The AI Bible Vlogs

and how art mediates the story

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Photo by Tom Krach on Unsplash

Dear reader,

Next Saturday I’ll be writing about the Left Behind series of novels and why, by the time they were published, there was every reason to ignore them. If you don’t know what novels I’m talking about, I’ll explain next week.

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The other week on my regular Life FM morning interview, we discussed some AI videos that are doing the rounds. They’re set up in the style of social media vlogs from Bible characters as if they were influencers. Here’s a video that collects some of the examples.

There are plenty of them to find online.

Art has always been a big part of being human. There are some things that can’t be expressed well using the written word. We’re visual. Art has been a big part of the Christian faith right from the beginning, with early art being the drawing of simple symbols, and images on walls of places like the catacombs. Over time iconography developed, illuminated books, and the amazing art of the renaissance.

In the faith we’ve made music, and film. In film we’ve sat with monks in Into Great Silence, traversed the deepest of ethical dilemmas in The Mission, and we’ve endured cheesy evangelical films out of the US.

AI is another tool to create art. Whatever I think of these specific examples, that’s what’s going on. But I think there’s something about it all that we need to keep in mind - something more all encompassing.