While smartphones have already made themselves necessary in practically every part of our lives, the newest, trusted and handy operating system is Amazon’s Alexa speaker. If you don’t know what, or shall I say who Alexa is, you may have heard of her competition; Siri, ‘Google’, Echo, and Cortana.
Alexa is Amazon’s design and creation of a virtual assistant. If you look around the world today, in the common household, you will not see what you would have seen 15, 10, or even five years ago. Our lives are thoroughly intertwined with multiple devices and artificial intelligence has become a part of the human interactions between the modern family.
Being In The World, But Not of It
As lovers of the light, we cannot simply separate these worldly objects, as they have become a part of true reality.
We read in 1 John 2:15-17 (KJV)
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
But to what extent to do we allow these operating systems into our lives, and into our spiritual lives, and how much is too much?
AI and The Church
This week, the topic of AI and spirituality has circulated throughout major news outlets as the Church of England pushes Amazon to establish more skills into Alexa’s capabilities. That’s right, you can now command Alexa to connect you to God. Members of the Church of England have found the new Alexa skill to be quite intriguing, and it’s not a surprise to most of the world.
According to the Catholic newspaper The Tablet, the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, shared:
“The aim of the Alexa skill is to help users to know more of the love of Jesus Christ, to enable regular churchgoers and those exploring faith to connect with God in another way and at a time that’s right for them.”
In the same article, the Church of England announced that 75,000 Brits have turned to God for guidance, via their Amazon Echo speakers. The 1-sided conversation with God has consisted of about forty percent saying prayers and making their requests known while about 31% are asking the bigger faith questions. And the craziest one yet, 6% of the interactions with the new skill were of requests for Alexa to pray on their behalf before sitting down to eat.
We must be careful of the things we allow to stand between us and the Father. Remember saints, while it’s fun to have these gadgets in our homes, they do not offer true assistance to get to God. Only the Holy One, Jesus Christ, does that.