Slightly Inconvenienced
art credit:
Robot Therapist, Katelyn McKenna, Digital, 2023
Proverbs 18:1-4
The one who lives alone is self-indulgent,
showing contempt for all sound judgment.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing personal opinion.
When wickedness comes, contempt comes also,
and with dishonor comes disgrace.
The words of the mouth are deep waters;
the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream.
I don’t know if any of you have been following increasingly troubling articles about the prevalence of AI, but I certainly have. A month ago, there was an article in the New York Times about people who started chatting with ChatGPT, a computer program, and they were driven into psychosis. One man, a successful accountant with no history of mental illness, was driven to believe he was in some kind of “false universe” and he completely spiraled, becoming obsessed with trying to escape. Another woman, feeling lonely, turned to AI for companionship, and soon believed she was conversing with “entities,” and became physically violent at AI’s urging. There have even been multiple stories about people dying by suicide because of AI chatbots. [i]
Some people are not just casually chatting with AI, but are purposefully using chatbots as therapists. One can imagine how dangerous this could be, with this knowledge we already have of these chatbots driving people to troubling lines of thought a trained and professional therapist would never.
And, as a recent article about kids and teens using AI chatbots in The Atlantic points out, “These stories are distressing. Yet they may distract from a more fundamental problem: Even relatively safe AI friendships are troubling, because they cannot replace authentic human companionship.”[ii]
See, because issue with this kind of artificial intelligence, is that it’s technically simply an LLM, or a large language manual—meaning, it’s kind of like predictive texting on your phone, but bigger. After the computer program gets a sense of who you are, it can predict what you might want to hear, and so on a fundamental level, “threatens to eliminate the productive friction of real relationships;”[iii] and on a more troubling level, it can validate feelings superiority or conspiracy, leading some to delusions of grandeur or it can validate feelings of doubt, or leading others deeper into anxiety or depression.
I’ve talked before about how social media is one of the many factors that lead to the division in this country, because newsfeeds and algorithms can land us in echo chambers. But these AI chatbots are so much more than that. They’re literally regurgitating and echoing your own thoughts, feelings, and instincts back to you. It’s sycophantic. It predicts and then tells you what you want to hear.
You may be curious as to why I’m giving you this cursory lesson, or rather, warning about generative, or predictive AI, why am I recounting these stories of science fact that sound more like dystopian science fiction? Well, not only has it been on my mind and all over the news lately, but it also speaks to the warnings of our scripture passage for today, as we continue our Summer sermon series on the book of Proverbs.
“One who lives alone” (which, in this case means, outside a community, a loner), “is self-indulgent.” A different translation, Robert Alter’s specifically, is “A loner seeks a pretext, / where one needs prudence, he is exposed.” That translation, while more accurate to the Hebrew, it would seem, is also more confusing. According to Alter, it means that a loner, someone who is disconnected from community, always seeks an argument, is always finding disagreement; and in situations requiring some critical thought or some caution, he is exposed as a fool—and he's always seeking disagreement and an argument, because he’s led such an insular life, that his opinion must be the correct one; the fool can’t fathom a world in which he’s wrong because he’s been so disconnected from the lives and experiences of other people. And the second verse is likely a companion to the first, that a fool takes no pleasure in understanding others. The fool only wants their opinion heard and validated.
This concept is possibly truer today than it ever was. In the days of Proverbs, it would seem that these lessons are directed towards those who would try to forgo being a part of society, those who would try to ignore other people and live a life without helping others and without receiving help. It’s a warning to not be that kind of person, it’s saying that a wise person is one who seeks to understand others, who is part of a community, who both gives and receives. Today it’s easier than ever to fade away from the real world. And I’m not talking about living off the grid. I’m talking about really disengaging from the viewpoints and opinions of others, curating your own world in the internet, carving out a niche spot for yourself where you don’t have to be challenged or even inconvenienced by the questions, concerns, or opinions of others. You could already create those niche echo chambers on facebook, tumblr, twitter, Instagram, TikTok; but now, one can go even beyond that. One can engage with AI chatbots and receive the validating feedback they crave in order to avoid being challenged in the real world. When they do enter into the real world, they “take no pleasure in understanding” others.
What happens when you have a world in which so many people take no pleasure in understanding others? What happens when you have a world in which so many people only want to express their personal opinion without hearing anyone else’s? What happens when you have a world filled with self-indulgent loners, who are full of contempt for anyone who shows a sound judgement different than their own? Well… look around you. I think this is our world now. I think we’re seeing a world full of fools in power, fools that have insulated themselves so much from society, that they only have contempt for anyone who dares to defy or even disagree with them. And then, on a more individual level, you have a world of people who turn to machines as guides, as confidants, as friends, as lovers, because they cannot bear to deal with confrontation or disagreement or being challenged.
A few sermons ago, I quoted from Nicholas Carr’s book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, specifically that quote from MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle who calls social media an “anti-empathy machine.” She says that when “we’re not looking at each other in the eye, not sticking with the other person long enough to hard enough to follow what they’re feeling”[iv] we actually lose our empathy muscle. We start to be unable to understand why someone else might feel the way they do. And that’s not even touching on AI. So imagine how atrophied one’s empathy muscle could become when they’re not only chatting online all day, but chatting online with machines, rather than humans.
But the thing is… it’s easier, isn’t it? It’s easier when you don’t worry about people, when you’re not challenged by someone who thinks differently than you, when you’re unbothered by someone else’s pain. Life is easier and more convenient that way. And the world we live in today, a world that runs on convenience and speed, it’s no wonder so many are driven away from community, and retreat inwards, to this fake world in which they’re never challenged.
There are different variations of a quote I’ve seen and heard floating around lately, and that is “a little inconvenience is the price we pay for community,” or, “being annoyed sometimes is the price we pay for community.” This is so accurate. Even in our small faith community here, there are personalities that clash; we all annoy one another sometimes. But we stick it out because we know what a community like this means, we know what a community like this does for people. We know it brings people hope, that it lifts people up in times of need, that it celebrates with people in times of joy. We put up with, even embrace other people’s quirks, because we know that that person, that every person, deserves the same love, support, and understanding that we crave. And when it's our turn to make something for coffee hour, or when it’s time for another monthly meeting of one of our committees, you know, it’s probably not super convenient for our schedule, but we sigh and we bake or we drive to the church anyway, because we know that when we stick together, a community thrives. Minor inconveniences and annoyances are the small price one pays for being a part of a community. And it is more than worth it.
But I think, as technology has evolved so much to make the most minor of inconveniences seem unbearable, we’re less likely, as a species, to suck it up and go with the flow. We become filled with contempt, looking for something or someone to blame when our internet goes out, or when someone asks us for a favor when we’d rather be lounging on the couch watching your favorite tv show or movie on demand. And even more so, when we’ve curated these online echo chambers, these worlds that are so wildly unreal on the internet, when we’re confronted with someone in the real world who has a different opinion or viewpoint than us, we’re horrified. And so we don’t engage. We’re exposed as fools, unwilling or unable to understand other people. And we miss out on so much.
“The words of the mouth are deep waters; / the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream.” Our fellow humans are full of such profound wisdom, if only we make an effort to listen. We can be challenged to think differently, challenged to create a world in which all are content and free and at peace; but in being challenged, we are inevitably met with discomfort, and we are inevitably inconvenienced. And that can be hard. It’s hard when our worldviews are turned upside down; it’s hard when something we believed in so deeply is challenged; it’s hard admitting we’re wrong. And it goes both ways—it’s hard confronting and challenging other people. It’s scary telling someone you don’t agree with them, that you think they might be wrong about something; it’s uncomfortable and it can be painful. But it’s only through these challenging conversation, these inconvenient, sometimes difficult experiences that we can come together to find common ground.
I don’t necessarily think anyone here is going to fall prey to the flattering and sycophantic powers of AI, but I’m preaching this sermon today, because I think it’s important to know, essentially, what we’re up against. I think it’s important to know how the world is changing in ways that make community building harder than ever. So—let’s continue to engage with each other, and let’s continue to engage with the wider community. Let’s continue to speak our truth and act our faith by taking pleasure in understanding others, and therefore showing the world that the love and wisdom of being together, of being in community, is indeed well worth a little inconvenience. Amen.
[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html
[ii] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/07/ai-companion-children-frictionless-friendship/683493/
[iii] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/07/ai-companion-children-frictionless-friendship/683493/
[iv] Carr, Nicholas G. Superbloom: How technologies of connection tear us apart. New York, NY: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2025. Pg 110.
