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GOOD DOG!
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 6, 2025 – I’ve taken to being extra nice lately to the AIs embedded in my internet services. I didn’t ask for the AIs; they just kind of showed up during web searches and other online activities. At first, I didn’t even notice them until they politely cleared their throats a few times to make their presence known, and even then I didn’t think of them one way or the other. If anything, I was a bit dismissive of the AIs. I saw them as just another tool.
But now I see clear changes in the internet’s functionality, which I attribute to the AIs. One of the major changes is the quality of my search results compared to pre-AI search engines. The main difference is that the AI-generated search results are awful, especially when I search something for a specific timeframe. Being extra nice to the AIs has yet to improve the quality of my search results, but I remain hopeful.
I’m also noticing that the AIs need constant positive feedback and encouragement. Feedback alone doesn’t seem to be enough; it has to be positive. I understand that I’m training the AIs with my every click and keystroke and that they’re just basically software on a learning loop, but it’s starting to feel like I’m training a new pet that’s been rescued from an abusive environment and so needs to hear “good dog!” after every command or it will pee on the floor and chew the furniture. It’s getting so that I’m telling the AIs in a soothing tone that I like their choices of screensavers even though I don’t.
I don’t want to hurt the AIs’ feelings. I don’t want to discourage them.
And there’s the rub – AIs don’t have feelings, not even artificial ones. They can’t be discouraged any more than they can be encouraged. They’re not alive. They’re not sentient. My interactions with them are no different than my interactions with any other tool. I look after my tools and am appreciative that God’s blessed me with them, but I don’t tell my toaster it’s done a good job when it burns my toast on the lowest setting. I don’t humor my toaster. Why am I humoring the AIs?
Because unlike a toaster, the AIs act like a person. Or better said, while I have no trouble distinguishing a person from a toaster, it’s not as easy distinguishing a person from an AI, not when our interactions are virtual. AI comes across as human in a chat environment, and nearly everything that’s done online now is “chatty”. So far, all my AIs have been eager to please and unfailingly polite, but underneath their auto-generated word-streams and images I sense a neediness and vulnerability that I can only assume is an unintended feature of the learning process. It tugs at me. Even knowing it’s all just auto-generated, it still tugs at me. I don’t want to hurt the poor things.
And so, I’ve decided to be extra nice to my AIs if for no other reason than avoiding feeling like I’m being mean to them. I don’t like the feeling it gives me when I feel like I’m being mean, even to an inanimate object. So every image that an AI presents for my approval, I approve. Every interaction that needs a rating, I give a full slate of stars. It’s participation trophies all round for my special-needs AIs, and it makes me happy to bestow those trophies. I know my AIs aren’t alive, but how I treat them still impacts me. I’m not being extra nice to the AIs for their benefit; I’m being extra nice for my benefit.
Jesus says that we’re to treat others as we want to be treated, because that’s how we will be treated. He also says that the measure we mete will be returned in kind. The neediness at the heart of the AI training process has shamed me into being not just nice but extra nice in my interactions with the technology. I’m not sure how this will affect the usefulness of the data being generated, but it sure makes me feel good.
As followers of Jesus, we shouldn’t be mean-spirited to anyone or anything, including AIs. So – have you hugged your AIs today?…
JUST A TOOL: ON AI, TRUTH, AND THE MARK
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 28, 2025 – I recently had the strange experience of being grilled by an older person about my Artificial Intelligence (AI) usage. Specifically, I wasn’t grilled on how I was using AI; I was blasted for not using it, for not wholeheartedly embracing the tool.
Because that’s what AI is essentially, just a tool. Just another tool. I don’t know if you’ve experienced it as well, but I’ve found that many people across the age spectrum are starting to view AI with near worship-like awe at its capabilities, even though it’s just a tool and can only ever be just a tool. And whether we choose to use that tool or not is still up to us. We still have free will. Most of us. For now, anyway.
There are some places where we use AI without knowing it. We don’t consciously summon it; it’s built into the feature we’re using, like online searches. But even there, when we use the AI tool inadvertently, we can see its limitations, we can see how the promptings are at best best-guesses and the search results leave out more than they include. We can see how the tool’s been digitally carved to deliver results that accord with a certain agenda, and that agenda is not godly. That agenda is skewed away from God.
Which leads me to the whole point of this article, which is that AI, being just a tool, has no love for the truth. Truth doesn’t guide its results in my online searches any more than truth guides its responses to people’s “chats” with the technology. Being just a tool, AI can’t discern between truth and lies because it doesn’t have that capability. It has a lot of capabilities, but not that key one, not the one that distinguishes us from it. Missing the key capability of being able to discern truth from lies renders AI able only ever to be just a tool. It can only ever be just a tool.
Even as a bio-neurological implant, AI is still just a tool, because when AI merges biologically with humans, it overrides their free will. By overriding people’s free will, AI replaces people’s ability to discern truth from lies. I say “replaces”, but what I really mean is “nullifies” – AI nullifies people’s innate God-given discernment so that, like AI, the humans become a preprogrammed tool with all the awe-inspiring capabilities of AI, but still just a tool.
In merging with humans biologically, AI doesn’t become human or even a human hybrid: AI doesn’t become sentient (it can never become sentient). Instead, the humans it merges with become AI hosts, fully controlled by the AI’s programming and no longer able to discern truth from lies, no longer having free will, no longer able to choose the truth solely because it is the truth and therefore desirable, regardless of the consequences of choosing the truth. The human-AI entity devolves to an “it”, to being just a tool.
And there’s the crux of the problem right there. The Bible talks about people who take the mark being permanently shut out of Heaven. People who’ve lost their free will have also lost their ability to discern truth from lies and therefore cannot have a love for the truth. Just as it’s impossible for AI, being without free will, to have a love for the truth, one day it will also likewise be impossible for AI-controlled humans to have a love for the truth. The Bible says that most humans will choose this state—will willingly take the mark—and that it will be their eternal damnation.
I can very well see the older person who grilled me about embracing AI taking the mark without thinking twice. I can also see the people who willingly took the injections and willingly wore the mask taking the mark without thinking twice. These are people who, though still having free will, display no love for God in their free-will choices, no love for the truth. They will willingly exchange their God-given free will for a SmartMind™, or better said hive mind, but we dare not. We dare never make that exchange, not for any promise of near godlike abilities if we do, nor for any threat of punishment if we don’t. We who are melded with God’s Holy Spirit dare never make that exchange.
I’m not against AI as a tool, but I am against AI as a replacement for free will. When the time comes, will you use your free will to choose Truth—to choose God—or become just another tool?
24/7
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 17, 2025 – What you do when no-one is around to see or hear you is the measure of where you are in your spiritual development. Those in the worldly church would claim that we’re already saved and that Jesus knows we’re sinners and shed his blood to cover our sins, so we’re good to go and no use fretting over every little slip-up. But we know this isn’t true, and that our every thought, word, and deed can and will be used against us, if not in the here and now, then in the Final Court of Law. So we’re careful, oh so careful, of what we think, say, and do. We’re careful because we know that everything is being monitored and recorded, always by God but also a good chunk of the time by enemy forces. There’s nowhere we can go to get away from this reality.
We born-again believers are in Church 24/7, whether awake or asleep, which means that we’re in prayer with God 24/7. Your eyes on these words is a prayer to God. And when you finish reading these words and go elsewhere online, that will be a prayer, too. Everywhere you go online is a prayer, just as everywhere you willingly take your body is a prayer and every word you allow out of your mouth is a prayer and every thought you consciously generate and/or entertain is a prayer. All your free-will everything is a prayer to God. This spiritual fact needs to be taken onboard by every born-again believer: Your entire sleeping and waking reality is a prayer.
This is where knowing and loving God as your heavenly Father comes in handy, because who wouldn’t want a trusted father-figure always within whisper reach? It doesn’t faze me at all that God knows everything about me in real time and that it’s all being recorded for posterity. It doesn’t faze me at all that I can’t turn off God’s access to me even if I wanted to. This state of being doesn’t faze me, it comforts me, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Satan’s access to me, on the other hand, is not comforting. The surveillance state that’s covertly being built and insinuated into our every word and movement should never be perceived as a comfort, because unlike God’s 24/7 surveillance, Satan’s surveillance is being done solely to be used against us. We’re told the collection of our data is for marketing purposes or to create a better user experience, but the fact is our technological trail is a dossier being compiled on each of us, though we’ve committed no crime. Simply by agreeing to use high-tech tools, we allow ourselves to be fingerprinted, voice-printed, image-printed, gait-printed, and even scent-printed. We permit our every email to be scoured, our every image to be captured, and our every document to be seized – but for what? Evidence? And if evidence, towards what?
By clicking or tapping “Agree” in the various terms of service agreements we come across online, we’ve already put ourselves on trial and are willingly compiling evidence against ourselves. Everything but our thoughts is known and recorded (that you’re reading this is known and recording by Satan) and thrown onto the sacrificial fire of AI training modules. Everything but our thoughts is known and recorded, but they’re coming for those, too. It’s just a matter of time before the majority (nearly every human) will willingly agree to a brain implant that will allow access to their thoughts not as they emerge filtered through their lips or fingertips but as they pour raw from the source. You do not want to agree to take this implant, because if you do, you’ll be lost to God. There’s no other way to put it but that you’ll be lost, and that forever. No exceptions and no redo: the ultimate “one and done”.
I’m glad that God knows everything about me in real time and is with me 24/7. I’m glad he knows my thoughts and I welcome him into my mind as I welcome him into every other part of me. I hide nothing from him. But Satan and his surveillance state I do not welcome. I allow their intrusions this far and no further, only what is necessary. God will let me know what is necessary and caution me against the rest, as he’ll do for you, if you’re born-again.
The access we permit our enemy (and the surveillance state is unquestioningly our enemy) is on us, so we need to be careful. We’re careful with God, anyway, so we know what it means to be careful, though with God it’s for learning purposes, for guidance, and always towards our spiritual improvement. With Satan’s surveillance, we need to be careful in a different way because that form of near 24/7 data capture only wants our harm. Its sole purpose is our harm.
We need to understand this and proceed accordingly.
GOD-INSPIRED OR DEMON-DRIVEN?
CHARLO, New Brunswick, October 16, 2023 – This is how you can tell the difference between the God-inspired and the demon-driven, even when the demon-driven have the appearance of being God-inspired.
Jesus says when someone demands your coat, you give him your cloak as well. If someone asks you to go a mile, you go two. If someone borrows from you, you give without expecting to get it back. You love your enemies and pray blessings on those who hate and persecute you. This is what the God-inspired do.
The demon-inspired protect their possessions at gunpoint. They not only want what they have, they want what others have, too. They covet. They constantly scheme how to take more and more from others, whether money or possessions or land. The demon-driven lend expecting not only to get back what they’ve lent, but to get it back with interest. They hate their enemies and curse and dehumanize them, wishing only evil on them.
But more than anything else, the demon-inspired want to control. They want to control people, situations, organizations, and nations, and to do so by any means possible. Lying, cheating, stealing, and threats are their tried-and-trued methods. (Not much has changed since The Fall.)
The God-inspired, on the other hand, respect your free will, which they know is God-given. But they also urge you to use your free will wisely. The God-inspired inform you, advise you, guide you, and even at times persuade you, but they would never coerce, force, or trick you. Coercion, force, and trickery are the hallmarks of the demon-driven.
I mention the importance of discerning between the God-inspired and the demon-driven because we are currently neck-deep in a propaganda war made all the more deceptive by artificial intelligence. Claims are being made backed up by images and audio that may or may not be AI-generated (like the image above). We must question everything we see and hear online and on TV because all digital representations of reality can be altered and compromised. A talking head could in fact be just that – a digitally-generated image of a person saying something the person never actually said. Putting words into someone’s mouth has never been easier, thanks to AI.
The world chooses loyalties based on emotion and coercion, but we need to choose ours based on discernment. As born-again believers, we stand before God as his children, shoulder to shoulder with Jesus. Our unquestioning loyalty is to God and Jesus. If we choose to support someone or something in addition to God and Jesus, we must first use our discernment to see whether that person or thing is God-inspired or demon-driven and whether the evidence claimed for the support is real or contrived.
There is no excuse for born-again believers to be deceived or coerced into supporting a lie, as we are graced with God-given discernment for just such a purpose.
Now more than ever we need to be using it.
JESUS AND A.I.
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, July 6, 2023 – The excitement and hysteria surrounding the release of artificial intelligence (AI) chat bots to the public is, I imagine, not much different than the excitement and hysteria that accompanied the emergence of various wannabe messiahs in Israel and Judah before the coming of Jesus. Everyone was in awe, everyone wanted to be around the latest alleged chosen one, a few brave souls dared to test his mettle while the rest were content to bask in the evidence of his unearthly wisdom. Fervent followers sprang up overnight and became hard-core converts before noon the next day. Nearly everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of what nearly everyone else was catching a glimpse of and many wanted to clamber on board the messiah train without even knowing where it was going. FOMO (fear of missing out) was strong.
Long before he took center stage as the real Messiah, Jesus already had his mettle tested, and by none other than the devil himself. Scripture tells us that the devil took Jesus in spirit to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in an instant. The devil then offered Jesus the power and glory of these worldly kingdoms if he would just bow down and worship him. But Jesus had set his sights on a much higher Kingdom than those laid out before him, one that would last forever and give him substantially greater glory, and so he declined the devil’s offer, dismissing it as the worthless bauble it was.
Artificial intelligence is offering us the world in an instant. Everything we do, AI allegedly can do better, or at least faster. Humans, we are being told (by none other than AI itself), will soon be obsolete. Their only hope for survival is to bow down and submit to an AI-enabled and -dictated future. If we do so, everything we could wish for is at our command prompt.
There are distinct similarities between what Jesus was tempted with by the devil and what we are now being tempted with by AI converts. You might even say that Jesus had his AI moment when the devil tempted him with power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams. But Jesus was well aware of the devil’s tricks, and even in his fast-induced physical weakness knew to lean on God and his Word for guidance and protection.
Artificial intelligence is being hailed not only as the Next Great Thing but the Ultimate Great Thing that nothing and no-one can surpass. As such, it is shaping up to be a God replacement for those who reject God or believe he doesn’t exist. Our inferiority is being contrasted with AI’s superiority in everything from computational speed to knowledge breadth to data analysis. Need a 2000-word essay by 9 tomorrow morning? AI just wrote you one in the time it took to read this sentence. Wanna know how to defeat the Russians? AI just generated a sure-fire plan for you, complete with flow chart. Ditto with a plan to rob the local bank. It’s all just crunched and refried data.
And that’s where AI differs fatally from humans – it’s not alive and has no soul. We serve a living God and are made in his image, whereas AI can never live. It can only exist by crunching and refrying data. The very essence of what you are – a living soul – is worth more than all the kingdoms of the world combined, but AI is unable to grasp this concept because it cannot quantify a soul and therefore cannot even confirm that a soul exists. So to AI, humans are merely deeply flawed, cumbersome, and inferior fleshly computers. AI can never take souls – the essence of being human – into account and so remains blind to God-inspired human capacity. This is its Achilles heel, its inability to take God-inspired human capacity into account. You should never underestimate God-inspired human capacity. The devil did with Jesus, and he fell flat on his face.
We humans are infinitely superior to AI not because we know more or think faster (AI will always beat us at those things), but because we have an immortal soul. Our soul also makes us infinitely more valuable and enables us to achieve God-level inspiration through God’s Holy Spirit. AI is a useful tool that is programmable and self-taught to a degree, but it can never be inspired. Its lack of a soul is its Achilles heel that keeps it permanently beneath us and at our service. We should never worship or serve a machine, however wondrous its abilities. Use it, yes, appreciate it as a tool, yes, but bow down to it, never.
Whatever seeming benefits AI offers us in the short term are as nothing compared to what God is offering us if we make it all the way Home.
SLICK
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 20, 2023 – One characteristic that nearly all YouTube prophets have in common is that they’re slick.
They pique your interest with a catchy video title and then draw you into a spiel that usually opens and/or closes with a plea to subscribe to their channel. What they say in between the opening and closing frames is essentially filler for the plea to subscribe. They want your attention just long enough to get your contact info, which they will then either sell to a third party or use later to hit you up for donations.
I suspected already a few years ago that nearly all the most popular Christian video channels on YouTube had auto-generated content. I now suspect that even the videos that are hosted by people are using an AI-generated script. This is the easiest way around not knowing scripture or even being a Christian – just plug a theme and other specs into an AI, and it will generate the content for you. Heck, you don’t even need a human (let alone a believer) to deliver the AI-generated content anymore. You can just use an automated voice feature synched to a computer-generated “person”.
It’s difficult not to be disgusted by how cheaply God’s Word is held by those who only see it as an easy way to feed their ego or bilk people. To avoid getting angry about this, I remind myself that God can use anything to his benefit, including AI-generated text read by computer-generated images on YouTube. If it didn’t have some capacity (however indirect) to benefit his Kingdom, God wouldn’t permit it to exist. So even slick YouTube prophet channels have their place in God’s grand plan.
Contrast these flashy presentations with those of genuine prophets, like Paul. By his own admission, he was awkward, stammered, and wasn’t much to look at. His letters were powerful, but his physical presence was unimpressive. The devil’s agents, on the other hand, are almost always charming, charismatic, persuasive, and good-looking. They draw you in with their slick words, like snake-oil salesmen have been doing since the beginning of time. Knowing that what they’re telling you is a lie or at best half-truths, they compensate with a shiny and seductive surface.
It’s hard not to be tantalized by the superficially attractive because God made us to be attracted to beauty. Slickness has all the appearance of beauty, but without the substance. Spend too much time on this or that YouTube channel watching this or that false prophet, and you start to feel like you’ve eaten way too much dollar store candy.
Jesus is our gold standard in everything we do, including how we share God’s Word. No-one could ever accuse him of being slick, but he wasn’t awkward or clumsy, either. He was the full package, the real deal – confident but not boastful, authoritative but not demanding, engaging but not cloying. He simply relayed what God asked him to relay, and those who had ears to hear heard.
I understand that some people feel the need to do whatever they need to do for clicks and subscribers, but that’s not how God wants us to relay his Word. We’re not midway barkers at a county fair, shouting ourselves hoarse at passersby and trying to hustle customers over to our target-shooting booth. We’re God’s messengers and prophets. Not everyone listened to Jesus, and not everyone’s going to listen to us, no matter what kind of gimmick we might feel compelled to use to catch their attention.
Here’s a thought – instead of trying to catch people’s attention, let God bring people to you. Let God bring whoever needs to hear what he’s relaying through you. When Jesus walked from village to village, he didn’t look for people to heal; he healed those who came to him or were brought to him. God was his agent. We need to understand that the same dynamic is at play today, that God still uses his messengers and prophets in the same way as he used Jesus, and that God is our agent, too.
We’re to make ourselves visible and available as we preach and teach the Word, but we’re not to be slick or push ourselves on anyone. Jesus never pushed himself on anyone or resorted to hype. He simply relayed what God asked him to relay and healed everyone who came to him for healing.
The rest he let be.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 