Digital Spirituality: between SEO and hamartia

In 2023, a Protestant church in Germany gave control of a whole worship service to an artificial intelligence.

From prayer to singing to preaching, every moment was “managed” by a digital avatar. The service was handed over to probabilistic calculation, partly out of curiosity and partly out of a sense of novelty, starting from a simple prompt (“You are a preacher, how would you conduct this service?”).

This surreal scene, however, is not so distant from our daily obsession with Christian engagement, the search for a catchy sermon title, or the reduction of a church meeting to an event.

You don't need artificial intelligence to create an artificial spirituality.

We have entered the era of SEO-optimized spirituality. But to whom does the glory truly go? What is the real mark to hit?

Search Engine Optimization: the light on the digital path

The relationship between churches and the digital world changed radically in 2020. The pandemic forced large and small Christian organizations to establish a social media presence to compensate for the inability to meet in person. They also recognized this as a significant evangelistic opportunity. While social media activity was previously less widespread and organized, 2020 marked a turning point in both presence and use methodologies. Content went from being published just to “be digitally present” to full-fledged promotional campaigns for all activities.

However, surviving in the digital world does not mean merely being present; it means being found. Consciously or not, professionally or not, something has changed in the way churches use social media and perhaps in the way they perceive themselves. Because you need to be found, your content must be visually impactful, aesthetically curated, and linguistically up to date. It must generate engagement to increase reach.

All of this would be appropriate if we weren't talking about spirituality and faith. Why? Because it means adapting the content to the parameters of what “works” in the digital world. Who establishes what works in the digital world if not the light of search engine optimization (SEO) that enlightens our algorithm? This is not the first time the Christian world has tried to adapt to contemporary tools: in the last thirty years alone, Christianity has had to navigate the advent of the Internet, YouTube, Facebook, and the explosion of social networks. However, never before has there been a sense that the medium is changing the churches, the message, and the messenger.

The changing church

One of the first risks of chasing digital attention is the change in the identity, nature, and mission of a church. The digital world is now considered indispensable for the life of the church, not merely useful, due to a marketing dynamic.

This concept challenges the biblical idea of a church's identity being dependent on Christ (John 15:5).

It's not an exaggeration to say that, in common perception, a church without a profile “doesn't exist” and a church without published activities “doesn't work”.

Are we moving away from the New Testament model of a church whose existence was tied to the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4)? A church that even gathered in secret, but divine signs accompanied it, confirming the preaching (Mark 16:20), so it could reach the ends of the earth with its witness full of divine power (Acts 1:8).

The risk lies in thinking that likes, shares, and comments are the metric of approval for the actions of a Christian community. The risk is settling for flattering analytics. The risk is believing that we are hitting the mark solely because we are successful according to measurable data.

But, as much as we may not like to admit it:

• if the nature of a church is dictated by its digital presence, we are missing the mark
• if the identity of a church is established by its visibility, we are missing the mark
• if the mission of a church depends on its reach, we are missing the mark

And we are not moving for the glory of God.

 

The changing message

The integrity and doctrine of the biblical message are also being impacted by the digital race. It is certainly not the first time in history that Christian preaching has been subject to manipulation. Consider the numerous warnings in the epistles about false teachers (2 Peter 2:1-3), some of whom viewed faith as a means to become wealthy (1 Timothy 6:5). Remember Paul's prophecy: "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2 Timothy 4:3).

The search for novelty is one element. The emphasis on certain biblical themes is another. The inclusion of a secular lens as an exegetical method is a third. These elements predate social media. However, social media has caused them to detonate in the Christian world. The speed at which this has happened is unsustainable.

In the last fifteen years, we have witnessed a phenomenon that is easily verifiable through a Google Trends search: Bible-related YouTube searches have increasingly been for “motivation”, “healing”, and “blessing”. Conversely, the trend has been decidedly downward for “doctrine”, “sin”, “holiness”, “repentance”, and “cross”

What does this brief research tell us? It tells us that a vicious circle has been triggered. In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for a biblical message that comforts, motivates, and inspires. Algorithms, simply doing "their job," have begun to reward content featuring these themes with greater visibility because they are the most viewed. In an effort not to disappear digitally (because that would mean dying), the biblical message has been changed. It now focuses less on difficult themes (doctrine, sin, holiness). Instead, it focuses more on themes that are easy to understand and appealing to many people. All within a reduced timeframe.

The highly elevated risk is finding ourselves with a Gospel that can no longer lead to salvation from sin (under penalty of digital death), but that must be the key to personal self-actualization.

Also in this case, we must face reality:

• if repentance is omitted so as not to affect reach, we are missing the mark;
• if the cross is hidden so as not to compromise engagement, we are missing the mark;
• if we preach a Gospel optimized for the algorithm rather than centered on Christ, we are missing the mark.

And we are not moving for the glory of God.

 

The changing messenger

The final piece of our analysis concerns the messenger. John the Baptist, the greatest “among those born of women” (Matthew 11:11), recognized the need to step aside for Christ (John 3:30). The apostles refused personal glory to exalt Christ (Acts 3:12; 14:15), and the apostle Paul desired to make Christ stand out in his life (Galatians 2:20).

They can all be defined as "heralds" of the Gospel, messengers of the good news of grace. None of them sought personal visibility; all that mattered was “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). They knew they were instruments of the divine will, not protagonists.

Putting themselves out there meant living a life consistent with the message they preached, not having their photo on a Christian event poster.

If the digital age most encourages and rewards the use of images, then it's not surprising that it has urged a need to “help” the Christian message with a communication strategy that opens the doors to visual self-celebration.

But a question naturally arises: Is all this truly necessary? Have we really reached the point where we think the message no longer exists without our faces? Have we reached the point where we consider what is instrumental to be indispensable? Does the Gospel need our visibility to spread?

• if the messenger is more visible than the message, we are missing the mark
• if it is the messenger who must attract people to the message, we are missing the mark
• if it is the messenger being celebrated, we are missing the mark

And we are not moving for the glory of God.

Hamartia: the "crash" of the system

If we genuinely think that we have to give up the biblical identity of the church, the gospel message, and the messenger in the name of better digital “efficiency”, then we will eventually accept the idea that a day will come when an AI will lead a whole worship service.

However, if we reflect on how this frantic race for digital relevance is causing us to lose sight of the essence of our spirituality and directing it toward different goals, we will remember that in New Testament Greek, missing the mark is called hamartia.

And this is universally translated as “sin".

May this conviction “crash” SEO spirituality before it definitively convinces us that a human “like” is worth more than God's approval.