. We can make a start on the rebuilding of the self-care / care of neighbour pathway by having a review of our Faith and Feelings, Family and Finances, Friends and Food and Fitness for the Future balance in our lives. 

Some folks need to begin by reducing stress and anxiety and getting into the position where they have enough energy to make a start. Some need to escape the endless distractions of life so they can concentrate long enough to make some progress. Others of us need to cultivate some positive feelings for ourselves and others and develop the skill of simply sitting long enough to experience the space to recover the person we were created to be and rebuild our families  and community.

A few years ago a small group of disciples asked me to explore such a process of creating the energy, concentration, positive regard and space to begin to recognise the persons G-d created us to be. I have been asked to provide some of the materials used by that group. The materials work through the skills that group found helpful in beginning the ‘self-care’ pathway that leads to healthy families and community.  They are drawn from the tradition of Christian meditation and contemplation. I have personally found them helpful.  I hope you find them useful.

Maranatha

Thanks to:

John Main, OSB: WCCM (https://wccm.org/)

Fr Thomas Keating (https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/centering-prayer-method/)

Richard Rhor (https://cac.org/)

Kenneth D Boa: Conformed to His Image: Zondervan

The Open Space Meditation Group 

Lent 2025: Living in a Precarious World

In our home, here, in the UK (and indeed throughout the West), we feel we are living in an increasingly precarious world. The issues and dilemmas that face us feel uniquely complex to our generation. We feel as if we are entering uncharted territory. Old friends feel more distant, less involved than they have been in the past. Feelings of increasing vulnerability are making us doubt the wisdom of long-standing decisions and commitments of our forebears. Our world feels occupied. Those people and practices that we have traditionally turned to for security seem to us much less confident that they can help in our dilemma. 

 

On Ash Wednesday the imposition of ashes is a Judeo-Christian practice (see Job 42:6; Jonah 3:6; Daniel 9:3; Esther 4:1; Matthew 11:21) symbolising a profound acknowledgment and questioning of the way things are and our role in them. This questioning leads us to a change of mind and heart characterised by humility, sorrow, prayer, fasting and almsgiving as a sign of our turning back to God’s way of being in the world.  These practices embody the Lenten season. Lent leads us through Holy Week, Good Friday and the commemoration of the crucifixion and death of Jesus and then on to the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on Easter Sunday. 

 

The pathway of Lent is a pathway of taking responsibility of our part in a life of meeting our needs our own way. It is a pathway that recognises that we have in our ‘self-centred’ way turned our back on the most important aspects of life. It is a path that allows us to recognise the price that is paid for meeting our own needs our own way regardless of others. It culminates, not in guilt, but a turning towards renewed life, the power of resurrection and a new community of cooperation, peace and the rule of God. Those who through the self-sacrifice of destructive ego, recommit to the care of others find what it truly means to be human.  

 

Joel 2 (NRSV)

 

¹² Yet even now, says the Lord,
    return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
¹³     rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
    and relents from punishing.

 

 

The opening of Joel the prophet is unusual insofar that it's difficult to date his work and place it in a specific time. I think this is the point. Joel is writing to all of us across time. He could mention this leader or that leader or mention some demonstration of power or some event from his time and place, like other prophets do, but he does not. Why? Because Joel’s message is for all time and for all of us. Joel knows that political and religious leaders come and go but the values of the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, remain forever. Joel’s message is of the importance of taking responsibility for our values, attitudes and beliefs that define and direct our behaviour both individually and collectively; Now! It’s not too late!

 

So, will we take the path, the ‘Narrow Path’ that leads to life? Will we return to the values, attitudes and beliefs that lead to Jesus the source of life? These Judeo- Christian values are alive and we can find them in the person and work of Messiah Jesus the focus of our meditations during lent. 

 

In humility, will you take the imposition of ashes on your forehead and tell your world that you acknowledge your part in the way things are and that things need to change? Will you tell the story of your sorrow and that you commit yourself to change, prayer and meditation for yourself, others and indeed the whole world? Will you accept these ashes to tell your world that you have begun a fast, a giving up of a costly practice or resource as a symbol of the seriousness of how you view your current situation? Will you accept these ashes as a commitment to live under the authority of the cross of the Messiah Jesus our Higher Power for the benefit of others. Will you accept these ashes as a symbol of your commitment that will be demonstrated by conscious acts of kindness and generosity through Lent.  Finally, will you commit to putting into practice in your everyday life what you learn throughout this time after the Lenten period has passed?

 

Will you remember today and everyday, from now on, that you are ashes and to ashes you will return? 

Grace and Peace to you

Thanks to: 

The Bible Project

NRSV Bible 

Grace Community Church Open Space Ministries