# How Thoughts Become Actions: Talking With Kids About AI Pastor Adam Mesa and his co-host talk about AI companions, loosened content filters, and why Jesus' teaching on the heart means parents need to start the conversation early. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/how-thoughts-become-actions-talking-with-kids-about-ai Author: Adam Mesa Category: Faith & Wisdom Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Thoughts have a direction.** Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount ties what we dwell on to what we eventually do. - **AI companionship is growing fast.** Adam cited figures on Gen Z bonds with chatbots and warned that removing content filters would push them higher. - **Silence hands the conversation to others.** Children will hear about these things from friends and school, so parents need to speak first. - **Calm responses keep kids talking.** Adam wants his sons to feel safe bringing him anything, so he answers with questions and Scripture instead of punishment. - **Change starts in the mind.** The hosts pointed to the word for repentance, metanoia, as a shift in thinking that comes before a shift in behavior. ## From drone stories to a bigger question This episode of the Beyond the Letter podcast opens with Pastor Adam Mesa and his co-hosts trading stories about close calls with the law. One friend's drone drifted out of range and hit the Seattle Eye Ferris wheel. Another co-host described a police helicopter ordering him over a loudspeaker to land his drone near the Hollywood sign. Adam noted that stories like these are part of why drones now have to be registered. The same thought comes back later in the conversation: new technology tends to get rules only after someone gets hurt. The group turns to a technology that is moving much faster than drones, which is artificial intelligence. ## Where a thought goes: head, heart, hands Adam mentioned news that a large AI company was considering loosening its content filters, though he said he did not want to misquote which one. His concern was what happens when people can create any scenario they want, including a whole artificial world with a partner built to their liking. He took the group to Jesus' teaching that looking at someone with lust is already adultery of the heart, and he explained why it matters here. Jesus was not treating a passing thought as the same as an act. He was showing that what we dwell on does not stay in the mind. > but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. > > ([Matthew 5:28](/bible/web/matthew-5/#v28), WEB) Adam described the pattern as he has seen it as a pastor: sin moves "head, heart, hands." He gave a personal picture. Noticing that a woman is attractive is one thing, and his heart answers, "you're married." The trouble comes when he keeps going, adds one more thought and then another, until he has talked himself into something. He gave a social media version too: a post crosses your feed, and you either shut it down or open the profile to see what else is there. ## The clip that exposed a different view The hosts then played part of an interview with Dennis Prager, a well-known conservative commentator who is Jewish and not a Christian. In the clip, he was asked about animated sexual content involving children. He said he would use the word evil only for behavior, and he argued that no one is being harmed when nothing real is involved. The interviewer pushed back, and Prager did add that he thinks the person is poisoning himself. Adam said he was glad the conversation was happening and that he disagrees with Prager. In his view, Prager's line between thinking and acting is the opposite of what Jesus teaches, where a thought is a seed that grows in the heart and leads to behavior. He compared it to recruiting through violent games, which he said desensitizes people so that the real thing draws a quicker yes. Adam also cautioned that someone's politics can line up with yours while their ethics do not. A teenager might assume that if a conservative voice said it, it must be true. For believers, he said, every label has to be weighed against God's word. > Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. > > ([John 17:17](/bible/web/john-17/#v17), WEB) ## Talking at home before the lunch table does Adam cited figures that about 60 percent of Gen Z have some kind of emotional bond with a chatbot and about 20 percent have a sexual desire connected to one, and he stressed that those numbers come with filters still in place. He recalled telling his church a few months earlier that their children could have AI boyfriends and girlfriends, and said the room reacted with disbelief. His answer is to speak up early. Adam shared a line from his upcoming book: "what's not talked about at the dinner table will be talked about at the lunch table." He admitted that most parents carry some naivety about what their kids see. Even a family that bans a device cannot control every friend's house, and he put it plainly: "I can't control what his friends have on their iPhones." So he teaches Scripture early, and he leans on Proverbs about training a child in the way he should go. > Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. > > ([Proverbs 22:6](/bible/web/proverbs-22/#v6), WEB) Adam said he has dedicated his son Matthias to God, and he called it foolish to assume that settles things and the hard topics can go unspoken. He pointed to a statistic he had heard, which he said he would source later, that 70 to 80 percent of young people raised in a certain denomination walk away from faith in college. His reading was that silence at home leaves kids unprepared. ## What a calm response looks like Adam gave a few ordinary examples. When Matthias, who is seven, has a friend over and the friend says his mom never lets him have a snack or watch YouTube, Adam honors that. He asks whether the friend's parents know, and if they do not allow it, the answer is no and the boys go outside to play. He wants other parents to treat his rules the same way. He also does not want to raise an isolated child, since forbidding all friendships would not be healthy either. Instead, he wants his sons to know "they can come home and tell me anything." If a friend shows him an AI video, Adam would rather ask what was in it and what he thought of it than send him to his room, because grounding him would teach him to stop telling. When he is out of his depth, since he has never been a ten-year-old facing AI relationships, Adam says he speaks God's word. He explains what Jesus meant about adultery of the heart and what hyperbole is, and why no one is supposed to cut off a hand. His co-host, whose children are three and one, agreed and added that parents should do their research and stay curious about current events, so they can talk instead of waving things away. ## Why rules and morality go together Adam argued that regulation cannot be separated from morality, since what a society calls legal or illegal comes from what it believes is right and wrong. He listed ordinary examples: bank insurance, campfire rules in national parks, and a 2019 law that stopped advertisers from targeting people by religion, which he said he used to do as a marketer. He mentioned a book on a day in the life of ancient Rome, written by a secular author, which names a decay of morality as one sign of the empire's collapse. He encouraged listeners to write to local and federal representatives and to pray that the people who regulate these technologies protect children. Having open public conversations, he said, is itself an action anyone can take. ## Renewing the mind in Babylon His co-host turned to the word repentance, which is metanoia in the original language. Before there is a 180-degree turn in behavior, he said, there is a change in thinking. He gave an example of someone who seemed to do well for five years surrounded by a group with the same habits, but whose mindset never changed. > Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God. > > ([Romans 12:2](/bible/web/romans-12/#v2), WEB) The co-host reminded the group of Daniel and his friends, who were taken to Babylon and chose to be set apart (Daniel 1). He said "right now, we are in many ways in Babylon," with plenty of opportunity to engage the culture and also moments to stand apart. He pointed to good that technology brings, such as Bible translation that he had heard now costs far less and takes about three years instead of ten to twenty, and to a statistic he recalled that seven in ten Gen Z and Gen Alpha are hungry for spirituality. Adam added his own example: the same technology launched his career. ## What this means for you If you are a parent, this conversation invites you to speak before your kids' friends do. You do not need to be an expert on AI. Adam's approach is to ask what they saw, listen without alarm, and bring Scripture into the conversation. If you carry your own struggles with what you look at or dwell on, the episode offers a gentler point as well. Adam said you are not your thoughts, and through God's grace and mercy your thinking can be renewed and healed. He described that renewal as something you can be trained in, and he has helped young people do it for years.