Can we use AI to deepen experience with nature?
Yes.
A chatbot can suggest hikes, parks, seasonal activities. It can create a nature scavenger list. It can identify plants or insects. But the real exploring happens when we go exploring.
Step outside digital reality into physical reality. Be spiritually present in the moment. Invite friends or family, but put your device away. When we step outside, we step into God’s classroom.
Nature teaches patience as seeds grow, humility as storms pass, and joy as sunlight warms the earth. These lessons are not downloaded, they’re lived. As we reverence in and care for creation, we honor the Creator. Every breath of fresh, crisp air can spark gratitude. Intentionally choose moments that gladden the heart and lift the soul.
Technology can inform us, but without the Spirit, it cannot transform our nature or our being.
Let us wisely use AI and technology tools to deepen faith and spiritual understanding, strengthen relationships and families, and instill reverence and gratitude for God’s creations.
Showing posts with label Screens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Screens. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2026
Excessive screen time also comes at a high opportunity cost.
Excessive screen time also comes at a high opportunity cost. Imagine all the things we could do with that time. So, as the saying goes, please make time to “touch grass.” If you find you’re more comfortable on your phone than with people, or that it’s keeping you from the delight, serendipity, and spontaneity inherent in God’s nature, now’s a good time to change.
Find again the serenity, calm, and assurance that come when we re-immerse ourselves in the order and beauty of creation. Let quiet, natural places put our daily personal concerns in perspective. Watering a plant, nurturing a garden; they can restore equilibrium. It can uncrowd an apartment. It can unclutter a mind.
Watch the leaves dance with the first kiss of light. Pause as the sun paints the clouds with God’s palette. Listen to the stories the constellations tell as they wheel through the expanses of the heavens. It takes conscious effort to slow down. God’s goodness can enrich our souls.
Today’s noisy, cluttered, polluted world can make it hard to “be still and know that I am God.” We curate life to be “insta-perfect,” even though we know insta-perfect is neither insta nor perfect. Only when we turn off the kitchen fan do we remember how noisy it is. Sometimes slowing things down, those things that matter less, helps us find the things that matter most. In an age of AI, what tech insiders warned earlier is even more true now. If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
Find again the serenity, calm, and assurance that come when we re-immerse ourselves in the order and beauty of creation. Let quiet, natural places put our daily personal concerns in perspective. Watering a plant, nurturing a garden; they can restore equilibrium. It can uncrowd an apartment. It can unclutter a mind.
Watch the leaves dance with the first kiss of light. Pause as the sun paints the clouds with God’s palette. Listen to the stories the constellations tell as they wheel through the expanses of the heavens. It takes conscious effort to slow down. God’s goodness can enrich our souls.
Today’s noisy, cluttered, polluted world can make it hard to “be still and know that I am God.” We curate life to be “insta-perfect,” even though we know insta-perfect is neither insta nor perfect. Only when we turn off the kitchen fan do we remember how noisy it is. Sometimes slowing things down, those things that matter less, helps us find the things that matter most. In an age of AI, what tech insiders warned earlier is even more true now. If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
Digital exchanges are at best a poor substitute or, at worst, a counterfeit for what we live through our senses, hearts, and minds.
Beauty, says author Marilynne Robinson, is the “signature of God.” An important way to know God is to discern his signature in creations made to gladden the heart.
Imagine you’re preparing for a wilderness hike. You light a single candle as you assemble your maps, food, sleeping bag, tent, and so on.
Because of the light in the room, you do not notice the candle. Now imagine you turn off the light in the room. Now the candle shines clear and bright. It illuminates the room. It was not that the lit candle was invisible before, it was that the room’s artificial light obscured the lit candle’s natural light.
In some ways, we need to be in nature, away from the artificial light and the artificiality which crowds so much of modern life. There we can see God’s light, not as a single candle, but, as E.B. White put it, as “the combustion of stars.”
Digital screens can serve us, but they can’t substitute for the testimonies of nature and the natural world. AI cannot replace sunlight, wind, and natural wonder. Digital exchanges are at best a poor substitute or, at worst, a counterfeit for what we live through our senses, hearts, and minds.
Our physical and spiritual senses and abilities are God-given, in part so we can experience time, space, and physicality, including the stunning, revitalizing beauty of our physical world and environment.
Imagine you’re preparing for a wilderness hike. You light a single candle as you assemble your maps, food, sleeping bag, tent, and so on.
Because of the light in the room, you do not notice the candle. Now imagine you turn off the light in the room. Now the candle shines clear and bright. It illuminates the room. It was not that the lit candle was invisible before, it was that the room’s artificial light obscured the lit candle’s natural light.
In some ways, we need to be in nature, away from the artificial light and the artificiality which crowds so much of modern life. There we can see God’s light, not as a single candle, but, as E.B. White put it, as “the combustion of stars.”
Digital screens can serve us, but they can’t substitute for the testimonies of nature and the natural world. AI cannot replace sunlight, wind, and natural wonder. Digital exchanges are at best a poor substitute or, at worst, a counterfeit for what we live through our senses, hearts, and minds.
Our physical and spiritual senses and abilities are God-given, in part so we can experience time, space, and physicality, including the stunning, revitalizing beauty of our physical world and environment.
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