Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Andrew Carico
For most Americans, Labor Day is about cookouts, a long weekend, and saying farewell to summer. For Christians, it’s also an opportunity to honor the uniqueness of human beings and add context to the meaning of work.
The first Labor Day parade took place in 1882 and was the brainchild of unionists and socialists. It brought attention to unsafe working conditions, long working hours, child labor, and other issues emerging from the industrial revolution. In 1894, the U.S. Congress passed an act making the first Monday of September an official holiday.
Labor Day is about acknowledging the rights of workers. As Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, stated, a laborer is more than “a mere producing machine.” In a cultural moment like ours, where people feel disconnected from productivity in the midst of a larger crisis of meaning, there is more that can be said about the importance of human labor.
Our labor ultimately finds meaning in the fact that God first labored as He created the world and human beings. Adam and Eve were tasked by God with the job of cultivating and caring for the Earth. Thus, our work derives dignity from reflecting the work of our Creator. Put differently, work is a mark of human exceptionalism. We don’t merely toil; we work, and the difference carries significant biblical implications.
The best human technologies reduce the “toil” that has corrupted human work since the Fall. Our best inventions restore but do not replace the dignity that God intended for man in his work. Though marred by sin, work remains a good and noble part of who we are and can serve God’s redemptive purposes. In fact, much of modern history involves Christians embracing a vision of human work not reduced to drudgery but inspired by the redemptive possibilities of blessing many across economic and class lines.
The emphasis on the dignity of human work is increasingly important as we encounter artificial intelligence. It is tempting to either elevate AI, in word or deed, to the status of image bearers or to reduce image bearers to the status of AI. We are all growing far too comfortable with humanizing AI (such as talking to our preferred “chatbot” as if it’s a real person and a friend), and we already devalue humans based on what they can or cannot produce. As Psalm 135 teaches, we will see ourselves in the image of whatever it is that we worship.
To maintain the meaning inherent in our work, we must be clear on the purposes of technology, especially as it becomes more impressive. Technologies can help humans, heal humans, enhance humans, and replace humans. The first two purposes are legitimate uses that can serve human exceptionalism. But attempts to enhance and replace humans are today driven by committed purveyors of transhumanism and posthumanism. We will need discernment to navigate between the radically different potential uses of technology, including AI.
Recently, Dr. John Lennox observed a distinction between “narrow AI,” or a computer system that does one thing normally done by humans, and “Artificial General Intelligence,” which matches or exceeds human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. The latter is increasingly desired and increasingly feared. We should pray that Christians operating from a Christian worldview will find ways to lead restorative AI innovation.
We must understand the temptations of AI in light of the larger crisis of meaning. We work because we are made in the image of a God who works. To strip work from people is to strip meaning from them and dehumanize them. Part of honoring human exceptionalism is to honor work.
Even if Labor Day has dubious origins and has been reduced to just another day of leisure, it offers the rare opportunity to reflect and champion the truth about people. In fact, leisure is also a notion with massive philosophical and theological meaning, a break from what Josef Pieper called a culture of “total work.” When we work, we mimic and image God. When we rest, we also mimic and image God. At best, AI can only mimic and image us, and it cannot rest.