The Idea a Pope Called "Insidious"#
Deep in his encyclical on AI, Pope Leo names an idea he calls "particularly insidious." Not greed. Not violence. The insidious idea is this: that you have to earn your own worth.
Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. (MH 51)
Leo is not speaking of a fringe idea that lurks in the shadows of society. Rather, he is describing the operating system of society. In this ideology, people become a means to an end, something to be exploited. This concept that our value is earned through our capability or productivity runs right through us. But – as I’ve said many times – if we are defined by what we do, AI is the end of us. It can outproduce us all day long… and through the night as well.
Pope Leo names this outright. Human dignity, he says, rests not on our abilities or output but on the fact that we are created in the Image of God, willed into being, made for relationship, loved. (MH 50) Worth is not earned; it is given by God Himself. This is a gift. It is an ontological dignity, tied to our very being. And no machine, no wrong choice, no failure to produce can remove what God has bestowed.
None of this was new to me. This is the territory I'd previously spent seven weeks on in my Being Human in the Age of AI series prior to opening his encyclical. This is exactly why reading it was so striking for me. I wasn't being persuaded. I was being joined by a somewhat unexpected ally.
Worth is not earned; it is given by God Himself. This is a gift.... And no machine, no wrong choice, no failure to produce can remove what God has bestowed.
This Isn't a New Fight#
The encyclical is right about this, but here’s what I noticed as I read. It declares the dignity. It says, beautifully, that your worth is a gift from the God who loves you unconditionally. What it doesn't linger on is why that's true, or what it's up against. And in a moment when a machine is about to make the opposite case more persuasively than anything in history, I don't think the declaration is enough. We need the argument underneath it.
The claim that your worth precedes your usefulness is one the Bible has been making since its first page. And it spoke that claim against a world that believed the opposite.
The creation stories that existed in the time and region in which the Bible was written down declared that humans were only created to accomplish tasks for the gods who didn’t want to do manual labor themselves. In one such story, humans were created from the dead body of a god, spit, blood, and clay. Humans were a vile, necessary evil, tolerated only for what they could accomplish.
But Scripture had a different perspective. There, worth precedes work. It is not earned. In Genesis 1, Image-bearing comes before commission. The declaration that humans are tob meod – “very good” – comes before any task. [See my “Made in the Image of a God Who Loves” post for more.]
Relationship comes before earning. In this, the Bible unmistakably underscores the value and dignity of human beings not because they acquired it but because God willed it.
Worth precedes work
We Just Swapped the Gods for the Market#
We are not so far from that old story as we'd like to think. We've just swapped the gods for the market, and the clay for the machine. We value ourselves and others based on what we can do and what we accomplish. Similarly, we devalue those who fail to contribute. But, and here we return to the encyclical, “the fundamental dignity of each person, therefore, is neither acquired nor earned, nor does it need to be justified.” (MH 53) If God has created them with dignity, calls them into relationship with Himself, and has unconditional love for them, the worth precedes effort.
A culture that values humans by their output, while it might feel like what capitalism demands, is dangerous. This would devalue young children. And, even if we said that they were important because of their potential, there are many others who are left out: stay-at-home mothers, the sick, those down on their luck, the homeless, the disabled, and the elderly. The capability framework that Pope Leo calls out here declares that these have less value than others — or even no value at all. That is a destructive line of thinking and stands in stark contrast to the way of Jesus.
This isn't only a Christian concern. Any view that sees a human as having worth in themselves – rather than worth in what they produce – stands against this. The instinct that a person is more than their output is not unique to faith. But it is grounded in something when you know Whose Image you bear.
Honestly, this can feel unsettling. Not the value and Image-bearing piece, of course. But the framing of worth outside of what we do. I, myself, didn’t realize how deep this capability framework runs through me until I really started dissecting this concept a while back. Yet, we must grow to understand that we are valued and loved long before we could ever do anything productive.
The Day God Stopped#
On the seventh day of creation, God does the one thing no productivity culture would ever build into its design. He stops.
He then offers this Sabbath rest to humans as a model and a gift. Humans retain their worth even when not producing. This stands sharply in the face of parallel creation stories, and to much of our thinking today. This is not just about rest as a means to more work. It’s worth that doesn’t depend on the work at all.
In contrast, a machine’s value is what it can accomplish. A human at rest is still tob meod — very good. A machine with no power or ability to function is just material.
AI Can Challenge Your Productivity. Not Your Worth.#
If you’ve felt the pressure of AI, find assurance in this. It may work faster, have access to more information, and never take a break. It may outproduce you. But this is not a threat to your humanity or your worth.You are valued by the Almighty God Himself. He made you in His Image. He desires relationship with you. He loves you unconditionally, regardless of what you do, how you fail, or how much you produce.
AI can challenge your productivity. It cannot challenge your worth.
This week we covered ground the pope and I share. Next week is where I start to see it differently — beginning with the Image of God itself, and a dimension I think his framing leaves underdeveloped.