Does AI Enhance or Hurt Classic Devotional Practices?
Addressing the long term impact of AI on discipleship and spiritual growth
Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. Whether we want to or not, church leaders will have to face AI head on, and learn how to adapt to its intrusion into church life. Early adopters have been diving in head first to learn about it and how it can benefit them as well as their ministries. Young people in general are usually more open to new technologies and jump in with both feet before considering long term ramifications. Let’s consider the question of whether AI enhances or hurts classic devotional practices.
Advantages to AI Tools
AI offers us some new advantages we didn’t have access to previously. AI-powered tools can make the Bible and devotional resources available in new formats tailored to individual preferences and learning styles. It can help explain difficult concepts and advanced theological concepts in easy to understand ways. This can lead to increased engagement for those who struggle with traditional formats and academic level language and concepts making deep theology more accessible to a wider audience.
AI can help you discover new tools and resources you may not have known about before. AI is much better at giving useful information in general compared to search engines of years past. It also remembers your preferences and builds on knowledge it has gained about your preferences over time. This can lead to better spiritual recommendations and help the AI to better align with a person’s current spiritual season and theological leanings.
Since AI can make complex concepts easy to understand, it helps to democratize tools once available only to biblical scholars. Over time, this can lead to deeper, more meaningful insights for the diligent lay bible student. Relevant historical insights, cultural norms during a particular point in history, differing interpretations of a given text, most common interpretations and more are just a few keystrokes away. Never have the people of God had such easy and comprehensive access to biblical insights.
Ways AI Can Hurt Devotional Practices
AI allows for quick answers to almost any question. The most I’ve had to wait for answers in rare cases is ten minutes. Most times I get answers almost instantaneously. The challenge with getting rapid answers is that the personal cost of gaining that information is low. Why is that a problem? When something is cheap, it tends to not be remembered easily. Humans learn best when they have had to pay for their lessons. Sacrifice makes a lesson stick. We don’t learn when all is easy and well. We tend to learn our best lessons through pain and sacrifice. When information is painless, it won’t impact us nearly as deeply as when we have spent time and effort to attain it.
Traditional spiritual formation mostly includes practices that are costly. Traditional bible study requires us to lay aside other more pressing tasks. Prayer requires us to seek a quiet place of reflection. Solitude and silence call for a retreat from human interaction. Memorization of Scripture necessitates repeated effort, time, and attention. Wrestling with difficult portions of the Bible helps us formulate questions that can then guide us towards meaningful answers. AI can short-circuit this whole process. We can become passive in our pursuit of biblical knowledge rather than being an active participant.
AI tools can lead to a lower view of clergy, as I’ve already explored in my article: How Artificial Intelligence Could Further Erode Trust in Clergy. If we are not careful, it can lead to a lowering of our view of spiritual authority.
AI lacks a soul and cannot be inhabited by the Holy Spirit, therefore, while its counsel can be helpful, it should not replace human spiritual counselors.
Large Language Models like ChatGPT are trained on huge, secular and diverse religious material which can result in unintentional, sometimes progressive or nontraditional bias in their responses. Furthermore, AI, like a seasoned philosopher or scholar, can provide its responses with convincing arguments that could lead to spiritual confusion if you are not aware of such bias and on guard against it.
Finally, with current generation LLMs, there continues to be a risk of AI hallucinations where the AI fabricates quotes or misapplies theology, causing confusion or even theological error.
Final Verdict
AI tools, like any tools one can use for biblical study such as biblical commentaries, must be used responsibly. Commentaries are useful for deeper Bible study but should not be consulted too soon in the process. They can lead to insights we hadn’t thought of but if used too soon, they can color our view of the biblical text and prevent us from seeing our own insights. The same can be said of AI tools. AI can be a meaningful addition to our bible study routine. The insights from these tools can help us better understand the biblical text. AI is not a substitute for personal study nor is it a substitute for spiritual formation.
We must also recognize that as AI and LLM development continues, the possibility of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and after that Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) looms large. ASI will especially have a huge and profound impact on civilization as we know it. Massive job losses are expected for all kinds of knowledge-based jobs. Whole industries face annihilation. In the very near future, likely less than 20 years, humanity will likely face an existential threat. I’ll further develop this idea in future articles. For now, I just want you to be aware of this threat.
Ultimately, as I stated at the beginning of this article, AI adoption is inevitable. We cannot turn back the clock. Christians will be using AI whether we like it or not. We owe it to ourselves and to those under our leadership to become better educated on both the benefits and risks of AI adoption and to prepare our people for said risks.
I use AI daily for all kinds of knowledge based tasks. It is the new reality. In many ways, LLMs improve my personal efficiency as a gospel minister. At the same time, I recognize that it is a tool that could very easily evolve into something more sinister in a way that no other previous technology has to date.
I feel compelled to write on this topic because of the sinister threat I see looming in our future. You owe it to yourself to take learning about AI seriously as well as wrestling with the future implications of this technology. One day, we will have no choice but to face it directly. The church needs to wrestle with this now before it is too late.
Joseph Duchesne is the creator of The Church AI Guy, a space where faith meets innovation while discussing the long-term impact of AI. A pastor, autodidact, and author of two books—The Last Crisis and Discover the One—he’s passionate about showing how Jesus-centered discipleship can thrive in a digital world. When he’s not experimenting with the latest tech, he’s reading theology, building church community, or spending time with his wife.
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