AI and Accomplishment: Will ChatGPT Take My Job (Satisfaction)?

Why bother with writing?

It's not a particularly lucrative activity, nor does it magnify my "influence." If I wanted steady income or cultural clout I would make reaction videos on TikTok. I don't write because my work makes the world a better place or because society so desperately needs my voice. If I wanted either I would look towards organizations or movements with wider followings than I have (though I am grateful for each and every one of the 13 followers I amassed while still on Twitter).

Truthfully, I write for selfish reasons. I write because doing so gives me a clear sense of satisfaction. Completing a thoughtful paragraph or a clever phrase provides a sense of "job well done" that is difficult to attain elsewhere. Typical of an Enneagram "3," I have a bias for achievement. Writing, blogging, occasionally publishing, are activities that feed my bias and nourish my ego. Putting pen to paper or words to the screen helps me to feel an objective sense of impact and rectitude, scarce sentiments in a culture of speed, and subjectivity. Even the writing projects that ostensibly achieve nothing --- few views, zero re-tweets, certainly no monetization --- have a way of convincing my egotistical self that my work is satisfactory.

Over the last two years, I've added more technology into the creative process. I've increasingly started to work and to write alongside AI. I started slowly at first, apps like Grammarly and ChatGPT serving as high-tech spell-checkers. And then I learned what else LLMs could provide: post titles and content outlines, suggestions for the next paragraph and prompts for the next post, tables of contents, images, translations, and recommendations for further reading. I learned that AI could subtly adjust the tone of voice of an entire essay, reformat a course for a different set of learners, and polish scraps of notation in a message fit for a chief executive.

I've certainly become more efficient after hiring AI as my editor and co-creator. Projects that once took me days are now requiring hours. Tasks that were once tedious are now easy to complete. While I've stopped short of generating entire works from LLMs, I wonder how coherent my words would be if I were to start a project without the support and love of my preferred large language models. I should note that as I type these words, Wix, my site hosting platform, is nudging me to use its own AI to "generate a full-length blog post with a title and images." Do I dare click the magic button and end today's writing session?

Even with this artificially-generated efficiency, I've observed a change in how I feel—in writing, content creation, project development, even in emailing people with important job titles. Something seems off. And I think I know what's missing.

Thanks to AI, thee smug, self-centered satisfaction I used to feel in my writing isn't as strong as it used to be. The sense of accomplishment from a witty phrase or a creative expression isn't as evident since I started using OpenAI.

Our cultural dialogue around AI emphasizes efficiency gains and existential threats, environmental impact and essential regulation. It's a dialogue that is ever-sensitive to career displacement. But lost in this conversation is the topic of AI and achievement. AI might very well take my job. Must it also take my sense of job satisfaction?

We're all on a learning curve with artificial intelligence, but that curve is more complex than we imagine. It's not that we must learn to master ChatGPT or to work alongside these magical technologies. It's that we must also learn to do so in a way that preserves what makes the creative process worthwhile. The real learning curve for AI is to discover how to use these resources in a way that preserves that spark of accomplishment, that glimmer of a job well done, that visceral feeling that comes when I have envisioned, written, or brought to life something both original and useful.

I'm not particularly worried that AI is going to take jobs - mine or yours. But I'm becoming increasingly concerned that AI is going to remove some of the agency and autonomy that fuels so many of us in our creative pursuits.

Will AI make us more productive? Most certainly. Will it diminish the delight we take in our efforts? Perhaps. Will it make the creative process a slog? It remains to be seen. What's at stake is more important than a temporary occupation. What's at stake is our intangible yet foundational sense of purpose and meaning. As AI development accelerates, the very human challenge in front of us is to retain the joy of creativity as AI makes us increasingly productive.

The Church in 2025: A Community of Gracious Uncertainty

In thinking about the year ahead, I was drawn to this quote from Oswald Chambers, a 20th-century Scottish minister:

Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.

If uncertainty is a characteristic of a faithful life, then 2025 is shaping up to be quite a formative year.

Rev. Oswald Chambers, 1874-1914.

As the calendar turns, uncertainty is omnipresent: in global affairs, politics, economics, and business; in education and healthcare; in energy and transportation. In our organizations and families, in our workplaces and our churches, 2025 begins as a year of the unknown. The Economist identified "radical uncertainty” as one of just 3 forces that’ll shape the year ahead. The other 2? Donald Trump, and technology.

If you're an optimist, you might find reasons for positivity in this uncertainty, looking at lower interest rates, decreasing inflation, and the ongoing advancement of AI. On the other hand, if you tend to see the glass as half-empty, you might be concerned about global conflicts, persistently high prices, digital misinformation, and job displacement due to AI. But regardless of your outlook, we can’t possibly imagine where economics, politics, and technology will be in one year's time. In each of these areas, 2025 appears to promise much more volatility than we would normally expect. The situation is like a coin that’s landed upright on its edge. We all wait to see in which direction the coin will decisively tilt.

Moreso than any other community or institution, the church is uniquely situated to help communities navigate a year of uncertainty. And yet we must recognize that our culture is not one that is accustomed to uncertainty. As any TikTok influencer can attest, people crave specificity and certainty, clear and succinct takes and reactions. So how, then, does a faith community navigate a year of uncertainty? How does one live a faithful life when the surrounding us culture forms us to flee the uncertain? And what does it mean to be the church in an uncertainty-filled culture?

First, we might recognize that waiting amidst uncertainty is something the Christian faith has always practiced. We dedicate an entire month of our liturgical calendar, Advent, to anticipation. The very structure of our life together, the liturgy, knits us together in a practice of waiting for God to show up. The liturgy is a tool for those of us who are very uncertain, who acknowledge that we cannot see what is coming next. If we could depend on our certainty, there’d be no need for such practices.

Acknowledging that navigating uncertainty is core to the witness of the church, we might come to regard humility as a spiritual discipline. Humility is the antithesis of certainty, which can often lead to rigidity and a false sense of security. Certitude, with its assertive proclamations, confidently asserts, "I can see what will happen next here." Conversely, humility invites a posture of openness and curiosity. It acknowledges the limitations of human understanding and the vastness of divine mystery. Humility says, "I recognize that there is far more than what meets my eye."

In this light, humility becomes an essential lens through which to view our faith journey. It encourages the faithful to engage with the complexities and the paradoxes of their beliefs, to grapple with doubts and uncertainties, and to seek wisdom from ancient and contemporary sources. Furthermore, humility allows for a deeper engagement with the scriptures, leading us into prayer and contemplation. As we approach the Bible with a humble heart, we become more receptive to the polyvalent meanings and many interpretations within the text. We become more receptive to the subtle voice of God in our midst. We may even be more gracious towards ourselves and towards our neighbor. The spiritual discipline of humility fosters a sense of community where individuals can share their wanderings and wonderings without fear of judgment, creating a safe space for dialogue and exploration. In this light, humility becomes virtuous. Counter-cultural, yes, but virtuous nonetheless.

Fr. Richard Rohr points out that the church is at its best when it leads with a posture of humility. In an essay on "Humble Knowing," he writes:

Healthy religion is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time—when the truth is the exact opposite. Anybody who really knows also knows that they don’t know at all.

In its commitment to humility, the church holds an alternative voice from those who believe that they alone can keep you safe, fit, and productive.This alternative voice isn't that of argumentation or resistance. It is instead a voice that speaks rather gently. It is the voice of one who is willing to listen, even to stand down. It is the voice of one who recognizes that all of us are beholden to myopia, error, and even sin. While the surrounding culture boasts of it's unique access to certain truth, the faithful recognize that we see through a glass darkly. While the surrounding culture elevates influencers and charismatic experts, the faithful proclaim an anthropology in which we are fully saint - but also fully sinner. As the surrounding culture carries into the new year with overconfidence, let 2025 in the church be a year of humility. Let us begin a year of gracious uncertainty.

Finding The Stillness of Advent in a Culture of Yuletide Intensity

Lowe's knows what this season is all about.

It’s the season "of going all out," or so its recent commercial would suggest. While I have an immediate negative reaction to any claim that Christmas requires "going all out," I suspect that the marketers at Lowe's have succeded in diagnosing the American holiday zeitgeist.  Within this short advertisement, Lowe's isn't so much selling, as much as they are describing. December is indeed a time of going all out.

Some would argue that Christmas in a secular society is about excess and consumption. I used to agree with this widespread critique. But Lowe's has helped me to rethink things. Today, I would argue that our current cultural understanding of Christmas isn't as a time of excess but as a time of fervor. We don't view December as a season of consumption and spending, as some would suggest, but a period of vigor. We don't attend 9 Christmas dinners and wrap 35 presents or sit through 5 school concerts because of a desire to consume. We do it because we are caught up in the new-found intensity of the yuletide.This isn't a season of consumption. It's a season of hustle. It's not a season of busyness, but a season of intensity. With steely and at times frosty determination, we shop, decorate, and sprint through our holiday preparations (all of which Lowe's can and does help with).

Holiday movies depict the raging reality of this time of year. Arnold Schwarzenagger's character in the Oscar-snubbed "Jingle All The Way"is not so much a caricature but a mirrior of the frantic volition that propels us through this season. The grown-up Ralphie of "A Christmas Story" describes the time leading up to Christmas as a "yearly bacchanalia of peace on earth and goodwill to men," in a quote that encapsulates the rowdiness of this final month of the calendar.

Is it any wonder, then, that we don't know what to with Advent? We so often mistake the Christian liturgical season of Advent for the 24 days that lead up to Christmas, missing out on the practices of waiting and anticipation leading up to Christ's arrival (note to self: verify whether my annual Advent beer calendar qualifies as a practice of waiting and anticipation). I want to be clear that our misunderstanding of Advent has little to do with "putting Christ back in Christmas." Secular holiday celebrations haven't pushed aside the church's season of Advent. Rather, we have willfully adopted a mindset of forceful festivity, one that’s completely incompatible with Advent's longings and liminality.

At its core, Advent isn't a countdown to Christmas. It's a month-long reminder that Christ has come into our world. It's a four week expression of the hope that Christ will come again. Advent, then, has something of a split identity - one of looking back but also ahead. That's why the readings in Advent lectionaries depict themes of anticipation and longing, and why traditional Advent themes are solemn, even a bit melancholy. The traditional practices of Advent have been practices of repentance, of preparing our hearts and minds for Christ's presence in our lives. This has been the purpose of Advent throughout church history. By the 9th century, the church recognized that Advent served a dual purpose - of waiting for the commemoration of Christ's birth, just as we await Christ's return in the fullness of time. Throughout Christian history, Advent hasn't been a time of counting down, but a time of dwelling in the space between the Incarnation and Christ's return.

But how does one find time for stillness in a season where Lowe's beckons us to go all-out? How do we dwell in the tension of liminal space, practicing waiting and contemplation, when there are concerts to attend, parties to host, malls to visit, presents to wrap?

I'm not completely sure that the attitudes of waiting and repentance that Advent aims to instill are achievable in this setting. In a world that is increasingly fast-paced and filled with distractions, the traditional practices associated with Advent can feel out of place, almost like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The month of December, with its relentless flurry of activity, shopping, social gatherings, and the pressure to create the perfect holiday experience, may not lend itself easily to the contemplative spirit that Advent seeks to cultivate.

And so I’d suggest that maybe the answer isn't to force a new contemplative exercise into the harried calendar of the 12th month of the year, to take on new spiritual disciplines or go "all-out" on the practices of the early church. You might try to read every book on stillness and solitude that you can, but even that might simply be an expression of the deep drive that defines December.

Perhaps the answer is simply to recognize that our celebration of Christmas loses something crucial when preceded by intensity instead of introspection. The best way forward is simply to be aware that our own effort diminishes our appreciation of this high holy day. And maybe if we learn to dial-down the intensity from December 1 through December 23, the practices of Advent will be that much more formative, our appreciation of Christmas that much more meaningful.