David had always struggled with writing assignments, and with a major paper due the next morning, he felt completely stuck. While searching online for inspiration, he came across an old essay that perfectly matched the assignment. At first, he just skimmed it, but as the clock ticked past midnight, desperation took over—he copied the entire thing, tweaking a few words to make it sound like his own. When the grades came back, he had earned an A—his best ever—and no one suspected a thing. His teacher praised his insights, his parents were proud, and for the first time, he felt like a real writer. But as the excitement faded, he couldn’t shake one question—if his words weren’t truly his, did he even deserve the grade?
It was clearly wrong for David to just copy and paste off the internet, right?
But what if I told you that I just did the same thing? The paragraph above is not original with me. Sure, I prompted the story. I asked for a couple of revisions. But ultimately, I just cut and pasted it from AI. It took me not more than 30 seconds to come up with David and his cheating ways. Was that plagiarism? I’m not really taking from someone else—but it’s not exactly my work either?
The rise of artificial intelligence has created new ethical dilemmas for Christian writers and students. How can we utilize this technology for God’s glory and not fall into dishonest practices and cutting corners?
What Is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism as defined by the University of Oxford is “presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.”
That definition means that I did not technically plagiarize above because I told you that it was AI. But if I didn’t say a thing and it somehow skirted by the plagiarism detection tools, would it have mattered?
Technically, plagiarism is not criminal or even a civil offense. It becomes illegal when it infringes upon an author’s intellectual property rights. And it’s especially going to get you in trouble if that material is copyrighted or trademarked.
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1. How AI Has Changed the Landscape?
AI doesn’t copy from a single source. Instead, it gathers information from multiple sources and predictively generates content. If I read through several commentaries on a passage of the Bible and then generate content with all of that floating around in the background, it isn’t plagiarism—unless, I substantially quote or totally hijack the outline of another pastor. And that’s really what AI is doing when it generates answers to our prompts—it’s just doing sermon prep really quickly.
I think we’d all agree that a pastor who said, “Give me a sermon on John 3:16” and then just preaches what AI gives him is being dishonest. Maybe we’d call it plagiarism or maybe it would just be called lazy and dishonest. The same goes for writers of articles or students who write papers.
But what if your usage of AI is a little more interactive? What if the pastor says, “What are the major themes of John 3:16?”. And then he reads through what AI produces—cutting down on hours of reading content.
He then puts together a sermon outline and asks AI, “What do you think of this?” When he does, AI comes up with some of its own thoughts. “Have you considered….” The pastor then uses some of those suggestions in forming his outline and writing his sermon. After completing the sermon, he once again asks AI for some suggestions. It happily gives them and the pastor agrees with such wise suggestions and makes those changes.
Is that plagiarism? Should he let his congregation know that some of his content structure was tweaked by AI? (I’ve got my own thoughts here, but for now I’ll just let the question sit out there).
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2. How Should Churches Think About AI?
Thankfully, more and more followers of Jesus are beginning to have these discussions. In the early days of AI, it was a mix between clunky and having scary potential. But for things like writing, it wasn’t that good. (And it’s still not great. I’m kind of shocked it didn’t use the word tapestry in the above story about David and his cheating essay. But it’s getting better and harder to detect with the naked eye. That means we’re having to think a bit more deeply about this.
Recently Andrew Wilson and Tariq Fernandes sat down and had an absolutely fascinating conversation about the impact that AI might have upon believers. They highlight some of the ethical concerns which AI raises. Not only do we have to worry about a proliferation of plagiarism but also things like erosion of critical thinking. They offer a few suggestions for approaching the topic with wisdom. It’s a great discussion.
But their core point is important—AI is a powerful but flawed tool that reflects humanity. Suppose we think of it like a tool that helps us to understand the importance of human involvement. Tools can be used for wickedness and they can be used for good. Tools can be used to deceive and they can be used to clarify. The key is the human on the other end. If AI is used as a tool to provide clarity, and assist human creation, then it’s a great tool to be used.
But that still leaves us with that aching question—where is the line?
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3. Where Is the Line with AI?
We’re still in the beginning stages of navigating all of the ethical components of the usage of AI. There are legal ramifications that have yet to be explored. And we don’t know the impact that artificial intelligence might have upon the job market. We know one thing, though, it is going to be disruptive. As Christians we cannot bury our head in the sand and pretend like the AI revolution is not upon us. But that also doesn’t mean we have to uncritically adopt it.
In my mind, one of the keys to thinking through this is to keep AI in its proper category of a tool to utilize. That means we take responsibility for it. If foolishly decide to take a shovel and whack someone over the head with it—the shovel doesn’t go to court. I am responsible for how I used that instrument. In the same way, humans are responsible for how we utilize this tool.
That means we need to be certain to fact check. We need to make sure that what it produces is marked by beauty and truth. And we need to take responsibility for the prompts. It often creates what we tell it to create. (Which at least partially makes it a bit different from plagiarism when we have substantial interaction).
If used well, we might think of generative work as co-creating with AI. But is it like creating something with a partner, that you’d better mention, or is it like creating a painting with your Bob Ross paint, paintbrushes, and methodology?
When I did that cut and paste earlier, I wasn’t stealing from anyone. Nobody is being harmed. And my prompt is the one that yielded the result. (You should have seen its first couple drafts. It had another student, a teacher named Mr. Reynolds, and a bunch of unnecessary details.
And yet it would have been unethical to not disclose that.
Here is what I’ll say in conclusion. Let’s go back to that pastor who substantially uses AI for his sermons. Tell your congregation. Does that make you nervous? Well, I think that might mean you already know where that line is. If AI feels like a dirty little secret, that should tell you something.
I’d say the same thing about AI that I say to young preachers. When in doubt, cite. It doesn’t have to be some MLA formatted footnote in your sermon. You can just say, “I heard somewhere…” Just don’t let people think you came up with something when you didn’t.
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Originally published Tuesday, 11 March 2025.