More Power, or More Love?

 

I preached this homily yesterday, and as I was working through the readings, I kept coming back to a quotation from Pope John Paul II that I came across recently:

“Modern man has enormously increased his power on this planet and beyond, but as he abandons more and more his alliance with eternal wisdom, he is less and less able to rule himself.”

John Paul II said those words in France in 1980.

They sound like they could have been written yesterday.

We have certainly increased our power since 1980. And perhaps nothing illustrates that better than artificial intelligence.

AI can write, calculate, translate, create images, answer questions, analyze enormous amounts of information, and carry on remarkably convincing conversations. It can even imitate friendship.

That raises an important question.

Just because we can do something, does that mean we should?

Pope Leo XIV has been asking essentially the same question in his reflections on artificial intelligence:

“Not merely what can we do, but what ought we to do?”

That distinction matters.

Because power and wisdom are not the same thing.

When technology enters the place of relationships

A recent Wall Street Journal article caught my attention. It looked at middle-school children who are turning to AI chatbots for companionship.

That is both fascinating and troubling.

We have created technology that can talk to a lonely child. It can listen. It can respond. It can appear to understand.

But the research reported in the article raises an uncomfortable possibility: children who use AI as companions can actually experience greater loneliness.

Why?

Perhaps because imitation isn't the same thing as relationship.

A chatbot can respond to you. But it cannot take your hand when you're hurting. It cannot sit across the table from you after an argument. It cannot forgive you. It cannot ask you to forgive it.

And those things matter.

Jesus gives us a different model of relationship

That brought me back to Sunday's Gospel from Luke:

“As you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.”

And Jesus doesn't stop there.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

Jesus isn't simply telling us to have nice feelings about other people.

He's telling us to act for their good.

And that's hard because people are hard.

We learn patience because someone frustrates us.

We learn forgiveness because someone hurts us.

We learn generosity because someone needs something from us.

We learn mercy because sometimes the other person doesn't deserve it.

That's how we learn to love.

And maybe that's one of the things we need to remember in an age when technology can increasingly arrange itself around our preferences.

Other people don't exist simply to make us comfortable.

In fact, some of the most important things we learn about love happen precisely because other people are inconvenient.

We learn love in the family

Pope Leo XIV made a point that I found especially helpful. He said:

“It is within the family that we first learn trust before calculation, generosity before competition, dialogue before division, and love before power.”

Think about that.

The family teaches us things that can't simply be downloaded.

We learn to wait.

We learn to listen.

We learn that we don't always get our way.

We learn to forgive.

We learn to sacrifice.

We learn that loving another person sometimes costs us something.

And that brings us back to John Paul II's warning.

The problem isn't that human beings have become powerful.

The problem is that power without wisdom can become dangerous.

Paul's “thorn”

The epistle gave us another perspective.

St. Paul speaks about his extraordinary experiences and revelations. But he also speaks about his “thorn in the flesh.”

He asks God three times to take it away.

God doesn't.

Instead, God tells him:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

That's a very different understanding of power.

The world tells us to eliminate weakness.

Christ tells us that God can work through it.

The world tells us to get control.

Christ teaches us to trust.

The world tells us that having more power is the answer.

The Gospel tells us that love is the answer.

What kind of people are we becoming?

And perhaps that's the question we need to ask about artificial intelligence—and about technology in general.

Not simply:

What can we build?

Not simply:

What can we make machines do?

But:

What is all of this making us?

Are we becoming more patient?

More generous?

More capable of listening?

More willing to forgive?

More attentive to the people sitting right in front of us?

Or are we becoming less willing to deal with the inconvenience of other human beings?

John Paul II warned that humanity could become increasingly powerful while becoming increasingly unable to govern itself.

Leo XIV is asking us to make the distinction between what we can do and what we ought to do.

And Jesus gives us the standard:

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

That is the goal.

Not simply to become more powerful.

Not simply to become more efficient.

Not simply to become more intelligent.

To become more like the Father.

To become merciful.

To become generous.

To become forgiving.

To become capable of loving even when love costs us something.

Because in the end, the question isn't whether humanity will become more powerful.

We almost certainly will.

The question is whether we will become more human as we do.

And for the Christian, even that isn't quite the final goal.

The goal isn't greater power.

The goal is greater love.