Crying Wolf with Algorithms: Why “AI Use” Is Not Evidence of Sin

Here we go again.

Once more, we are watching the same pattern repeat itself in anti-Christian Nationalist evangelical discourse. This pattern has now emerged so predictably that it deserves to be named for what it is: crying wolf.

The pattern starts with the movement (Christian Nationalism) being tagged as dangerous. Some of the concerns are legitimate. The excesses are real, and taking biblical issue with them has brought plenty of digital, anonymous heat on Protestia. But instead of carefully separating error from truth, voices from squarely within our theological camp have fired wholesale volleys against the broad Christian Nationalism recipe that don’t separate the good (love of nation, public Christian witness and advocacy of God’s law) from the bad (magisterial enforcement of the 1st table, violence against speech). collapsing essential distinctions and ultimately accomplishing the exact opposite of what they intend.

This same pattern is repeating itself, with the alleged offense being the use of artificial intelligence.

Screenshots of “AI detection” tools are now being circulated online as proof of moral failure among professing Christians. No biblical case is being made. No engagement with the substance of what they are opposing occurs. No argument is being answered. When pushback occurs, the best responses have been light (and ultimately incoherent) ethical appeals, illogically tying AI writing tools to plagiarism.

An algorithmic probability score is simply dropped into the conversation as if it were self-authenticating evidence of sin.

It isn’t.

And worse, this approach is actively sabotaging the very effort to confront the real theological problems within Christian Nationalism.

Sadly, these ham-handed attempts to use technical disqualification in place of argumentation against Christian Nationalism are not new.

In 2023, several voices in the G3 orbit attempted to confront the rise of Christian Nationalism. Many of their instincts were correct. There were real dangers emerging. There were theological overreaches gaining traction.

But the arguments deployed were not sufficiently surgical, and too often failed to engage with the epistemological and rhetorical devices at play.

In attempting to repudiate the excesses, many of Christian Nationalism’s critics undermined:

• Legitimate Christian engagement in civil life
• The biblical role of the magistrate
• The duty of Christian citizens in a representative republic
• The second-table jurisdiction of civil authority

By failing to distinguish what Christian Nationalism gets wrong from what it gets right, the critique collapsed into something that sounded more like pietistic withdrawal theology than biblical correction. The result was predictable. Rather than weakening Christian Nationalism, those arguments strengthened it.

Young men who were open to being convinced of Christian Nationalism’s errors concluded (often incorrectly), that not only did its critics lack a coherent political theology from which to explain and understand their grievances, but that the same critics would be conscientiously objecting behind their pulpits rather than standing beside them as fellow law-abiding citizens when the lawless of the world threatened physical harm against their families and communities.

They quit listening, called them fake and gay, and retrench with those who gave voice to their concerns, however misaimed their direction was.

The critique missed its target.

In 2024, the pattern repeated itself with the so-called Antioch Declaration.

Once again, some concerns were legitimate. There are sinful forms of ethnic partiality. There are real theological dangers in collectivist rhetoric. These matters deserve serious engagement.

But once again, the execution was blunt, accusatory, and imprecise (not to mention possibly politically motivated).

Instead of carefully demonstrating where Scripture was violated, the declaration trafficked in insinuation rather than exposition, generalities rather than argument, and moral collectivism rather than biblical specificity.

Anonymous actors were treated as representative. Disagreement was flattened into extremism. Guilt was inferred rather than demonstrated. And once again, the outcome was predictable.

Support for their opponents hardened, and proper critique was marginalized yet again. Opportunity for genuine correction was squandered.

Every time a Christian Nationalism critic responded to excessive rhetoric with “Christians are citizens of another kingdom, not America,” or some other pietistic (and often self-serving) silliness, young men heard, “Turn the other cheek when the enemies of God overrun your community.”

Now we’re seeing the same strategic failure (hopefully on a smaller scale) popping up in the form of (comically ironic) accusations of AI-produced content.

Instead of saying:

“This doctrine is wrong because Scripture teaches otherwise,”

We are now being told:

“This man is discredited because an algorithm says he used AI.”

This is not discernment.

It is an argument by technicality. Worse, it is an argument based on either misunderstanding the technology or deliberately misapplying it. AI detection tools do not prove authorship. They do not establish plagiarism. They merely analyze linguistic patterns and compare them to probabilistic models. That is all.

The same companies selling AI detection, revision, and “humanizing” services openly admit this. The same companies sell both the detection tools and the “humanizers” designed to evade them.

An algorithm accusing another algorithm of algorithmic resemblance is not proof, much less the basis on which to suggest others have sinned. This is particularly true when many public accusers apparently don’t know the difference between plagiarism detectors (which compare submitted work to libraries of other published work to find exact textual matches) and AI detectors (which look for patterns in structure, not exact content).

Tellingly, the brothers doing this (who should know better) are stopping short of calling it sin, conveniently excusing themselves from having to mount a fully formed biblical argument.

Saying AI use is “wrong,” or simply publishing an algorithmic claim of probable AI use and relying on others to assume the accusation is not just weak and cowardly. It is sinful.

Scripture is not silent on how accusations must be made.

Plagiarism (what many are labeling AI use as) is sinful because it involves:

1. False witness
2. Theft of another person’s labor

AI use does neither by necessity.

If a man publishes material under his own name, he bears responsibility for its truthfulness, regardless of the tools used in its preparation.

That standard already exists.

What Scripture does not permit is insinuation.

Probability is not proof. Suspicion is not evidence.
Disliking someone’s theology or associations does not justify lowering the standards of accusation, nor of simply not making a formal accusation, sitting back, and letting ignorant supporters fill in the accusatory gaps.

A prominent example demonstrates an inconsistency that is impossible to ignore.

John MacArthur (beloved by all of us) produced an extraordinary volume of published material while simultaneously serving as a senior pastor, seminary president, conference speaker, and radio broadcaster.

No reasonable person believes he personally drafted every page of every book. Nor has anyone accused him of sin for that fact.

Why? Because it was universally understood that his sermons supplied the theological substance, while editorial staff handled transcription and structure, researchers assisted with preparation, and MacArthur reviewed and approved the final product.

The arguments were his. The responsibility was his. That is what authorship means.

If that model was morally legitimate (and it was), then the distinction between human editorial assistance and software-assisted editing is not a biblical distinction at all. It is an emotional one.

Worse, rebuking small-scale theologians for using technology rather than large institutions to fully form and publish their content smacks of a kind of theological class warfare unbecoming of the church, as if one must enjoy a higher level of institutional power before their argumentation qualifies for an audience.

In terms of critiquing Christian Nationalism, here is the central issue:

Every time critics substitute bad arguments for biblical argumentation, they make proper critique harder.

When accusations are sloppy, personal, or overbroad, error becomes harder to expose, truth becomes easier to dismiss, legitimate concerns are delegitimized, and extremists gain credibility by contrast.

The God-loving young men we are trying to reach are watching these debates, and they are not blind. They see when screenshots replace Scripture. They see when insinuation replaces argument. And when we (ironically) use polemical shortcuts (“dismiss this guy because he might have used AI”), they don’t take our corrections seriously. Instead, they conclude that we don’t know what we’re doing. And they’re right.

If a man’s theology is wrong, explain why. If his doctrine violates Scripture, demonstrate it. If his claims exceed biblical jurisdiction, show where. But declaring someone disqualified because an algorithm said so is not discernment.

It is precisely the kind of behavior that has repeatedly undermined every serious attempt to address the magisterial excesses of Christian Nationalism over the last four years, and it’ll either stop, or the voices acting this way will continue to marginalize themselves and make the work more difficult for the rest of us. For Protestia’s part, we’ll keep doing the work to explain as we attack, fighting our friends because we love them.