AI Is A Gateway To The Welfare State
October 6, 2026 |
Keith Giles
I grew up hearing that there wasn’t a soul on earth God didn’t love.
That the gospel was about helping people, not judging them. That Jesus wasn’t interested in playing church—he was out feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and lifting up the forgotten.
My childhood was deeply shaped by those messages. My father ran a homeless shelter, and from a young age, I was up at 5 a.m. making breakfast for those who had nowhere else to go. Before I ever got on the school bus, I was filling coffee cups, scrambling eggs, and offering a warm smile to people most of the world chose to ignore. That was my introduction to Jesus—not a sermon, but service.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
Today, much of what passes for Christianity feels hollow, even dangerous. So many churches spend more time building walls than bridges. So many sermons teach people how to be more judgmental, not more like Jesus. Christians are trained in exclusion—taught how to keep out anyone who doesn’t look like them, believe like them, or love like them.
There is a sickness in the Church.
This sickness is vile. It seeps into every crack and crevice of the faith. It disguises itself in scripture, weaponizes theology, and masquerades as truth. It slips into sermons, into worship songs, into Sunday school lessons. It teaches people how to judge but not how to love. How to condemn but not how to care.
Until it is addressed—until it is named and acknowledged—the Church has no real future. Not the kind Jesus envisioned, anyway. Because a church that refuses to examine its wounds will only bleed on the people it’s meant to heal.
What once started as a message of radical welcome has turned into a system of exclusion. Gatekeeping has replaced grace. Fear has replaced faith. And political allegiance has replaced prophetic imagination.
It’s not just an unfortunate side effect. It’s a rot at the root.
The true gospel—the one Jesus lived and breathed—was never about control, hierarchy, or exclusion. It was about radical love. Uncomfortable love. A love that crossed social, religious, and political boundaries.
Jesus didn’t align himself with empire or religious elites. He didn’t create systems of oppression—he disrupted them. He touched the untouchable. He elevated the voices no one else wanted to hear. He stood in solidarity with the vulnerable and called out those who used religion to control others.
One of the most telling examples is the man in the graveyard—an outcast so feared by society that he was chained up and left to rot among the tombs. He was called a demoniac, considered unclean, crazy, beyond redemption. People avoided him. They’d given up on him.
But Jesus didn’t.
Jesus didn’t flinch. He wasn’t afraid. He got in a boat, crossed a stormy sea, and walked straight into the place everyone else avoided. He spoke to the man with compassion. He called out the torment within him and restored his mind. While everyone else saw a threat, Jesus saw a soul. And when the man was healed, Jesus sent him home with dignity and purpose, saying, “Go tell what God has done for you.”
That is the gospel.
It’s not clean. It’s not convenient. It’s not comfortable. It is disruptive, tender, and fierce all at once.
In The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr reminds us that “Jesus is the microcosm of the macrocosm.” He came not to start a religion, but to show us how to live in union with God, with one another, and with creation. Rohr challenges us to see Christ not as a gatekeeper but as a revealer of the divine in all things.
The problem isn’t Jesus. The problem is how we’ve reshaped him.
We’ve taken a teacher who washed feet and made him a symbol of domination. We’ve silenced the revolutionary and praised the institution that killed him. And in doing so, we’ve turned the gospel into something Jesus wouldn’t recognize.
Thankfully, we’re not alone in naming the sickness or longing for something better. There are voices—modern prophets, really—who have been calling the Church back to the heart of Christ.
Rachel Held Evans wrote, “This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.”
Her words remind us that the gospel is not about who deserves a seat, but about who is hungry enough to come. Her work echoes the call of Jesus—to tear down the barriers we’ve built and set a longer, wider table.
Ray Simpson, in Celtic Christianity: Deep Roots for a Modern Faith, invites us to rediscover a way of living the gospel that is rooted in presence, humility, and hospitality. Celtic Christians don’t build towers of judgment. They build communities of care. They walk with creation instead of trying to dominate it. They pray with their hands in the soil and their hearts open to mystery.
Thomas O’Loughlin, in Celtic Theology, emphasizes that theology is not meant to be a weapon—it’s a lived experience. He writes that “our understanding of God must be shaped by the lived experiences of people, not just abstract doctrine.” That means paying attention to the hurting, the oppressed, the voices at the margins.
These voices are not just critiques—they are blueprints. They point us toward something deeper, truer, and more holy.
It’s not enough to name the sickness—we have to become part of the healing. If we are serious about reclaiming the gospel from distortion, we must embody something different. Something more whole. Something more human.
1. Spend less time in church—and more time being the church.
Go where Jesus went: to the margins. Volunteer at a local shelter. Listen to stories from people who’ve been cast aside. Bring coffee to someone living on the street. Not to convert them, but to see them.
2. Choose curiosity over certainty.
Interrogate what you’ve been taught. Ask better questions. Read widely—from theologians of color, queer Christians, and those who have deconstructed and reconstructed their faith. Sit with the discomfort and let it grow you.
3. Re-center Jesus, not church tradition.
If your faith is shaped more by what your church teaches than what Jesus lived, it’s time to shift your foundation. Read the gospels slowly. Watch what Jesus does, not just what people say about him.
4. Practice presence.
In the Celtic tradition, the sacred is found in the ordinary. Light a candle. Go for a walk in silence. Bless your meals. Write prayers in the margins of your life. Holiness doesn’t require a pulpit—it asks for awareness.
5. Extend radical hospitality.
Open your table. Open your heart. Make space for people who don’t look like you, vote like you, believe like you, or love like you. The table of Christ is not exclusive—it’s expansive.
6. Tell the truth—even when it costs you.
Call out injustice in your community, in your church, even in your own past. Healing begins when we tell the truth about harm, and refuse to protect broken systems just because they’re familiar.
7. Let love be your legacy.
When all is said and done, we won’t be remembered for our doctrine or denomination. We’ll be remembered for how we loved. Let that be what defines your faith.
A Blessing for the Road
May you have the courage to unlearn what no longer serves the Christ in you.
May your heart stay soft in a world that hardens faith with fear.
May your hands find holy work beyond the church walls,
and may your feet walk faithfully into places others avoid.
May you remember that Jesus is not found in power, but in presence.
Not in exclusion, but in embrace.
Not in dominance, but in healing.
May the gospel rise up in you like fire and tenderness,
bold enough to speak truth,
gentle enough to restore what’s been broken.
And when the noise of religion gets loud,
may you always hear the still, small voice of Love—
calling you back to the table
where there is always room,
where grace still tastes like bread and wine,
and where no one is turned away.
Amen.
