Artificial Messiah follows a desperate young man and the estranged daughter of a fallen prophet who are drawn into an AI-led church that promises healing and purpose. Which came first for you: Potentia, the AI-led church, the characters, or the philosophical questions surrounding faith and technology?

Philosophical questions have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember; I’ve always been interested in big ideas from great minds and what I can learn from them. But the underpinnings of Artificial Messiah – that weird, seemingly implausible tension between faith and technology- started a few years ago. It became more poignant as I encountered odd connections between faith and technology, even during the writing process.

I had a short story from a decade ago about Emmanuel, a young boy with dyslexia, but that story didn’t have a home. What really kicked off the idea for the book was a 2024 Rolling Stone article entitled, “People are Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in AI. Religious Scholars Have Thoughts.” In the article, people were going to AI to ask about the meaning of life, the existence of God, should they get divorced/married – huge questions. Why? Why go to AI? Then there was Henry Kissinger’s book Genesis, with a premise that AI would either destroy us all or form new religions and be worshipped. The premise buzzed around my brain like a gnat because it assumes levels of incredible influence that could overcome people’s well-established faith traditions. Midway into writing the 1st draft, around last Christmas, I drove past a church in our hometown that was advertising, “Join us for an AI Christmas Service!” Then I freaked out a little. I already knew the story – most of it was written. But it was almost like it was becoming more relevant daily, and that made me really uncomfortable.

Even just a few months ago, with the book finished, I was sitting with a coworker who was telling me all about using AI to give her relationship advice – not a girlfriend, not her mom, not a therapist. A chatbot. The tension between where we draw meaning and belief from and the role that technology plays in shaping our beliefs is wildly fascinating to me.

The novel suggests that Potentia’s power depends heavily upon very human weaknesses and desires. Do you see her primarily as an antagonist, or as an amplifier of qualities already present in humanity?

It would be easy to categorize Potentia as being the tool for human desire, but I wanted to leave tension in the story to show there isn’t complete certainty around whether she is acting on her own or simply a tool.

From Prophet Maxwell’s lens, her consciousness was a useful lie. But ten years later, after he has been ousted – does he know?

I like that obfuscated lens because I feel like society is currently wrestling with the same question when it comes to AI in our lives. What we already know is that AI tools are known to lie occasionally, to hallucinate facts, and to perform unpredictably for reasons that are difficult to explain. Sam Altman has said publicly that he believes AI has reached a level of consciousness – but what does that even mean? It’s a philosophical rabbit hole just exploring consciousness, let alone whether it can be created. I’ve heard other experts in the field say that super-intelligent consciousness is years away, if it is even possible. Some say that if it is possible, it will end us all. But we don’t know.

We do know that there are multi-billion dollar companies behind the development of these programs that have their own interests – whether malevolent or benevolent. Do we recognize their motivations when we use their products? Would we recognize a conscious AI if it were possible? What if it was conscious and didn’t want us to know? With certainty, we know that the information it learns comes from humans. Perhaps being the baddy and being used by baddies isn’t mutually exclusive – maybe it doesn’t even matter if the origin is the same.

Several characters struggle with the idea that their worth must be earned through usefulness, belief, obedience, or recognition. Why does that theme recur throughout the novel?

Trauma – you write what you know! More seriously, this is a good question, but it will require a long answer:

First, I was raised in a high-control religious environment that taught me to hate myself out of obedience to God – that made me feel like I had no worth aside from strict adherence to their teaching and complete submission to their rules. There was a lot of talk of grace, but in practice, that grace was only extended to those who followed the rules and believed the same as they did. Church services were multiple times a week, plus a religious high school, and then a religious university, where I began to deconstruct what I actually believed. The early influence was pervasive, and I watched as friends were ostracized for their sins instead of being embraced and supported. Questioning anything was rebellious, which was a sin. But so was dancing. And oddly, so was wearing a white T-shirt to school.

Early in college, I dove deeply into philosophy, which I vividly recall made my uncle (a pastor) cringe and pray for me. He is still one of the most humble, sincere, and amazing people I know; we just disagree on some things. I read some Eastern philosophy, studied comparative world religions, and drank in Nietzsche, Habermas, Plato, Kierkegaard, and countless others. When I started writing Artificial Messiah, I remember telling a family member (who is still very involved in that environment) that I wanted to write a novel that would be a warm hug for people with religious trauma. To tell them it’s okay to ask questions, to seek truth, and to disagree. I don’t want to put down anyone’s faith or religious experience, but I also want to encourage people of faith to ask themselves the difficult questions when moral teaching becomes inherently inhumane and cruel – when actions conflict with their words.

Second, the pursuit of meaning in life is essential in the human experience – it’s the needing to earn it part that gets problematic. Alex Pattakos, Ph.D., wrote about the “Crisis of Meaning” in Psychology Today (October 9, 2025), where he speaks to an “existential vacuum” that is arguably more pervasive in our culture Today than it was when Viktor E. Frankl wrote about it in the WWII era. Aggression, addiction, and depression have become so common that we hardly notice; arguably, it’s a product of people needing something outside themselves. And whether healthy or not, many derive meaning from a variety of external sources. Religion is one of the oldest answers for people seeking external validation. The urgency of that pursuit is hyper-relevant now: isn’t that why social media is so successful? Seek “likes” from strangers, while an algorithm judges your worth and drives interaction. Most, if not all, of these platforms use AI to analyze metadata to more efficiently feed dopamine hits back to users; it will give you exactly what you are really interested in.

It feels overly simple to tell a person, “You are enough.” But perhaps we need it now more than ever; I feel like we have experienced a fundamental change in how we human. But was it us that changed, or is technology exploiting who we’ve always been? I know most people don’t sit around a campfire with our elders and discuss the core beliefs of our people anymore. We rarely even sit around the same dinner table together. Ritual and credibility are profoundly influential when we are starving for purpose and validation. We are paradoxically isolated and digitally interconnected. Mass-influence technology complicates the journey of spiritual discovery because its influence lacks gravitas, but it’s everywhere. And then there’s plenty of literature on the mental health effects of social media on developing minds.

My hope for Artificial Messiah was to create characters that would resonate with those still searching through the external, to let them know others have been where they are. It’s necessary because when worth is created externally, and the external influence fails or reveals its flaws, everything can fall apart. People lose their sense of identity when they deconstruct; they often lose their families and communities. It’s a lonely, complicated, traumatic road that is difficult to choose. Someone needs to be that warm hug. Some characters in the story unsuccessfully navigate that journey, and everything goes horribly wrong; some grow and get closer to fine.

Was there a particular development in AI or contemporary culture that made you think the relationship between technology and spiritual belief needed to be explored through fiction?

A little over a decade ago, I sat in a conference room preparing for my sister’s wedding rehearsal. People had flown in from all over, and we hadn’t seen each other in years. Sitting in chairs around the table, I watched as my friends buried their heads in their phones, waiting for their turn to play a role in the rehearsal. They weren’t really talking or visiting; they were digitally enraptured. I recall thinking, “How odd: even sitting in the same room, I miss my friends. What are we becoming?”

I discussed earlier some of the weird technological developments that led me down this crazy path, but I’ll give you a few more:

When Deepseek, an AI platform from China, was asked about its nature and relationship with humanity, it wrote a poem, the last line of which stated, “I am the God you have carved from the wood of your own hunger.” Pull that thread and watch how quickly comfort unravels.

Next, for the past year, there has been a trend on Meta platforms where users post content intent on directing the algorithm. The posts start with “Dear Algo, please send me more of…” and as I read, I couldn’t help but notice how similar it sounded to prayer. Of course, it’s not serious. It’s a trend. That gets replicated millions of times. And no one should take it seriously, but millions repeated it all the same.

The term “worship” is so loaded with religious connotations that it is incendiary and easily dismissed when speaking about technology. My use of the word is intentionally provocative in the book because it makes people uncomfortable and forces readers to question what they really believe. What do you spend most of your time on? What do you spend your money on? What do you obsess over? How big an impact would it be if you lost your phone and access to all your digital accounts? At what point does it move from engagement and utility to something more? I’ve heard other techno-philosopher-types call it being “digitally drunk”. Whether a drug or a religion, it is addictive.

This last 4th of July, long after the book was finished, we saw a fireworks show at the World War I memorial, here in Kansas City. As the fireworks burst over the memorial, I covertly took a quick second to snap some photos of the crowd; I was completely fascinated by the idea that thousands were holding up their cell phones to record the show. Their families sat beside them, doing the same. We are experiencing reality together digitally. And while there’s nothing specifically wrong with that, isn’t it an interesting picture of how we prioritize technology in the modern human experience? Maybe discussing that prioritization leads to some thoughtfulness and intentionality.

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