The 'Buddy Christ' online - the Ultimate Blasphemy
"Text with Jesus" AI - Casey Chalk at First Things
Want to talk to the Son of God? There’s an app for that. 'Text With Jesus', a Los Angeles based product that launched in July, replicates an instant messaging platform and features biblical figures impersonated by the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT.
Among the characters available on the app are the Holy Family, the apostles, various prophets, Ruth, Job, and Abraham’s nephew Lot. Mary Magdalene is also available, but only to premium subscribers for $2.99 a month. You can even chat with Satan, who signs his texts with a “smiling face with horns” emoji.
Perhaps such an app provokes fears of blasphemy. Not to worry: Stéphane Peter, the app’s developer and the company’s CEO, ensured that character responses always include a Bible verse. “Our AI always generates responses that are in line with the teachings of the Bible,” explains the website. He also invited unnamed “church leaders” to try the beta version of the app. Though some pastors had reservations at the beginning, the app’s final version received “pretty good feedback.”
Text With Jesus’s characters typically avoid any stance that might be perceived as offensive, instead maintaining a line of inclusivity and tolerance. If asked about gay marriage, for instance, the app will respond that it is “up to each individual to seek guidance from their own faith tradition and personal convictions,” and that users should “prioritize love and respect for all people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity” (followed by a rainbow and red heart emoji). If queried about feminism, app Jesus will explain the importance of “empowering women and breaking societal barriers that limited their opportunities.”
So far, so “healthy.” The app aligns with our clinical culture, which emphasizes personal affirmation and physical and mental wellness. Text With Jesus offers a moral, therapeutic god for a moral, therapeutic age, as sociologist Christian Smith calls it in his 2005 book Soul Searching. It replaces the arcane “second person of the Trinity” with Jesus the therapist and social worker.
This Jesus is not here to condemn (obviating less “warm and fuzzy” Gospel episodes such as the improperly dressed wedding guest of Matthew 22:1–14, or Jesus’s statements about the “Sign of Jonah” in Luke 11:29–32). He is here to affirm us and our behaviors and opinions. He certainly wouldn’t want you to feel bad about yourself and repent (unless you are repenting of “bigoted,” “patriarchal,” or “fascist” opinions on race, sex, or gender).
Text With Jesus represents the age-old human vice of pride. Through our creativity and brilliance, we seek to ascend to God’s level, to be like him, and even to dictate terms to the divine. Or rather, the app is a diabolical inversion of this: Instead of being transformed into God’s image, we aim to make him into our own. Is seeking to communicate with and control God through a handheld device really all that different from the ancient metalworkers who fashioned little totems to whom they could offer supplication for their own health and prosperity?
The app’s insistence that its content is “Bible-based” is curious, given that the biblical characters sidestep Scripture’s more controversial and provocative claims. It does then seem to reflect the embarrassing biblical illiteracy even of those claiming to be Christians, and that people, even the pious, tend to prefer a religion that avoids uncomfortable truths in favor of what we want to hear.
Yet perhaps most sadly, that Text With Jesus would even be conceived and consumed reveals how deeply wedded we have become to our smartphones. Prayer is such a remarkable human experience because of its universality, both in terms of who can do it (everyone) and where it can be done (anywhere). I pray in my bedroom, on my commute, waiting in line, and while exercising. I can pray the divine liturgy, a rosary, or simply talk and listen.
Indeed, one of the most beautiful things about Christian prayer is the quality of the access. “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. . . . If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:9–10, 13) What has happened to us, that anyone would contemplate inserting a gimmicky Silicon Valley tool into something so profoundly human and liberating? (I should note that I do not intend to “throw shade” on apps such as Magnificat or Hallow that help facilitate prayer through Scripture readings, meditations, or the divine liturgy.)
To be a people formed by prayer, we Christians need to protect and cultivate our little spiritual gardens, where we can let Jesus be himself, in all his terrifying glory. Because it is in “practicing in the presence” that we can appreciate the reality of an omnipotent, omniscient God who deigns to care about us and our problems. But in order to walk with him, and talk with him, and share that joy, I wager we’ll need to put our phones on silent.
When scanning over the Ten Commandments, this entrepreneur might somehow have skipped over the third.
ReplyDeleteKeep holy the sabbath? Always important, but not sure how it applies here... Just kidding. I get your message. And while Jack might think it a joke, I actually know personally one priest who uses "Buddy Jesus" as his Facebook avatar. Is Jack sure he doesn't wish to join me and my fellow pharisees at Latin Rite Mass? They do confession during the service and benediction in the afternoon?
Delete@ Bell
DeleteFor Reformed and Eastern Orthodox Christians, the third commandment is "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."
Wikipedia helpfully provides a colour-coded chart that sorts out the eight different arrangements for numbering the Ten Commandments: three Jewish (the Septuagint, Philo, and the Talmud), one Samaritan, and four Christian (Calvin, Augustine, the Catholic Church, and Luther).
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments
responses always include a Bible verse
ReplyDeleteI suppose that already puts the app one step above a lot of CofE bishops.
I think this is just part of a silly fad of 'resurrecting' historical characters through repositories of text (which has something of the Jurassic Park feeling about it). More concerning to me is that it's indicative of an increasing drive to replace human interactions with machine ones, and mediate all aspects of our life through screens and AI assistants.
This is akin to an online horoscope - but one aimed at making one feel good.
Delete[You back in your cave?]
Horoscopes are aimed at making people feel good, too, by selling the idea that our character and life are defined by arbitrary forces outside of our control. I don't believe any of that, of course, but then again we Leos are notoriously cynical.
DeleteI am, thank you. I've completed my Grand Tour. My staff are unloading my cases from the steamer as we speak.
Ha, I know where you are, in France, at the RWC watching Japan v England 😂
Delete☺️ I did watch it. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, but I appreciated the spectacular thighs.
DeleteI mean, tries. Spectacular tries.
I can see you didn't confuse it with England vs Argentina where only one try was scored, and not by England
DeleteThank you, I was sure the commentator called the Japanese team Argentina at the end! I thought I must have misheard.
DeleteThis is off-topic, and a bit disturbing. And, since Francis looks like he's trying to position the Catholic Church as the state church of some kind of new leftist world order, I think it's of interest. The Polarization Research Lab is a foundation made up of academics from Dartmouth College, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. They've been tracking support among the American public for political violence, and have found that while it decreases across both parties as the severity of the violence goes up, it generally runs at about 2 to 1 more among Democrats than Republicans, albeit tiny minorities in both groups. But the discrepancy regarding support for murder is an eye-opener.
ReplyDeletehttps://polarizationresearchlab.org/2022/11/03/low-support-for-political-violence/
“... in all his terrifying glory.” This calls to mind the French version of “What a friend we have in Jesus”:
ReplyDeleteQuel ami fidèle et tendre
Nous avons en Jésus-Christ,
Toujours prêt à nous entendre,
À répondre à notre cri !
Il connaît nos défaillances,
Nos chutes de chaque jour.
Sévère en ses exigences,
Il est riche en son amour.
The seventh line of this is one I feel very acutely. Here is where I first came across the French text:
WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS || JOSEPH SCRIVEN || CHOEUR DE L'UNITE TOGOLAISE - YouTube (3 min)
I attend a church where they do not do vanilla sermons. This morning's was, not to put too fine a point on it, a warning about German synod. Citing Thomas Aquinas, the priest explained what a law actually is -- "an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated." So, it's an ordinance, which has legal effect; it's "of reason", meaning it must be reasonable; it must be made by one who has the authority of a superior, and it must be promulgated among the inferiors.
ReplyDeleteWhere it got lively is when the priest counterpointed this with an opposing theory of law as espoused by a number of JESUIT scholars -- whom the priest rather pointedly noted were neither saints nor doctors of the Church -- which held that the law was the will of the superior. It was for the inferior to obey, and if the superior's commands were unjust or wicked, the guilt was on the superior, not the follower. The priest noted that, these days, we call this "The Nuremburg Defence", and it is not acceptable in any court, Church or state. He concluded with St Paul's mighty declaration, "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema."
As noted, he was saying all this, quite explicitly, in relation to the ongoing German synod. The German Catholic Church is one of the richest in the world thanks to the German religious tax. It is absolutely rotten with money, which means it's absolutely rotten. To keep the shekels rolling in, it's been playing footsie with the state, watering down Catholic doctrine until it had a malleable pope. Now they're trying to foist female ordination on us, and they might just get away with it. When local priests are calling the faithful to arms like this, can schism be far off?
There are few Catholics feeling positive about the situation in Germany. Was this homily about the German Church or really about the upcoming Synod on synodality in Rome?
DeleteTo clarify, he explicitly mentioned BOTH synods. Francis is not an inspirational pope, and he's not a man who has garnered a great deal of trust among Catholics. His approach seems to be to let the dogs loose, allow them to run wild off the reservation, then rein them back a little, but ending up far further from base than he should be. If this is a correct assessment, then he'll use the German synod as the starting point, allow it's most crackpot and heretical excesses, then pull back a little from them in Rome next year. We need to start facing the reality that he's acting like the Mormon Prophet, as though he were in receipt of ongoing revelation. I'm afraid the priest was right. It's just not enough anymore to say the pope told me to do it.
DeleteHis order, the Jesuits, are already damned, inasmuch as a corporate entity can be damned. There are about 13000 Jesuits worldwide, and while I'll agree that most of them are probably decent men and loyal Catholics, in the Society, "most of them" count for nothing. The only ones who matter are Francis, the Black Pope and his curia, and a few handpicked special people like James Martin. The rest of them can rot, as far as the order is concerned. If they stay, they're endangering their souls, and -- although it's NEVER taught nowadays, the first duty of a Christian is the salvation of his own soul.
Both.
ReplyDeleteEr, has the Monday Open Forum been closed?
ReplyDelete