ChatGPT has become so ubiquitous it immediately strikes one as pointless and unnecessary to get into the messy, and even hypocritical, business of criticizing it. Also, several others have written so well and beautifully on the matter already, you could perhaps take a look at this and this afterwards in light of the matter before us.
There’s this funny Pinterest post in which someone is being offered a brain on a plate and he rejects it: “No, thank you. I use AI.”
I use Claude, more than I do the other LLMs(large language models), because I have felt it has far lesser fluff than does ChatGPT for instance. There is this, by all appearances, so remarkable an insight Claude led me to during a conversation in which I had put in that Bible passage about sparrows:
That ostensible remarkability notwithstanding, this isn’t as neat as it seems, for while we use AI, there’s something that we are blinded to. The more accurate term is in fact LLM (large language model) and not AI. While I use Claude, or some other LLM, I am making a tradeoff that I might very likely be unconscious about and unaware of on the whole. It is playing a game of chess in which you are offered a pawn, but your queen is subsequently taken.
There’s a sanctity about that time and those moments when we sit with the Scriptures to read and ponder what the Word of God says to us. There are indeed several and so many resources we could turn to in this day and age, though helpful as they all may be, I feel like it’s their sheer numerosity which really does end up paralysing us. Whenever we feel like there’s so much to do and so much to refer to and pore over, we begin to resent the work that we have to do.
In pretty certain terms and very clear passages, the Bible portrays the wrestling, patience, waiting, and trust that involves relying and hoping in God. His answer doesn’t always come so soon as we ask for it. Saul waited for Samuel until he felt obliged to offer the sacrifice himself and in that manner consequently erred and sabotaged the Kingdom; to Habakkuk the Lord’s instruction is: “If it seems slow, wait for it…” AI on the other hand, conveniently gives us all the explanations at that exact moment when we ask for them. We don’t have to wait, nor do we have to wonder or wrestle with the uncertainties of whether or not a particular bit of text is contradictory. In Church during sermons, some people even have a ChatGPT tab open, and they follow its commentary alongside the preacher’s. During a Bible study session my heart sank for a moment when a colleague consulted ChatGPT about a text that was really just straightforward. Would it not have been better and more edifying if we had wrestled with the text ourselves?
Usually, anything that makes the job so easy doesn’t help lay hold of our attention well enough; we never truly and fully get invested in the task at hand. Though we may often pine for, and though we do appreciate and are awed at the very elaborate responses and clarifications that we get from AI, we really never treasure them because of how easily they come to us; we might wait expectantly those few seconds before the response comes, but once it does we easily skim over it, turn to the next thing, or itch to put in another prompt for another response. I have found that I never sit long enough with what it gives back to me, because in actuality ,what interested me were those moments of cogitation and the seeming magic with which a response got generated and laid out before me. If one does that often and long enough with chatbots, he surely picks up that habit of impatience and expectation of novelties. In the end, he might realize that he cannot sit with the Bible for more than a minute anymore. After all, if there happens to be a machine that can clarify all this in a second, why fret myself trying to figure it out on my own?
But the Bible is meant to transform us by renewing our minds, and transformation and renewal require patience and much pondering. You have to return to the matter in your mind several times, and you need to pray. Does anyone ever pray while they are using ChatGPT: “Lord as I feed this in, I pray that the response will be accurate and that it will glorify your name.” The sham and naivety and ridiculousness of doing that would be so apparent. LLMs and Chatbots are fashioned by men whose primary purpose has very little to do with allowing us to gaze long enough at the truth and unadulterated Word of God. AI may serve a peripheral role in researching a theme or a particular Scripture, but it quickly becomes a very dangerous companion who sabotages the work we set out to do. ChatGPT is never a faithful and true servant but a sycophantic and pernicious one. It’s the Trojan horse you let into your fort to your own dismay.
There are good books and resources I would recommend one to use for and during their devotion instead of ChatGPT. First, a hardcopy Bible beats You Version on our phones. Also, it’s a good idea to have several different versions of the Bible if that’s possible. I know it often isn’t. For a commentary I have used and loved, the Matthew Henry Commentary. It can be accessed on the Bible Gateway page. A good commentary such as Matthew Henry’s becomes a companion to treasure because it really does slow one down. There must be some other more modern and easily accessible commentaries but I haven’t used any that I would gladly or confidently recommend. For devotional material, I would recommend Thomas A’ Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, a book that is to be read slowly and savored. Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening is also very good. It has entries for every morning and evening of every day of the year. But these two books are meant just for help and guidance, we ourselves ought to take time each day to reflect on a portion of Scripture, or a meaning of a verse, without taking recourse to or falling prey to the lure of an LLM.
I pray that with open and unveiled faces, we all will continue to behold the glory of God as in a glass, even as we are transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. Amen.
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You can read more essays by Henry Madaga on his Substack Words, Wound and Wonder, and on his personal blog, Essais.
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