Devotionals from a Soulless Machine

I’ll admit, I haven’t yet bought into the benefits of AI, especially not as it relates to my Christian faith. Faith seems like something too personal, too intimate, too real to be adequately addressed by a machine intelligence. I’d read about the church that hosted a service totally created by AI, including the sermon, and I was a little bit horrified, if I’m honest. So when I saw that Preston and Harriet Lewis had a book of devotionals created using ChatGPT, I thought, okay, I gotta see this. I was skeptical. REALLY skeptical.

The authors do a good job explaining their process and setting out their own faith, so it’s clear where they’re coming from. Their beliefs line up with mine, which seemed like a good starting point. The book is broken down into chapters, with each chapter covering a different topic and including several AI-generated devotionals on that topic. Each devotional includes a verse, a devotional, and a prayer. The authors also included a chapter with devotionals that they had drafted, to allow for comparison between AI-generated and human-created works.

As I read, I didn’t see anything that stood in stark opposition to my faith. Quite the contrary. The AI-created material seemed to line up well with what I hold as scriptural truth. It hit all the right notes. But it didn’t feel quite “right” as I pored over the devotionals. The prayers seemed, well, scripted, not like something I would pray from the heart, and really, not even like something I could use as a starting point. It made me think of the parable in Luke comparing the Pharisee’s prayer with the tax collector’s. “The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, crooked, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’” (Luke 18:11-13 NASB) The AI-written prayers felt like the Pharisee’s prayer – slick.

I also noticed that the AI-drafted works tended to start sounding alike over time. There were words used often enough to be noticeable. One such word was “unwavering.” I think I counted it 33 times before I quit keeping track. If it was something written by a person, edited by a person, that repetition would eventually catch the eye, and the writer would think, “Huh, perhaps I should vary my word choice a little!”

And when I got to the personal devotionals, it hit me: AI doesn’t include any personal stories. There are no tales about kids and grandkids, no gentle humor at one’s own expense, no relatable experiences that encourage and uplift the reader. That’s why I think calling it “AI-generated” is accurate. AI can manipulate the data it’s trained on and produce a document that fits specified parameters. But AI can’t take an idea and put emotion behind it.

This was a fascinating experiment. I’m glad Preston and Harriet Lewis put this out there, and I like the way they structured it. For this Bible-believing girl, though, AI’s affirmation of my faith will never take the place of sharing the Word with a body of like-minded believers. We’re created for community, and AI can’t give us that.

Five stars for an engaging intellectual exercise and because I loved the personally written devotional chapter!