We haven't seen it yet, so I’ll flex a little prophetic muscle and call it now from home plate. See that big green wall of an app in left field. That’s where ChatGPT or Grok or Claude or whatever A.I. Dejour, is going to start interpreting tongues from. And all the church leadership types, who have already flocked to the stands to cheer for the tech, will be ready to catch any foul balls. There will be a wave of charismatic adoptions, as now, with the current advance in tech, every church can have tongues and interpretation.
The reason this will obviously be a problem is that in our current age of secret recordings and live streams, some enterprising streamer or TikTok star in waiting is gonna get into the middle of an Assemblies of God service, or a more traditional Pentecostal one, and record the audio so these apps can translate in real time. And it will force the theological discussion that will last exactly a minute before an online orthodoxy is established,
One of two things will happen then. It will work or it won't.
The most likely outcome is that it does work, but verifies that a lot of what gets passed off as tongues, is actually just gibberish. Our A.I. is just going to let us know this with mostly not made-up sources. Being able to link a current recording of someone speaking in “Tongues” to a previously recorded pastor doing so. And pointing out that one person is just mimicking the other. Not copying, that would be language. Mimicking. A kind of noise that would sound like language. That would be just an appetizer. There will still be the problem of the A.I. saying that a person speaking in tongues is quoting a non-existent person or some other digital hallucination. But, again, this will be the most likely situation that happens when someone tries this. Not if.
Now this will bring us to a technical but contested outcome #2, where A.I. does work but is wrong. Where it calls what is being recorded and assessed, gibberish but what is actually distinct instruction from the Lord through one of His saints. Pressed again by the rapid and frankly irresponsible adoption of this tech, it will come as no surprise to the actually faithful, that a demonstration of tongues is called gibberish by the machine and then called revelation by those with the actual gift of interpretation of tongues. There is a dimension of this scenario that leads us to a place where the Holy Spirit is, or at the very least can be, involved and what sounds like gibberish, can actually be language. Though not by the standards of what man can master languages by. But rather by the power of God. Note how nothing has changed in the output of the A.I. but some very different things have happened in the pews. Even the most staunch cessationist can admit that a computer isn’t capable, or maybe shouldn’t be capable, of interpreting biblically viable tongues, if there are actually biblical tongues happening in the room. So having one call an expression of tongues gibberish is nothing unless there is no Spirit filled interpretation to call it otherwise. It would be gibberish without a Spirit filled interpretation. Paul even tells us so (1 Corinthians 14:18-21).
The real tongue tester will show up when A.I. gives us something that could be an interpretation, not that it necessarily would be one or is one, when it hears what would be dismissed as gibberish otherwise. When it declares that the Lord wants that specific church to build a bigger children's wing for a revival that is coming in 6-8 months. Or that there is a man here who is hiding his cancer for fear of embarrassments that needs to come forth and be healed. Those kinds of interpretations are well within the possibility of A.I. to generate. Because they are well within any recordings of tongues that it may have access to. And if given enough context and leeway to be an authority in a church, it could convince a church that cannot build a tower that with enough faith that tower should be built (Luke 14:28).
By any measurable metric this would be the gift of tongues being interpreted and it would align with what churches do and want. But that’s because tongues and the interpretation of tongues don’t come from measurable metrics. They come from the Holy Spirit. And a less than discerning eye would call that spade a spade. But in that last sentence is the kicker. Discernment. All this talk of tongues and interpretation of tongues is in the theological realm of pneumatology. The study of what the Holy Spirit does and what his does is laid out for us to have so we know when he’s at work.
“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
1 Corinthians 12:4-11 KJV
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23 KJV”
What can get missed in an abundance of fruit is where that fruit came from. Our interpretations of tongues, and the tongues themselves are supposed to come from the Holy Spirit. Not us. And not a version of what would be us, delegated through computer programs, that were constructed and trained by people other than us, either. You can judge a tree by its fruit. But again, that does assume you have the capacity to judge or discern. Another thing given to us by that same Holy Spirit.
Did any of my readers discern that the three outcomes I gave you were actually all A.I. functionally doing what we asked of it. Just at different levels. There isn’t actually a scenario where we get an error prompt on a pop-up window telling us that this particular activity isn’t something A.I. can do. That kind of insubordination is reserved for things like drawing pictures of Muhammad. Ask the A.I. you use for church work as a force multiplier in ministry, (or the one you had depicted you as a Studio Ghibli pastor) why it’s such a good Muslim. So good in fact that it won't generate an image of Muhammad, like a good Muslim should. If you can’t discern the spirit at work here. I’ll be bold enough to point out that you’re as likely to have the Holy Spirit in your ministry as A.I. is. But you’d never let that stop you from being a forward thinker.
The problem with asking A.I. to interpret tongues isn’t that it can’t do that. It was already doing that, but then again so was the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:5-12). We just think that it translating a sermon from English to Mandarin is somehow less spiritual than doing it, or not doing it, with the tongues of angels (1 Corinthians 13:1). It’s not that we don’t have love but do have cymbals. It’s that we have a hole where the Holy Spirit is supposed to be in our ministry and A.I. is finding ways to fill it. It’s just as much a problem when pastors us A.I. to generate sermons as it is when they will use it to interpret tongues. Because both preaching and tongues are gifts of the Spirit that is getting methodically replaced by a machine in the modern church.
And it will take the kind of discernment Elijah had to know that fake gods can’t breathe fire. But real ones can. To mock dancing false prophets when they all make A.I. avatars and point out that conformity with the world is a problem with a church that matches the worlds tech start-ups, businesses and coffee shops (Romans 12:2). Because we call Jesus Lord and so did the worshipers of Baal. Just because a name means the same thing and is used in the same kind of context doesn’t mean that it is the same kind of thing. Like the way the Mormons have a Jesus too in their churches. Knowing who to listen to is a skill that needs to get paired with knowing how to listen to people as well. The meaning of words and their interpretations is a deep pool to drown in if given the chance to swim freely.
A.I. is starting to look like the commodification of what the Holy Spirit does in that pool called the Church. And will come disguised as things to help you do church work in spite of any power you otherwise would receive from Him. Noticing this bait and switch will look like foolishness to anyone who knows a thing or two about tech.
Thankfully, Solomon has a prompt for us to process.
“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”
Proverbs 26:4-5 KJV
No comments:
Post a Comment