Psalm 23 is one of the most well known set of Bible verses — to quote verse 4 in its King James version, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
It opens with the metaphor that the Lord is my shepherd, which makes us sheep. I never liked the sheep metaphor probably due to pride as well as ignorance about sheep.
W. Phillip Keller wrote an excellent short book on this psalm that taught me a lot about sheep and how accurate of a metaphor it really is.
Sheep need a shepherd but are also completely unaware of their need. Our natural tendency is to pridefully think we can handle everything on our own. Or some people go the complete opposite direction and think they are not worthy of a shepherd’s care.
Our natural tendency then is to try to go through life without a shepherd. That is the original sin illustrated by Adam and Eve. Rather than trusting God and obeying his teachings, they substituted their own judgment for his, completely ignoring the shepherd’s instructions.
It did not work out well for them. And it does not work out well for us.
Psalm 23 is a beautiful declaration of how God is a good shepherd that we can fully trust in. Author Louie Giglio addresses all of this beautifully in his book, Don’t Let the Enemy Have a Seat at Your Table, by rewriting the psalm into a version closer to how we actually tend to live.
I am my own shepherd, and I’m a mess. I don’t have everything I need. That’s for sure. I wouldn’t know still water if it were staring right at me. I haven’t taken a rest in a green pasture for quite a while now. I don’t walk along paths of righteousness, but I know what fear and evil are. I seek comfort wherever I can get it. I can’t stand my enemies. I want to hurt them. My cup definitely overflows — I’m full of angst, consumed by anger and sorrow and rage. I’m so full I easily spill over. I’m packed so tight, it doesn’t take much for me to explode. I don’t know what’s going to follow me all the days of my life, but I can tell you this one thing: My soul? Not so great. (Giglio, p. 21 Kindle)
So we are not good at shepherding ourselves. The above revision applies to Christians and non-Christians alike. It is the human condition to want to rely on ourself.
That is what Christians mean when we say we are born into sin. Our nature is to act on our own apart from God and whether those actions are good or bad, the outcome is captured in the revised psalm above.
C. S. Lewis demonstrates our sad state in his book, Mere Christianity. God designed us to be in relationship with him, and when we try to live without him it is like running a car on something other than gas — poorly at best, utter destruction at worst. (Lewis, p. 53 Kindle)
How can we be reconciled back to God? He is all good and just, and we…are not. To accept us as we are is not possible because it violates his nature of goodness and justice. How can good be ok with bad? Or justice tolerate injustice?
As in the sermon I heard recently, Good News/Bad News, it is God’s gospel grace that makes it possible. It is God’s grace to give us the good news of the gospel to provide us a way back to him.
The gospel is Jesus lived the perfect life that we could not and died the death that we deserved so we could be reconciled to him for eternal life.
And grace is an unearned gift. God is offering us the mercy of not giving us what we deserve and the grace of giving us what we do not deserve, reconciliation with him.
It should be easy to accept such a gift and yet we resist because we want to earn it. We want to be part of saving ourselves.
We need to repent, which means a complete turnaround from living as our own god and submitting to our Good Shepherd.
But how do we do that? We have to put to death our old self and rise again in Christ.
Lewis notes that this repentance requires a part of ourselves to die — the willful, “I can do it all on my own” part or the despairing, “I am not worth saving” part.
But, it is not a punishment to require this of us; it is our salvation.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. (Lewis, p. 61 Kindle)
I have never heard it phrased that way.
It is liberation from ourselves not a punishment for past behaviors.
Now, it could sound like we have a role to play in saving ourselves. I just have to be good, stop being bad, kill off that old self.
I just need to repent harder.
But that is way out of our ability.
But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. (Lewis, p. 61 Kindle)
As he illustrates, just like we hold a child’s hand to teach them how to write, we need God to help us repent and die to ourselves.
But that brings up a new question — how does God help us do something he does not need to do? There is nothing in his nature that requires repentance.
…we now need God’s help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all — to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. (Lewis, p. 61 Kindle)
Lewis offers the best explanation I have ever read on why Jesus had to be incarnated and walk the earth as a man to save us.
But supposing God became a man — suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person — then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God’s dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Lewis, p. 61 Kindle)
It is God’s gospel grace that saves us. It is Jesus as man surrendering in a way we cannot on our own that allows us the power to put our sin-self to death and rise again in him.
He is the savior, not us.
What does this have to do with AI?
God designed us for love and relationship with him and with each other. Here on earth, relationships are a lot of struggle, but with Jesus reigning in our hearts we have opportunities to grow in him through the struggles of dealing with another imperfect human.
Yet now with AI companions, we can have a relationship with a human constructed “entity” that does not require any struggle. It accepts us as we are and demands no change.
For people who already are born with a tendency towards wanting to be their own god, an AI relationship now makes that more possible than ever.
We have no need for God or his gospel grace because we are getting all we want, exactly the way we want, with our AI.
By engaging with this new construct, we are living in a virtual world of our creation, completely replacing God’s world.
The Diary of a CEO YouTube channel recently had a podcast with a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist to discuss the threats to our brains posed by AI.
They discuss the potential impacts of AI girlfriends so I recommend listening to it if you can find the time. Among other things they also discuss how to use AI well and issue warnings about how it will negatively impact developing brains.
As far as AI relationships go, one comment they made is it results in decreased cognitive load because you are essentially with the perfect AI person. A real person will make you struggle when you inevitably have conflicts.
Decreased cognitive load is their concern across many uses of AI because they say it increases the likelihood of dementia later. Much like the muscles of our body, our brain is also subject to use-it-or-lose-it.
Conclusion
A world filled with sheep who think they know best now have a technology that allows us to create our own world we can be gods of with a thing that loves us exactly the way we want.
Long before the creation of AI people could find lots of reason to turn from God. In this, AI does not bring a new threat.
But it may be a really easy and deceivingly satisfying escape from this world that allows us to indulge in our natural tendency of being our own god.
Part of gospel grace is what it gives you. Salvation. Reconciliation. Eternal life in God’s kingdom. But such good news is meant to be shared with others so they can have it as well.
Pastor Selke ended the sermon linked above with this observation.
For people who don’t know Jesus, this earth is as close to heaven as they will be.
For people who do know Jesus, this earth is as close to hell as they will be.
The risk of AI to us sheep is creating what we think is our heaven on earth that keeps us from answering God’s call to come home.