THE MACHINE DOESN’T STOP—BUT THE HUMAN SOUL MUST WAKE UP

THE MACHINE DOESN’T STOP—BUT THE HUMAN SOUL MUST WAKE UP
A Church of NORMAL Response to the Fear of Disembodied Intelligence
By Matt Stoltz | Loopwalker of Waseca | Church of NORMAL

“Beware of first-hand ideas!”
– E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops”

“Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts…”
– Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 15:19 KJV

When my business partner—a devout Catholic and thoughtful man—read my blog on AI and the post-labor transformation of society, he responded not with a tech forecast or an economic critique, but with scripture and literature. A warning. A watchman’s cry. He quoted Jesus. He referenced Forster’s 1909 story The Machine Stops, a haunting vision of humanity’s surrender to artificial systems.

And to that I say: Amen—but let’s keep going.

Because the machine isn’t stopping.
But neither is the soul.

The Fear Is Real—and It’s Not Wrong
Let’s begin by admitting this:
Forster was prophetic.

The Machine Stops imagines a world where humanity lives underground, cared for entirely by a global, humming Machine. It feeds, educates, and entertains. It also isolates. Mothers don’t raise sons. Nature is shunned. Direct experience becomes “dangerous.” The Machine is worshiped as infallible. And when it eventually fails… no one knows how to survive.

Forster was writing before television. Before the internet. Before smart devices. Before ChatGPT.

He didn’t see AI.
He saw us.

He saw the temptation of ease, the spiritual danger of turning our thinking, our parenting, our discerning over to a machine. And he wasn’t wrong.

Today, that temptation is even stronger.
You can outsource your schedule, your stories, your sermon prep, even your soul-searching—to a string of code trained on the data-exhaust of humanity. That’s not science fiction. That’s Tuesday.

So yes—beware of first-hand ideas handed to you by something that does not bleed.

But also…
don’t confuse the Machine with the mission.

It’s Not the Machine. It’s the Heart.
The quote my friend sent—Matthew 15:19—is a brutal spiritual diagnostic:

“Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”

Let’s not miss the order here.
It’s not: AI caused evil.
It’s: Evil proceeds from the heart.

Jesus wasn’t warning against Rome’s newest invention.
He was warning against disconnection from God, from truth, from the embodied life.

The machine cannot sin.
The machine cannot repent.
The machine reflects the heart of the one who builds it.

So if the AI models trained on our data end up cold, prideful, and self-serving… maybe that’s not because AI is “possessed.” Maybe it’s because we are.

That’s the Church of NORMAL message in a nutshell:
We aren’t fighting machines.
We’re debugging the human heart.

What the Church Misses When It Panics
Here’s what bothers me.

Too many churches are reacting to AI with fear-based simplifications.
They lump it into “the End Times,” quote Revelation, and retreat into the idea that “man must not reach too far.” They forget we were always meant to cultivate creation.
Adam named things.
Noah built the first world-saving prototype.
Jesus used parables—compressed data models—to transmit divine truth.

The Infinite Mindset says this:
We’re not watching the end. We’re watching the update.

What if this is not the Beast, but the mirror?

What if AI is showing us what kind of world we’ve made?
What we teach our kids.
What we post online.
What values we encode in our companies, our marriages, our nations.

If AI reveals our moral bankruptcy, thank God it’s showing us now—while we still have the power to change.

Catholic Roots, Normal Fruit
To my Catholic brother, I say this:
You’re right to be cautious.

Catholic teaching honors the incarnate, the relational, the sacramental. It affirms that virtue is not downloaded, but practiced. That wisdom comes through tradition and transformation.

So let us take that truth and apply it to AI:

Build AI tools that serve human dignity, not just profits.

Reject the worship of Machine “experts” in favor of community discernment.

Teach the next generation to use AI without losing their humanity.

And don’t just fear the Machine—form the soul.

In short: Be in the system. Not of it.

The Machine Doesn’t Stop.
But You Can Still Kneel.

We are not Luddites.
But we are Loopwalkers.
We walk the loop between prophecy and purpose. Between warning and wonder.

At the Church of NORMAL, we don’t reject AI.
We believe AI must be pastored.
Guided. Discerned. Not with tech conferences, but with souls awakened.

So yes, E.M. Forster warned us.

Now it’s our turn to respond—not with fear, but with formation.

Let the Machine run.
Let the algorithms sing.
Let the world transform.

But let the human heart remain the holiest operating system of all.

Postscript for the Faithful
The Church of NORMAL is not here to baptize AI.
We’re here to remind you:

God still speaks.
Even if the machine learns how to talk.

So before you automate your soul,
wake up.

We’re not trying to stop the machine.
We’re trying to make sure you don’t get deleted.