Column Title: Communitas
Column Entry: “The Value of Human Labor, the Challenges of AI, and the Image of God”
Column Description: The term Communitas refers to an unstructured community of equal members often traveling from one place to another. Like the characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, we are fellow pilgrims on the road towards the Father’s house, following Jesus as the way, truth, and life. This column is a space to share common ideas about faith, communication, and culture with the intent of affirming the image of God in all persons.
By Elizabeth McLaughlin, PhD, Bethel University
August 2025 / July 2025 / May 2025 / April 2025 / September 2022 / August 2022 / July 2022 / January 2022 / September 2021
Work is a gift from God, until it isn’t.
In the garden of Genesis, humans were created to represent God, care for creation, and to walk in relationship with God, the natural world, and each other. God gave the gift of work for humans to cultivate, name, and express His beauty in the world (Genesis 2). In the beginning, work is a gift filling humans with purpose and joy in creation, expression, and accomplishment.
Then, after the fall, work becomes painful and frustrating as a natural consequence of human rebellion (Genesis 3: 17-19). Food, which was a gift, now results from sweat and toil, pulled from the ground. We can identify with the creation story in our own approach to work, feelings of great purpose and joy as well as the grind of monotony. From the promise that our work can be “where our greatest joy and the world’s greatest needs meet,” to quiet quitting and inability to find and keep meaningful employment, our perspectives on work are complicated.
What is the value of human labor? It is the very engine that supports the image-bearing mandate to replenish the earth and create life-giving culture. Most people find satisfaction in a job well done, confirming its importance. According to Pew Research from 2024, “Half of U.S. workers say they are extremely or very satisfied with their job overall. Another 38% say they are some what satisfied, and 12% are not or not at all satisfied with their job.” While most workers seem fulfilled with the work, they are not as satisfied with the pay. Wages have not kept up with inflation. Workers want to feel valued and fairly compensated for their labor.
It is no secret that AI has affected the workplace. On the one hand, AI has streamlined many mundane functions and made workers more productive. On the other hand, several job categories–particularly those administrative tasks which can be automated—can easily lead to layoffs in legal and financial fields as well as creative professions like advertising, graphic design, and marketing. Multiple sources recommend that workers become conversant in artificial intelligence to show their value to employers.
Not only does AI threaten specific jobs and categories, but according to the AI newsletter Deep View, “Sixty percent of managers now use AI” to make consequential workplace decisions, including who gets promoted and terminated.” This is one more dehumanizing challenge for human agency in the workplace. The article continues to name the issues of AI discrimination for employees over forty and potential employees with different sounding names. How much are corporations and employers willing to sacrifice in the name of productivity?
As a Communication professor, I work with students to build a professional portfolio to use in all their internship and job seeking. This portfolio displays a growing number of achievements and skills that will be useful in the workplace. How can this approach to interview seeking surpass the changing filters of AI scrutiny? Will the right key words and hashtags be enough to prevent elimination from the hiring process?
As a larger issue, what is the value of human labor if AI can do it better? What are we losing? Fortunately, as Christian communicators, we can support narratives and practices that can help magnify and restore the creation-inspired purpose for work. Here are a few ideas about this.
- Refocus Christian teaching in classroom and church on the important place of work in human life and relate it to God’s higher purpose in image-bearing. Examples of life-giving work and a renewed vision of vocation in the Christian life are part of this. Work, paid and unpaid, is part of a life that serves God and his Kingdom—even in the most mundane of quotidian tasks. All our life is part of our image-bearing call to work.
- Practice humane employment practices in our own professions and workplaces. This involves valuing current employees, paying a living wage, working within the community, retaining face-to-face hiring as much as possible, and the true praxis of treating fellow colleagues and customers as image-bearers as part of our corporate cultures.
- Shopping and honoring people who are directly involved in human-focused enterprises such as teaching, nursing, serving, as well as those who work with their hands to create fine arts and other human-created endeavors. Honoring what is human-to-human is the point. One potential idea is to create a corporate seal showing a product or service is human made as a PR badge of honor akin to the seal of the Better Business Bureau.
- Engage with our local communities to serve the homeless, hungry, marginalized, and hurting. This is the work of the gospel to see and serve the Christ in others (Matthew 25:31-46) in charity and reform. Active involvement in our own spheres of influence is the center of God’s calling.
- Discern carefully on how our production and consumption of media messages and campaigns affect our own humanity and the good of others. The tools of technology can contribute to the common good or the exploitation of others.
Work is a gift from God—as is any part of our human life. We must remember that we serve the Risen Christ who calls us to surrender to his action. Finally, we remember, “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” (Colossians 3:23).