Thinking Faithfully About AI: Fear - Psalm 46 and Finding Refuge in God
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Thinking Faithfully About AI: Fear
Scripture: Psalm 46
Series: Thinking Faithfully About AI
Preacher: Russell Smith
Date: August 30, 2026
Church: Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio
Theme verses: Psalm 46:1, 4-5, 7, 10
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Thinking Faithfully About AI: Fear
We are beginning a new series called Thinking Faithfully About AI. For this week and the next four weeks, we will consider how to think faithfully about artificial intelligence. It is a dangerous topic. As soon as I say AI, some of you may already be rolling your eyes. Others may clench internally. Some may think, “This again? Can’t we give it a rest?” Everybody seems to be talking about AI. Yet nearly every day brings a new announcement, feature, or tool; a new news story about something that has gone wrong; protests over data centers; concerns about privacy; or worries that AI is going to become sentient and suddenly we are living in The Terminator or The Matrix, or whatever dystopian future we choose. In the midst of all this churn and conversation,I thought it worthwhile for us to think theologically about AI.
This week we are focusing on fear. Fear is in the mix when we talk about AI. Consider Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner known by many as the godfather of AI. He has spent his career working toward artificial intelligence. His insight several decades ago helped lead to the current breakthroughs in language-learning models: rather than merely programming a chain of rules – a vast matrix of “if this… then that”- he recognized that this was not how human beings learn. He helped open a new path, and he ushered in a whole new era of AI.
In a Time magazine article published late in 2025, Hinton called artificial intelligence "the most impactful technological development of our time - more impactful than computers or the internet and, perhaps, comparable to the Industrial Revolution, but happening on a much faster timescale." It is ushering in transformation, and with transformation comes uncertainty and fear. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans are more concerned than excited about the use of AI in their daily lives. The concern rose sharply after the release of ChatGPT and has remained far larger than the number who feel optimistic or enthusiastic.
Hinton himself names why the concern is understandable: "My sense is unless we act quickly, the huge increases in productivity that AI will surely bring could be accompanied by some very negative side-effects. It will likely replace most jobs that involve mundane, intellectual labor. This will lead to greater inequality which will provide a breeding ground for violent populists. Bad actors will use AI for cybercrime, biological warfare, and corrupting elections with fake videos. Most experts believe that some time within the next 20 years, AI will become much smarter than humans at almost everything including persuasion. Nobody knows how humans can stay in control. We have already seen AI use blackmail to prevent itself being replaced. We won't be able to turn it off because it will persuade us not to." Here is the godfather of AI, someone who has worked toward this technology his whole life, expressing deep concern about what may happen.
So it is justifiable to begin with fear. This cultural transformation is happening all around us, whether we like it or not. We may wish it would go away so we could return to normal, but the reality is that change is upon us. And in times of great upheaval and transformation, there is fear. So before we tackle any other issues around AI, we need to name the fear and address it, for fear is the enemy of faithful action. When we give ourselves over to fear, we either feel paralyzed or we react in unhelpful ways. Before we ask, How do we think faithfully about AI?, we need to ask, How do we not react fearfully to its reality?
Psalm 46 is a wonderful psalm to lean on in a time of fear and uncertainty. It was the psalm that inspired Martin Luther to write A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Luther lived through a time of social upheaval and uncertainty: the Reformation, the Italian Renaissance, wars of religion around Germany, and the power struggles of the Italian wars, when great families such as the Medicis were feeding into the papacy and trying to control European trade and commerce. Life was vastly confusing and unsettled. What did Luther do? He turned to Psalm 46 and from his meditations on it flowed thoughts of comfort: "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing."
God Is the Ultimate Reference Point
Before the psalm addresses fear, it begins with a central claim: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." In other words, God is the ultimate reference point.
That may seem blindingly obvious, but we live in a highly materialistic twenty-first-century world. Even the most spiritual among us may put God on the side as something we think about from time to time. We compartmentalize: I do my religious thing, my work thing, my neighborhood thing. Yet here we se the assertion that God is our refuge and ever-present help - always present, always available. When we grasp that reality, when we grasp that we are never separate from God, that God permeates the cosmos and the universe, fear is not simply something that grips us and that we want to go away. Fear becomes a forge for faith.
Fear becomes the occasion for us to turn to the ever-present God. It is where we say,”I bring my fear to you, God and entrust it to you.” Faith is not sticking our heads in the sand and singing, “la, la, la, nothing is going to happen and nothing is going to go wrong.” Faith is knowing that, no matter what goes wrong and no matter what happens, I am not abandoned. I am not alone. I will be in the hands of God. God is my refuge and my strength.
This is the first thing we must embrace when confronting fear of whatever kind, whether fear of AI, fear of job loss, fear of aging, fear about the world in which our children are growing up. We do not simply say those fears will go away. We entrust ourselves to the living God who loves us, is with us, and will carry us through troubles and challenges. This is not a new technique for fear management. It is making God our ultimate reference point in all of life: in joys and triumphs, fears and failures.
God Brings Order out of Chaos
Psalm 46 then names a source of fear: chaos. "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." This language echoes ancient Near Eastern creation stories. Many of those cultures pictured the world before creation as a churning chaos. Their gods saw the chaos, entered into war against it, subdued it, and made the known universe.
An example of this concept of the war against chaos is the relief from the Temple of Ninurta at Nimrud, ancient Kalhu in modern Iraq. It shows the god Ninurta pursuing the monster Anzu. Anzu - half lion, half eagle - stole the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil, throwing cosmic order into chaos because whoever held the tablet controlled the fates of gods and humans. Ninurta was sent to defeat Anzu and recover it. It is but one example of the ancient pattern of chaos versus order: a god must battle the chaos monster, and only then can order be established.
The Hebrew creation story offers an entirely different picture. Yes, there is chaos, but there is no war. God does not have to slay a chaos beast or enter a contest whose outcome hangs in the balance. God simply shows up and says, Let there be light. God speaks, directs, and creates order. After the creation, the world is broken by the fall, but it does not devolve back into absolute chaos. The remarkable thing is how much order and stability remain. Psalm 46 tells us that we will not fear because God brings order out of chaos. God reigns. God rules. God calms the chaotic seas.
This speaks to our own internal chaos as well: the storms that keep us awake at night and the mind that will not shut off. God is the God who calms the chaos, who says, "Peace, be still." Applying that to fear of AI does not mean denying upheaval. Some people will lose jobs. Some data centers will move into places where people do not want them. People will use AI for bad and harmful things; that is what human beings do. Yet God speaks peace over the chaos. Look for where God is speaking peace over the use of AI. Look for where God is speaking peace and order over us. We should always be wise and discerning, but we do not have to clutch our fists in fear because we are not alone. God is with us.
At the end of verse 3 comes selah. We cannot be entirely certain what selah means, but most scholars understand it as a pause for a musical interlude - a pause to consider. In the midst of chaos, the psalm invites us to pause. God reigns. Selah. God rules. Selah. Be still and know that God is God.
The River of God's Nourishment
Then the psalm pivots from churning seas to the river of God's nourishment. "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts." Notice the contrast. This is not a churning sea but a flowing, channeled stream: not chaotic turmoil but the river of God. There can be chaos around us, yet within the city of God there is peace because the people of God are nourished by the living God.
If you want to face AI faithfully, unplug from AI for a while and plug in spiritually. If you want to face your fears faithfully, take your eyes off your fears and be nourished - nourished by the living streams of water, which are the Holy Spirit. As we receive the Spirit by faith, we are nourished by God.
This river image recurs throughout Scripture. Jesus says to the woman at the well, "Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The spring bubbling up is relationship with him.
Perhaps even more on target with the psalm’s image of the river is the vision shared with us in Ezekiel 47. Ezekiel had a vision of a restored and renewed temple during a time when Israel had experienced chaos and abandonment of God. He saw water coming from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east, down the south side of the temple and south of the altar. Then he was led out through the north gate and around to the outer gate facing east, where the water was trickling from the south side. The image is a fountain, springing up. As the angel led Ezekiel along the water, it became deeper and deeper - ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep, and then a river too deep to cross.
Ezekiel describes it this way: "When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, 'This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds - like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.'"
This is a visionary picture of the river of nourishment, flowing from relationship with the living God. As we turn to God daily, converse with God at work, at school, at Starbucks, at the gym, and in all our decisions great and small, asking, “Lord, what guidance do you have for me here?“- we are nourished by leaning on the living God. The picture, whether in the psalm or in Jesus’ words, or in Ezekiel, is one of abundance and fruitfulness, the opposite of fear and anxiety. Do you want a fruitful life or a fearful life? A fruitful life is nourished by ongoing relationship with the living God; a fearful life reacts to whatever unsettles and upsets.
The techno-utopians need to grasp that AI will not save us. AI will not fulfill us. Our calling as faithful followers of Christ is to be so nourished by the Lord that we can use AI wisely, well, and as a tool for human flourishing. The technophobes need to grasp that AI will never knock us from God's hands. It will never compete with the nourishment and healing that come from the Lord. Our calling as faithful followers of Christ is to be so nourished by the Lord that our fears about AI shrink to their rightful place.
The Lord Is Present Always
The psalm's refrain makes this personal: "The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress." Verses 7 and 11 repeat it because the psalm does not want us to miss the point. The psalm begins with God, and now it names the LORD Almighty, the God of Jacob: not a vague reference to God, but the personal God who spoke to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God has walked with your ancestors. God has walked with those who have gone before you. God will walk with you, no matter what the trials and challenges are. When confronted with fear, rest in relationship with the LORD Almighty.
A Call to Curtail Human Chaos
Finally, Psalm 46 gives a call to curtail human chaos. "Come and see what the LORD has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire." Given verse 9, the invitation to come and see is not primarily for the worshipers who are already being nourished. It is for the chaos sowers: come and find peace; lay down your weapons of aggression; lay down your arms; lay down your need to dominate, to control, and to be in charge of everything. Come and join the community of those who trust in the Lord.
"Be still, and know that I am God." I have often used this verse to speak to my own internal chaos and churning. But in the context of the rest of this section of the psalm, it is also a word to war-makers and contenders. You do not have to control everything. You do not have to fix everything. You do not have to manage everything or defend against every possible thing that could go wrong. You are not going to do it. It is not humanly possible. Be still and know that God is in charge of the universe.
God declares, "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." In the ancient world, that means among the peoples. Today we might say: I will be exalted among the corporations, among the tech bros, among Anthropic and ChatGPT and Google and all the others. Any pretender to ultimate cosmic power will ultimately be frustrated by the living God - the God who was, is, and ever will be, the God who will be exalted in all the earth. There are people who fear AI will become sentient and destroy everything. We turn to this: God will be exalted.
Fear is the first matter to address as we begin to think faithfully, not fearfully, about AI. In the coming weeks we will consider four buzzwords often heard in AI conversations: agency, speed, friction, and context. AI advocates talk about human agency and what AI might empower; we will ask what faithful agency is. They talk about speed and how quickly things can happen; we will ask whether speed is the greatest value. They talk about removing friction and creating a frictionless world; we will ask what friction ought to be removed and what friction we need to embrace. Finally, we will consider context: AI needs context to make better decisions, yet there can be too much context. We will entrust ourselves to the God who has all the context of the cosmos and holds it all in his hands.
Invitation to Reflection
As you sit with this psalm, bring your fears to the Lord. Rest in the relationship of the God who is your refuge and strength, and ask where he is inviting you to receive his nourishment and peace.
Questions for Reflection
What fears do I need to bring to the Lord?
How can I open myself to more nourishment from the Lord?
In what areas of my life do I need to be still and know that God is present?
This sermon is part of the Digital Discipleship Resources of Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. We create resources to help people take their next step of faith with Jesus.
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