(RNS) — I was having coffee with a friend, the father of two young daughters. He mentioned a growing concern: “I am not sure how to advise my girls regarding college. Is college even the right move for them? It seems like all these jobs are being lost to AI.”
While his daughters have a few years before they graduate from high school, the question is timely and valid. Current college students are feeling the pressure as well; a recent study noted that students are increasingly considering changing their majors due to the threat artificial intelligence poses to their industry.
AI is already reshaping the current job market. According to The Alliance for Secure AI, which has been actively tracking job losses due to artificial intelligence, more than 126,000 jobs have already been lost to AI.
While some argue that AI will ultimately create more jobs than it eliminates, the anxiety around this shift is real and growing. For many, the uncertainty is about more than employment — it’s about meaning and purpose.
Between conversations over coffee, ministry forums and community events, when someone approaches me regarding AI, the volatile job market often comes up. And why wouldn’t it? AI’s impact on the job market has created a deeply practical problem, and people are concerned they will be squeezed out of their jobs, their homes and the communities they’ve built with their peers, neighbors and friends.
The conversation with my friend centered on AI and its influence on the job landscape, a topic which will, no doubt, dominate living room discussions, news stories and political campaigns indefinitely; his concern, however, went beyond his daughters’ ability to pay their future bills. He was more focused on the dignity of vocation.
Vocation, after all, is not simply clocking in for a day’s pay. Its roots run deep: The word “vocation” originally referred to a summons from God to a particular purpose or function, especially in a religious sense.
It is logical to connect the two: work and vocation. The terms are often synonymous in secular terms, but vocation goes beyond occupation. Vocation is what we are called to do by God; it is divinely purposed and extends to all areas of life. As the Apostle Paul noted, “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people” (Colossians 3:23).
While the terms are not mutually exclusive, it’s incredibly challenging to remove occupation from vocation. Our job naturally absorbs a great deal of time, and for many of us, is the primary source of community in our lives. It’s natural to build relationships with the people we work with for eight hours every day for five days a week. Our occupation often requires training and preparation that can range from a few days to decades of formation.
As theologian Millard Erickson noted in “Christian Theology,” Christians are meant to live in service to God. “Every legitimate occupation is a sphere in which one can and should serve God,” Erickson writes, “so that there is no valid distinction between sacred and secular work.”
Every occupation provides an environment where the Christian can and should glorify God, serve God and serve others. If AI takes away a person’s occupation, how does that impact their vocation? If AI can take away a significant portion of a person’s vocation, will it keep them from fulfilling their calling?
This concern shifts the conversation from the very real and great practical implications of a massive job upheaval to the even greater concerns of people struggling to live in the purpose that they believe God called them to.
Progress has impacted industry over and over again. For decades, people’s jobs have changed due to the emergence of new tools and technologies, yet people continue to find jobs and purpose. Still, this reality pacifies neither the anxieties nor the fears of people attempting to navigate the best path forward in their vocation.
These questions affect people of all faiths and backgrounds. For religious communities, however, there may be a unique opportunity to speak hope into a culture anxious about the future of work. Occupations will inevitably change, but a sense of calling can remain deeply rooted in something more enduring than the latest technology.
Scripture reminds us, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). AI has not caught God by surprise, and his purpose for us was never limited to a particular profession. In the midst of an ever-changing reality, our purpose is grounded in our relationship with God and our calling to love and serve others.
A teacher who loses a classroom, a graphic designer who loses clients or a programmer whose tasks are replaced by automation has not lost their God-given purpose. The occupation, work environment and surrounding community will continue to change, but the calling remains.
So perhaps the more pressing question isn’t whether AI will change what career advice we give the next generation. Of course it will. Instead, we need to ask: How will people of faith and our communities remain grounded in our deepest callings despite those changes?
Well before eager employers provided opportunities for people to work, and long after technologies disrupt and change those opportunities, God’s call remains the same. Honor God in service, work and love. AI will transform the workplace, but it cannot replace the vocation God has given people.
(Michael Grayston is a campus pastor at LifeFamily Church in Austin, Texas, and an assistant professor at Liberty University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
