A few weeks ago, The New York Times published an article titled “Finding God in the App Store.” It described how millions of people around the world are turning to chatbots and religious apps to find guidance, comfort, and forgiveness. These tools, trained on sacred texts, have become digital companions for those who seek hope, prayer, or understanding at any hour of the day or night.
Behind this technological curiosity lies something profoundly human. People are searching for connection, belonging, and understanding. They want to feel seen and heard. Why? What if this growing search through technology is not basically about convenience, but also about a deep longing to be understood in a world that often feels impersonal?
The loneliness that so many carry today might not be accidental. It could be the result of systems that value productivity over people, of economies that exhaust workers with long hours and leave no leftovers for socializing and family time, of a culture that often overlooks retired people and considers them less important because they are no longer seen as productive, and of religious settings that sometimes choose a particular understanding of purity over compassion. In such a world, many have turned to digital voices because the human ones they once trusted have grown silent.
This is where the gospel speaks most powerfully. Jesus entered precisely into those spaces where people were dismissed, marginalized, and left alone. His message of salvation was not abstract. It was embodied in presence, in tables set, in hands extended, in stories told and heard. If salvation is good news, it must be good news for those the world forgets.
As Christians, as we witness the rise of faith technology, there is also something important to discern. When artificial intelligence begins to imitate spiritual care, we might face a subtle danger: that our algorithms end up reflecting our image and likeness rather than the image of God revealed in Jesus. If technology learns from human behavior without the transformation of grace, it risks reproducing our biases, our impatience, and our need for control.
As followers of Christ, our calling in this new reality is not to condemn people for seeking God through digital means, but to become living witnesses of a love that no machine can imitate. The church can be a space where those who search online can also find something real and transforming, the experience of being welcomed, listened to, and valued.
We have so many opportunities before us, as individuals and as a community, to make the love of Christ visible and tangible. Every act of compassion, every moment of hospitality, every time we sit and listen to someone’s story, becomes a doorway through which God’s presence can be felt again.
Maybe people are searching for God in their phones because they have not yet found God in our presence. What if our congregations could become the kind of places where they do?
Warmly,
Rev. David A Gaitan
