Restoring Love as the Source of Human Value

There is a heresy at the heart of American Christianity: the belief that the production of disciples of Christ is what gives Christians and Christian churches their value. 

In the last post I pointed out four challenges to the way in which we value our humanity posed by the 2nd Machine Age we are beginning to live in. 

First, machines will increasingly take over the intellectual tasks that were markers of human distinctiveness. What we believed marked us as unique will first be shared, and then we will be surpassed. 

Second, machines will become moral agents, making decisions of the type heretofore limited to humans. This will attack the assumption that human uniqueness lies in our being conscious moral agents. Or more properly, the nature of our moral agency will change. As creators of moral agents who determine the parameters of their decision making ours will be a kind of super-morality - taking on a role more like that traditionally assigned to God. 

Third, with the rise of artificial intelligence machines will become increasingly capable and will no longer need human servants. This means that humans will be increasingly cut out of the cycles of economic productivity by which we’ve commonly measured our value.

Finally, the rise of AI will inexorably concentrate wealth in the hands of the minuscule elite that owns them and has the majority claim on what they produce. And this will render an increasing number of people “worthless” by common social standards. 

To the extent that we have valued ourselves on the basis of possessing intellect, possessing moral agency, and our productivity (in any sense) we will have a decreasing value. To the extent that we haven’t fully considered our responsibility as creators of moral agents our theological anthropology will remain incapable of relating our actual selves to God. Together these will demand a renewal of Christian anthropology that that focuses on what actually is capable of giving a distinctive value to our humanity: the love of God.

With regard to the first of these challenges we are in some respects already on our way. Pastors thinking deeply about the inclusion of persons who do not have or will never have a fully formed intellect have already taken on part of a key challenge of the 2nd Machine Age. The same is true of those engaging with some seriousness in the emerging field of disability studies. Now we'll need to go further. We will find that relative to the capabilities of artificial intelligence and the intellectual demands placed on us by our environment we are all less than fully formed. 

With regard to the second, in an odd way the current struggle within the United Methodist Church has forced the self-identified traditionalists to at least assert a theology of human value based on God’s love for all rather than on the production of moral behavior. Likewise progressives are, or should be engaged in a recovery of a theology of human value based in God's love in relation to persons whose excluding behavior they find loathsome. But I note that this is, on either side, a work of recovery rather than invention. We are not the first generation of Christians to struggle with God’s love, and thus the demand on our love, for those incapable or unwilling to producing moral behavior of which we believe God approves.

Similarly, serious theological consideration of the responsibilities of parenting and leadership more generally engage the problem of nurturing and guiding moral agents. But it will be necessary to expand the scope of such reflection to include those who create moral agents and those who, as they design virtual worlds, create the moral universes in which increasing numbers of persons dwell at least part of the time. And we will need to ask: what does it mean to sit in judgment on creatures for which we are responsible - already a fraught problem when it comes to pets. 

It is the third challenge, associating value with productivity, that will and must reconfigure contemporary Christian culture. 

That human value derives from God's love isn’t a new idea. Indeed it is the oldest Christian theological idea. Jesus reveals that God values us, and thus gives us value, as participants in the God’s own inner life. In Christ we are drawn into the love that defines God’s nature as Lover, Beloved, and Love itself. There is nothing we can do that can either increase or decrease our value since that value derives entirely from what the Triune God has done through all eternity; include Creation in the Divine Life. 

But while we humans cannot increase or decrease our value, we are invited by Christ to experience and enjoy  that value by consciously participating in the Divine love, by participating in the love between the Love and the Beloved. 

It is the nature of the participation in Divine love offered by the Church that will need to change in the emerging 2nd Machine Age. 

The problem of participation will first affect the so-called prosperity gospel preachers, since it is inevitable that given increasing joblessness and concentration of wealth their congregation members will not experience prosperity. If you are preaching that material prosperity is the means by which your congregation participates in God's love then you are doomed.

Equally challenged is the implicit message to the already prosperous that God has blessed them so that they can (through the church) give their money and time to others. This is frequently the bedrock message of American Christian churches. We validate our prosperity by the assumption of social responsibility, and these become the twin guarantors of our value. As that prosperity disappears and people are less able to assume social responsibility preachers of the gospel will (hopefully) be forced to offer a deeper message about God's love and human value. 

Yet the deepest challenge will be developing a theological anthropology that disentangles value (of both individuals and the church itself)  from the production of disciples, the growth of the church, and the production of righteousness.  

Look at the United Methodist Church mission statement: "The mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." The very mission of the church is tied to production. And inevitably the valuation of both members and congregations is tied to production as well. UM leaders across the board have made it clear that congregations that aren't producing are failures, as are their pastors. Worse, there is no reason that cleverly programed smart machines can't market the gospel as effectively as they already market goods on the internet. 

It is relatively easy to assert that we shouldn't judge our own value or the value of others on the basis of economic productivity, although putting this assertion into practice is difficult. But when it comes to the production of disciples we appear to have a clear command of Christ to make something, and thus a clear valuing by God of human productivity. And yet this is heresy, a heresy at the heart of American Christian identity that has led it to the greater heresy of placing productivity as the key marker of human value.

When Jesus calls his apostles to join in his work of both manifesting the immediacy of God’s Reign while proclaiming the same he isn't calling for the apostolic production of disciples. He isn't calling for the formation of an evangelistic machine whose input is sinners and output is believers. But to see this clearly we need to consider three things. 1. All those verses in which Jesus calls his disciples to join his work must be considered, not merely one or two verses that churches have grasped as inspirational slogans to spur their leaders and members on to greater productivity. 2. The actual implementation of Jesus' command by those who knew him best. e. A close consideration of the relationship between the creativity engendered by love and the productivity engendered by command. 

In the next two posts I’ll consider these. With regard to the first I’ll maintain that taken together, and along with their outworking by Jesus' disciples, Jesus’ call for his followers to join in Jesus’ mission is a call to join in loving their fellow humans, not producing members for the church. With regard to the second I’ll maintain that this loving is essentially a creative act rather than a productive act. It is our ability to create in love, in union with  reality-encompassing Divine, that must give human life its distinct value in the coming 2nd Machine Age