Lose Your Mind or Use Your Mind

Here's something crazy if you really think about it: humans built AI. We wrote the code. We taught it what to say and how to sound almost human. We built the machines to help us. However, somewhere along the way, we started letting them think for us instead. Ask Alexa. Ask Siri. Ask the app. Ask anything... except yourself. Today, the same people who built it are using it to think for them. The creator needs the creation to function. That's kind of backwards, right?

It's not a new problem, though. It's just showing up in a new format. Nobody woke up one day and decided, "I'm going to stop thinking for myself." It happened little by little. One easy shortcut at a time... until the shortcuts became the default.

Alexa gives you the weather, the news, or the answer to a question you could've figured out yourself, or once just knew off the top of your head. Siri writes your texts, sets your reminders and finishes your sentences before you've even fully thought them through. Algorithms pick what shows up on your feed, what's "trending," and quietly shape what you assume everyone else is thinking too. AI chat tools write your essays, sum up what you were supposed to read and hand you opinions you end up repeating as if they were your own.

None of that makes these tools bad. A hammer isn't bad either but if you forget how to use your own hands because the hammer does everything, that becomes a problem. These tools were made to help the mind not replace it. We built the machine to help us think, not to think for us. However, here's the part that should make us pause. The same engineers and coders smart enough to build AI are often the most hooked on it. They let it write what they could've written, solve what they could've solved, decide what they could've decided. That's not really about technology. It's about us. Give a person a shortcut, and most of the time they'll take it, even if that shortcut slowly weakens the exact skill that made the shortcut possible in the first place.

The Bible already warned us about this issue way before smartphones existed. God never tells people to check out mentally and let something else do the thinking for them. He actually invites us to think things through with Him: "Come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD." Isaiah 1:18. Reasoning is something you do with someone and not something you hand off. God never made us to outsource our thinking, not to statues people used to worship back in the day and not to devices built out of code today. Both are things humans made with their own hands. Both can quietly become something we trust more than the mind God gave us.

Paul told Timothy something that still applies today: "For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7

A sound mind is a gift. Gifts are meant to be used and not to be left sitting on a shelf. When we let convenience quietly take over our ability to think, reflect and figure things out, we're not just losing a skill but we're neglecting something we were given for a reason.

Paul also shows us what an active, engaged mind actually looks like in action: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Philippians 4:8. That's literally a command to think on purpose with your own mind fully switched on. It's hard to do that if you've handed your thinking over to a device that has no idea what honesty, love or virtue even feel like. It only knows data. A machine can process information. Only a real, awake mind can chase wisdom.

Romans lays out exactly what we need to hear: "And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." Romans 12:2. You can't "renew" a mind that's stuck on autopilot. Growth happens when you actually engage by wrestling with what's true, weighing your choices, praying through the confusing stuff and sometimes, just trying to remember something yourself instead of asking a device to remember it for you.

This isn't about ditching technology. Alexa isn't the villain here and Siri isn't out to steal your soul; however, when "convenient" turns into "I can't function without it," we've quietly traded a gift for a shortcut and shortcuts rarely take you somewhere worth going. God gave us these minds and we used them to build these tools. Let's not lose our minds while we're using the tools. So, while you can go ahead and ask the assistant for the weather, just don't ask it to do your wondering, your praying or your thinking for you. That part was never meant to be automated. Stay awake, stay engaged and keep your mind activated.