How should Christians respond to existential threats?

The Last Judgement, Heironymous Bosch (detail)

In the last few days, we’ve been hearing ‘tech bros’ speculate that AI may choose to eliminate humanity sooner rather than later, unless action is taken urgently to mitigate the existential threat. AI technology promises wonderful things, such as cures for cancer, but could also be used to engineer pandemic viruses. We can all see how current AI models pollute social media with dangerous nonsense. It is easy to see how in future AI can eliminate millions of jobs, creating a crisis of white-collar unemployment, with unpredictable, and probably nasty, social effects. And military-industrial complexes around the world are already developing automated weapon systems to fight deadly wars without human intervention.

Yet I remain sceptical. In the short term, I think I fear the global economic shock of an implosion of the AI bubble, more than I do the creation of an artificial general intelligence determined to destroy us. And this AI panic threatens to distract us from the other existential threats we already know about: climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, nuclear Armageddon.

But it does focus our minds on the question, how we as Christians should respond to existential threats? I have seen nothing wiser than this reflection, given as a comment by someone calling herself ‘hidden sister’, on the Thinking Anglicans web page a few days ago, copied with her permission.

Do read it, and let me have your thoughts!

‘hidden sister’ writes on the threat that AI may soon eliminate humanity, 9 Sep 2026

God does not desire our elimination but our consecration and flourishing. Humanity is perfectly capable of eliminating itself. We basically need saving from ourselves (I do for sure), through God’s grace, mercy, healing and love. I believe that’s God’s desire, and always has been. I only believe in ‘end times’ in the sense of our own ‘end times’ – by which I mean the fleeting brief lives we have and our transience. In which context, as gift, God calls us repeatedly to open each day, in the here and now, to God’s grace and devotion to us, and asks us to devote our lives in return.

Each day, the eternal Love of God is offered to us, to flow through us, to draw us into the divine compassion for other people and the world. It’s not rocket science, but it does come with cost. At heart it’s so clearly God’s will, though we prevaricate over rules, disputes, and anything else, to distract from the gospel heart or put off actually living out the love. But if we pray and devote ourselves each day – sharing sacrificial devotion with and in God – and seek mercy for the pitiful needs within us and around us… then by the way of the Cross we may open to who God is within our hearts, and become conduits for the flow of tender love to others. We are called to be alive today, in the here and now. Apocalypse can wait. Today is the day to be saved I am told, day after day, and I am reminded that God says “I desire mercy”.

All space and time will run on for billions of years when we have long been wiped out from the face of the earth. But here, now, today… God invites us to open our consciousness to God’s vast and eternal consciousness… in the eternal now… in the very love, the very compassion of who God is… the endless flow. And to become sacrifice like God. To be given in love. And what gift and privilege, and what opportunity in each encounter we have today… with people we know and prayer for those we have never met. All vulnerable, all transient, all wounded by hurt and sin, in need of merciful compassion and the grace of God. We can leave judgment – the discernment of a person’s heart – to our merciful and compassionate God.

What we are invited to do – the whole point of the gospel – is to open to the flow, the cost, the compassion of God’s Love.

The flowing stream of God’s Love always seeks mercy, always seeks healing, and always seeks inroads through our resistant hearts, minds, souls… to open our lives – today in the here and now – so grace, mercy and love may reach out into the darkness and the lostness (in the process touching our own darkness, let’s be honest) and, in giving our lives to God this day in practical love, we may find ourselves made more of who we are in Christ, find ourselves drawn into the very mind and consciousness of our compassionate God, and drawn into the sacrifice and devotion of Jesus Christ.

Isn’t that the call? To be living sacrifices?

We don’t live long, but while we are granted another day, we may become conduits not of judgment but of mercy. All by grace and the givenness of God. So…

Come let us worship. Let us open to God. Let us own our own sins. And let us pray for the pitiful needs of the world. For God – the ever-living God – is love. And God’s nature is always to have mercy, always wanting to heal, and make people whole.