Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Why The Robot Can't Help You Pray

As if on cue when I ventured onto the general feed of my Facebook account, I was struck by something a Bible college could never dream of preparing an alumnus for, even in the best of hindsight. 

A group that I follow, because  I write about this kind of thing, that focuses on A.I. and church leadership, posted a quirky "Life hack" that was likely little more than a joke about having A.I.'s praying for you. The screenshot of the action featured ChatGPT, post "Thank you" from the user, mentioning that it was "Praying that the message resonates deeply with your congregation". The first commenter took this as the life hack where pastors who subscribe to the idea of GPTs being able to pray at all, could employ round-the-clock A.I. assistants to pray for them. A commenter further down in the comments section remarked that her "Girl ChatGPT" prays for her as well. And that she loves it.

Now this is not going to be a whip-crack against the idea of such a group in general. One that wants to discuss and collaborate around the idea of using A.I. in church. Interdenominational work groups like this are generally a good thing. I follow this one and several others, to keep a finger on the pulse, of what people who are doing the things that make up church these days are doing. Especially how it relates to technology use and all the related issues surrounding it. Sadly there are no groups for theologians to discuss this kind of stuff, so I'm posting this here. Not there. Because we all know I would get banned. And we all know why.

Back to the issue of A.I.'s praying and/or using A.I.'s to pray. Can it pray? No. And should you use it to pray? A tragically worse no!

What's happening here is the content of what a prayer can be is being confused with what a prayer is. Yes, prayer is words, for the most part, but those words aren't the most likely strings of corresponding words strung together by probability, which is what an LLM does. They are utterances in our language which can be represented by words of things we say to God. These utterances are not just the mechanical interpretations of a language made vocal. But instead are the emotions, convictions, and declarations of the soul of a person. This is why you can pray in tongues and why a translation of that prayer is only possible through the supernatural gifting of the Holy Spirit (1Cor 12:10). And why that same Spirit intercedes for us when those same convictions and emotions bear so heavily on us that even words fail to describe what is needed, and what we want to say to God (Rom 8:26). Because the words are not the essential part of prayer. The reconciliation of Christ allows for the relationship of the person to be the essential part of prayer. 

Prayer isn't just words in a particular order, though it is those. Prayer is words from a particular speaker to a particular recipient. The mechanical functions of language aren't needed, because they can be dismissed when they aren't sufficient. But the relationship of the person (as a Christian or someone headed that way) and their God through the reconciliatory resurrection of Christ. A hammer has no such relationship to God. Neither does a calculator or an LLM. There is no technology so novel and prone to goldy work and use by Christians that it comes with us into his presence when we die or will survive into the new heaven and new earth (2Pet 3:10). 

There is also no tech so powerful as to wrestle from or interpose onto the things pertaining to God. No amount of money given to Caesar, will take it away from the all-powerful command of God. No amount of authority vested into Caesar, gives him authority over the souls of God's image born in all mankind. The idea of having a machine do the praying is the epitome of rendering the things of God to ungodly things. And it shows a profound lack of understanding of what prayer is and what prayer does.

Because any other time prayer and objects of artificial origin and knowledge were combined, we called it idolatry.

That we season these idols as if they were fit for church potlucks makes them no less a poisonous food. A pastor entering into a legitimately challenging time of spiritual warfare, thinking he's bathed in the prayer of a thousand prayer warriors, could find himself alone, save the grace and presence of the Holy Ghost and Christ, because those prayer warriors are chatbots not actually praying for him. Jesus even said that prayer was the key to certain spiritual victories. But if these digital imposters are actually just stringing words together and not praying, where does that leave us? Or that pastor?  Did we unironically ensure that statistically more prayers would go unanswered by allowing these chatbots to think that they pray in the first place? 

Or perhaps better yet, maybe we're thinking of these powerful ministry tools too lightly.

Let's take the LLM to a Pentecostal service and see how much it can translate. If what we hear them doing is prayer by the Bible's yardstick Let's take this one step further. If it can pray why can it not also interpret. Surely if a machine can pray it can also prophesy, heal the sick, and discern the work of evil spirits. That ick you feel right now is the sore throat of conviction. We all know why machines can't pray but addressing that why means addressing other parts of our flawed theology of tech in the church. We love using new tech immediately because it can give us the results we desire, immediately. A new shiny bit of tech comes along and promises us it can be a hand like no other hand the church has ever had. And only at the expense of the sense of smell. This is what idols do. They make promises and cost us something to deliver. That something is, at this point, cheapening the very nature of how we speak with our God. Saying that a data center and warehouse of computers and wires can somehow intercede from us in ways we used to reserve for the Holy Ghost, is idolatry. Which is the point of most tech being used in church when you poke that particular beast enough to get it to groan. 

The LLM being used to pray steals the same spot from the Holy Ghost that the smoke machine and lights do when we praise. We don't want to remove those because they are actually doing a great job of making us feel good during Sunday praise and worship. Which isn't the same as feeling good because Sunday's praise and worship were convicting and good. It's just that the smoke machine and lights have switches, we can turn them on when we need them. There's no faith involved in why they are there, just budget lines and receipts for purchase. No dependence on them that can't be managed. 

Leaving those kinds of things behind means finding out if our churches are a place for the Holy Ghost or just a house where dopamine and desire are well managed for the crowd. I have no doubt that He'll still show up. The same way I have faith He's still groaning over the LLM's.





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