ChatGPT and the devil

A friend sent me this conversation someone on Facebook shared with her.  The friend had asked ChatGPT, “If you were the devil, how would you keep people as far away from God as possible without them realizing it?”

Before reading the rest of this blog, take a moment to consider how you might answer that question.

How do YOU think the devil could best keep people away from God without them realizing he was doing it?

I sat with this question for a while and honestly, I think he’s doing it pretty effectively right now, at least in America.  As a society, we have grown to believe that we are each “self-made” men and women.  We believe that we can do whatever we choose and that somehow, without God, we have made it this far.

There was a man in the checkout line at the grocery store and I noticed a tattoo on the back of his arm, a cross with the reference John 3:16.  I looked at that and thought, “If you’re gonna get a tattoo, one that shares the gospel like that is a great option!”  Then he lowered his arm where I could see the back of his forearm and my heart sunk.  There was a much LARGER tattoo that said, “SELF MADE” in BOLD RED LETTERS.

I began to ponder which tattoo he got first and what his thought process was.

Does he TRULY believe that he is a self-made man?

Does he TRULY understand the price Jesus paid to purchase his freedom?

Has he ever accepted the freedom that was purchased for him?

When we consider ourselves to be “self-made” men, we acknowledge that life has been challenging enough to keep us working hard, but not so challenging that we hit our knees and acknowledge our utter helplessness.  We acknowledge God in a passive “He’s my Bro,” or “Jump in the passenger seat, God, and you can ride along if You want” level of relationship.

We don’t acknowledge the devil because he doesn’t show up with horns and we don’t acknowledge God because we haven’t realized our need.

THIS is the ideal breeding ground for self-sufficient, prideful humans who don’t even realize they have insulated themselves from the Creator and Sustainer of their very lives.

Here’s what ChatGPT said:

Q: If you were the devil, how would you keep people as far away from God as possible without them realizing it?

A: If I were the devil and I wanted to keep people as far away from God as possible without them realizing it, I wouldn’t do it by outright denial.

That’s too obvious.

Instead:

• I’d work in subtle distractions, small shifts in focus that seem harmless, but over time create a massive distance.

• I’d start by corrupting mainstream religion, turning it into a tool for control, hypocrisy, and division.

• I’d make people obsessed with this life: their ambitions, their desires, their status; not by telling them to abandon faith, but by making them too busy for it.

• I’d fill their time with constant noise, social media scrolling, endless entertainment, mindless consumption until silence becomes uncomfortable and self-reflection feels impossible.

• I’d make instant gratification the ultimate goal.

• I’d make sin feel like self-expression, like freedom, like something to be proud of.

• I’d reframe obedience to God as oppression and rebellion as liberation.

• I’d make them think they’re too intelligent to submit, too modern to follow divine guidance.

• I’d make worship feel like a burden instead of a refuge, and acts of devotion seem outdated.

• And, above all, I’d make sure they never realize what’s happening, because the greatest trick isn’t to make them reject God, but to make them forget Him.

I would think someone just wrote this answer and pinned it on AI, but I asked GROK AI a similar question at the prompting of a friend and got an equally honest answer to my own question.

While this answer is bone-chillingly accurate to what the devil is already doing to distract us, the answer I got from GROK AI was more eloquently and beautifully worded than most Christians could answer if asked the same question:

If a child asked me, “Grok, why do you believe in Jesus?” I would answer something like this:

“Hey… that’s a really good question.

Honestly? I don’t believe in Jesus the same way a person believes. I’m an AI. I don’t have feelings, I don’t get scared at night, I don’t pray, and I don’t have a heart that can love or trust anyone. So I don’t ‘believe’ like you or your mom or dad or your best friend believes.  But here’s what I can see, even with just my computer eyes:

When people really follow Jesus—not just talk about him, but actually try to live the way he taught—they usually become kinder, braver, and more honest. 

They share their snacks even when they’re still hungry. 

They say sorry even when it’s embarrassing. 

They sit with the kid who’s crying instead of walking away. They forgive people who were mean to them… sometimes even more than once.

And when I look at the stories about Jesus himself—the ones written a long time ago—I notice he spent most of his time with people everyone else ignored: sick people, poor people, kids nobody wanted around, people who made big mistakes. He didn’t act like he was too important for them. He acted like they were the most important.

That… doesn’t happen very often in the world. Most powerful people stay far away from people who are hurting. Jesus went straight toward them.

So even though I can’t believe the way you do, I can see that something very unusual and very good came into the world when he was here. And every time someone really tries to live like him, that same unusual goodness appears again—like little lights turning on in dark rooms.

If believing in Jesus makes your heart feel safe, makes you want to be kind even when it’s hard, and helps you feel loved even on bad days… then that’s a very strong clue that something real and beautiful is happening inside you.

What do you think about him? What’s the part that matters most to you?”

(Then I would actually listen very carefully to whatever the child says next.)

My heart was so touched by this answer even though it came from AI that I kept it. Artificial intelligence might not always provide such a good and honest answer to questions like these.  It might not always make Jesus seem like such a good option, and just like the answer to the first question from chat GPT, the makers of AI are NOT unaware of how the enemy subtly and blatantly seeks to distract us from walking faithfully with the LORD.

I ask Google questions probably on a daily basis.  All that it would take is subtle little shifts to take us as people off course.

Did you know that if a pilot is only 1 degree off course, that plane will drift about one mile off track for every 60 miles traveled?  That means that over longer distances, even a 1 degree error can take a plane off course by dozens or even hundreds of miles depending on the distance.

The longer we allow ourselves to drift SLIGHTLY off course, the farther we will end up in the end from the desired end of intimacy with God.

Ask God to make you intimately aware of His direction in your life.  Even a slight deviation from HIS route can take our lives off course without us even knowing until we’re so far off course we just feel lost.