Why Adventism Must Become Radically Human

Last month The Atlantic ran an article that I can’t stop thinking about. It was titled “The Age of Anti-Social Media is Here.”*

The author argues that we’ve reached the end of the social media era—the phase where we were all supposed to feel connected, networked, part of something bigger—and are now stepping into something even more isolating.

Instead of platforms that connect us to other people, we’re creating technology designed to replace them: AI companions. Digital friends who listen, remember, affirm, and never interrupt. Programs that can talk about your day, comfort you when you’re anxious, and even speak in the voice of someone you’ve lost.

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. It’s here. Teenagers are chatting with Snapchat’s built-in “friend” when they feel invisible.

Adults are opening apps like Replika to vent after work or talk through loneliness at night.

Amazon is testing a feature where Alexa can mimic the voice of a dead relative, reading bedtime stories to children.

And as eerie as all that sounds, people are saying yes to it. They’re saying yes because the machines are easy. They don’t misunderstand you or gossip behind your back or make demands. They don’t talk back, lie, or ask you to change. They’re always available, always affirming, always emotionally consistent.

Beneath the Trend — What It Really Means

For years, we’ve been living in what psychologists have dubbed the “loneliness epidemic.”

Despite being more connected than any other generation before us, Millennials and Gen Z are simultaneously more alienated from authentic belonging. Thats a fancy way of saying we are lonelier. Social media’s hyper connectivity has produced the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than deepening intimacy, it seems to have contributed more to fractured relationships. And in that context, a world full of AI companions feels like relief.

When I saw that article, however, what stayed with me wasn’t the technology itself but what it says about us. We didn’t wake up one morning and decide to replace each other with machines. This moment has been forming for a long time. Beneath all the innovation and marketing is something raw and human—a quiet confession that we no longer know how to be together. We’ve learned how to communicate without connecting. How to perform intimacy without risking it. How to look busy and responsive while living lives that are emotionally vacant.

The rise of AI companionship isn’t just a technological trend; it’s a mirror reflecting our own relational poverty back to us — a new manifestation of Nietzsche’s prophecy that, once we lost transcendence, we would become the “last men”: shallow, comfort-addicted consumers who no longer remember what it means to be human.

An Opportunity for Adventism

The world doesn’t need more information. It’s drowning in it. Every answer is a few keystrokes away, every opinion has already been shared, every argument already exhausted.

People aren’t starving for knowledge anymore—they’re starving for connection. For relationship. For belonging.

What if that cry was met, not by technology, but by us?

What if Adventism became known as the place where being human was still sacred? Where faith wasn’t another system to maintain, but a way of healing what’s been broken between us?

What if people came near us and felt something they hadn’t felt in a long time—safety, tenderness, presence—and began to ask, “What’s going on here?”

That’s the opportunity in front of us.

Not to out-preach technology or out-market culture, but to outlove it. To be the one place left on earth where people don’t have to perform to be accepted. Where we sit with each other’s doubts instead of diagnosing them. Where truth isn’t used as a weapon but held as an invitation.

That’s the kind of church the world is aching for. A church where the image of God isn’t an abstract doctrine but something you can feel in the warmth of community, in the laughter around a meal, in the quiet presence of someone who refuses to leave when life gets hard.

We could become that again. Not by innovation, but by incarnation. Not by rushing to stay relevant, but by slowing down long enough to remember what it means to be human together.

The only question is, will we? Will we dare to become a church that chooses presence over performance, love over relevance, humanity over hype?

It’s easy to say “yes.” Most people do. Until we realize that becoming that church means asking why we aren’t that church already. It means auditing our own culture, our own systems, our own comforts—and being willing to name what needs to die so something living can grow again.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get there as a global body. But if this vision stirs something in you, take heart. You don’t need permission. You don’t need a budget or a title. Just a few people who share the ache—and the courage to start small.

We might not fix the institution. But we can plant something beautiful where we are.

Because our culture is begging us to. Every new AI companion, every synthetic substitute for belonging, is another reminder of what the world still aches for most.

And maybe this is our moment to remember: in all things and in all ages, Christ remains the antidote to the deepest longing of the human heart.

_____

* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2025/12/ai-companionship-anti-social-media/684596/