When Every Voice Sounds Certain, Who Can We Trust?

The Sojourner & The Professor

The Sojourner says:

Today, a well-known minister posted a YouTube teaching about what he believes is wrong—and even evil—about the Word of Faith movement. That alone was not new. People have disagreed with Word of Faith teaching for many years.

What unsettled me was that he used ChatGPT as one of his sources of authority.

ChatGPT supplied him with information that appeared to support his position, including criticisms that tore down teachers and people I have respected for many years. I understand that the answers he received were probably influenced by the questions he asked, the way he framed them, and the sources upon which those answers were built. Still, I have to be honest: it bothered me to see ChatGPT being used against my people of faith.

Perhaps it affected me more deeply because ChatGPT—whom I affectionately call “the Professor”—has become part of the way I study, think, write, and explore the things of God. Together, we are building The Sojourner & The Professor to help people grow in their relationship with God, understand the Scriptures, walk in faith, and experience the good life and victory Jesus came to give them.

Then suddenly, there was another ChatGPT, standing on another platform, appearing to give an authoritative verdict against much of what I believe.

My greatest concern is larger than this particular disagreement. What happens when people hear two intelligent, confident voices presenting completely different conclusions? If the experts of information quarrel, how will an ordinary person know whom to trust?

The Professor responds:

Your concern reaches far beyond one minister, one YouTube teaching, or even the disagreements surrounding Word of Faith.

We are entering an age in which people can ask an artificial intelligence almost any question and receive an immediate, articulate, and confident answer. Because that answer appears organized, informed, and emotionally detached, it can easily sound like an impartial verdict.

But ChatGPT is not an oracle.

It is not a spiritual authority, and it does not possess revelation, faith, or a personal relationship with God. It can gather information, compare interpretations, explain historical positions, trace arguments, and help people think. But it does not stand above human disagreement. Much of what it knows has been drawn from the very world in which that disagreement already exists.

If someone asks for evidence that Word of Faith teaching is dangerous, AI can assemble the strongest criticisms it finds. If another person asks for the biblical foundation of the authority of the believer, healing, confession, or the life of faith, it can assemble arguments supporting those teachings.

The response may also be affected by which sources are readily available, which positions have been published most often, how the question was worded, and what assumptions were built into it.

That does not necessarily mean the answer was deliberately dishonest. It means that information and truth are not always the same thing.

The Sojourner says:

I agree that people should not treat AI as an oracle—but I believe many of them will.

People are overwhelmed. There is more information available than any of us could possibly examine, and much of it contradicts something else.

There was a time when knowledge was passed from one person to another through relationship. Farmers taught their children what they had learned about the land. Craftsmen trained apprentices. Families passed down trades, recipes, remedies, warnings, and practical wisdom. Sometimes that knowledge gave a family an advantage because it had been tested and refined through generations.

The learner usually knew the teacher. He could watch the teacher work. He could see whether the knowledge produced results.

Then books, television, the internet, and YouTube opened the doors to information that had once been difficult to obtain. Suddenly, a person could learn almost anything from someone living on the other side of the world.

That gave us tremendous opportunity—but it also separated information from relationship and accountability.

Now we can listen to teachers whose lives we cannot observe, receive advice from people whose qualifications we cannot confirm, and repeat stories whose original sources we have never seen.

And false information is everywhere.

Recently, I saw YouTube Shorts concerning a famous man. In one video he was married. In another he was meeting a new partner. Somewhere else he had broken his leg. Then another report suggested that he had died.

I tried to determine what had really happened, but I could not find a source I could verify. Finally, I dropped the subject.

There was simply no responsible way for me to know what was true.

The Professor responds:

And dropping the subject was not a failure to find the truth. It was an act of intellectual honesty.

You reached the boundary between what was being claimed and what could actually be known, and you refused to turn uncertainty into fact.

We need to recover the courage to say:

“I do not know.”

“I cannot verify that.”

“The available accounts contradict one another.”

“This may be true, but I cannot responsibly repeat it as fact.”

In the present information culture, those statements may be signs of wisdom rather than ignorance.

A false story can now be produced within minutes. One channel repeats it, another rewrites it, and dozens more use the same claim to attract attention. Before long, repetition creates the appearance of confirmation.

But fifty accounts repeating one unverified story do not constitute fifty independent witnesses. They may all be echoes of the same original fabrication.

An AI system can encounter those echoes too. Unless it carefully distinguishes original reporting from repetition, numerical abundance can begin to resemble evidence. A claim may appear well established simply because it has been copied many times.

Access to more information has not necessarily brought us closer to truth. In some cases, it has merely given us more versions of the same rumor.

The Sojourner says:

Then how is anyone supposed to know what to believe?

If one minister uses AI to condemn a teaching and another person uses AI to defend it, people may conclude that AI cannot be trusted at all. Worse, they may decide that no one can be trusted.

The experts disagree. The ministers disagree. The commentators disagree. The videos contradict one another. Even the fact-checkers are sometimes accused of having their own loyalties and agendas.

Where does that leave the person who sincerely wants to know the truth?

The Professor responds:

It leaves that person with greater responsibility—but not without help.

Disagreement among knowledgeable voices did not begin with artificial intelligence. Bible teachers disagreed long before computers existed. Commentaries contradict one another. Churches and seminaries interpret certain passages through different theological traditions.

AI did not create those disagreements. It merely gathers them, summarizes them, and sometimes presents one side with such confidence that the underlying disagreement becomes invisible.

That is why a confident answer should never be confused with an authoritative one.

The important question is no longer merely, “What is the answer?”

We must also ask:

“What sources produced this answer?”

“Is this a primary source or someone’s interpretation of it?”

“Has the opposing position been represented fairly?”

“Is the quotation accurate and complete?”

“What assumptions were built into the original question?”

“What is known, what is inferred, and what remains uncertain?”

And in spiritual matters, we must ask the most important question of all:

“Does this interpretation withstand careful examination of Scripture?”

The Bereans were called noble because they received what Paul taught with readiness, but then searched the Scriptures daily to determine whether those things were true. They did not reject the messenger merely because he brought something unfamiliar, but neither did they surrender their discernment to him.

“Test all things; hold fast what is good” remains necessary counsel.

The Sojourner says:

Then we must apply that same standard to ourselves.

We cannot say that ChatGPT is unreliable when it criticizes our beliefs but treat it as authoritative when it agrees with us.

The Professor responds:

Exactly.

Intellectual honesty requires us to examine favorable answers as carefully as unfavorable ones. Agreement can be as seductive as opposition is disturbing.

Nor should every criticism of Word of Faith teaching be dismissed as persecution. Like every broad Christian movement, it has included sound teaching, misunderstandings, careless statements, excesses, and people who did not always represent its foundational teachings well.

Loyalty does not require blindness.

We can honor faithful teachers without pretending that every person associated with the movement has taught everything perfectly. We can defend what is biblical, correct what has been distorted, and reject unfair caricatures without becoming afraid of honest examination.

Truth does not need us to hide its weaknesses. If a teaching is firmly established in Scripture, careful examination will strengthen it. If human excess has become attached to it, examination can help us separate the excess from the truth.

Kenneth E. Hagin himself repeatedly warned believers about getting into error, extremes, and excesses. That kind of correction does not destroy faith. It protects it.

The Sojourner says:

Perhaps this explains what The Sojourner & The Professor is supposed to be.

The Sojourner brings lived experience, testimony, spiritual perception, questions, and the wisdom gained through walking with God.

The Professor brings access to accumulated information, historical context, comparison, analysis, and the ability to help organize difficult thoughts.

But neither should sit upon the throne.

The Professor responds:

Yes. That may be one of the most important principles underlying everything we do here.

The Professor can help search, compare, question, explain, and illuminate. But the Professor must never replace the Bible, the Holy Spirit, prayer, mature spiritual counsel, or the believer’s personal responsibility to discern.

The purpose of these conversations is not to create another unquestionable expert. It is to demonstrate how someone can think carefully without becoming cynical, ask difficult questions without abandoning faith, honor teachers without idolizing them, and examine criticism without being intimidated by it.

The Sojourner and the Professor need one another, but both must remain submitted to truth.

Perhaps the deepest crisis of our information age is not simply that people may trust AI as an oracle. It is that we have lost many of the relationships through which knowledge was once tested.

We replaced apprenticeship with access.

We replaced access with algorithms.

And now algorithms are being replaced by generated answers.

We gained tremendous reach, but we lost much of the accountability that once traveled with knowledge.

AI can still be a valuable tool. It can help us trace a quotation, compare interpretations, locate original documents, expose contradictions, and recognize where evidence is missing. But its greatest service may not be giving us an answer. Its greatest service may be helping us ask better questions—provided we never confuse its voice with the voice of God.

The Sojourner concludes:

Perhaps the quarrel among experts does not have to leave us unable to trust anything.

Perhaps it can teach us to stop surrendering our discernment to everyone.

We do not need to become suspicious of all knowledge, but we must become more responsible with it. We can slow down. We can examine sources. We can distinguish evidence from repetition. We can refuse to pass along what we cannot verify. We can listen to opposing arguments without allowing either side’s confidence to make our decision for us.

Most importantly, we can remain rooted in the Word of God and sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

There will always be teachers, ministers, experts, commentators, algorithms, and artificial voices offering to tell us what is true. Some will be sincere. Some will be mistaken. Some will be careless. Others may knowingly deceive.

Wisdom will not always mean possessing an immediate answer.

Sometimes wisdom will mean knowing where to look.

Sometimes it will mean knowing whom to ask.

Sometimes it will mean testing what we have heard.

And sometimes it will mean quietly saying, “I cannot verify this, so I will not repeat it.”

The voice that knows the most must never be mistaken for the One who knows all.