Using AI to Challenge Your Assumptions

Are you using AI primarily to get quick answers? That's amateur hour. Instead, use AI to challenge you and grow you!

I see it all the time. People use AI to get quick answers. I get it. I often do the same thing. If that is ALL you are using AI for however, you are barely getting any value out of it. In fact, it is most likely doing you harm.

Face it. You are biased. All human beings have bias. The sooner you can admit to bias, the better off you are going to be as a human being and as a Christian.

God is interested in helping you see the truth. There was only one human being who ever existed who had and was perfect truth, Jesus Christ. You and I don’t have all the truth nor understand all truth. That’s one of the big reasons why the Bible and regular Bible study and reading is so important.

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.” (John 3:19-21)

Most humans don’t want truth. They aren’t interested in being corrected. They are happy just the way they are. Worldviews like belief in the Theory of Evolution have come to exist in part because humans don’t like the idea of God existing because if he does exist, it means they have to be accountable to him.

The book of Proverbs often talks about the different between a fool and a wise person.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But he who heeds counsel is wise.
(Proverbs 12:15)

A fool isn’t interested in seeing a different perspective. They are the proverbial know it alls. You can’t teach them because they already know it all.

What does this have to do with AI? Plenty.

Echo Chamber or Slap in the Head?

You can use AI to confirm your biases or you can use it to cut right across them. One will leave you stunted and small minded. The other will broaden your horizons and stretch your imagination. Which one you get all comes down to the way you approach a Large Language Model (LLM) and interact with it.

Instead of just asking it a direct question, start asking it to give you a different perspective. Sam Illingworth from Slow AI is really good at this.

I asked Claude to compare the Slow AI approach to Christianity and compare it to ChurchAIGuy’s content and approach and produce a guide for Christians based on this. Here is just one output from this 18 page document that is pure gold:

The Slow AI framework wasn’t built for Christians specifically. But it maps onto Christian intellectual life with surprising precision. Here’s why.

Scripture itself is a confrontational text. The prophets didn’t confirm Israel’s assumptions; they shattered them. Jesus didn’t give the Pharisees the answers they were looking for; He reframed their questions entirely. When the rich young ruler asked ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’, Jesus didn’t validate his framework. He exposed the thing the man didn’t want to examine.

Christians who use AI to study the Bible face a unique version of the sycophancy problem. Our theological traditions give us pre-loaded frameworks. We approach texts with doctrinal commitments already in place. An AI that confirms those commitments feels like validation. But validation and truth are not the same thing. Sometimes the most faithful thing an AI can do is refuse to agree with you.

There’s another layer. Christians in particular have a tendency to treat Bible study as information retrieval: What does this passage mean? What’s the context? What’s the Greek word? These are fine questions. But they can become a way of keeping Scripture at arm’s length. You gather data about the text without ever letting the text gather data about you.

Slow AI techniques push the interaction in the other direction. They ask: What does this passage reveal about my assumptions? What am I avoiding? What would change in my life if I took this seriously?

I love this quote. Validation and truth are indeed not the same thing.

Most of us want validation but what we need most is truth. The Bible is clear, you and I have a truth problem. Our hearts have been corrupted by sin. Our bias against God and his laws blinds us to what is just, right, and true.

Long before AI came around, human beings have been guilty of surface answers, taking the easy way out. What LLMs have done is magnify the problem that always existed.

Run towards the light!

You have a choice. You can choose to live a deceived life and do whatever you want however you want, the Apostle Paul called that living for the flesh, or you can choose the way of the Spirit

For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)

I urge you to run to the light. To choose to engage with truth instead of just living in your fantasy of self-deception. AI is your servant. It can help in your pursuit of truth or it can help you live in self-deception. The choice is yours.

Just be careful friend, the cumulative of the choices you make could be the difference between eternal life and death.

Joseph Duchesne writes to help Christians think biblically about Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of a couple of books, The Last Crisis and Discover the One, both available on Amazon.