When Profit Becomes More Important Than People

There comes a time when we have to stop looking at what is happening around us and simply shake our heads in disbelief. We have to ask a harder question: What are we going to do about it? We are living in a time when artificial intelligence is moving into almost every part of human life. It is being used to write, draw, paint, answer phones, create music, produce advertisements, handle customer service, analyze information, and perform work that humans depend upon for their livelihoods. Technology itself is not the enemy. People have always created tools to make work easier and to accomplish things that would otherwise require enormous amounts of time and effort. The problem begins when the tool becomes more important than the person, and when the desire for greater profit causes humans to be treated as though they are nothing more than an expense that can be eliminated.

That takes us into something much deeper than artificial intelligence. It takes us into the way God expects us to treat one another. From the beginning, God gave mankind work. Genesis 2:15 tells us that God placed Adam in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Work was not created as a punishment. Work existed before sin entered the world. There is dignity in being able to use the abilities God has given us, to create something useful, to serve another person, to learn a skill, to provide for our families, and to know that the work of our hands has value. When we start talking about replacing millions of human workers with machines, therefore, we are not merely talking about a business decision. We are talking about people’s lives.

God tells us why human life has such value. Genesis 1:27 says that God created mankind in His own image. That changes the way we should look at people. A human being is not merely a line on a company's expense report. A worker is not simply a cost that needs to be reduced. That person is someone created in the image of God, someone who has a family, responsibilities, hopes, needs, and a God-given purpose. When a company decides that a person can simply be discarded because a machine can perform the same task more cheaply, we need to be willing to ask whether we have allowed the pursuit of profit to become more important than the people God created.

The Bible has always had something to say about how workers are treated. Deuteronomy 24:14-15 tells God's people not to oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy and not to withhold his wages. God was concerned about the worker long before there were corporations, computers, factories, or artificial intelligence. He cared about whether people could work and receive what they were owed. James made the matter even stronger when he warned wealthy employers who withheld the wages of their workers. James 5:4 says that the wages the workers were owed cried out and that their cries had reached the Lord. God sees what happens in the workplace. He sees what happens to the person who has very little "power" compared with the person who controls the money.

And this is where we need to look honestly at the people who have the greatest economic "power". There are extremely wealthy people, corporate leaders, investors, and other "powerful" interests who have far more influence over the direction of the economy than the average worker does. We often hear these people described as “the elites.” Being wealthy is not, by itself, a sin. The Bible does not condemn a person simply because he has money. But wealth becomes dangerous when it gives a person the "power" to make decisions that affect millions of other people while those people have little or no voice in what happens to them. When the people with the most money and influence can help shape laws, labor policies, tax policies, and the future of technology, we have every right to ask whether those decisions are protecting human workers or simply protecting the wealthy and their machines.

That question becomes especially important when the laws themselves begin to change around the new economy. We are already hearing arguments about how workers, wages, taxation, automation, and Social Security should be handled as artificial intelligence and other forms of automation remove more human labor from the economy. There is a tremendous difference between changing the law because society has changed and changing the law so that those who control the wealth can avoid responsibilities that ordinary working people are still expected to carry. If the law eventually says, in effect, that a company does not have to pay workers fairly because a machine can perform their work, while the people who own those machines continue to collect the wealth produced by them, then we need to ask a very serious question: Who is the law serving?

God's standard does not change simply because technology changes. A worker does not become less worthy because his employer has discovered a machine that can do his job. A human being does not become disposable because someone else has found a more profitable way to produce the same thing. And a person's right to receive what he has honestly earned does not disappear because the people at the top have found a new way to make money.

Today the situation is different, but the principle has not changed. We are now watching technology become capable of doing work that once required humans. A company may look at a room full of employees and see salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, vacation time, sick leave, and other costs. Then someone looks at an AI system and sees a way to reduce those costs. From a strictly financial perspective, that may look brilliant. But God does not tell us to judge every decision by how much money it saves. He tells us to love our neighbor – you know, that human that needs the job you just gave to the machine, so you could pocket the profit yourself.

Jesus said in Matthew 22:39, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That command does not stop applying when we walk into a workplace, open a computer, make a purchase, or invest money. It follows us into every part of life. If we would be devastated to discover that our own job had been eliminated because a company found a cheaper way to make us unnecessary, then we should think carefully about whether we really want to financially support the same thing happening to someone else.

This does not mean that Christians have to reject technology. That would make no sense. A tool can be used wisely or foolishly. Technology can help a human do a job better without eliminating the person who does the job. It can allow someone to accomplish in an hour what once took a day. It can help people who have disabilities. It can assist doctors, engineers, teachers, farmers, researchers, artists, and countless others. There is nothing inherently evil about a machine making human work easier. The question is what we do with the "power" that technology gives us?

If technology helps people, we should be grateful for the help. If technology becomes an excuse to treat people as disposable, then we need to stop pretending that efficiency is the only value that matters. The question is not simply, “Can a machine do this?” The question is, “Should we replace the human worker simply because we can?” Those are two very different questions.

This is where consumers have more "power" than they often realize. Businesses exist because people give them money. Every time we buy something, we are participating in the system that produced it. Our money tells a company that we approve of what it is doing enough to give it our support. That means our purchasing decisions can become a form of peaceful action. We do not have to scream at anybody. We do not have to threaten anybody. We do not have to destroy anything. We can simply decide where we will spend our money.

If a company uses technology to help its employees, that is one thing. If a company uses artificial intelligence primarily to eliminate human workers and increase profits while leaving those workers and their families to carry the burden, consumers have every right to say, “I don't want to support that.” We can choose human-made products when we have the choice. We can choose businesses that keep people employed. We can choose human customer service when it is available. We can support artists, writers, craftspeople, farmers, small businesses, and other workers whose livelihoods depend upon people choosing to purchase what they produce.

That does not mean we should blindly accuse businesses of replacing workers with AI. If we are going to stand for truth, then we have to be truthful ourselves. We should know what a company is actually doing before we condemn it. We should not spread rumors simply because something sounds outrageous. We should look at what companies themselves announce, what their employees report, what their financial statements show, and what can actually be proven. If we are going to stand against the misuse of technology, we should not become careless with the truth while doing it. At the same time, we should not allow the demand for perfect certainty to become an excuse for ignoring what is plainly happening before our eyes.

The Bible tells us in James 1:5 that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God for it. We need wisdom now. We need to know the difference between technology that serves people and technology that makes people disposable. We need to know the difference between a company becoming more efficient and a company deciding that humans are no longer worth employing. We need wisdom to know where our money is going and what our money is supporting. We also need wisdom when we look at those who are trying to shape the laws governing this new economy. We should not automatically believe that every proposal made by a wealthy person is evil, but neither should we assume that every proposal is good simply because it comes from someone "powerful".

There is also another problem that cannot be ignored. Social Security and other systems that depend heavily upon wages were built around an economy in which humans worked, earned wages, and paid into the system. If increasing numbers of people are removed from the workforce because their jobs have been automated, then fewer human paychecks are producing the payroll taxes that support programs such as Social Security. At the same time, the companies receiving the economic benefit from that automation may continue making enormous profits. That raises a serious question that society cannot simply shove under the rug: If machines produce more and more of the wealth while fewer people receive wages, how will we structure an economy in which humans can still live, work, provide for their families, and support the systems they have spent their lives paying into?

And this is where the treatment of workers and the treatment of the elderly become connected. We cannot build an economy that steadily removes people from wage-earning work, reduce the number of people paying into systems that depend upon those wages, allow the wealth produced by automation to concentrate increasingly in the hands of those who own the technology, and then turn around and tell the people who spent their working lives paying into Social Security that they now need to accept less because the system is struggling. If the economic structure has changed, then the people who have benefited most from that change cannot simply demand that the people at the bottom absorb all of the consequences.

That is not a question that can be answered by simply telling people to “learn another skill.” What happens when the next skill is automated too? What happens when the goal of the technology industry is to automate the next category of work as quickly as possible? At some point, we have to stop pretending that every displaced worker can simply run down the street and find another identical opportunity waiting for him. The entire structure of work may be changing, and we need to have an honest conversation about what that means for humans. We also need to ask who is going to benefit from that change, who is going to pay for it, and whether the laws being written will protect the people who have the least "power" or the people who already possess the most.

The Bible gives us a very serious warning about this kind of imbalance. Proverbs 22:2 says, “The rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.” That does not mean wealth is evil, but it does mean that wealth does not make one human more valuable than another. The person who owns the company and the person who cleans the company both have the same Creator. The investor and the worker both stand before God. The person who writes the law and the person who must live under that law are both accountable to Him.

That is why the wealthy and "powerful" should never imagine that their position places them above God's moral law. Proverbs 14:31 says, “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” That is a sobering statement. God connects the way we treat vulnerable people with the way we treat Him. A person can sit in a magnificent office, possess more money than he could spend in several lifetimes, and have influence over people in high places, but none of that changes the fact that God is watching how he treats the people beneath him.

James understood this when he spoke so strongly to wealthy people who had accumulated riches while workers were suffering. James 5:1-6 warns about wealth that is hoarded, luxury enjoyed while others suffer, and wages that are withheld from workers. The point is not that every wealthy person is wicked. The point is that wealth brings responsibility. If God has allowed someone to possess great resources, that person has a greater opportunity to do good, not a greater right to exploit those who have less.

This brings us back to the people who think we should call them the “elites”. If some of the richest and most "powerful" people in the world are helping determine what happens to human labor, then they need to understand that the people being affected are not disposable pieces on a chessboard. They are not merely numbers in an economic model. They are not an inconvenience standing between a corporation and greater profit. They are people made in the image of God. If laws are changed so that corporations can avoid responsibilities once connected to employing humans, while ordinary people are still expected to pay their taxes, support their families, and somehow prepare for their own future, then we need to examine those changes carefully and ask who benefits and who bears the cost.

God never told the wealthy that they could cast away humans like garbage because they had found a cheaper way to accomplish the work. He never said that the person with the most money gets to decide that another person's livelihood no longer matters. He never said that profit excuses injustice. The command remains the same for the person at the bottom and the person at the top: love your neighbor as yourself.

But perhaps the first thing we can do is much simpler. We can remember that we are not "powerless”. We can choose what we buy. We can choose whom we support. We can ask questions. We can tell companies that human workers matter to us. We can support businesses that value people. We can refuse to reward the unnecessary destruction of human livelihoods when we have another choice. One person making that decision may not change a corporation. A million people making that decision can change a market. When people act together peacefully and consistently, even enormous corporations have to pay attention.

This is not about hating technology. It is not about being afraid of progress. It is about refusing to confuse progress with replacing people simply because people cost more than machines. There is a difference between making work easier and making workers unnecessary. There is a difference between using a tool and worshiping efficiency. There is a difference between increasing productivity and deciding that humans are expendable. There is also a difference between becoming wealthy through honest work and using wealth and influence to create a system in which the people who produce the wealth have less and less say over their own future.

The love of money is another matter we need to examine honestly. 1 Timothy 6:10 warns us that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Money itself is not evil. The Bible never teaches that earning money, possessing money, or conducting business is sinful. The danger comes when money becomes more important than righteousness, more important than compassion, and more important than people. When increasing profit becomes the reason a company is willing to discard thousands of workers without seriously considering the human cost, we have moved into territory that deserves moral examination. When great wealth is used to gain political influence for the purpose of protecting that wealth while ordinary people are left carrying the consequences, we should be even more concerned.

God never told us to love profit more than people. He told us to love our neighbor.

And perhaps this is one of the places where the people of God need to remember who we are. We do not have to follow every trend simply because everyone else is following it. We do not have to accept every new thing as progress simply because someone gives it a shiny technological name. We are supposed to examine things, test things, seek wisdom, and then make choices according to what is right. We should not be impressed by wealth merely because it is wealth, and we should not be frightened by "power" merely because it is "powerful". Our allegiance is to God.

Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Love is not merely a word we say in church. Love affects how we treat people. Love affects what we support. Love affects how we conduct business. Love affects what we are willing to sacrifice for someone else. Love affects where we spend our money. Love also affects whether we are willing to speak when "powerful" people make decisions that harm those who have less "power".

So maybe the question we need to start asking is not simply, “How much money will this technology save?” Maybe we need to ask, “What will this save, and who will pay the price?” If a corporation saves millions of dollars by eliminating workers, where did those millions come from? They came partly from the wages those people would have received, the taxes connected to those wages, and the economic activity those wages would have created. If the savings become private profits while the consequences become a public burden, then we have to ask whether that is really progress or simply a transfer of the burden from the "powerful" to everyone else.

If a machine allows a worker to do his job better, wonderful. If technology helps a person create, build, heal, teach, communicate, or serve, wonderful. But if we reach the point where we are eliminating humans from the economy simply because machines are cheaper (free), while still expecting those same humans to pay taxes, support the economy, raise families, and somehow survive, then we need to stop and think. And if the people who own the machines are then given the "power" to help write the rules governing that new economy, we need to be paying very close attention.

Because humans are not machines. humans bear the image of God. And when we look at another person, we should be able to see more than a labor cost. We should see someone God created. We should see someone's mother, someone's father, someone's child, someone's husband or wife, someone's grandparent, someone's neighbor. We should see a person whose life matters to God.

That is where this conversation needs to begin. Not with fear of technology. Not with hatred of corporations. Not with political shouting. It needs to begin with something much older and much more "powerful": the command of God to love our neighbor as ourselves. That command applies to the worker and the employer, the poor and the rich, the employee and the CEO, the ordinary citizen and the person with enormous political influence. Nobody is exempt from it, Believer or not.

If we really believe that command, then we have to ask ourselves what our money is saying. We have to ask what our purchases support. We have to ask what kind of economy we are helping build. We have to ask whether we are rewarding the treatment of humans as disposable simply because doing so produces a larger profit. And we have to remember that the people with the greatest wealth are not the only ones who have a responsibility here. Every one of us has some measure of "power" through the choices we make.

Perhaps it is time for us to make our money say something worth hearing. Perhaps it is time to say that we will support progress that helps people, but we will not blindly support progress that treats people as garbage. Perhaps it is time to remind the corporations, the lawmakers, the wealthy, the "powerful”, and even ourselves that there is something more valuable than profit.

There are humans on the other side of the numbers.

And God sees them ALL.

Father God, help me to remember that every person I encounter bears Your image and has value in Your sight. Give me wisdom to recognize when technology is serving people and when profit is being placed above people. Help me to use my money wisely, support honest work, speak truth without hatred, and never forget the human beings behind the numbers. Teach me to love my neighbor as myself, and give me courage to stand for what is right even when powerful people choose another way.  In Jesus' precious Amen.

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Don't take my word for it. Like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Open your Bible, study God's Word for yourself, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth. Don't simply accept my conclusions. If what I've written agrees with Scripture, hold fast to it. If it doesn't, let God's Word be your final authority.

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© AMKCH 2026

image done by my chatgpt at my direction.

If any of these people looks like you or someone you know, that is purely coincidental. They are not.

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