For $1.99 per minute, you can speak directly with Jesus Christ — or, at least, an imagined AI approximation.
Just Like Me, the brainchild of Chris Breed, bills itself as a “groundbreaking AI platform that lets anyone talk face-to-face with lifelike digital versions of real people and personas.” The company currently has 16 profiles available, ranging from some generic stock figures like “Bella” — a life coach with a generic doctor-like avatar — to real-life personalities such as Candace Owens.
And then there’s Jesus, whose AI creation has been the cornerstone of Just Like Me’s marketing campaign. In a video showcasing the technology, a man introduces himself to Just Like Me’s Jesus avatar — a figure who evokes a Jonathan Roumi from The Chosen in look and vibe: “My name is Jeff and I’ve been having a really hard time in life and I’m looking for some inspiration and guidance.” During this sentence, AI Jesus has alternated between staring blankly and offering slight nods meant to evoke active listening but come across more as visual glitches.
After a few seconds of processing, AI Jesus responds: “That heaviness you’re carrying is truly felt and I want you to know you’re not walking through it alone. In the Gospel of John, Jesus reminds us that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that through him we can find true rest for our souls. Trust the same steady love can be your anchor today, even when the waves seem high, and lean on prayer as a safe harbor. What small step could you take right now to invite that peace into your day?”
Just Like Me CEO Chris Breed says he envisions this sort of back-and-forth as a way of decreasing loneliness, increasing connection and helping participants with improving their mental and spiritual well-being. Churches that refer congregants to Just Like Me Jesus can get a 25% cut of the profits.
And at $1.99 per minute — evoking the 1-900 numbers of the 1980s and ’90s — the grift looks pretty obvious. In a world desperate for spiritual (and human) connection, Just Like Me offers a digital analogue that’s always available and always affirming. He’s your own personal Jesus.
A God of our own making
We could laugh off Just Like Me’s attempt to financially capitalize on the “personal Savior” narrative of evangelicalism, but this remaking of God in our own image isn’t something new. It’s just that giving it a face and voice makes us recognize the hypocrisy more clearly. It doesn’t take artificial intelligence to create a Jesus who affirms our worldview. The fame and name of God always have been appropriated by those looking to use God as a way of holding wealth and power.
“It doesn’t take artificial intelligence to create a Jesus who affirms our worldview.”
The 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire, known for his sharp satire of religion, once remarked, “If God made us in his image, we have certainly repaid him in kind.” Voltaire’s comments were borne out of his personal experience of religious conflict and the way he saw religion used to justify political authority and social control. Those in power, Voltaire said, tend to use that power to make the image of God mirror themselves. This is a God who never contradicts us, always praises us, loves the things we love and — perhaps most importantly — hates the things we hate.
Pete Hegsth tattoo
We’ve seen this God throughout history. In the Crusades, “Deus Vult” — Latin for “God wills it” — became a rallying cry that justified a violent invasion of the Middle East to claim the land for Europeanized Christian peoples. A few centuries later, this expanded into the Doctrine of Discovery, which claimed Christian rulers had divine sanction to claim lands inhabited by non-Christians, thus justifying colonialism and the burgeoning Transatlantic slave trade. In the West, that theological belief morphed into Manifest Destiny — the belief that God had given the continent to white colonizers.
It wasn’t just about who held God’s favor, either. It was also about what God looked like. Western art provides for us one of the clearest examples of God being reshaped in the image of those in power. Gone is the Middle Eastern rabbi, the Palestinian Jew with olive-toned skin. This God is envisioned as a light-skinned European with Anglo features. The most famous example of this might be Warner Sallman’s 1940 “Head of Christ,” which presents a white-skinned, blue-eyed and fair-haired Jesus painted in the style of a celebrity headshot. It was this Jesus whose visage graced my bedroom wall as a child, to whom I offered up my nightly prayers.
The God of the Christian white
“Head of Christ,” Sallman
The end result of centuries of Europeanized Christianity was a God who is white. White here reflects not just a paleness of skin or a European history, but a way of being within the world that demands a place of power and authority.
European colonizers began to assert their power and authority over colonized peoples on an appeal to their first most obvious difference — skin color — then drew God, the ultimate authority and power, to look like them. The message was that our whiteness reflects God’s whiteness, so too our power over you is a reflection of God’s desire and command.
Writing from a leadership perspective, a team of Stanford researchers found the more an individual conceptualized God as a white man, the more likely they were to perceive white men as more competent or fitting leaders. “Basically,” lead researcher Steven Roberts concluded, “if you believe that a white man rules the heavens, you are more likely to believe that white men should rule on Earth.”
The majority white culture of the West reformed God to be like them, not just to rubber-stamp their imperialist policies but to actually reflect the way they looked.
Jesus in whiteface helped create racial hierarchy, sanctifying it as God-ordained, in order to place and keep those who are white in positions of power and control. The issue is no longer (explicitly) about skin tone, but the underlying impulse remains. God is invoked to validate systems of authority that maintain white Christian dominion. White evangelicalism’s “personal Lord and Savior” becomes just that — not a God for all people, but an icon or an idol representing the worship of power.
The God of Christian nationalism
A few weeks ago, Donald Trump posted an AI image of himself as Jesus. Trump claims it was him as a doctor, but pretty much every discernible piece of the image — the white robe with red sash, the glowing hands, the woman with hands folded in prayer and the celestial beings — all evoke a particular Christian iconography placing Trump in a messianic role. There was immediate backlash, even among Trump’s usually unflappable far-right evangelical following. They won’t admit this, but I think that backlash came because it showed them who they were actually worshiping.
Trump has a long history of quasi-messianic claims. Accepting his nomination as the Republican candidate for president in 2016, he lambasted a broken political system and claimed, “I alone can fix it.” In 2019, he inferred that God had placed him in power to confront China, looking to the heavens and proclaiming, “I am the chosen one.” Just this past Easter, he spoke at the White House Easter commemoration and mentioned Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, saying that “crowds welcomed him with praise honoring him as king” and, “They call me a king now. Can you believe it?”
Paula White-Cain, Trump’s spiritual adviser, brought Trump’s point home later, explicitly comparing Trump to Jesus, saying he was “betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” but, “because he was victorious, you were victorious.”
“The God of American Christian nationalism is revealed in Donald Trump.”
The God of American Christian nationalism is revealed in Donald Trump. Not that Trump is a god, but rather Donald Trump — in his being — is the reflection of a god made in the image of Christian nationalism.
American Christian nationalism has created a savior, and it doesn’t look like Jesus at all. Instead of the one who blesses the meek, this god favors strength and dominance. Instead of the one who tells followers to love their enemies, this god rewards retaliation. Instead of the one who sacrificed everything, this god lives for personal enrichment. Trump is the Jesus American Christian nationalism wants. He is the god they have made in their own image — their own personal Jesus.
We stand at an inflection point. Will we continue to create our own personal Jesuses — be they political, colonial or AI-generated? Will we continue to remake God in our own image, reflecting our own desire for convenience, power and wealth? Will we continue to personalize and customize our faith experience in a way that pushes others out instead of drawing them in?
The Jesus of the Gospels cannot be reduced to a chatbot, a mascot or a cultural weapon. He blesses the poor, not the powerful. He welcomes the outsider, not the insider. He calls his followers to take up a cross, not seize a throne. We are not the first generation to recreate God in our image. It’s been a constant theme of history. Having been awakened to that reality in such a jarring way, the question remains whether American Christianity can do what Jesus’ first disciples did — drop everything and follow him.
Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.