Will Manidis:

From Genesis, man enters not a paradise without labor but a world of intentional creation. The LORD God places man in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15) establishing labor not as punishment but as sacred vocation. This original calling invites us to co-create the Kingdom, tending and developing the world with intention and care. Our fundamental purpose is not consumption but participation in the ongoing work of creation.

The serpent’s temptation represents the first shortcut in human history. “Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5) was not an invitation to deeper engagement with creation, but a way to get out of the work required to tend to it. The consequence wasn’t the introduction of work itself, but its corruption into burdensome toil: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19). Humanity’s first sin was, in part, choosing the easy shortcut over the meaningful process – preferring effortless gain to the demanding but fulfilling work of tending the garden.

This first temptation remains alive today. Our post-enlightenment view that our world is purely material—that our lives are the outcome of physical processes devoid of feeling, craft, or meaning—is to discount the unique, historical, and stubbornly detailed nature of reality. This view misses what is evident: that the world we inhabit bears the marks of exacting, purposeful craftsmanship on both human and cosmic scales. Viewing the world as raw material is a cheap shortcut around the demanding, hermeneutic work of understanding the past and engaging deeply with the present.

The outputs of these shortcuts are Slop, the dominant cultural output of the twenty-first century. Slop emerges when we eliminate not just toil (the burdensome aspects of work) but labor itself (the meaningful human engagement with creation). Slop is production without history. Slop is detached from genuine human contribution. Slop born of effortless, replicable processes.

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Language models provide the means for industrialization of Slop. In their highest calling, these tools can eliminate genuine toil: tending to burdensome emails, litigating with your co-op board, or drafting a parking ticket appeal. But when we ask a model to write a poem, design a church, or compose a eulogy, we get something fundamentally different from human creation. The model has never lost a loved one, never stood in a holy space, never lived. We can and should automate toil, but we must preserve craft.