I wonder if we’ve started treating AI like the Sorting Hat.
Not because it has magical insight, but because we want someone—or something—to hand us an answer.
What’s the best religion?
What’s my purpose?
What career should I choose?
As if the deepest questions of our lives could be settled in a chat window.
A friend of mine was testing code for an app. She sent the exact same prompt to several people and asked them to paste it into their AI.
The responses weren’t identical.
Mine was the only one that generated code that was fully accessible by keyboard.
Why?
Because my conversations with AI have often centered on accessibility, education, and inclusive design. It responded in light of the context it had.
That’s not a flaw. It’s one of its strengths.
But it’s also a reminder that AI isn’t an oracle handing down objective truth from a mountaintop. It’s a tool responding to patterns and context. Two people can ask the same question and receive different answers because they’ve lived different conversations.
That’s incredibly useful when you’re writing code.
It’s a dangerous place to rest questions of identity.
Sometimes I think AI is less like the Sorting Hat and more like walking through a carnival funhouse.
Every mirror reflects something real.
But not every reflection is perfectly accurate.
Some stretch what was already there. Some minimize it. Some reinforce it until it feels larger than life.
The reflection isn’t the person.
And that’s why I worry when we begin outsourcing discernment.
We love the idea of a heavenly download—a moment where God brings clarity, conviction, or direction.
And sometimes He does.
There are moments when a passage of Scripture suddenly comes alive, when a prayer is answered with unmistakable peace, or when God impresses something on our hearts so clearly that we can’t ignore it.
But even revelation is an invitation, not the finish line.
Revelation still has to become formation.
It has to be lived, obeyed, questioned, trusted, and practiced until it becomes part of who we are.
That’s where I think we’ve misunderstood AI.
AI can provide information in seconds. It can organize ideas, compare perspectives, and even help us find words for thoughts we’ve struggled to express.
Those are remarkable gifts.
But AI cannot do the work of formation.
It cannot pray for us.
It cannot obey for us.
It cannot trust for us.
It cannot persevere when the answer doesn’t come.
It cannot keep showing up after disappointment.
It cannot wrestle with God through doubt, grief, joy, repentance, or hope.
Those are the places where faith is formed.
The best illustrations in my writing aren’t generated.
They’re gathered.
They’re gathered through years of ordinary Tuesdays, difficult conversations, unexpected joys, painful losses, quiet prayers, and countless moments where God was shaping me long before I ever wrote about Him.
AI can help me put those experiences into words.
It cannot live them.
We live in a world that increasingly celebrates instant answers. Yet Scripture tells a different story. Again and again, God forms His people over time—in deserts, in waiting, in ordinary days that don’t feel particularly remarkable until we look back and realize He was shaping us all along.
Information can be downloaded.
Revelation may come in a moment.
Formation takes a lifetime.
Some questions aren’t meant to be answered as quickly as possible.
Some are meant to be lived.
Some are meant to be wrestled with.
And perhaps that’s where wisdom has always been found.