Two Laments: What Christian Educators Need to Grieve Before They Can Lead on AI

When I stand in front of a room full of Christian school teachers to talk about AI, I don't start with the technology. I start with grief. There's a reason for that. If we skip over what this moment actually feels like for educators, we're going to rush toward solutions that don't address the real problem. And I've found that what's happening with AI in schools involves not one grief but two, and the second one is harder to name than the first. ## The First Lament: AI Arrived on Exhausted Ground Think about the past five years. Teachers adapted for COVID. They rewired their entire practice under enormous pressure, often with inadequate support and at real personal cost. Everyone is exhausted. And then, right on the heels of that exhaustion, comes a technology no one saw coming, no one asked for, and no one deserves. A cheating machine for everything. Now it looks like we have to reinvent our teaching practice all over again. For those in the humanities (English, history, Bible), this has been particularly painful. Students, as fallen human beings in the early stages of their sanctification, are most likely to use AI in ways that are foolish and detrimental, undermining the work their teachers are trying to do with them. As if teaching wasn't already hard enough, every student now has access to an amazingly cheap machine that can produce passable work in seconds. And we can't even rely on tools like Turnitin, because they're not good at flagging AI-assisted plagiarism. This has mostly felt like a loss. And here's the backdrop that makes it worse: we're in the midst of the fastest technological revolution humanity has ever experienced. The last revolution we lived through, the internet through social media, has proven to be largely harmful for teenagers. We were promised deeper connections and ended up with anxiety, depression, and isolation. We were promised better access to knowledge and ended up with misinformation and polarization. Tech companies designed slot machines for our brains, hacked our neurobiology, monetized our data, and exposed our children to explicit content and predators. Why should educators jump on the hype train of another technology when the last round of promises turned out to be a bill of goods? I think it's important to acknowledge this grief. To sit with it. To pay attention to the voices that are skeptical and concerned and angry before rushing to figure out what to do. ## The Second Lament: The Brokenness We Stopped Noticing This second grief is harder to tap into because we've gotten used to it. The way our schools are structured today is in large part the result of the prior major technological revolution: the industrial revolution. That revolution did something remarkable for education: it solved the access problem. Universal education is a great good. But it came at a cost we've learned to live with. Prior to the industrial revolution, the most effective form of education was one-on-one tutoring: the Oxford model. A tutor could immediately address a student's gaps, make learning meaningful to their experience, adjust the pace, and set a trajectory. This is how world leaders were educated, and the results speak for themselves. The industrial model replaced that with one-to-many instruction. One teacher picks a target and teaches to it. Students on either side are either lost or bored. We try to differentiate (and conferences and education degrees have told us to differentiate, differentiate, differentiate), but let's be honest: true differentiation for 100 students is actually impossible. That's why teachers work ridiculous hours. They're trying their best to do something that is, frankly, beyond what any single human being can accomplish. This is something worth lamenting. The industrial model puts students on an assembly line. They move at the same pace through the system. And we've dulled the sadness of the ideal not being met by telling ourselves: "This is just how things are. I'm doing the best I can." A perfectly reasonable response when you've been asked to do something impossible. But it's important to sit with this lament right now. Because AI is making that problem solvable. ## Why Both Griefs Matter If you only acknowledge the first lament, you'll stay stuck in a defensive posture: how do we survive this? How do we stop the cheating? How do we protect what we had? If you only acknowledge the second, you'll jump to solutionism: AI will fix everything! Personalized learning for all! Neither posture serves your students. The path forward requires holding both griefs at the same time. Yes, AI has caused real harm and real exhaustion in schools. And yes, the educational model we've been defending was already broken in ways we'd stopped noticing. The technology that created the wound might also be the technology that heals something older and deeper, if we are wise enough to direct it toward human flourishing rather than efficiency for its own sake. Andy Crouch puts it well in his Redemptive Thesis for Artificial Intelligence: every major technology in history has created genuine common wealth while also being subordinated to foolish and prideful visions that caused significant damage. We can expect the same from AI. If you're excited, you have justification. If you're terrified, you have justification. Both are true simultaneously. So before your school writes an AI policy, before you adopt the next platform, before you attend the next conference on AI in education: grieve. Both griefs. The first because it's recent and raw. The second because it's been there so long you forgot it was a wound. Then, from that honest place, start building. Because here's what I want to leave you with: God has not only placed you geographically where you are and vocationally where you are in this school. He's also chosen to place you when he placed you. Our "when" right now is in the midst of an AI revolution. This is not outside of God's sovereign control. He will equip you to play the role he's called you to play in this time. The question isn't whether AI will change education. It will. The question is whether Christian schools will be in the driver's seat, or whether we'll sit back and let secular institutions define the terms and then come in late, again, like we did with the internet. We have a theological vocabulary our secular counterparts don't. We know that in our seats sit bearers of God's image who have incredible dignity and worth and need to be formed and shaped in the direction of what is good and true and beautiful. We can use AI to accomplish that mission better than anyone. But first, we grieve.