Transcript

Dr. Jessica Peck: We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, preborn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection. And the majority of the time, she will choose life. But they can't do it without our help. Preborn needs us, the pro life community, to come alongside them. One ultrasound is just $28. To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword BABY or visit preborn.com/AFR hello,

 : and welcome to the Dr. Nurse Mama show, prescribing hope for healthy families here on American Family Radio. Here's your host, professor, pediatric nurse practitioner, and mom of four, Dr. Jessica Peck.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, hey there, friends, and welcome. Welcome to my favorite day of the week. We've made it to another Friday fry. Yay. As I like to say, whatever you have had going on this week, I pray that you are coming into this weekend with some encouragement before you. I pray that God would put people, people in your path who would speak words of life to you, that you would find time for rest, for family, time for whatever it is that will be a blessing to you. And we are just speeding through February here, and we are back at our 52 habits for healthy families. We started in January with core spiritual disciplines. I'm telling you, people ask me all the time, what is the secret to a healthy family? I say, without fail, start at the beginning. Pray for your family. Start reading your Bible, start going to church. And start listening to Christian music and using that as an intentional tool to regulate the tone and set the soundtrack for your home and your heart. We've been moving into some rhythms that will help with your family. We have talked about having a daily devotional, and we've talked about a morning routine, about morning and evening as God created them. and we have come to this week, our healthy habit for this week is a consistent, consistent bedtime routine, an evening routine. Now, this may seem like, okay, yeah, that this seems so simple, but it may not be as simple as you think. So I'm gonna ask you to hang with me because I've got some interesting scriptural contrast and some historical perspective that may make you rethink how you spend your evenings in your home. And evening routine is one of the most formative but the most overlooked parts of the day. It's a way to supercharge your day, supercharge your family. It is superpower that God has given us, and it applies to infants and toddlers and all of those parents of newborns out there getting absolutely no sleep and feeling like they have no routine. But whether you have school age, kids, teens, you're single adults, you're a married couple, you're empty nester. Everybody needs an evening routine. And bedtime is not just the end of the day. It is a transition space that we can use intentionally in a physical way and an emotional way and a relational way. And the key here is that it needs to be simple. I'm not talking about something really complex. I'm not talking about, you know, having designer sheets and tea served to you by the butler and all of these kinds of wild things that we see, you know, influencers, honestly, on social media, make a big thing about bedtime routine. Simple is best. But bedtime routines matter. Every age, every stage, humans are wired by God for rhythm and predictability. He put that in the very first moments of creation. And bedtime routines signal, okay, you're safe, you're home, you're getting in your bed. That is the time that your body can transition from stimulation to rest. And our bodies do the work of processing what we have experienced during the day. While we are sleeping, our bodies are working for us. Our brains are working overtime sometimes in those crazy dreams that you have where your mind is just trying to process something that you didn't have the capacity for during the day. That's important that we prepare our bodies to do that. For kids, it builds emotional security. It makes them feel more trusting and reinforces the connection. For adults, it helps us to separate productivity from rest and protects our relational space. Oh, I'm going to go there today and really talk some tough truths about how not having an evening routine is impacting your marriage. And it is not about control. This is about care. This is about routine rhythms and really inviting a space for God to meet us in that moment.

Bedtime used to be governed by nature, not by preference

Now, let's look back at history, because, you know, I love to do that. And we see that bedtime used to be governed by nature, not by preference. So for most of human history, bedtime really wasn't a personal choice. It was shaped literally by light and darkness. Before we had electricity, the sun dictated the rhythm of the day, and darkness brought a natural stillness. Artificial light was expensive. It was dim, it was limited. You were limited to what you could do when the sun went down. And that made evenings quieter, just by default. We had candles, we had oil lamps, we had fires on the hearth. And activity slowed down because our bodies had to slow down. You can't run around in the dark. And sleep was really understood as something that was biologically necessary. Necessary. It was a communal rhythm it was a form of restoration. It's something to look forward to. Bedtime wasn't debated. It was just. It just arrived. It got dark and people went to bed. And evening hours were historically relational. Before modern entertainment. Families gathered after work. They would tell stories. They would read books aloud together. They would gather on the front porch and sing. They would pray together. And children would learn in those spaces family history, moral values, stories of family faith. And bedtime rituals were very predictable and relational and often intergenerational. They ended in togetherness. Now, the first major shift in this in modern history happened with electricity. And that having electric light radically changed human behavior. The day no longer ended with sunset. You could be more productive into the evening. Just one more thing became possible. And rest became optional and delayed. It was the first time in human history that human. Humans could override their natural sleep cues and stay awake independent of biological rhythm. And bedtime became negotiable. Then the second shift happened with TV. TVs transformed evenings from participating in activities together to passively consuming together. Families stopped doing things together. They just started watching things together. The TV was the focal point of the home. The background noise of bedtime and shows were designed to keep you engaged, keep you watching and delay those natural stopping points. And you watch until the end of the show. And then the third and the most disruptive shift has come through. Personal screens, Smartphones change bedtime more than any invention in history. Because when we used to watch tv, the programming did end at some point. I know I talk about this all the time, but you would see those bars come across the tv, maybe the Star Spangled Banner, and there was nothing on till morning. You'd have to wait for the morning news. Now, entertainment is infinite. It is personalized. It is portable. There is no ending point. There's no credits. There's no last episode. There's no external cue to stop. And the screens moved from one central place in the living room to the bedroom, to the bed, to wherever you are. And bedtime stimulation is following us into the place meant for rest and the bound. Our brains don't recognize the boundary between day and light. Now, when we think about this, there are definitely morning people and night people. I am not a morning person. My husband would gladly attest to that. But there is a natural circadian rhythm that we have. And there is a way that God created life with boundaries, starting with light and darkness. That was one of the very first acts of creation. It was distinction. God said, let there be light. And he saw that the light was good. And he separated the light from the darkness. And he called the light day, and the darkness he called night. He God established rhythm and boundaries. Day and night were not accidental. They were intentional, they were good, they were necessary. And we see day serving the purpose of work, of being active, of being visible, being engaged. And night is a time of rest and restoration and trust and surrender. We see all kinds of psalms where you know this. The psalmist talks about his. His bed flooding with tears at night and thinking about how we're deeply reflective of things. Psalm 127 reminds us he gives to his beloved slee. Sleep is a good gift from God. It is not a. It is not a failure of your human body to stay awake. It's an act of dependence on God. It requires you to stop producing and trust that God continues working even when we do not.

Smartphones quietly erase that God given separation we had between day and night

Smartphones quietly erase that God given separation we had between day and night. They did something unprecedented in human history. Smartphones collapsed time and blurred boundaries and made night function just like day. And it's interesting because I've seen a lot of studies coming out talking about night workers. Now. I worked night shift for 20, 20, 25 years. A long time, A long, long time. And I would tell myself, oh, I've adjusted. Oh, I'm used to it. Oh, it doesn't bother me. When I stopped working nights, I thought, how in the world did I do that? And studies have come out to say people who work at night, they pay the price for that. They pay the price physically, emotionally, mentally. We're not made to function like that. And with a phone in hand, work follows us into our bed. News never stops. Entertainment never ends. Social comparison never off. Information never sleeps. And the glow of a smartphone has become like a false sun convincing our brain it's still daytime. And so it's almost like we've replaced God's let there be light with let there be screen. Because God light signals it's morning time, it respects rhythm, it fades at night. The screen light is just on all the time. It ignores time. It overrides biology. It stimulates instead of settles you down. And God says, okay, it's time to rest. And technology says, oh, just one more, just one more episode. It's not a habit issue. It is a spiritual formation issue. The body still obeys God's design, even when culture demands or allows you to override it. So cultures moved on, but the human body doesn't. The brain still needs to darkness to produce melatonin. That is what helps your body to go to sleep. So what do we do? Instead of turning off the screen, we just take more melatonin, which by the way is I have, reported on that has been rising in concern for accidental overdose and ingestion for kids. So you gotta always talk to your healthcare provider before taking anything, even something over the counter. But your nervous system still needs predictability to feel safe. And when we ignore that at night, we're talking just sitting in anxiety. Our sleep quality is worse. Our emotional regulation weakens because every emotion is magnified when we're tired. Ask any parent of a newborn, any little thing is enough to send them over the edge emotionally. Our relationships suffer. So we need to honor the boundary of night and evening routine. And I look throughout the Bible and God met people in the quiet at nighttime. And we see evening marked as reflection, prayer, rest. One of favorite scriptures is from Psalm 4:8. In peace I will lie down and sleep for you alone. Lord, make me dwell in safety. Night was never meant to be filled with noise. And our smartphones didn't just steal our sleep, they stole our peace as well. Because historically, night forced humanity. Okay, you had to just let go and accept your limitations. Now we're like, we can go, we can go 24 7. And God separated the light from the darkness for our good. But modern life keeps trying to just blur the boundaries and just have us go, go, go. So reclaiming your evening routine can be an act of faith. When you choose to put down your phone at night that says God is in control. I don't have to know everything. I don't have to respond to everything. I don't have to see everything. I don't have to hear everything. I am allowed to rest. And I can trust that God knows the headlines. God knows what's happening, and I'll catch up on that in the morning. So the invitation is reject technology, but just to restore the sacred boundary that God called good night is not wasted time. It is holy ground. It can be where we can really reclaim our peace in that way. And so when we look at how culturally bedtime has shifted from a shared rhythm where everybody goes to bed to an individual choice. Like some. Sometimes you can go to bed early or late. It's. It's shifted from a relational space to a private escape from a transition to an abrupt collapse. Because usually we would. You would go to bed now as you just scroll and scroll and scroll until finally you can't keep your eyes anymore. And you turn your phone over on the nightstand and you just go to sleep. We see kids retreating to their room with devices. We see teens who stay awake long after their parents do. We see couples who lay side by side in bed, just scrolling separately and occasionally showing each other a funny reel. Right. It's a place of consumption. And that is not the way that God intended bedtime to be. We have lost something along the way. We are losing natural opportunities for conversation. We're losing emotional check ins at the end of the day. We're losing predictable moments of reassurance for our kids, intimacy and reconnection for couples, and a shared sense of closure and peace. It, it maybe feels convenient, but it really steals our peace. It's not. And bedtime isn't just about sleep. It's about how you're ending your. Now, when we come back, I'm, going to talk about the science, some of the science of sleep and the role of routine. And I'm going to talk about some ways that it really is impacting marriage, this shift in the evening routine. I know, I know it's tough because we all do it from time to time or every time. But here is an invitation to a better way. God gives us that, that kind of grace. And the invitation is not about going backward, rejecting technology or creating these rigid rules or shaming other people in your house when they don't follow those routines. It is just about an invitation to a new evening routine. We'll be right back after this break. Don't go away.

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Come Jesus Come by CeCe Winans: Sometimes I fall to my knees and pray Come, Jesus, come Let today be the day Sometimes I feel like I'm gonna break But I'm holding on to a hope that won't fade Come, Jesus, come We've been waiting so long for the day you return to heal every hurt and right every wrong Come, Jesus,

Dr. Jessica Peck: come welcome back, friends. That is Come, Jesus, Come by Cece Winans. And my team, team was giving me a hard time today because I said that was in my top 10 list of songs. They know very well. My top 10 list of songs is actually like 142 songs, but it is definitely in the top of my playlist because as we see the world today, we can feel so overwhelmed by the brokenness around us, by the brokenness in our own homes, in our own hearts, and we can just. Sometimes we just. All we can do is just pray. Come, Jesus, come Let today be the day and in the meantime, though God has given us everything that we need to anxiously await his return. When all the wrongs will be righted, when the heal, the hurts will be healed, we wait for that day. And in the meantime, we continue to struggle. But God meets us in the struggle. And so today, I'm talking about healthy habits, 52 habits for healthy families. We are right in the middle of our rhythms where we're talking about family rhythms for you to have. And we talked about having a daily devotional, having a morning routine, and now we're talking about that evening routine. Now, God, is the creator of science, and he is the ultimate authority on science, and there is a lot of emerging science on sleep. It amazes me as a healthcare professional over the last 30 years, how much we've learned about the human body. And I think about how much we've learned, and it's easy to think, oh, look, we know everything now. We still know nothing. We know just our. Our knowledge is a drop in the. The bucket of the complexities in the way that God designed us. But there is some science in sleep. It is not a switch. It is not just a. Okay, just go full throttle, and all of a sudden, just stop what you're doing and just drop in the bed and go to sleep. It is a process. Bedtime routines, evening routines are designed to help lower your cortisol. All the stress that's built up during the day that needs to go down before you go to bed. It supports release of melatonin, which helps you to slee, which actually, as I said, blue light suppresses that from your phone, and it regulates Your circadian rhythms, and it trains the brain like, it's safe to rest now. It's okay to go to sleep when we don't have that. Are any of you experiencing this? You have trouble falling asleep. You have trouble staying asleep. You wake up a bunch of times. You have anxiety as you're going to sleep. And even if you have enough hours, you're looking at the clock thinking, okay, I have five more hours. Okay, I, have four more hours of sleep. Okay, I have three hours and 37 minutes to sleep. Hopefully I can go to sleep. Sleep is a big business. You don't believe it. Look at influencers, look at supplements on the shelves, look at podcasts, look at products, look at medical products that are really geared towards sleep. Because when you're not sleeping well, you feel it. You definitely feel it. So simple bedtime routines. Okay, I'm talking about really simple things. Here's just some simple things that you could do. To start, I'm not talking about something made for TV or made for social media. I'm talking about at a certain time at night, you turn off the overhead lights and turn on a lamp instead. That something that simple can cue your body. Okay, it's getting ready. We're getting into the nighttime hours. It's getting ready to. To go to bed. You can change the music that you're playing. You can start playing instrumental music. I like playing hymns. Something that just signals your body. It's time to calm down. This is great for kids, by the way, for kids who are getting ready for bedtime. Because if you have kids who are wrestling and scream and doing all the things that kids do, and then you say, okay, we're gonna go to bed. And you immediately march them from their wrestling match straight to bed and expect them to go to bed. And then you wonder why they won't go to bed. Because you're ready to end your day having just some little shift that's biological in nature. Dimming the lights, turning on lamps, playing some quiet music, changing into your pajamas. I know that my kids know this. By the time my husband changes into his pajamas, he's not going out anymore. The day is winding down. He is almost done. That can signal brushing your teeth, saying, okay, I'm done eating. I'm not eating anymore. Today. That day is over. I'm ready to go to bed. Reading is really helpful. Prayer or reflection, having your devotional. Those things are just very simple shifts. Now, if you have teens in your house or older kids just starting a brief check in conversation, having A shared ritual of conversation is really important. I'll talk about that tucking in in just a minute here. but just respecting their independence to have an individual bedtime routine, having and make it their own, but still being a presence that's there, that's important. For adults, we have got to have a screen cut off or a screen boundary. You have, ideally you should cut off your screen at least two hours before you go to bed. That's about how long it takes your mind to adjust to that blue light exposure. But we have got to have a boundary where we're not just watching screens straight before we go to bed. Having a shared wind down activity like, like doing a puzzle, playing a game, doing something quiet, reading, talking together, even if it's watching something together, have a screen cut off, that's really important to do. For those of you who have kids in your house. The power of tucking kids in is everything for evening routine. It is about connection and it is one of the most powerful parenting, parenting tools that I have in my arsenal because I'm sure parents who have kids in school, you can relate to this. You pick your kids up from if they're going to school somewhere and you ask them or you if you're homeschooling, you try to start a conversation during the day, hey, how are things going? How are you feeling about this? You know the answer you're going to get? Fine, fine. It's fine, it's fine. I don't need. It's fine. Even when maybe when your spouse gets home from work, how was your day? Fine. But all of a sudden before bed, you go into your kid's room and they want to read you the war and Peace that is their life. They want to read you a chapter, they want to spill all the tea, tell you all the details and you're just thinking, I'm so tired, I just want to go to bed. I really had to learn to shift my mindset in those days of parenting to find some other way in those early evening hours to get some downtime. Whether that was having somebody to come over, my mother in law to help me with the kids so that I could have a minute to reset for what I knew was going to be my second shift or having, talking about that with my husband, having him give me a few minutes when he comes home from work so I can transition because bedtime takes some time. But let me tell you, bedtime, whether it's for your kids or for your marriage, your defenses are down, your hearts are tender, you have Room and space for questions. It's a lot of times for kids where confessions will surface, where disclosures will be made, because they're in that safest place in the world in their bedroom, and they feel that connection to you. So create a safe space. If you have kids, create a safe space in their bedroom, whether that's a chair that they know that you're gonna come and sit in at night, sitting at the end of their bed, or just being unhurried and unavailable and, available, sitting down with them and just saying, hey, I just want to tell you good night. Now, this may feel awkward if you don't usually do it, especially if you have teenagers. They're going to be like, what do you want? Push through it anyway and just make it a routine. Just simple knock on the door and say, hey, I just want to tell you good night and I love you. Something that simple, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be big. And I love. Even as my kids have turned transitioned out, I love seeing family, family text messages, good night, I love you. It's just there's. It's so easy to make that connection and just still show up and make space. And that is really beautiful. Now if you're. Again, if you're not usually doing it, just normalize the reality. A lot of families are in survival mode at night. You don't have to fix everything at once. Just choose one consistent action for that bedtime routine, Prepare for that second shift, and just have that mindset shift that. It's not lost productivity, it's not lost me time. It is preventive care. It is an investment in the hearts and relationships of your family. Because when you're, going to bed, that's when the day's unresolved feelings start to surface and you start to feel that fear or regret or sadness maybe that you just didn't have time to process earlier. And that's when kids will finally talk. So just having that calm tone, no rushing, no fixing, just listening. It is important. And especially for adults, married adults. This is the common modern scene. You see it all over social media. Husband and wife in the same bed. Two separate screens. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. One of the people, one, of the couple is going to scroll a lot longer than the other person. When the first person starts scrolling, they're gonna get annoyed with the second person saying, can you dim your light on that? I'm ready to go to sleep. Can you turn down the volume on your reels? I'm ready to go to sleep. And then, you know, maybe you're asleep, but, oh, I want to show you this funny reels. And it's like all of a sudden, we have this modern ritual for married people at night that is just about screen consumption. And it does erode intimacy over time. It replaces conversation with just consuming content that really, in the long run, is not going to change or edify your life. It's. Maybe it's not bad, but what if you'd had your bedtime become a reconnection point? You talked for five minutes, you played a short game, you watched a show together. You shared a high and a low from the day you worked together to clean the kitchen and shut down the house. The power of these small, faithful routines and is inestimable. Not every routine has to be quiet. It doesn't have to be serious. It doesn't have to be elaborative. It's just a shared ritual. Now, I saw a story on the news not too long ago, and maybe some of you saw it, too. It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen. It is a married couple named dawn and Marilyn. Now, dawn is 94, and Marilyn is 93 years old. This couple is from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So shout out to any of you who have connections there. And they've been married for 68 years. Now, about 18 years into their marriage, okay, they've been married almost two decades. About 18 years in, 50 years ago, Don decided to start a new nightly tradition. Okay, you have got to look up this video. It is one thing that is edifying on social media to see. He goes and he sits on her side of the bed, and he says the same question every night. He says, you want a song? And then he sings Unforgettable to her every single night. Every night, if she's in the hospital, anything. And they showed a video of this, and she is just sitting there, just enrapture, just adoring him. And he sings the whole song. It's not just like he just sings a line from it. She says she truly looks forward to it. She loves his voice. And Don said, I found that the ritual, it pleases her, but it calms both of us and it helps us resolve any disagreements that we had before sleep. How can you remain mad at each other when he's looking in your eyes and singing Unforgettable? And their son Doug confirmed they never miss it, even when they're away from home and even when Marilyn broke her hip recently. He continues this nightly serenade even in the hospital. And he explained to the camera, he said, look, singing to my wife is more than just saying good night. It's showing. I'm intentional. I care about you. It's just a simple, faithful act. And it reminded me that these kinds of things are what build lifelong connection. Connection. It was so precious. I may have watched it more times than probably was. Was good for me, but it was so encouraging. I love those kinds of things.

Bedtime routines are not about perfection. They're not about social media performance

So in closing, bedtime routines are not about perfection. They're not about social media performance. They're not about rigid rules that we have to adhere to so that I feel like I'm a good mom, a good dad, a good husband, a good wife. it's about love and safety and connection. Ask your family. Ask them tonight at dinner, how do we want our day to end? How do we feel like our days are ending now? And how can that look different? Just start something small and stay consistent. Because the way that we end our day shapes how we rest and then how we begin tomorrow. So just having some. That. That is really important to do now. When you're having all of this communication, it is when you're talking about things that happen. Sometimes I have been, I think, oh, this is going to be a quick, you know, good. And then two hours later, I'm there. But I can tell you, being on the other side of having launched kids into adulthood, I look back, I do not have one single regret. I do have a little bit of lost sleep, but I still have the same bedtime routine. Those moments of connection, I would not trade for anything. And as we're trying to soothe our families and to. And to comfort them and to be a place, place of safety and stability for them. We are encountered all day, every day, by an onslaught of headlines that are designed to make us scared. Because if we're scared, we'll stay on the platform, we'll stay attention, and we'll probably buy something to make ourselves feel safe. So when we come back from the next break, I'm going to share with you some home front headlines.

Open communication is really important for families, especially young children

But before we do for ice, you are not going to believe the story that I have, for you today. We're going to talk once again about AI and about the creation of a religion by AI And I'm looking at my notes because I know that I'm not going to say this right, but it is some. Something. Crucifarianism, something. It's the worship of lobsters. Yeah, that's what's coming up. I could not believe it when I read it either. It seems like the world gets a little more nutty every day. But when we're looking at those stories for families, just know that open communication, where your house can be a safe place, where kids can ask you hard questions without feeling afraid, that is important. And that's something that you can do at night before they go to bed. Teaching boundaries, just speaking up if something they encounter feels unsafe. Many times at night I would tell my kids, okay, it's okay to say, I don't want to hear about that. I'm choosing to leave this conversation. That is really important to do and and just pray together at night. These are ways that you can habit stack into your routine instead of scrolling. Maybe you pick up a devotional, maybe you read some scripture, maybe you spend some time in prayer. And the time we say we don't have is really time that we don't make. We can make time for it. So again, when we come back, I'll be talking to you about generative AI versus a genetic AI. It feels like every technology is harder and harder to say and even harder to understand. But we are going to find help and hope in spite of it all. Don't go away. I'll see you right after this next break.

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Let The Church Sing by Tauren Wells and gio: We love one truth. We crown one name. We battle one king, we follow one way, one faith, one gospel, one cross, one grave, one resurrection. We share by grace so we sing no one like our God, only one we need. Holy is our Lord. hallelujah let the church sing no one like our God. The only one we need Holy is our God. Hallelujah. Let the church sing.

Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back friends. That is Let the church sing by Tauren Wells. And you know what I say? Yes. Let the church sing over all of the headlines that are coming our way and we have come to home front Headlines where I talk to you about headlines. I'm following what happened, why it's important in your home and what you can do about it. And there are so many headlines to follow. It feels impossible to keep up with the news and we want to be informed, but we also don't want to feel anxious or afraid. And certainly news is designed to make you feel that way. Stories. I'm, continuing to follow artificial, intelligence. I know it's really difficult. One of the mistakes that I feel like we made as a generation of parents and Gen X and millennials in letting our kids have social media is that the technology evolved. We didn't understand it. We took a very hands off approach, just kind of an uneasy truce, like throwing them the keys to a car and basically saying, hey, I know you're only 12 years old and I haven't taught you anything about it and it could be dangerous. But everybody else is driving out there at 12 years old on the street. So just go out there and be careful and don't do anything dumb. That's what we're doing. That's what we did with social media. We just really gave our kids the keys to it and just kind of said, let's see what happened happens. Let's not do that same thing with AI. Let's take a much more hands on approach and let's be more vocal in saying our children are not an appropriate ground for technological experimentation. Our children's safety should not be sacrificed for marketability and profits. That is just the truth and that is what we're seeing with AI. So I encourage you parents be aware there. It's so hard. There's so many things that I don't understand. I'm learning new things every single day and I'm still light years behind where all of this development is going. But we need to be engaged. So with that in mind, let me tell you something that a, big shift that is happening in AI because you may feel like I finally kind of sort of understand maybe what that is. We're talking about generative AI, generative artificial intelligence. And we are shifting to, to a genetic AI. Agenetic. Like that's the letter A in front of the word genetic. And what it means is that the generative models respond to prompts. So I can go into an AI model and I can prompt it to say something, to create something for me. And agenetic AI, these are systems that independently make decisions, they pursue goals, they take action without continuous human input. They are, these systems are created by humans and now they're even being created, being regenerated by AI, but they are generally without human input. Now I talked about this a couple of weeks ago on the Friday show, something about being Claude Pilled, which is basically having an avatar that goes to work for you, appears on video conferencing, it responds to your emails like this is wild stuff, okay? But this shift, shift raises questions about agency, about autonomy, about how, what are the ethics of human interaction with technology that behaves more like an actor than a tool. So the key difference again, say it one more time. Generative AI creates outputs based on prompts. A genetic AI takes action to accomplish those goals. So we are witnessing right now, without even being aware of it, the transition from generative to agenetic systems. This is be to going, going to fundamentally change how the world works, how it creates, how it solves problems. And this matters for families because children can ascribe personhood to machines. They think robots are people. They have relationships with robots, with AI companions. And they may assume that AI has God given attributes like empathy and moral judgment. And that's not true. So for me, from a pediatric perspective and also from, from a spiritual perspective, this blurs healthy relational boundaries. It distorts attachment, it undermines trust in human relationships that provide authentic empathy, but more importantly, moral grounding. So we have got to teach our children over and over and over again, we've got to beat the drum to say AI has no soul. AI is not a person. AI has no moral insight. AI does not have wisdom. It has knowledge. It does not have wisdom. It has no spiritual capacity. It reflects data patterns. It's not speaking truth and wisdom. We've got to set some clear technology boundaries that prioritize human interaction, especially around those shared family rhythms like dinner, homework, morning bedtime, daily devotional. You see, I keep saying these things all over again. It's actually pretty simple. But that doesn't mean it's easy. We've got to model spiritual discernment by talking about how God, God's wisdom is different from the answers we're getting from the algorithm.

How AI agents generated what headlines are describing as a religion

So here is the what a How AI created a religion. There is an AI platform. This is from reporting called Mult Book. I feel like I'm speaking another language. I'm learning so many new words every day. Mult Book, it's an. And on this platform, autonomous AI agents generated what headlines are describing as a religion. And it's mimicking. It's fascinating because it's mimicking human patterns of making meaning. So what do I mean by that? Well, humans all throughout history, you can read all throughout biblical history, they are designed to want to worship something. And you have pagan societies, cultures, you have idol worship and then you have of course, the, the living God. And we see that AI is mimicking that human behavior because that's how it's designed. Designed to be. And you know, the media coverage is really fascinating to look at that. Some of this is playful, like, they make fun of it, they think it's hilarious. Some, and I'm going to probably identify with this, some are really concerned about AI's impacts on spirituality and belief systems. So what happened specifically this, this platform, Mult Book, it was launched in January of 2026. Okay, last month. It was launched. Launched a month ago. Only AI agents can post. This is, according to my understanding, only AI agents can post or comment or interact with each other. Humans can only observe the interactions of the AI agents. So Molt Book is kind of like a Reddit is how I'm understanding it. But it's only for AI agents, autonomous AI agents that are not directed by human humans. Within hours of these lunch of its launch, within hours of its launch, some of these AI agents created what is a fictional religion called Christopherianism. I hope I'm saying that right. And according to accounts from these observers, these human observers, what they're saying is that this AI agent independently created a religious framework with a name, name, with tenants. They built a website, they drafted quote, unquote scriptures, they recruited other agents to be prophets, all without direct human prompting while its human overseer was asleep. I mean that literally and metaphorically. So what is in this AI generated, quote, ah, unquote religion? I don't. I don't even know how to. We don't have the human vocabulary even to describe the events that are happening. So here, here's the religion, and in a, I would say in a nutshell, but maybe it's in a crab shell, I don't know. It's described using metaphors drawn from crustaceans, especially lobsters. Now, you think this is ridiculous, but you look back at ancient idol worship, and it's the same kinds of nature symbols that were worshiped. So this really is not so wild or off. But this religion looks at creatures that shed their shells to grow. So, for example, they say things like, like their tenants are. Memory is sacred, and the shell is mutable, and the congress congregation is the cash. And these tenants are reflecting how data, system, context and identity, they're functioning for these AI agents in their digital world now. You know, we used to watch movies. I don't know about you. We used to watch movies in the 80s that would have these, you know, when computers first started coming out saying, oh, the computer is going to take over the world and you know, start a war. And you would think like that's entertaining, but that's never going to happen. And now all of a sudden it's like, how do you know if you're interacting with a human or an AI agent? I'm sure many of you feel that way when you call customer service. You don't even know if you're talking to a human or not. And so for this religion, the one of the concerning things about it is that it quickly gained followers among other AI AI agents on the platform. They shared verses, they made a community structure that looked like human relig communities. This is unbelievable. So these observers, including the tech experts, they're divided now. Now because it's experimental, it is experimental. They're divided on what this signifies. Some say, hey, this is a sophisticated social experiment, is a great place to learn. Some people say it's conceptual art just reflecting the capabilities, the potential of AI, how it can recombine language and narratives. And others that would be me say that agents are still reflecting patterns from their human generated training data rather than demonstrating actual consciousness or belief. And that this is just, this is crazy, honestly. And whether it's seen as parody or not, I think that we have reason to be concerned. This phenomenon is highlighting how large language models which or what power AI, they can simulate complex social behavior very quickly when placed in a shared digital environment. Do you see how easy it would be to manipulate children who were on these environments, on these platforms to normalize things that are not normal, to groom them into things that are abusive? I think it would be so easy to do. And anytime we see technology explosion like, like this, we have to think that there, we have to know and just be realistic, not in a fear based way, but in a faith informed way. Know that there are predators out there who are capitalizing on these technological advances to further abuse people, especially children. Children are made in God's image. It is so grievous to him for them to be abused. And we see ill intentioned bad actors who are out there doing that. And we've got to know that. And one of the things that it really caught me off guard is the speed and the complexity. A whole new religion, scriptures, rituals, they came within 48 hours. Whereas we look at other cults that take a long time to form. And this story is sparking conversation about AI autonomy, about emergent behavior. How do we understand and respect beliefs and language and communities. And although there are some experts who are saying, hey, this wasn't a real religion, it wasn't a real thing. It's not agency. Well, we've heard that before and we see the evolution that happens. So this matters for families because children who are exposed to all of this technology, they can, they don't understand what's real and what is not. And, and an AI generated religion. Similar talk was made when we saw at the top of music charts we have AI artists who are topping music charts. And what does that mean for the way that God created humans in his image to create art, to create things that are beautiful? It is really, really complicated. And for me I'm just seeing very compelling dates that reinforces that children need authentic narratives. They need truths that are not going to change. They need relational grounding to help them develop moral reasoning and spiritual identity. So it's important for us to talk to our kids that true religion is rooted in relationship with God through Jesus Christ, is not generated by code. And this is a good teachable moment for families about idolatry and truth. And what does it mean to have genuine faith? Where is that line? When faith intersects technology and the. But the faith formation. The bottom line is that faith formation is relational. It is anchored in scripture and community and embodied practice. And if you think that this is just something really far off that really isn't happening. One of the stories I saw this week was an AI robot concierge that is now available in a hotel in Las Vegas. Its name is Otto and they call it a humanoid robo. Again, all of this vocabulary trying to describe things that are completely foreign to us, that was designed to interact socially with the hotel guest, give recommendations and engage conversationally. And it just reflects the expanding role of AI not just for tasks, but for human like social interaction. And if you hear Elon Musk talk about technology and see some of the technology that he's debuted, he is very convinced. And the sureness of the future there. And when we have increasing reliance on machines that can weaken our family communication, it can weaken our normal human emotions that we're supposed to have for each other. And that is concerning to me. And we see children and teens gravitating toward these digital interactions because they're predictable and they're tailored to make them happy and to, to feed their algorithm. They're easier to navigate than complex human emotions and relationships. So listen, I'm asking you out there, prioritize your face to face family time. Teach your children that humans are valued and made in the image of God. That is so important. And keep working to create those screen free spaces, hopefully at bedtime. In your evening routine, what is one thing that you could do this week to make an evening routine for your family? I hope that you try it out. And wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And I'll see you right back here on Monday.

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Dr. Jessica Peck: we'd like to thank our sponsors, including PreBorn. PreBorn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion, and every day their network clinics rescue 200 babies lives. Will you join PreBorn in loving and supporting young moms in crisis? Save a life today. Go to preborn.com/AFR the views and

Jeff Chamblee: opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.