When Productivity Is No Longer Enough
AI, Human Worth, and the Future of Work
What happens when technology can do the thing that makes us feel valuable?
I know how easily being useful can become part of how I measure my worth. There is security in solving a difficult problem, knowing something others don’t, or being the person someone calls when something important needs to get done.
For me, it helps to separate three things: what my skills are worth, where my dignity comes from, and how I am accepted by God.
The value of our skills can change
On September 10, 2026, Reuters reported that Wipro said AI had freed capacity equivalent to roughly 20,000 employees. The company said employees had been redeployed into other roles. That is different from saying 20,000 people lost their jobs.
Still, it raises a question many professionals may recognize: What happens when something I spent years mastering becomes easier for a machine to do?
We should take that concern seriously. Changes in work can affect income, purpose, relationships, and the ability to support a family. Telling someone their worth hasn’t changed does not pay their bills. People navigating disruption need practical support.
Yet alongside those concerns, we need to examine an assumption we can quietly carry: if my skills become less valuable, perhaps I do too.
Our dignity is given by God
Genesis 1:27 grounds human dignity in being created in God’s image. Before we earn a degree, build a career, or make a useful contribution, we possess a worth that achievement cannot give us.
We recognize this when we look at a newborn child or an elderly person who can no longer work. Their dignity does not rise and fall with their productivity. Neither does ours.
That is why I’m cautious about grounding our worth in whatever humans can still do better than machines. Creativity, empathy, judgment, and relationships matter enormously. We should develop them. But our humanity does not depend on winning a competition with technology.
For leaders, that conviction carries responsibility. When we consider automation, we need to ask who benefits, who bears the cost, and how we will help people whose roles change. Respect for human dignity should shape the decisions we make.
Our acceptance in Christ is received
The desire to prove our worth can follow us beyond work and into our relationship with God. We try to become good enough, faithful enough, or useful enough to finally feel secure.
The gospel meets us there with grace.
Jesus lived the righteous life we could not live, bore the judgment our sin deserved on the cross, and rose from the dead. Through faith in Him, we receive forgiveness and acceptance we could never earn. Paul describes salvation as God’s gift, received through faith rather than works (Ephesians 2:8–9).
Then, in the very next verse, Paul says we are created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10). That order matters. Grace gives us a foundation from which to live and serve.
This is what I want to keep learning in my own work. I can pursue excellence, adapt, and contribute without asking my performance to secure my standing before God. My work can become an expression of gratitude and service.
AI may change what organizations need from us. Some changes will be difficult, and faith does not remove the need to learn new skills or care for people through disruption. But we can face those changes knowing that our dignity is given by God and, through faith in Christ, our acceptance is secure.
Where might you still be asking achievement to give you the security Christ offers?
