Sometimes, listening to the Bible allows me to hear what I might have missed if I was just reading the text, and that point was evident one night a week or so ago.
I was awake when I should have been asleep, and so I slipped one AirPod in and hit play on my “Bible in a year” reading plan. The narrator started in Joshua 7, and maybe I would have caught it if I had been reading it, but because I was listening to it, I couldn’t miss it:
Six times in the first five verses, I heard the reader say “Ai.”
I knew he was saying the name of an Old Testament city, but all I heard was AI, and in the stillness of the really early “why am I even awake” hours, God started revealing the hidden danger of Artificial Intelligence.
Now, before I continue, and you label me a whack job who is afraid of any new technology, let me tell you that I’m all about embracing and using technology to work smarter, not harder. I’m also 100% okay with using it to spread the gospel. I mean, we live in an age when it is actually possible to tell practically everyone about the good news of Jesus at the same time through the devices we have in our pockets! That, friend, is incredible!
But here’s the danger of AI, and it jumped right off the page when I went back to the story the next morning: in our pride, we can overestimate our ability while underestimating our need.
The result? We let down our guard.
Joshua had just led God’s people against the mighty city of Jericho, and it only took a few steps away from that victory for Joshua to forget how little he had to do with it.
If that city had fallen, then this town won’t be a problem.
After returning to Joshua they reported to him, “Don’t send all the people, but send about two thousand or three thousand men to attack Ai. Since the people of Ai are so few, don’t wear out all our people there.”(Joshua 7:3 CSB, emphasis mine)
The strategy was based on the assumed danger, the threat level was based on the apparent strength, and the enemy’s strength was based on the actual size.
If it’s small, it can’t hurt me. It sounds good to a person infatuated with his size and strength, but it doesn’t stand true when that big man takes a small bite of a poisonous plant.
Or when a small snake uses two small holes to inject deadly poison.
But isn’t that just like the enemy? If he always manifested himself in all his power, we’d always have our guards up. But he doesn’t do that.
He crawls. Slithers. Whispers. And we do just what Joshua did. We don’t ask the same God who took down Jericho’s wall to go before us and defeat Ai’s men.
AI isn’t a bad thing, but it’s only as good as the input given to it by its programmers, right? If we ask ChatGPT before we search out the scriptures or approach the Father in prayer, then we’ve bypassed the Lord in the same way that the Israelites did when they faced the first Ai.
More than likely, we’ll experience the same result.
See, we think the enemy’s greatest deception is tricking us into believing a lie, but so often it’s just convincing to not believe the truth.
satan's greatest deception wasn't convincing us that we could live without God, but rather, that we would ever want to. Click To TweetIn fact, in the garden, satan’s greatest act of deception wasn’t convincing Adam and Eve (and us) that they could live without God, but that they would even want to. He convinced them that knowing good and evil was the same as understanding good and evil, and even duped them into thinking that they could overcome evil with good without God.
“Don’t send everyone…”
“Don’t wear all the people out…”
“It’s just a little fight…”
“It can’t be that bad…”
The enemy will do whatever it takes to convince us that we can handle whatever we face on our own, in our strength, and in our wisdom.
“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability…”
What used to be part of the introduction to every episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (Google it, Gen Z) is now the temptation we face with a broken culture, with broken morals, with broken beliefs. The breaks may not seem so big (like Ai didn’t seem big in comparison to Jericho), but let’s not make the same mistake the Israelites did. It’s time to stop overestimating our abilities while underestimating our weaknesses. It’s time to return to the truth of John 15:5, and live in utter dependance on Jesus.
Truly, apart from Him, we can do nothing. Even the things that seem small. After all, AI may look innocent, but there is danger within it, and we’d be wise to proceed with caution as we approach it.
I’m sure that given the chance, Joshua would interact with Ai differently, too.
