All posts by Esteban D. Dortta

About Esteban D. Dortta

Esteban is an evangelical pastor. He studied theology at the Baptist Theological Seminary of Uruguay between 1991 and 1994. Born in 1971, he lives in Brazil since 1995. Understands that freedom of thought, expression and reunion are essential to the development not only of Christian but of the whole society.

Jesus and Artificial Intelligence

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A curious scene unfolded at our workplace just a few days ago.

Much of our development process now relies on artificial intelligence. It suggests code, reviews sections, points out errors, and organizes ideas. Then, suddenly, the credits for the platform we were using ran out. The renewal would only happen the next day.

We found ourselves looking at each other.

Not because we had forgotten how to program (though there is evidence of a certain mental atrophy). But because, without realizing it, we had stopped seeing much of the path the code took before reaching our hands. The tool had become so ingrained that it was part of our very way of thinking.

I suspect this will happen to society as a whole.

You might not be aware, but artificial intelligence has been fed with everything humanity has produced in written or graphic form or any other medium that can be digitized. Today, when it answers a question, it does so based on this knowledge. Moreover, it uses open sources on the internet to continue “learning” and thus respond in an updated manner.

In 2026, we crossed an important threshold: more than 50% of internet content was produced by artificial intelligence. Inevitably, this leads to the situation where artificial intelligence itself will be producing content from other content it has produced or helped to produce. As a result, human creativity is being sidelined by the ease of using accumulated knowledge… without producing any more relevant new content.

Let’s return to the text

Today, no one stops to think about electricity before turning on a light. We don’t ponder the engineering of reservoirs, the altitude they must be at to use gravity, and other similar things when we turn on a faucet. Nor do we understand the entire chain that allows a plane to cross the ocean.

We simply use it.

The same will happen with artificial intelligence.

But there is an important difference.

Electricity doesn’t interpret for us. Just as running water doesn’t think for us.

Artificial intelligence, in a way (and without being intelligence, just very fast logic), interprets. It summarizes. It organizes. It prioritizes. It suggests. It touches precisely what we consider most human: our ability to understand, which in turn connects with our creative capacity.

Perhaps that’s why it forces us to return to a very old question.

When an expert in the law asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life, Jesus responded with two questions:

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” (Luke 10:26, NIV)

It has always impressed me that Jesus didn’t just ask what was written. He asked how that man read it.

The problem was never just the text. The problem is also the reader.

This applies to the Bible. It applies to history. It applies to politics. It applies to artificial intelligence itself.

We are not just forming answers. We are forming readers.

Perhaps it is precisely here that the church needs to recover something it has lost over time.

A friend recently asked me if I wasn’t afraid that an artificial intelligence project aimed at preachers would make Christians think less.

My answer was uncomfortable even for me.

Perhaps we gave up on critical thinking long before artificial intelligence. Long ago, we learned to read the Bible through commentaries. We choose authors who confirm our tradition, our theological school, our preferences. Often, we know the interpreters better than the text itself.

Calvinists and Arminians (not to mention Molinists and other currents), for example, often accuse each other of forcing the Scriptures. Perhaps both should start with the same question from Jesus:

“How do you read it?”

This doesn’t mean disregarding tradition.

Quite the opposite.

Peter writes that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20-21, NIV). Paul affirms that the spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets (1 Corinthians 14:32-33, NIV). Biblical interpretation was never an isolated, almost mystical experience between an individual and their text (indeed, sects arise this way). It always happened in the life of God’s people, where brothers correct brothers, generations dialogue with each other, and Scripture itself judges our conclusions.

The revelation was entrusted to the church, not the individual. Just consider how the church resolved the great disparity over the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s people. The apostles and elders gathered, heard different testimonies, examined the Scriptures, and reached a conclusion together (Acts 15:1-29, NIV). It wasn’t a political compromise but a common commitment before God’s action and His Word. Without that council, probably neither you nor I would have been reached by the gospel in the same way.

That makes all the difference.

Recently, I heard Luis Felipe Pondé advocate for the return of oral exams as a mitigating element against students’ use of artificial intelligence. I found the idea interesting. A written exam can reveal that someone organized information well. But a conversation reveals something deeper. It quickly discovers whether that knowledge has become flesh or remains mere repetition.

Perhaps that is exactly why Jesus asked so many questions.

He wasn’t collecting answers.

He was forming people.

And people don’t mature just by accumulating information. They mature when they need to respond before someone.

It’s curious to see that artificial intelligence itself pushes us back to this need. It can summarize entire libraries, compare translations, find parallels, organize arguments. All of this has enormous value. I use it daily myself.

But it is not part of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-27, NIV)

It doesn’t participate in the communion of saints.

It doesn’t visit the sick. It doesn’t accompany the grieving. It doesn’t break bread. It doesn’t celebrate Communion. It doesn’t walk alongside someone whose faith is crumbling.

These things continue to happen among people.

Perhaps this is the true challenge of our time.

Not deciding whether we will use artificial intelligence. Remember what has already happened with the steam engine, the typewriter, the computer, the word processor, etc.

We will use it. Consciously or not.

The question is different.

Will we continue to allow the Word of God to occupy the center (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Hebrews 4:12, NIV), or will it become just another voice among commentaries, algorithms, videos, summaries, and opinions?

In the end, technology was just the starting point.

The question remains the same as it was two thousand years ago.

How do you read it?

Everyday Miracles

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Every Known Passage Runs a Risk

As a rule, when we first read a biblical passage or hear a sermon on it, we form an idea about it. And, as often happens, the first impression sticks. We all develop a way of interpreting certain Scripture texts. Perhaps later, we return to them to draw other lessons. But once we’ve reached a conclusion, it’s very difficult to see the same passage in another light.

What usually changes this perspective? Sometimes, a life experience. Sometimes, time. Other times, new learnings. But above all, the willingness to keep seeking, not settling for the first reading. The first reading is merely the foyer to a much greater feast.

Perhaps that’s exactly what’s missing. We are creatures of habit. And habit, when it comes to the Bible, can prevent us from seeing new shades in the same text.

One such passage is the beginning of John 6.

It’s a text as well-known as the parable of the prodigal son or the crucifixion of Jesus. And almost always, we end up with the same conclusion: “Give Jesus the little you have.”

This conclusion isn’t wrong. On the contrary, it does justice to the text.

The problem is, when we rush to the conclusion, we miss appreciating the scenery.

Why Believe This Story?

The account of feeding the multitude appears in all four Gospels. This, in itself, is noteworthy. After all, John is quite different from the other three evangelists. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called synoptic because they follow a very similar structure. John writes differently.

And he explains why.

At the end of his Gospel, he states that Jesus performed many other signs not recorded, “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Nothing there is incidental.

John carefully chooses the events he narrates. And it’s no accident that he places the multiplication of the loaves before the great discourse on Jesus as the Bread of Life.

Moreover, the Gospels were written when there were still many living witnesses of those events. Thirty years had passed since the death and resurrection of Christ. It was enough time for the apostles to see the need to record in writing what the Church had proclaimed from the beginning, yet there were still people who could confirm or deny those facts.

Either this story happened, or it would be a monumental lie.

There’s not much room between one thing and the other.

And a community willing to die for what it proclaimed would hardly build its message on a fable so easily disproven.

Starting then from the assumption that we are facing a true event, it’s worth observing some details.

Who Prepared That Lunch?

Jesus was teaching a huge crowd.

Speaking outdoors to five thousand people would already be, in itself, an extraordinary challenge. It was necessary to keep their attention, make the message reach those farthest away, not lose the thread of the conversation.

But there comes a moment when a very simple concern arises.

Who will feed these people?

Jesus calls Philip and asks where they could buy bread for so many. The text itself explains that Jesus did this to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

Trials are always more for us than for God. They don’t serve to prove our faithfulness to Him. They serve to reveal to us who we really are.

Philip looks at the situation and responds in the most honest way possible. Not even two hundred denarii—practically the wages of two hundred days of work—would be enough for each person to get a small piece of bread.

Then Andrew appears.

And he does exactly what he had done in the first chapter of the Gospel. There, he finds his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus. Now he finds a boy and does the same.

“Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish…”

John is the only evangelist who tells this.

He’s the only one who says the loaves were barley.

He’s the only one who mentions the boy.

And this raises a series of questions.

Who prepared that lunch?

The mother?

The boy himself?

Who thought he would spend the day out and needed to bring food?

Barley was the bread of the common folk. Not of absolute poverty, but of the everyday table of workers. And those fish were probably small salted fish, used more as a side dish than as the main meal.

It was a common lunchbox.

Nothing extraordinary.

And perhaps that’s exactly where the extraordinary lies.

The God Who Continues Creating

We tend to expect God to intervene by suspending the laws of nature.

But this sign begins precisely with nature functioning perfectly.

There was rain.

There was earth.

There was planting.

There was harvest.

Someone ground the barley.

Someone baked the bread.

Someone caught those fish.

Someone prepared that lunch.

And only then did Jesus take it into His hands.

John calls these events signs.

And a sign always points to something greater.

Perhaps this points precisely to the fact that God has not given up on His creation.

We live surrounded by a spirituality that seems to want to escape the world. As if creation were just a temporary place from which the soul needs to flee.

The Gospel points in the opposite direction.

The Word became flesh.

God entered creation.

And, before that crowd, chose to perform a sign using exactly what creation itself had produced and what human hands had prepared.

The Kingdom doesn’t begin by destroying the world.

It begins by restoring it.

Therefore, perhaps the great lesson of this text is not just to give Jesus the little we have in our hands.

Perhaps it’s to learn to look at the everyday with different eyes.

Because God continues doing the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Five barley loaves.

Two fish.

An anonymous boy.

A family that never imagined the lunch prepared that morning would become part of the story of redemption.

Perhaps that’s exactly how God continues working.

And perhaps we are looking for His miracles in the wrong place.

Whom Should the Church Judge?

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Some topics have become almost taboo within the church over the years. One of these is judgment. The moment someone quotes “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” it seems the conversation ends there. As if Jesus had forbidden any form of discernment, correction, or discipline.

The problem is that the church has absorbed much more from the surrounding culture than it realizes. We’ve begun to call love what Scripture never did. A love that never confronts, never corrects, never calls to repentance. A love that only embraces. But this is not biblical love. God’s love is never irresponsible. It is patient, merciful, and full of grace. But precisely because He loves, He also corrects.

Therefore, the question is not whether the church can judge. The question is: whom should the church judge?

Paul answers in a surprising way. “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” And before anyone jumps to conclusions, he explains himself. When he wrote not to associate with sexually immoral, greedy, idolaters, slanderers, drunkards, or swindlers, he wasn’t talking about those who belong to the world. Because if that were the case, he says, “you would have to leave this world.”

This observation completely changes the discussion.

The problem was never living among sinners. If that were the problem, Jesus would never have sat at the table with tax collectors and prostitutes. The church was not sent to flee the world but to proclaim Christ to the world.

So whom is Paul talking about?

The one who calls himself a brother.

The one who wishes to be recognized as a member of the body of Christ, participates in the church’s fellowship, but has decided to remain in rebellion against Christ without any repentance.

The difference is not in the gravity of the sin. It is in the truth of the fellowship.

Because the lost usually know they are lost.

The self-deceived believe they have found Christ while continuing to walk in the opposite direction.

It is precisely this self-deception that the church cannot confirm.

But to understand this, we need to go back a bit.

In Matthew 18, Jesus presents the path of discipline. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault. Alone. If he listens, you have won your brother. If he does not listen, take witnesses. If he still refuses to listen, tell it to the church. Only after this entire process does Jesus say to treat him as a pagan or a tax collector.

Notice that from the beginning, the goal was never to expel someone.

The goal was always to win the brother.

Discipline is the last resort when all attempts at restoration have failed.

At first glance, it seems like a personal problem. One brother sinned against another brother. But only at first glance.

Because the New Testament reveals that no sin within the church is merely a problem between two people.

When Saul persecuted Christians, Jesus did not ask, “Why do you persecute my church?”

He asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

The attack against the body was treated as an attack against the head itself.

Later, Paul himself would develop this truth. The church is the body of Christ. If one member suffers, all suffer. If one member is sick, the whole body is sick. “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak?” And to the Corinthians, he writes as one who feels “the pains of childbirth” for those brothers.

So discipline ceases to be a conflict between two people.

It becomes a matter of the body of Christ itself.

When one member is sick, the rest of the body cannot pretend nothing happened. Nor can it amputate it for convenience. The body mobilizes everything it has to restore it.

This is exactly what happens in 1 Corinthians 5.

The church was proud of a tolerance that Paul considers incompatible with the gospel. A man was living publicly in sin, refusing to repent, and the church continued to treat it as if it were merely an expression of grace.

Paul reacts.

Not because that man was beyond grace.

But because the church was using grace to confirm a lie.

So he orders that the man be removed from fellowship.

This may be one of the harshest texts in the New Testament.

But only until we read the reason.

The goal is not to destroy him.

It is not to preserve the church’s image.

It is not to demonstrate moral superiority.

It is so that he may awaken.

It is so that he may stop living in the worst possible spiritual state: believing himself united to Christ while deliberately rejecting the lordship of Christ.

Discipline does not break fellowship.

It merely makes visible a rupture that has already occurred in the heart.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Years later, writing again to the Corinthians, Paul instructs them to do the opposite. Now is the time to comfort. It is time to reaffirm love. It is time to receive that brother again, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

Whether it was the same person or another case, the principle remains the same.

The same apostle who commanded separation now commands restoration.

Because the goal was never to lose someone.

It was always to recover them.

That is why Hebrews states that God disciplines those He loves.

He does not correct because He stopped loving.

He corrects precisely because He loves.

Perhaps the greatest mistake of the contemporary church is separating these two things.

There are churches that speak so much of grace that they have abandoned discipline.

There are churches that speak so much of discipline that they have forgotten grace.

The gospel allows for neither of these extremes.

The church does not discipline because it considers itself better.

It disciplines because it understands that a sick member compromises the whole body.

And it restores because it understands that the same member remains the target of Christ’s love.

In the end, the mark of a Christian has never been perfection.

Nor is it biblical knowledge, spiritual gifts, or reputation.

The mark of a Christian is repentance.

As long as there is repentance, there is fellowship.

When it disappears, the church loves enough to correct.

And when it reappears, it loves enough to restore.

This is how Christ treats His body. And this is how the body of Christ must learn to care for itself.

Where Does God Spend Eight Hours a Day?

Christian Essays, ,

Where Does God Spend Eight Hours a Day?

Perhaps you’ve never stopped to consider, but where does God spend eight hours a day?

Of course, we know that God exists beyond time and space. Both are His creations, and thus, He is not bound by them. However, whenever God needs to interact with humanity, He does so within the time and space for which man was created.

With this in mind, the question takes on a more tangible form. After all, if angelic beings manifest within this realm (as in the book of Psalms 34:7 – “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them”) or when God descends on the mountain amidst fire (Exodus 19:18) or when God fills the temple with His presence in a real historical, geographical, and political setting (Isaiah 6), to cite a few examples.

So, the question remains, where does God spend eight hours a day? Some might answer “in the church” (assuming the church is a physical place, for example). Others might say “in the church” (assuming the church is a mystical entity beyond the everyday). Others might say “everywhere.” Some, bordering on pantheism or fully manifesting it, might say “in all things.”

But the question remains valid. If we look at the life of Jesus, the answer is surprising.

Jesus Worked More Than He Preached

There is a stark difference in the time Jesus spent working (something like 20-plus years) and the time He spent preaching (around three years). Roughly speaking, He dedicated 90% of His life to learning and professional life, while a little over 9% was invested in ministry.

He accompanied His stepfather, learning the trade, how to deal with people, how to analyze materials, and how to work those materials to satisfy customers. He must have experienced good and bad times. Deadlines, quality, effort, fatigue.

Why did God choose to manifest His Son in this way?

The Division We Invented

Without realizing it, we’ve learned to divide life into two territories: the sacred and the secular.

The “church” (which for many means the physical building and not the people as in the Bible) has become a sacred place. It would be the site of contact between the earthly and the divine. A piece of holy ground where one walks differently, speaks differently, thinks differently than “in the world.” And this is emphasized on Sunday nights during a 90-minute ritual repeated to exhaustion.

It’s true that in the old covenant (or the Old Testament if you prefer), there was a well-established rigid separation. Instead of the orgiastic relations practiced by other peoples, the proposal God gave the Hebrew people when He chose them included a separation of the holy and the sacred, clearly seen in the burning bush, the veil of Moses, the institution of the priesthood, the tent of meeting during the desert, Solomon’s temple with all its glory, and the second temple with all the earthly splendor Herod the Great gave it.

In the new covenant, at the exact consummation of the perfect priestly sacrifice, the temple veil was torn. Matthew 27:51 describes it splendidly, with details hard to accept or believe but completely compatible with what was happening: a new kingdom (occupying the same time and space as the previous kingdom – Romans 5:21) had just been inaugurated, and – contrary to popular thought – the redemption of the entire creation had begun (not just the souls of some humans).

So, as I was saying, this new covenant, or testament, or era, is gradually perceived by the first disciples and gains momentum and spreads. This necessarily leads to re-reading and reinterpreting many things, but what becomes clear is that what was planned, promised, and awaited in the Old Testament is now crystallized in the new. And what do we see in the letters of the apostles and the author of the book to the Hebrews and the disciples of the apostles? All of them, in their letters, deal with everyday life because it is there that faith becomes concrete.

Work Reveals Who We Really Are

Perhaps God spends so many hours with us at work because it’s there that masks last the least.

Imagine yourself for a moment in those 90 minutes of repetitive communal worship. There are no surprises, hence no renewal of thought. There’s also little room for impatience, lying, or pride. If I only know you from Sunday night, we both might carry the impression that we are almost saints (not in the sense of chosen ones, but as people of impeccable conduct and thought).

Now, let me accompany you to work for a few days. Without you knowing that I am an evangelical pastor or your brother in faith. Just a new colleague at work. Or vice versa, you accompany me to my work. You, who started working in the same environment as I did last Monday.

It’s there where we will know and be known for patience, pride, ambition, lying, justice, generosity, forgiveness. The office, the workshop, the classroom, or the factory function as laboratories for true sanctification.

There is no longer a distinction between a sacred place and a secular one. What exists is the Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of Heaven, depending on which evangelist you prefer) advancing and the gates of Hades being stormed by the movement of God’s children.

Work Was Never a Curse

Sin made work burdensome, not that work is an invention of Sin. (Note for readers, the distinction of usus loquendi between “sin” – lowercase – and “Sin” is to distinguish the former as personal decisions against God’s will, while the latter is the kingdom of sin inaugurated with man’s fall – Romans 5:12..)

Work was never a punishment; it was the original plan. From the beginning, God placed man in the garden to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15) and gave him purpose to rule and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). Both creation accounts contain this same idea.

What became a curse was the frustration and pain that entered with the fall: “through painful toil you will eat food from it… by the sweat of your brow” (Genesis 3:17-19), and even the pains of childbirth point to this reality of tribulation (Genesis 3:16). That’s why creation groans “as in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:19-22) while God Himself does not give up on it: its restoration continues until the consummation of the “new earth,” when everything is made new (Revelation 21:1-5). Thus, the kingdom here and now is a continuation of the original plan, and also in the final manifestation, there will be service in the renewed world – not punishment (Revelation 21:3-4; 22:3-5).

Before the fall, then, there was already cultivation, care, creativity, organization, responsibility. The cultural mandate comes before sin. Fatigue is a consequence of the fall; work is not.

And simplifying the last big paragraph (but without which I would be leaving you in the dark about the biblical view): Working is part of the image of God. We create because we were created by a Creator.

God Continues to Work

Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17). This statement is no joke.

We understand that the Bible is the only rule of faith and practice. And we also understand that it is a progressive self-revelation of God in the guise of human experience. Therefore, if Jesus (the ultimate manifestation of the Word of God) is saying that things are a certain way, we can rest assured that it is exactly that way and no other, no matter how similar it may seem.

God did not rest from creation because He lost interest in it. He continues to sustain, govern, reconcile, and guide history. Worthy work is a reflection of this God who remains active.

A Final Look at Eternity

In previous paragraphs, I nudged you a bit with the idea that eternity is a time/space of service. I left it simmering because perhaps it was already too much with the notion that work is not a divine punishment. Come with me now to take a look from the other end of history.

Perhaps our imagination about heaven (as God’s dwelling place and from where the celestial Jerusalem descends) is too small.

It’s not hard to find limiting caricatures of clouds, little angels with wings, harps, smiles like a gelatin or margarine commercial… well.

The Bible concludes its narrative with a city, not an empty garden. There is culture, kings bringing their glory, service, creativity, governance, and fullness. We will not work to survive, but because creation will finally be what it was always meant to be. Work ceases to be survival and returns to being joy.

Finally

Perhaps the question was never how to serve God at work.

Many times, pseudo-glorious stories are heard of people who steal from their employers by using work hours for proselytizing evangelistic actions.

Others have understood that “Bringing Christ to the office” means carrying a crucifix or reading the Bible in public. And other similar things.

It’s quite likely that it’s not about how to serve God at work, but discovering that He is already working there long before we arrive, and it’s quite likely that the only Bible people will ever read in their lives is just those eight hours they spend with us at work.

What would a company look like where Jesus worked eight hours a day?

And, even more uncomfortably: Could it be that He already works at yours?