This article explains one of the most talked-about parenting styles today: Nacho Parenting. Learn why the approach encourages stepparents to support rather than replace biological parents, and how that shift can dramatically improve family relationships.

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It’s crazy how fast this has become normal: Ask a question to any artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, and you get an instant, in-depth answer, even to a spiritual question. AI is already showing up in everyday Christian life. People are using it to generate prayers and devotions, get quick answers to “Is this sin?” questions (with a Bible verse citation or two), and even generate small-group discussion questions instantly. In each of these examples, it’s possible AI could churn out a biblically accurate answer. But the danger isn’t purely a matter of misinformation; it’s a matter of formation. The real issue is what habitual AI use does to us. It turns into muscle memory that, over time, will reshape basic Christian habits like what we pay attention to, what we expect, and where we look for counsel. Biblical spirituality isn’t mainly about having an instant right answer. It’s about our slow formation into Christlikeness by the Spirit, through the ordinary means God gives us, like Scripture, prayer, and the life of the church. The spiritual danger of AI is that it might condition us to take shortcuts in the means God uses to form disciples. Here are three ways this can quietly compete with biblical spirituality. 1. Attention Atrophy AI trains our attention in the wrong direction. Instead of wrestling with God’s Word, meditating on it, or studying it, we’re tempted to turn to AI to acquire quick summaries and immediate takeaways. It gives us the (false) impression that biblical wisdom can be imparted to us in fast bullet points. The spiritual danger of AI is that it might condition us to take shortcuts in the means God uses to form disciples. But God’s Word isn’t meant to be skimmed or summarized. Scripture should be read, heard, meditated on, and obeyed. What can the “attention atrophy” problem look like? A person opens his Bible and asks AI to summarize the chapter before he reads it, because studying it on his own feels challenging or inefficient. It’s easier to ask AI to explain the verses in simple terms, rather than the believer sitting with the verses, comparing context, rereading, and praying. Another person listens to a sermon and asks AI, “Give me five applications for my life,” instead of praying through self-examination. Over time, the speed of AI will likely accelerate the decline of attention spans and atrophy our muscles of focused attention. 2. Expectation of Less Friction With instant answers comes the expectation that instant is best and struggle is wrong. This can normalize a “friction-free” spirituality that assumes growth should be quick and painless, that our devotional life can be “optimized.” But in the Bible, God frequently forms his people through waiting, wrestling, suffering, and obedience—sometimes over painfully long periods of time. The way God forms us often feels inefficient and suboptimal. Think about how seemingly harmless uses of AI might subtly shift our expectations about spiritual growth. People are already asking AI to give devotional encouragement that makes them feel closer to God. They’re generating personalized quiet-time plans tuned to their schedules, personalities, and specific areas of desired growth. They’re asking AI to help them make life decisions or provide clarity, even about what God might want them to do. If we normalize these sorts of AI-optimized spiritual practices, we’ll be tempted to see friction and wrestling as avoidable impediments to spiritual growth rather than as opportunities to lean into God through faith. 3. Dependence on AI Shepherds AI can provide users with a “private shepherding” experience. This creates a temptation to bypass the pastoral relationships God designed. Consider what this growing dependence could look like. Someone uses AI for advice as her first stop when she feels anxious, tempted, or burdened by doubt, but never confesses her sin, asks another person for prayer, or invites accountability from a fellow Christian. A person feeling hurt by his church asks AI to help determine motives and blame and to give advice on whether to leave the church, without ever pursuing a conversation or reconciliation with the church leadership. A Christian struggling with recurring sin asks AI for reassurance that she’s saved, instead of praying, going to the Bible, and allowing her church to speak into the situation. Even if the counsel AI gives is biblically sound, it’s still spiritually detrimental if it trains people to rely on AI for what God intends to mediate through his Word, his Spirit, and his people. Five Principles for Pastors Every pastor should take the time to understand the implications of AI use for spirituality so he can address them directly in his particular ministry context. To that end, here are five simple principles you might teach and model in your local church: 1. Read first, then ask. Don’t start with AI summaries of Scripture (even in Logos). Read the passage, pray, and sit with the text, then use tools only as a secondary aid. 2. Pray before prompting. Don’t turn to AI for advice or reassurance before turning to God. 3. Seek pastoral counsel on serious issues. If you need input on matters involving ongoing sin, accountability, conflict, or major decisions, seek pastoral counsel and real people in a trusted church community, not AI. 4. Be clear on AI’s limits. Teach your congregation that AI can provide information (sometimes false information) but not true biblical wisdom. It lacks spiritual authority. 5. Talk openly about AI use. Encourage regular discussions in your church about people’s use of AI. Encourage a careful approach that involves community input as we weigh potential opportunities and hazards. As AI transforms the world, the church needs to remain faithful and clear about what the Bible teaches about spirituality. AI doesn’t just give answers; it trains our instincts. We need to address now how those instincts might, over time, lead Christians and churches in spiritually malformative directions.

On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers. I asked Kelly M. Kapic—professor of theological studies at Covenant College and author of several books, including Christian Life in the New Studies in Dogmatics series—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more. What’s on your nightstand right now? This is a hard question in some ways because I’m always going through several books for different purposes. For example, I just finished John Gavin’s Growing into God: The Fathers of the Church on Christian Maturity, since Pro Ecclesia asked Gavin and me to read and respond to one another’s books (he is reviewing my Christian Life volume). I think that this kind of dialogue between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic can be useful and constructive. Similarly, I recently reread Fred Sanders’s wonderful little book Union with Christ because I was asked to respond to it at a conference. For “fun” reading, I just recently finished each of the following three volumes: Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity; Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being; and Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), God Is Beauty: A Retreat on the Gospel and Art. At one point, Kingsnorth claims that “modernity is a machine for destroying limits,” which resonates with my concern about our negative relationship to finitude (see my You’re Only Human). While I disagreed with Kingsnorth plenty of times, he did a surprisingly good job of making us readers question our relationship to phones, cars, and other modern devices. But his deepest concern is AI, which he suggests may have an unnervingly dark side. He sees (rightly in my opinion) below the surface of the left-right divide, drawing our attention to larger forces of “the machine” that are negatively shaping us in countless ways. Rubin’s slender volume is filled with reflections on the act of creating. Funnily enough, only in the last 10 years did I finally begin to appreciate that as a theologian who writes, I qualify as a “creative.” Who knew? This shift in self-understanding (partly spurred on by reading Stephen King’s entertaining volume On Writing) helped me begin to approach my craft in fresh ways; similarly, Rubin’s volume offers many nuggets of wisdom on navigating the ups and downs of creating. Finally, Wojtyla’s volume is brilliant in many subtle ways, but mostly in his effort to connect our bodies and our experience with beauty to the triune God most clearly seen in Christ. There is real potential here, especially in terms of evangelism. While there is plenty I disagree with in these authors, there is also much to be gained from their experience and insights. I’ve also been slowly working through Nick Needham’s multivolume 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, which provides a fresh treatment of church history, often bringing up topics others don’t discuss; I’ve appreciated times when his attempt to be fair-minded allows him to give a truer and more honest review of the breadth and depth of the church. I love books on church history or historical theology because they help me resist the temptation to allow the current moment to dominate my imagination. Along similar lines, I’m finding Grace Hamman’s volume Jesus Through Medieval Eyes to be stimulating and helpful. And if readers haven’t yet read Carlos M. N. Eire’s Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650, please immediately rectify that! What are your favorite fiction books? Some of my favorites are Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels (I love good historical fiction), the Chronicles of Narnia series (I still benefit from regularly rereading the set even though my own children are adults), and Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. And, for reasons that relate to my teenage years, I love the existentialist fiction of Camus (e.g., The Stranger and The Fall) and Sartre (e.g., No Exit). For similar reasons, I still love Candide, not so much because I agree with Voltaire but because of how cleverly he attacks, thus forcing Christians to wrestle with what we believe and how we might more thoughtfully express it. What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why? One of the absolute best biographies I have recently read is How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key. Rarely do I laugh out loud while reading a book, but equally rarely do I weep because of that same book’s powerful honesty. Even though I know there are parts in it that will offend some, I wish I could make every pastor and leadership team who deal with struggling marriages read this book, because its wisdom would help us more faithfully love those in our congregations going through deep marital challenges. We must move past clichés or cheap answers and grow more comfortable with the painful complexity of each story and person we encounter going through these things. The biographies or autobiographies that have most influenced me include Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (because of his brutal honesty and how he shows us the grave dangers of false Christianity and inappropriate hermeneutics) and Augustine’s Confessions (because he helped show me that theology and biography can be held together—knowing God and self are tightly interconnected in ways we don’t easily recognize). I also regularly read biographies of C. S. Lewis (my favorite is by Alan Jacobs) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (my favorite is by Charles Marsh). These two authors are huge voices in my head, but honest biographies about them remind me of some of the weirdness of these men, which I find super helpful and grounding. Similarly, Kate Bowler’s memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, is a stirring reflection of her stage 4 cancer diagnosis and her coming to realize how much we really do live a version of the prosperity gospel, even when we deny it. I’m also a sucker for Chesterton’s Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Francis of Assisi: He didn’t do any original research on either of them but wrote more by impression and memory, so it isn’t always great scholarship, but it is great fun! What are some books you regularly reread and why? It is not uncommon for me to reread John Owen. Some of my favorites remain his volumes Communion with God, Pneumatologia, On the Mortification of Sin, and The Person of Christ, and his multiple volumes on Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ. Classics are what I reread most often because they help me remember how to locate the foundations of the house. They also keep me more clear-minded when distinguishing theological trends from ideas of lasting value. The Popular Patristics volumes are especially good—small, manageable, but also inviting you into a whole new world. I regularly reread works like these with my students. In particular, I never really tire of Melito of Sardis, On Pascha; Athanasius, On the Incarnation; and Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ. But beyond the Popular Patristics, I go back to significant volumes even if I don’t reread the whole book. This often happens as I wrestle with topics in my current research. So, for example, as I was writing Christian Life or You’re Only Human, I spent considerable time going back through the work of Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Owen, B. B. Warfield, Susan Grove Eastman, and many others. While I think there are dangers for us in our therapeutic age, I also think there are loads of important insights we can gain from good psychologists. For example, as part of my January, I started rereading behavioral scientist Wendy Wood’s Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick. Wood, who is provost professor emerita of psychology and business at USC, has loads of interesting observations based on data that I think are well worth considering. For example, her treatment of what she calls the “introspection delusion” looks at tendencies to put too much weight on our internal will and downplay the power of context in our attempts to break bad habits. There is some theological and pastoral importance in that idea as well. What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel? Each of these volumes significantly shaped how I understand God, his people, and how ministry can and should take place: J. I. Packer, The Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (first to help me connect profound theology with the wisdom of pastoral care); Colin Gunton, The One, the Three, and the Many and The Triune Creator (Gunton was my Doktorvater, and his life and theology left a deep imprint on me); John Webster, Holiness (short yet dense, thick with the wonder of God and why theology matters); T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (although Torrance sometimes blends his own theology with that of the early fathers, for example, occasionally expressing his opinion as if it were that of Athanasius, the volume is nonetheless brilliant and helped me in countless ways). I have been deeply helped by reading not just classic Reformed dogmatics (which really are important to me and always nearby), but also the three volumes of Thomas Oden’s Systematic Theology (a beautiful attempt at a Protestant catholicity that draws deeply on the breadth of the Christian tradition) and Donald Bloesch’s seven volumes in his Christian Foundations series (one of my teachers for Modern Theology, whose generosity and creativity were models for me, even if I don’t always end up where he does). Christopher Wright’s work, especially The Mission of God and Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, has significantly affected my understanding of a biblical vision of our participation in the kingdom of God. Also, Sinclair Ferguson’s writings have consistently inspired me because he so brilliantly and accessibly conveys deep theology. Other voices who have shaped me include John Swinton (especially his Raging with Compassion and Becoming Friends of Time) and Diane Langberg (especially her volume Suffering and the Heart of God). The list could go on and on, from Thomas Goodwin to Geoffrey Wainwright, but this gives a sense of books I would point to. What’s one book you wish every pastor would read? I’m always going to say Owen’s Communion with God, but for a book that few have heard of or read, I suggest J. J. von Allmen’s Worship: Its Theology and Practice. There is a strangeness to it at times, but also a fresh wisdom and a remarkable push to think of corporate worship in terms of recapitulation; I believe his work has unexpected implications for connecting our theology with our church services, which is why I draw from it in my volume Christian Life. Sorry, I can’t just give one: I also wish all pastors had a chance to slowly read through Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ and Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World. Gerald Sittser’s Water from a Deep Well is also remarkably helpful! What’s your best piece of writing advice? Stop trying to be someone else and stop trying to do it “the right way.” It was vital for me to learn that I’m not my heroes, and I am not supposed to be them. I have particular limits, but I also have my own particular mix of gifts and experiences that go along with those limits. This means I can bring a different voice and perspective, even as I have a great debt to so many. I am never going to be as smart as Augustine or Calvin, let alone Karl Barth or Katherine Sonderegger. I’m not a Protestant Scholastic (though they have deeply influenced my theology), nor am I Henri Nouwen (whose brilliant observations of the human heart have taught me so much). I learn from countless others, but God didn’t give me their gifts, so when I write (or approach writing), it is vital to grow more comfortable with myself, not just my strengths but also my weaknesses. I hope the same for other writers. What are you learning about life and following Jesus? God is really there. Really! Learning to be more attuned to the presence and activity of God has been very helpful. I know, I’m a theologian and should say something more profound than “God is really there,” but the truth is that this is what I am continuing to learn. It’s amazing how quickly I can get on with my endless to-dos, including speaking and writing about God. But there is no replacement for when I genuinely sense and foster intimate communion with God, sometimes when things are slow but even when things are moving quickly. What am I learning? Maybe I’m just slow, but I’m learning there really is a God, he really does abound with compassion, and he really is near. May I learn this more and more.

Although we study the passion of Jesus, his death on the cross, Easter is a celebration of his Resurrection.