Are We Creating a ‘User-Friendly’ God? From AI Hallucination to Eisegesis

In 2023, the Mata v. Avianca case provided a brutal lesson on the nature of contemporary technology. A group of New York lawyers relied on ChatGPT to uncover favourable legal precedents; the system responded by citing a series of detailed rulings that perfectly supported their thesis.

The problem? They were entirely fabricated. The result: the case was dismissed, and the lawyers were sanctioned five thousand dollars for submitting fraudulent documentation.

This was the first major public instance of AI hallucination: the phenomenon in which a large language model, optimised for the plausibility of its response rather than the accuracy of its data, reports non-existent facts simply to fill an informational void.

Technically, this is an alignment deficit: these tools are engineered to be helpful (user-friendly), not to be witnesses to the truth.

Anthropologically, this dynamic contributes to the erosion of "friction" with reality. We are becoming accustomed to interfaces that never contradict us, fueling a tendency to seek confirmation of our biases rather than objective facts.

Spiritually, the risk is a form of discernment atrophy: becoming incapable of perceiving a Will that conflicts with our own, slipping into that hermeneutical hallucination we call eisegesis.

The Complacency Syndrome

We live immersed in technology designed to remove every obstacle between the user's desire and the system's output. It is a "lubricated" existence where reality loses its right to contradict us. However, when the critical muscle ceases to clash with a denial, it withers. We are transforming into users who do not seek Truth, but rather on-demand validation.

If God is silent or challenges us, we stop listening and seek a new "prompt" that reflects back to us our preferred image. This is not an entirely new phenomenon, but rather the technological acceleration of an ancient spiritual pathology:

"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2 Timothy 4:3, ESV).

The user who accumulates prompts infinitely just to be right is the modern equivalent of one who accumulates teachers to gratify their ego. The boundary between algorithmic optimisation and the manipulation of the sacred is nearly invisible: if we no longer accept that the machine we built can say "No" to us, how will we ever submit to the "No" of the Creator who made us? And how can we stand for a biblical truth we do not “feel” related to anymore?

Hermeneutical Hallucination: From Listeners to Programmers of the Sacred

The danger is that our reading of Scripture becomes identical to our use of Artificial Intelligence: a compulsive search for confirmation. Philosophically, we are shifting our approach to the text from constative to performative.

In spiritual terms, the tragedy is deeper: we are ceasing to be listeners of the Word to become its programmers.

Exegesis vs. Eisegesis: The "Prompting" of Scripture

When we approach the Bible with intellectual honesty and submission, we perform a constative act. We place ourselves in a posture of reception: we recognise a Truth that precedes us, one we did not invent.

This is exegesis: an extractive, often painful hermeneutical labour that requires submitting one's thoughts to the text so that the Logos speaks, not our desire. The Word of God is not designed to be "user-friendly"; on the contrary:

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12, ESV)

Artificial Intelligence indulges the "I"; the Word incises it.

Hermeneutical hallucination reverses this vital dynamic, leading to eisegesis: the interpretation and language of the preacher become performative. One no longer seeks to understand what God actually said; instead, religious terminology is used to "institute" a desired reality. We force the Scripture until it "hallucinates" a message that justifies our bias.

The "Third Testament" and Religious Personal Branding

This systemic collapse is already underway. One only needs to observe the extreme religious personal branding proliferating online, which goes as far as claiming the need for exclusive "new revelations" or a "Third Testament" to update the canon.

The appeal to a “new testament” is not theological progress, but the annulment of the biblical text's resistance. It is an attempt to create a religious system where authority no longer derives from Divine Revelation, but from the performance of the preacher. The apostolic warning on this matter leaves no room for ambiguity:

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8, ESV).

"If I declare it with authority, if I claim the Spirit revealed it to me, then it becomes truth": this is the ultimate hallucination. A state where what I "feel from God" overwrites what God has spoken in His Word.

Much like the New York lawyers, the form (the prophetic tone, the charismatic jargon) becomes technically so similar to the original that we forget the content is false.

The Practice: Invisible Ministry as the Back-End of the Soul

If Artificial Intelligence is the apotheosis of efficiency without truth, invisible ministry is the exercise of faithfulness without immediate efficiency.

In technical jargon, we might say that every public word is merely the front-end of a system, but it is in the back-end of unindexed study and secret prayer that the integrity of the output is decided.

Dwelling in the "No": The Theology of the Secret

In "your room" (Matthew 6:6), language finally returns to being constative. Before God, no prompts suffice: we stand naked before a Truth we cannot manipulate or optimise for consensus.

Invisibility is not an elitist refuge, but the very root of integrity. The risk for today’s preacher is publishing the surplus of their own ego; the challenge is ensuring that every public word is instead the result of a divine will accepted, inhabited, and suffered in secret. Invisible ministry is the space where we allow the Spirit to debug our performative intentions.

Exercises in "Anti-Algorithmic Exegesis"

To resist the centripetal force of the algorithm, concrete countermeasures are required:

• The Friction Test: While preparing a message, ask yourself: "Is this text confirming my position or is it bringing me into crisis?" If the message produces no friction in the one proclaiming it, you are likely just optimising faith for your audience.
• Pre-Output Silence: Resisting the temptation to instantaneously transform every spiritual insight into a performative post. Like Mary, who "treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Luke 2:19), we must learn not to immediately “monetize” intimacy with God in terms of visibility.

Between the Logos and the Prompt

The challenge AI poses to the Church is not technical, but idolatrous. The true danger is not that machines become human, but that we become algorithms—beings who seek only circular confirmation and answers devoid of the Cross.

If we create a God in the image of our prompt, we are not praying: we are merely programming a mirror that reflects our own projection. A God who responds always and only as we wish is a mute idol (Psalm 115).

True faith begins exactly when we renounce the performative temptation. It begins when we stop giving commands to reality and start listening again to the Word that, alone, can create (John 1:3).

The hope for humanity in the digital age lies not in the capacity to generate infinite content, but in the willingness to be inhabited by a Logos we did not choose—one that creates friction with our will and, for that very reason, has the power to save us.