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Episode 8 When Truth Can Be Faked: Holding Fast to God’s Word in an Age of AI Illusion
17 Plays3 months ago
In today's episode of the Christian Educators' AI Guide podcast, I addressed the critical issue of how we can help our students hold fast to God's unchanging truth amidst the pervasive deception created by AI technology. I shared recent developments, such as Spain tightening consent rules on deepfakes and the U.S. Senate passing the Defiance Act, highlighting the urgency for Christian educators to teach discernment rooted in Scripture. I emphasized that truth has a source in God and that we must equip our students to be truth-seekers, not just fact-checkers. I also introduced the SIFT method for evaluating online information and provided a prompt for creating a classroom activity focused on biblical discernment. I encourage you to share this episode and implement these strategies in your teaching.
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Transcript
AI's Impact on Truth for Christian Educators
00:00:08
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Have you ever scrolled past a video or a photo and wondered, is that even real anymore? And as a Christian educator, how can we help our students hold to God's unchanging truth when technology makes it so easy to distort reality?
00:00:24
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If those questions resonate with you, then you are in the right place. Join us today as we explore what it means to hold fast to God's truth in an age of AI illusion.
00:00:38
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Welcome to the Christian Educators AI Guide podcast where we take practically biblically grounded steps to use AI with wisdom and discernment from a biblical worldview as we teach and as
Recent AI Developments and Deception
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we administrate. I am your host Rob Elmy and I'm glad you're here today.
00:00:55
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Today we are diving into a foundational issue that Christian educators face in the age of ai and that is truce Before we get into the big question for today, though, let's catch up on some of the news that's been happening in AI.
00:01:14
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In this segment, focus on some of the latest developments in AI and why they matter to Christian educators. Most times, I'll share one of General AI's story and one story more directly connected to education. In General AI development news, governments and regulators are continuing to respond to the rise of deepfakes and deceptive AI, which goes along with our big question for today. In early 2026, Spain moved to tighten consent rules around AI-generated images and deepfakes, and the United States Senate passed the Defiance Act, which would allow victims of non-consensual deepfakes to sue for damages. Well, might ask, why does this matter to Christian educators?
00:01:38
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This shows just how serious the issue of AI deception has become. We're not talking about a fringe problem anymore. We're talking about a growing cultural reality where images and audio and video can be manipulated and in ways that confuse people, or i would even say worse yet, damage reputations that erode trust. That means Christian educators need to help students become discerning people who do not simply believe or drink the AI Kool-Aid about what they see on a screen.
00:01:57
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And of course, this affects Christian educators because we have to let our students know that it's not appropriate. to create deep fakes or to damage somebody else's reputation. Let's move on to talking about some education news. Education Week has reported that schools are increasingly recognizing the need for AI literacy as fake content becomes harder to detect and districts are beginning to teach students how AI works and how to think critically about what they encounter online.
00:02:15
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This matters to us as Christian educators because this is a huge opportunity for Christian schools. The world is realizing that students need help spotting deception. But we as Christian educators have something deeper to offer than just AI and media and digital literacy alone. We can teach discernment that's really not only in critical thinking, yes, in critical thinking, but also in a biblical understanding of truth itself. in other words, we're not just helping students become better fact checkers. We're helping them become truth seekers.
00:02:34
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For us as Christian educators, we know that truth is a person and we need to teach our children, our students that. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. As Christian educators, we know we need to pass on to our students that truth is not found in ourselves where we all have our own individual truths, but truth is found outside of us, particularly in God's word that point us to the greatest truth of all, Jesus Christ.
00:02:50
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With that bit of AI news and update, let's now turn to the big question
Teaching Students to Anchor in God's Truth
00:02:52
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of the day. The big question for today is this. How can we help our students to hold to God's unchanging truth when technology makes it so easy to distort reality?
00:03:02
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This isn't just a technology issue. It's a discipleship issue. We live in a moment where AI can generate fake images. AI can generate fake audio, fake video. AI can generate fake essays and even fake people. And while the tools might be new, to the problem is not.
00:03:15
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We know that deception is a theme that we find throughout the Bible. Deception has been around since the very beginning, going all the way back to Genesis chapter chapter three. The serpent did not come to Eve with a sword. Instead, the serpent's weapon was deception.
00:03:26
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The serpent came with a lie. He twisted what God had said and introduced doubt about what was true. That's still how deception works today. The methods look more sophisticated. But the enemy still uses lies to erode trust in God's voice. That's the reality of it. That's the world that we are living in.
00:03:38
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So the question becomes for us as Christian education, what do we do with all that? in this podcast let me give you three practical anchors for this moment in which we are living. The first practical anchor is that truth has a source. Truth has a source. as Christian educators, need to remind ourselves and our students that truth is not determined by popular opinion. That truth is not determined by the virality, the viral nature of a social media post. Truth is not determined by what an algorithm pushes to the top of a feed. Truth has a source and that source is God. He is the source of all truth. John chapter 17, verse 17 says, sanctify them in the truth.
00:04:06
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Your word is truth. That verse matters so much right now. Jesus did not say that truth is whatever works. He didn't say truth is whatever most people believe. He didn't say truth is just what's most politically correct in the day because political correctness changes from age to age. He said to the father, your word is truth. That means when our students are living in a world of manipulated media and synthetic content, our first job is not simply to warn them about fakes. We should do that. But our first job is to anchor them in what is real.
00:04:25
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God's word is the final standard. God's word is the fixed point. God's word is not edited by a platform or rewritten by a model. so one of the most important things we can do is to keep putting scripture in front of our students and keep reminding them that truth begins with God, not with a machine.
00:04:37
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I'm sometimes asked by those who teach in the elementary grades, how is it that we can teach about AI when many of our schools prohibit, I believe correctly so, student facing AI at the elementary level?
Historical Perspective on Deception
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Well, if you are teaching your younger students about how we can trust in God's word, how we can find truth in God's word, as you are laying that foundation, you are actually equipping your students later on to deal with AI, with wisdom and discernment from a biblical worldview.
00:04:56
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A second anchor for us as we live in this deepfake world is to recognize that deception is not something new. AI may be new, but as I mentioned earlier, deception is ancient from the Garden of Eden all way through Scripture to false prophets, to those who falsely accused Jesus, to today's deepfakes.
00:05:10
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Lies have always aimed at the same target, and that is to erode trust. Lies make us question what is real. Lies make us doubt what God has said. Lies create confusion, fear, and instability. Jesus said this of Satan in John 8, 44, that there is no truth in him and that he is a liar and the father of lies.
00:05:23
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That's a deeper backdrop of this whole conversation. You should not be surprised that technologies in fallen world can be used to manipulate and deceive. We've seen this long before AI. We've seen this in the internet and even earlier electronic technologies.
00:05:34
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But we shouldn't panic. Why? Because God is still the God of truth. His word still stands. His truth still stands. His people are called to walk in that light still. And our task as Christian educators is not to retreat in fear, but to form students who can recognize lies and cling to what's true. That means helping students understand that just because something looks polished does not mean it's trustworthy.
00:05:52
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When AI spits out something that sounds really good, it has to be tested. Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it's trustworthy. You know, it used to be said we should trust, but verify. Now we need to turn that around. We must verify first before we trust.
00:06:03
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Just because something sounds confident does not mean it's correct. Just because something goes viral doesn't mean it's real. Just because something is shared by our friends doesn't make it true.
Equipping Students with Truth-Seeking Skills
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A third anchor for us as we live in this time, is that we have to form truth seekers as Christian educators. This is where the classroom comes Christian schools have a real opportunity to form students who test what they see, verify what they hear, and compare every claim against what?
00:06:22
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Against the truth of God's word, against scripture, and against reality. That means we teach discernment through three things. First, through scripture. Students need to get a steady diet of God's word. All of us need that, whether we're students or not. Second, we have to teach verification. We should teach them practical habits, like checking sources or using AI that gives it sources, comparing reports, looking for corroboration, asking whether an image, video, or quote has been manipulated.
00:06:42
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That's not only good practice today for AI, but that's been good academic practice and good practice for followers of Jesus forever. Third thing that can help us to form truth seekers is to help them engage in critical thinking. Students need to practice slowing down and asking some good questions about what they see.
00:06:55
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Questions such as, who made this? Why was it made? What is the evidence? What might be missing? Does this align what I know and have been taught to be true? We hear in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 21 to 22, but examine everything carefully.
00:07:07
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Hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. What a great verse for this AI intelligence age that we live in. See, friends, we moved away from the information age. That's now in the past. We are now in the intelligence age, but we must examine and help our students to examine everything carefully, to hold fast to what is good.
00:07:22
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You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like a good recipe for digital discernment. So, huh, who would thought it that the words of a first century Jew who became a follower Jesus named Paul could help us navigate these AI waters. But you see, that's the truth of God's word and how it works. It is truth throughout eternity, throughout time, no matter what changes in our world, it's our truth.
00:07:38
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A practical classroom example might be taking a viral AI generated image or a deep fake clip and walking students through how to evaluate, not just asking the question, is this fake? But how do we know that it's fake? and then letting that be a jumping off point for further discussion about why does truth matter?
00:07:50
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You see, that's not just media literacy. That's not just AI literacy. That's not just digital literacy. That's actually spiritual formation. And again, this can be done across grade level. You can start this in the fourth grade, showing images in your class and talking about what is real and what's a deep fake and how to notice some of those things that we see. And some of the AI produced slop, as they call it, the fake stuff and how we use wisdom and discernment. And you can do the same thing in 11th grade and then have a deeper conversation about what is truth.
00:08:10
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Remember shortly before Jesus was condemned to death. Pontius Pilate asked him that question, which is still the question of our day. What is truth? What is truth? So as Christian educators, we're not really trying to protect students from being fooled or trying to raise up young people who love God's truth because they love the God of truth. As I said, this is huge topic.
00:08:23
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It goes well beyond one podcast, but I do want to share a resource that can help you think more practically about
Introducing the SIFT Method
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this issue. and That leads us to the next segment of our show, our feature tool and resource spotlight.
00:08:36
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In this segment, we focus on a tool you can start exploring or a resource that could benefit you in the classroom. Today, i want to point you to a simple but powerful framework, the SIFT method of evaluating online information. SIFT, the acronym, stands for STOP, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, and Trace Claims to the Original Context. STOP, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, and Trace Claims. It's a practical framework for slowing students down and for ourselves as well, helping them and us verify what we see online before we share it, before we believe it.
00:08:59
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What I like about this is that fits beautifully with a Christian rule view. encourages humility, patience, and discernment. It trains our students not to be gullible, reactive, or impulsive. It trains them to pause and seek what is true. This could be especially helpful in a Bible class, even in an English class, history, or even if advisory periods when you want to discuss digital wisdom and truth-seeking habits.
00:09:14
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As a reminder, AI can be a useful servant in the classroom, but it makes a terrible master.
00:09:23
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In our next segment of the show, I share with you a tip or prompt you can use today in
Classroom Activities for Truth Discernment
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your classroom. Today, I want to give you a prompt you can use with your favorite chatbot, whether that be Gemini Cloud or ChatGPT or some other, that help you design a truth discernment exercise for your students.
00:09:35
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Simply type this in. You are a Christian school teacher helping students develop biblical discernment in the age of AI. Create a classroom activity for my students that teaches them how to evaluate whether an online image, video, or news claim is trustworthy. Include a short short Bible connection, five discussion questions, and a simple step-by-step verification checklist students can use.
00:09:48
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Now, you can adapt that for middle school, high school, for a Bible class, for an English class, or history. The point here is not just to talk about truth, it's to give students some practice in pursuing truth. I'll go ahead and include that prompt inside of our show notes so that you will have it and can copy and paste it into your favorite
Prayer for Guidance in Teaching Truth
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chatbot.
00:10:01
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Having shared all this, it's an appropriate time that we would move in to a time for a word of prayer.
00:10:09
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if you would join me in a word of prayer as we begin to close out this show. Father God, we thank you that in a world of confusion and distortion and deception, you're still the God of truth. thank you that your word does not change. Thank you, God, that your character does not shift and that your truth stands firm no matter what technologies, what new things rise around us. Help us as Christian educators to be people who love the truth. Help us to be people who speak the truth. Help us to be educators that teach the truth with courage and grace.
00:10:29
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Give us wisdom as we guide our students through a world where what they see is not always real what they hear is not always trustworthy. Teach us to anchor them not in fear, but in scripture. Teach us to form them, not just as consumers of information, but as seekers of the truth.
00:10:41
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And help us to model our own lives so that students see honesty and discernment and faithfulness that reflect our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. We ask all these things in his powerful name, who is our Savior and our teacher, Jesus the Christ.
00:10:54
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Amen. That's gonna bring us near to the end of our time.
Call to Embrace AI in Education
00:10:57
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If you found this episode helpful, I'm going to ask that you go ahead and share that. That if you are watching on YouTube, that you go ahead and like and subscribe, or that you'll go ahead and rate this podcast. And as you head back into the classroom, remember this one of the great callings of Christian education in the age of AI is to help our students become people who can recognize deception and hold fast truth.
00:11:12
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So until the next time on the Christian Educators AI Guide podcast, go and redeem AI for education. Go and redeem AI for the furtherance of the gospel. May you go in peace. God bless.