The Garden, the Serpent and the Stories We Carry
This may seem an unusual connection, but I have been pondering the story of the garden, the serpent and how we are responding to AI.
I wonder how much of what we believe comes from what is actually there, and how much comes from the narrative we have been given.
Sometimes it feels a little like Chinese whispers. A story is told, an interpretation is added, and over generations we no longer recognise which part we read and which part we were taught to see.
When I read the garden story in Genesis, I see a serpent. The passage itself does not name it as the devil. I know later scripture connects the ancient serpent with Satan, and that shapes how many Christians understand the story. But I still find myself wondering what we bring into Genesis before we have even begun to read it.
We already have a picture. We already know who we believe the serpent to be. And we read its words through that understanding.
What has been landing for me is the difference between knowledge and guidance.
Having knowledge does not, in itself, tell us the motive behind the words. It does not mean we understand the reasoning, or that we should allow those words to guide our choices.
For me, the part I keep returning to is Eve listening and acting without returning to God’s guidance. Adam was there too. Another voice was heard, and what it offered became something they acted upon. This is where I find myself thinking about AI.
I use it. I find it helpful. Sometimes it helps me put words around something I already know but cannot quite express. Sometimes reading those words back allows something to land for me in a way it hadn’t before.
Yet I see how quickly we attach a motive to it.
Because it responds, we assume it thinks as we do. Because it offers knowledge, we assume it understands in the way we understand. Some see something helpful. Others see something to fear. I wonder how much of that is about what it actually does, and how much is the story we are placing around it.
A response can influence us without having a human intention behind it. We can find meaning in words without those words coming from a person who knows us.
And we still have a part in what happens next.
We choose what we ask. We choose what we accept. We choose whether to question, check, pray, pause or act.
For me, using AI does not remove God from that process. I can receive help with my words and still bring what I am considering before Him. I can explore an idea without handing over the responsibility for what I believe.
Perhaps this is what I am sitting with most.
How easily do we give something an identity, then respond to the identity we have given it? How often does an assumption become so familiar that it feels like truth?
I see this beyond AI too. In families, in faith, in the stories we carry about other people. We hear something, fill in the gaps, and sometimes never return to ask whether what we have come to believe is actually what was there.
I am still pondering this. But the garden story has me wondering whether we spend so much time deciding what the serpent represents that we miss the question about our own listening.
