There is a good article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. by Owen Kichizo Terry. The main contention of this article is that writing software like ChatGPT—generally known as AI—is here to stay…yes, I know, I know, it’s not TECHNICALLY Artificial Intelligence, it’s an extremely advanced search engine; I get it, but for sake of convenience I’m just gonna call it AI and if that annoys you then consider this an opportunity to grow in patience…you’re welcome. ANYWAYS, the main contention in this article is that AI is here to stay and so colleges had better learn to deal with that and help students to learn how to responsibly use it and how to get the most out of it.
Now, this may come as either no surprise at all or it may be the shock of a lifetime, but I would say that the chances are high that you have listened to a plagiarized sermon. Unfortunately there aren’t great statistics. But according to one company, Docent, who came under fire a few years ago, they “helped” pastors write sermons that reached over a million people a month. And Docent is just one company. There are many companies that will ghostwrite the sermon for you o give you an outline—there are some that will give you the sermon, the slides, and the promotional materials.
In fact, here’s a test. Next time your church’s pastor has a series, look up the title of that series online and see if this is something for sale. Another way to check if your pastor is plagiarizing—if he has a really memorable quote, copy it down, and do an internet search for that expression. Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with recognizing someone else’s brilliance and giving them credit. There are times when I’ve prepared to give a sermon and I found that the way one pastor or commentator approached the passage of scripture was so good that I couldn’t improve upon it, and was going to model my message off of his—so you just tell people that’s what you’re doing.
Indeed, I remember years ago I was listening to a local church service; I was driving in my truck and listening to a young man preach a sermon. And as I listened, I kept thinking, “Man, this guy’s sharp.” And then I got to thinking, “Wow, I really like how he put that.” And then as he kept preaching, I thought, “Wow, that’s exactly how I woulda said that!” The I realized, “Wait, that IS how I said that, this guy’s rippin’ me off!”
I listened to someone plagiarize me. Now at that time I was a bivocational guy; I was poor, and I mean poor, I didn’t hardly have money for food some weeks, and this guy, I won’t say who he was or where, was on staff at a nice church and was making good money. And he stole from me. He robbed me. He took what was mine—what I not only was not getting paid for, but I actively paid for the airtime. He listened to my radio broadcast—which, let’s be honest, that was his first mistake—and then he liked it so much he decided to copy my sermon, in places verbatim. There he was, on staff, making good money, while I was working multiple jobs, and he took my words and used them for his own. I was so angry.
But it taught me a lesson. 1) it taught me that there are clergymen who will lie, cheat, and steal—because plagiarism is all three of those things. You’re lying by claiming someone else’s work is yours. Your cheating because you are breaking the rules of intellectual integrity—not to mention cheating yourself out of the opportunity to mature in faith and cheating your congregation out of the chance to be edified by an authentic message. And it’s stealing because you were paid to do a job and you took the money and didn’t do the job. 2) it taught me that he got away with it.
Cheating, plagiarism, intellectual dishonesty, theft, moral failure—call it what you will—it’s rampant. And if the clergy do it why shouldn’t we expect college students to do it? And if you think that your church is immune, think again. Remember Ed Litton? You know, President of the Southern Baptist Convention? Remember Mark Driscoll? Those two were two of the biggest names in Evangelicalism. They were both serial plagiarists.
But they got caught because they were just ripping people off. It was lazy and corrupt. Sure. But now. Now you can have someone write your sermons for you and you don’t even have to pay for it. You can have ChapGPT do your theologizing for you! And nobody will ever know. And frankly, considering a lot of preaching in this country, it might be an improvement!
I said years ago that eventually AI would be able to write better sermons than any human being. We’re not there yet, but we’re to the point where AI can write better sermons than most human beings.
And there are two ways of looking at this. On one hand we can look at AI as a legitimate tool—and there are certainly legitimate research applications for ChatGPT. On the other hand it is a tool that is so powerful that it will do your thinking for you—and that’s dangerous.
Think of it like a calculator. Most people use calculators if they have to do ANY amount of math. And calculators are great—they are fast, they are error free, they are cheap, and they make life better. But every math teacher worth her salt knows that you don’t start with a calculator—you start with longhand mathematics. You start with learning how to do the math by hand and in your head, step by step, arduously and painfully, sometimes with tears, sometimes with fear and trembling. But when a child learns math, there is a tremendous sense of accomplishment and confidence that comes with that!
I can tell you that apart from my children, some of the things I’m most proud of in my life are learning calculus in High School and being self-taught in Greek and learning Hebrew in seminary. I’m proud of having read and understood Shakespeare and Dante and Milton and Homer. I’m proud of my years as a carpenter, learning the trade. I’m proud of these things because they were hard, and because they were hard they were rewarding. I’m proud of the Master’s Thesis I wrote and the novels I’ve written and the sermons and essays I preach and write. I’m proud of them. Are they great? No. Not really. I’m well aware that I’m a fair to middling preacher at best, and maybe a slightly above average writer on a good day.
But I don’t care about that. I’m proud that I’ve been doing this radio broadcast for over 10 years and have over 600 episodes in the can. It has been hard. But, as Jimmy Dougan says in A League of their Own “the hard is what makes it great.”
Preaching is hard. Now, for some it comes more easily than for others, that’s most definitely true. Some are more natural preachers and some are just gifted with the ability to get up and go. But there is no truly great preacher, who doesn’t work his tail off to be great. It isn’t always work spent practicing or writing a specific sermon—but everything else that goes into it. Every sermon is the culmination of a lifetime. Great preachers (and mediocrities like me, too) are always writing sermons, they are constantly examining life and trying to understand the lessons God teaches, they are ravenous readers, attentive listeners, careful questioners, and they have dedicated themselves to the Word of God. Great preachers are never not working on a sermon—everything, every book, every tv show, every movie, every conversation, every walk or bike ride or drive, every prayer, every meditation, every song they sing, every weed they pull, every meal they cook, every nail they pound or lawn they mow, every thing, absolutely everything contains some truth about God and His self-revelation and it is the joy and duty of the preacher, to use his wisdom to turn all of life into the material needed to speak to God’s people with a prophetic voice. It is hard work. But it’s honest work. And it’s work of the self and soul.
But when pastors plagiarize, when they use software to write their work for them, to do their thinking for them, to do their theologizing for them—the problem is not just that they are lying, cheating, and stealing. It’s worse than that. And it isn’t just that they are surrendering their own voice—though that’s worth a whole series of messages to unpack that idea.
No, the worst part of letting AI into the pulpit is that we’re now being preached to by whoever created the algorithms that determine how these chatbots search, collate, and respond to prompts. The danger is NOT that the man of God surrenders his voice to a computer. It’s that he exchanges his voice with the voice of someone he doesn’t know, and who is not worthy of the trust of preaching.
Chatbots are not neutral arbiters of facts. It’s been pretty well demonstrated by this point that Open AI’s ChatGPT is woke—or at least its programming was done by people with woke biases that have revealed themselves in the responses to prompts that people have received. It’s significant enough that Elon Musk wants to create a rival “Based AI”, as opposed to Woke AI.
It is bad enough that ChatPGT is going to rob many young men and women of the ability to think for themselves—which is, you know, a necessary condition of maintaining a free and prosperous republic. Because, make no mistake, outsourcing all mathematical skill to calculators has a price, and a not insignificant cost, to society. But critical thinking skills, you know, the kind that are developed through writing, the ability to read or listen to someone else, understand their perspective, identify their main points and be able to reproduce their argument faithfully, and then meaningfully interact with what they say, this is not some obscure skill set. This is the fundamental pedagogical objective of Western education! And the reason why faithfully reading and carefully, meaningfully responding is the fundamental pedagogical objective is because that is the primary skill in debate. And debate is the basis of all free societies. A republic cannot exist without debate.
Oh, friends, ChatGPT has the power to do more to destroy the Republic than any of the miscarriages of education we’re seen heretofore.
But the destructive power of AI on the Republic is nothing compared to the destructive power of AI on the Kingdom of God. When pastors and preachers commit the gross and unforgiveable moral failure of plagiarizing sermons, outsourcing their ability to communicate God’s prophetic message to a bunch of godless woke programmers, friends this isn’t just a few bad messages, this means the effective destruction of the pulpit in the Western World.
Next week we’re going to talk about what we can do to fight back and save preaching.