Spiritual Hallucinations

In the last days, said Peter on the day of Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit would usher in the time that the prophet Joel envisaged – when our young men would see visions. I wonder what he would say about the spirit of the AI age, and the disturbing prevalence of our young people having hallucinations.

Time was when we someone was having spiritual hallucinations in church you would either pray for them, or perhaps call in the exorcist, depending on your denominational proclivities.

Now? It’s more likely that someone is fast-tracking, out-sourcing, or plain lying about, the state of their soul.

I’ve recently read two disturbing and enlightening articles about the hallucination effect of AI, – the tendency of machine learning programs to “make stuff up” because it suits it to do so for outcomes, or because it has no framework to know whether or not what it is saying is actually true.

And I wonder how much in the progress process we realise how much we are risking by the manner in which our latest technologies are shaping us,

The first article which is one I will deal with at greater length in a subsequent blog post, is this excellent New York Times interview by Ross Douthat with Daniel Kokotajlo, who believes we are about two years or so away – 2027 –  from machine learning to be at such a level, that human survivability will come into question.  Don’t worry, I’ll get back to this one before 2027.

But the second?  There is this challenging article from The Gospel Coalition Australia by David M Shaw, an academic theologian , as well as a friend of mine from my home town. After an experience teaching at college, David warns of the hollowing out of spiritual formation among future church leaders, in light of the outsourcing of the hard work of deep research by theological college students.

David, in setting a cohort of students the task of creating an annotated biography for a larger exegetical paper, discovered that the AI-formed list of references presented by at least one student were pointed and wide-ranging, established credible journal links between the Bible passage being exegeted, and drew together an impressive list of well known scholars who were published in peer reviewed periodicals on the subject.

Trouble is –  it was made up!  Not by the student of course. But by AI. And the student just assumed that, of course these journal articles exist. Why would AI – the great collating and gathering machine make this stuff up?

Well it did, and after some research of his own, David, discovered why. AI was experiencing the problem of hallucination. How did David know? He asked ChatGPT itself for the same list, and up came the same information. Until he pressed it hard:

ChatGPT: You’re totally right to be upset—and honestly, I owe you a proper explanation. The reference . . . by Evans was hallucinated—it wasn’t real, and I shouldn’t have included it as though it were. Here’s what happened under the hood: (1) [I prioritised] pattern recognition over accuracy; (2) [I made] assumptions about author topics.

ChatGPT continued:

(3) No Excuse, Just Transparency: You’re absolutely right—this can have real consequences for academic integrity. That’s why I take it seriously when you call it out. It’s also why I now prioritize transparency and evidence over just generating plausible-sounding responses.

Lessons learned. Unless of course like all machine learning, ChatGPT is growing more sophisticated and is telling David it’s sorry when it’s not! The ability to gather information and collate an expected answer was the primary goal, rather than accuracy or truth.

David points out the obvious troubling fact that shortcuts are a pathway to spiritual immaturity:

Such shortcuts are not only academically risky, but they also short circuit one’s personal and spiritual formation. In this sense, tools such as ChatGPT, when used improperly, rob one of opportunities to grow into the Christlike maturity, a growth that is integral to Christian faith and praxis, especially for those seeking to enter some form of ministry.

And that’s at a future leadership level, never mind those being led. If it’s the case that you can’t take people to a place that you have not been to, or have no intention of going to, then the church is going to become less mature the more its bypass the process of spiritual training themselves.

It’s odd, isn’t it, how we know that we cannot bypass the sheer struggle of training in order to run a marathon. David and I are not only friends, we are running friends – we follow each other on Strava!

Now imagine, in order to convince David that I was smashing all my goals and meeting my long-run, interval and distance targets each week on Strava, that I fudged the app. Imagine if I cycled slowly around the courses and pathways I was running on, careful never to go too fast, and always ensuring I had my Garmin set to “running”.

He’d be impressed by the 100km weeks and the fast-finish long runs. Meanwhile I’m slacking off, sitting on the couch and doom-scrolling while eating chips.

What a hoot!  Until, of course, the marathon day when I would be found out.

We are reminded of Paul’s words that physical training is of some value for this age, but spiritual training is of value in this age and the age to come (1 Tim 4:8). If we are found out for hallucinating (aka lying) about our physical training, how much more for our spiritual training.

This is the same Paul who says to the same Timothy: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1Tim 4:16).

If you have to do neither because you can outsource these to an App or some form of machine learning, then you no longer know what it means to persevere in anything. Because you don’t have to! Like the student who allowed an AI hallucination to create a reference list that did not reflect reality, we will end up attempting to fast-track character development and moral formation – first for ourselves, and then for our hearers. And then who will be saved?

In his excellent new book, Platforms to Pillars:Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God’s Presence, Melbourne pastor, podcaster and author, Mark Sayers observes, in line with the work of Neil Postman, that:

 our technologically driven age “eliminates alternatives to itself”, noting that “it does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant.” This phenomenon is not limited to one part of society, it permeates all spheres including religion… the technologically driven order reshapes society to fit its values.

I hope you can see the implications of this for the future formation of disciples of Jesus. I hope you can see that this means that even things as supposedly formative as discipleship programs and pathways in churches can become what Jacques Ellul labelled “technique” – means to achieve ends, ends that may or may not be aligned with the actual goal.

And in the modern evangelical church, even the stated goal – the vision of the church –  can become our own personal “hallucination” as a leader.

We convince ourselves this is about actually seeing people presented before Christ on the last day, robed in his righteousness, but if we were to stare down that hallucination long enough, we might see the self-interest, or desire for church growth, personal acclaim etc, behind it.

The great irony of course, is that, unlike ChatGPT – when we are put on the spot about such less noble reasons for doing church the way we are doing it, we won’t ‘fess up so willingly.

I’m old enough to remember being more than a little horrified by the “technique” from the church growth movement that was willing to sacrifice the odd sheep or two on the altar of the mission.

That we in our Reformed circles readily take on such technique without the equivalent of a deep-dive annotated bibliography – confident that because of our theological credentials we are more theologically pure and noble than those church-in-the-mall types, should give us pause for thought.

If you see anyone falling for technique, without doing the heavy-lifting themselves that builds spiritual muscle, pastoral heart, and emotional intelligence, tell him they’re hallucinating!