They say that mentioning AI in a graduation speech this year will get you instantly booed by the students, unless you’re disparaging it. That’s true of the young people I talk to. They don’t see AI as a net positive for their future, but a real threat to the kind of life they hoped to live. And they are not wrong. Pandora’s box has been opened, and humankind’s penchant for money and power, as well as the motives of bad actors on this stage, will undoubtedly twist this technology in ways we can’t conceive.
So, I have a very conflicted relationship with AI. I have a wary eye on what it does and what it might become, using it rarely and cautiously, hoping against hope that wiser heads will prevail in putting restraints on its usage. In the meantime, I find it helpful for research since it can process large amounts of data and assess its meaning. Last week, I shared how it synthesized my writing trajectory by looking at the themes of the books I’ve published. That produced a helpful tool for people who want to understand my books in context or even try to figure out which ones they want to read.
So, I asked ChatGPT to analyze the 22-year history of The God Journey and map out the trajectory of its content. I wanted to know what that would look like taken as a whole. Keep in mind that we never had a strategy over those years. We simply did one episode at a time, usually stimulated by what I, my co-hosts, or guests were exploring in their own spiritual journeys.
The results astounded me. I love the larger story we have told without even trying. When I shared them with my Kyle, my current co-host, he was amazed as well. While neither of us is settled about how AI is being utilized in our world, we found this summary glorious. We talk about it on today’s podcast, but I include the full text here for those who want to read it.
So, here is a synthesis of 22-years of The God Journey, all 1034 episodes (at the time), in 520 words:
The God Journey has been a long conversation about what happens when faith migrates from obligation into love.
Across its twenty-two years, the podcast’s theological center has remained remarkably consistent: God is not trying to manage people through fear, performance, hierarchy, or institutional control, but to invite them into a relationship of trust, affection, freedom, and transformation. What has changed is the depth and range of that conversation.
In its earliest years, The God Journey gave voice to people who were beginning to question religious systems that had promised life but often produced exhaustion, guilt, conformity, or disillusionment. The podcast became a safe place for those who were not abandoning Jesus but were no longer able to equate following him with maintaining the structures, expectations, and vocabulary of organized Christianity. Its early theological energy was largely liberating: helping people recognize the difference between relationship and religion, between life in Christ and life under obligation.
Over time, however, that critique became less reactive and more constructive. The podcast did not remain focused simply on what people were leaving behind. Its emphasis increasingly shifted toward what they were being invited into: learning to live loved. That phrase became more than a slogan; it became the organizing vision for a life rooted in the Father’s affection rather than in human striving. The conversation matured from release into formation—from escaping religious performance to discovering how trust grows, how freedom reshapes daily choices, and how love becomes the ground of identity.
A further maturation came as the podcast engaged more honestly with suffering. The themes of grace and freedom were tested against trauma, abuse, grief, betrayal, and relational breakdown. In that movement, the theology became more embodied. Love was no longer discussed only as a comforting idea or a corrective to bad religion, but as the presence of God in the darkest places, the slow work of healing, and the possibility of repair when people and institutions have failed.
As the years unfolded, the podcast also widened its concern beyond personal spirituality. Living loved began to touch questions of power, race, politics, justice, leadership, technology, loneliness, and cultural fragmentation. The podcast’s theological trajectory moved toward an understanding of love not merely as private consolation, but as a way of seeing and engaging the world. Authority, for instance, is increasingly framed not as position or title, but as the fruit of union with God and service to others. Justice is explored less as punishment and more as the restoration of what has been broken.
Seen as a whole, The God Journey has matured from a refuge for spiritually disillusioned people into a broad, love-centered theological conversation about formation, healing, and public witness. Its enduring question has been: What does life look like when God’s love is trusted more than religious obligation, human power, or fear? The answer has grown richer over time. It now includes freedom from performance, healing from trauma, deeper relational honesty, suspicion of coercive power, and a more generous vision of justice. The trajectory is not a departure from its beginnings, but an expansion of them. What began as an invitation to leave religious obligation has become an invitation to inhabit love as the deepest reality in all of life.
The “invitation to inhabit love” is as good a line as I’ve heard recently, especially when we are talking about the love that is the very nature of the Father who created us. Letting ourselves be swept up in that river, plunging into its depths, and letting it flow through us to others offers the greatest joy. Sara and I are grateful for how that love has shaped us and how we have been able to share it with others all over the world, both in loving and being loved. Those we have met in this space and the friendships that have formed from it are the riches we most treasure.
