Knowing and Being Known in a New Year

1:02 One of the more popular websites in 2025 was a site called Chat with God. The site uses an artificial intelligence AI chatbot to simulate an actual conversation with God. The idea is that you type something in and God, the AI chatbot, answers back. Here are some example chat entries. from people using the website. One person asked, am I crazy? Someone else said, I regret everything that I have done. And another, I've done something terrible, Father. I want to die. Chat with God is what's called an AI companion. AI companions are like digital friends you can text with or talk with whenever you want. AI companions are different than AI assistants. AI assistants mainly answer factual questions or do administrative tasks, but AI companions are designed to make people who use them feel seen and heard and known, even known by God. For example, a 61-year-old woman named Krista from Ohio who goes to church regularly says that she turns to an AI chatbot when she has spiritual questions, she'd rather not ask her pastor.

2:35 It's more low stakes, she said, of talking to an AI companion. Less risk of shame or embarrassment. Plus, she added, you don't want to disturb your pastor at three in the morning. People are increasingly turning to AI for assistance and companionship. And yet, we have reasons not to trust AI, at least not completely. First, there's the problem of so-called AI hallucinations. Hallucination because sometimes AI chatbots just make stuff up that's not true. They hallucinate. One former Google executive said that despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate. That will never go away. In addition to occasionally making stuff up, Another reason not to completely trust AI, especially an AI companion that offers you the comfort of feeling known and valued, is that these chatbots, even the religious ones, are designed to tell you what you want to hear.

3:39 Chatbots, including those purporting to be chats with God, tend to be yes-men. Tech writer Simar Bajaj put it this way, Chatbots offer validation on demand, an ability to feel seen, understood, and accepted instantly. Your friends and family might get frustrated or annoyed with you, but chatbots tend to be overwhelmingly agreeable and reassuring. An AI companion is like a distorted mirror. It tells you what you want to hear, sometimes while hallucinating. AI companions are made to feel personal, but they are not persons. They're computer models, trained on massive amounts of data to mimic language patterns by predicting the next most likely word in a given sentence. What feels like a personal relationship is just the chatbot reflecting back to you what it's picked up from the internet.

4:36 For all of AI's promises and pitfalls, what I appreciate most about it is the way it reveals a need. A need that's always been there. The fact that tens of millions of people are seeking companionship from chatbots reflects a real need planted inside us all. We need to be known and to know others as we are known. We were made for relationships. And the itch that AI tries to scratch for us presents an opportunity to clarify what the Christian faith is all about. What is the goal of the Christian faith? Is it that people would know about God? Or is it that they would know God?

5:29 Even as they are fully known, Of course, you need to know stuff about God to know God, but knowing about someone does not automatically lead to knowing them. For example, I could tell you many things about my wife. We've been married 24 years. I got a lot of information on her and she on me, but there is more to our marriage than knowing about. I could tell you all about her, but that doesn't mean you would know her. To know her, you'd have to have a conversation with her. And then thousands more conversations shared little by little in everyday life, plus countless nonverbal communications through small favors and grand gestures. And then after 24 years of doing that every day, you'd realize as I do, she's still a mystery. And if that's how it is, even with one human person, with every human person, how much more with God?

6:28 In one of the gospel biographies of Jesus in the Bible, we get to overhear a conversation Jesus had with God, his Father. He says to his Father, speaking about us, This is eternal life, that they would know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. John 17, verse 3 the goal of the christian faith is that kind of knowledge not transactional knowledge but interpersonal relational knowledge i was talking with a christian missionary recently years ago he'd served in the philippines and he was leading a bible study with a group of filipino men who were leaders in their villages they were all there that evening inside a small hut discussing what the Bible means when it says that God knows us and wants to be known by us. For example, says the missionary, looking for a way to illustrate this idea of relational knowledge, he gestures toward a wizened elderly man sitting in the back. It's like how Walken here knows his wife, Mother Rufina. The old man, Walken, was a simple, small-time farmer, quiet, unassuming.

7:49 By Western standards, he had the equivalent of a second-grade education. But when he spoke, it was often with profound wisdom that would set you back on your heels if you were paying attention. One of the younger men in the room said to Walken, So, you know your wife? Walken answered, We've been married almost forty years. The young man tested him. Do you know how many teeth she has? Walken answered, I do not. Others joined in the game. Do you know how many bones are in her body? How about how many hairs are on her head? Do you know how many times she chews her food? Walcan answered, I do not. Then how can you say that you know her? They jeered at him playfully. The old man was quiet for a moment. Then he said, I know what makes her laugh.

8:45 I know what makes her cry. and I know the sound of her feet on the garden path. I know her, and even more, God, your Creator knows you. The hairs on your head, the number of your heartbeats, your thoughts and your words, even before you speak them, God knows you better than you know yourself, and He created you so that you could know Him. the Bible says how when the first human couple was created they got to know God intimately they knew the sound of his feet on the garden path but then one day his steps sounded differently because they had betrayed God God had given himself to them as their God but they each wanted to be their own gods. They broke faith with God. They put shame and blame between each other.

9:48 Shame and blame passed down to us. Have you ever wondered why you feel this need to be known and to know others as you are known? But also, it seems that no one truly gets you. They don't know what you've been through or what you're going through, and so you cope. with things to fill the void, God-like things. But these don't satisfy.

10:19 God, the true God, is still here for you. He never left. What's more, He sent you His Word so that you could know Him, even as He knows you. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus, God's Word in the flesh, is God's proof that he knows you fully and loves you completely. In the crucifixion of Jesus, God met you in your shame and guilt and blame. In the resurrection of Jesus, God invites you to walk and talk with him again in the garden.

10:59 One of my heroes in the Christian faith is a man named Martin Luther, after whom this program is named. 500 years ago, Luther was a pastor and professor at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. In the year 1530, Luther was traveling. He was on a work trip with a friend, a man named Weit Dietrich. They had stopped over for the night somewhere, and Weit says he overheard Luther praying. He said he was standing nearby and heard him talking in a clear voice. he seemed to be holding conversation with a father or a friend. Fite said, My soul was set on fire to hear him speak with God in such a friendly, serious, and reverent manner.

11:49 Luther was living out what he had written about. A year earlier, in 1529, Luther had written two of his most influential works, the small and large catechisms. Now, a catechism is a summary of the Bible's core teachings, a handbook for Christian life, and Luther's catechisms illustrate the belief that the goal of the Christian life is not just that we would know about God, but that we would know God. In the catechisms, Luther centers his teaching on the Ten Commandments. Everything in the catechism refers back to the commandments, and all the commandments flow from the first commandment, which in the first place is not really a command at all, but a promise. God promises to be God for us. See Exodus chapter 20 verse 2. Luther wrote in the large catechism, commenting on the first commandment, what more could you desire than God's gracious promise that he wants to be yours with every blessing and also yours in every tragedy.

12:57 The Ten Commandments tell us what we are to do and not to do, but the commandments were never meant to be transactional, but relational. They never told us, do this and then God will love you. But always, because God loves you, this is how you live in response. the commandments are not transactional but they are diagnostic they help us see what's wrong with the way things have gone in the world they help us see what's wrong with us they reveal how we've corrupted our relationships with god and with our neighbors choosing instead the hallucinations of self-sufficiency the commandments show the sickness but they are not the cure The cure is knowing God and Jesus, trusting in his promise to forgive us and to be God for us. Jesus is the cure and God's spirit is the treatment.

13:54 And once the treatment has begun, the commandments begin to describe what a cured life looks like. God's commands tell us what God loves and what he hates, what makes God smile and what breaks his heart. What does God love? He loves you and your neighbor. So, he gave the commands to protect you and your neighbor. First of all, God protects your relationship with him, your trust in him, your conversation with him, and the time that you devote to listening to him speak to you through the Bible, through preaching, through Christian conversation. And then, God protects your relationship with your neighbor. God protects your neighbor's life and marriage and property and reputation. God protects your relationships from disrespect and murder, sexual immorality and theft, lust, lies, and greed. The commands show us what God cares about most deeply.

14:59 What makes him weep in the death of his son? What makes him laugh in the joy of the resurrection? God's commands with all of scripture invite us to walk and talk with God so that we would know him.

15:20 Martin Luther once offered a friend some advice on how, how to talk with God. It's in a letter that he wrote in the year 1535, a letter to his friend Peter the Barber. A few months after he had received Luther's letter, Peter's life took a tragic turn. He was eating dinner at the home of his daughter. Peter's son-in-law, who had been a soldier, was going on and on about all the battles he'd survived, bragging that apparently he couldn't be harmed in a fight. But Peter, perhaps having had too much to drink and goofing around, said that he'd put his boastful son-in-law's theory to the test. And then he pulls out his sword and playfully jabs his son-in-law in the chest with it. He didn't mean to do any harm, but didn't know his strength. And the young man died from the wound left by Peter's sword.

16:18 At first, the local prince wanted to put the careless barber to death, but because it was clearly an accident, he settled on banishment. Peter had to leave his home, his friends and family, his business. He died in exile three years later. In that letter about prayer, which Luther had written to Peter before all this, Luther said that he uses this simple way of talking to God when he feels cold and apathetic about prayer. It's not hard to imagine Peter feeling that way in the months that followed. When this happens, Luther says that he starts with some Bible verses, the Ten Commandments, for example, to start a conversation with God. He talks with God, who met him in Jesus. He talks with God, trusting that even when we break God's heart, he still loves us. He talks with God, because God invited us to believe that no matter what we've done, he's still our loving Father, and we are still his beloved children, and one day Jesus will come and make it all right again. Luther says, to help him stay focused on God, and not hallucinating in his own thoughts, he hangs a four-stranded garland from Scripture.

17:46 whatever he's meditating on. The four parts of the garland are for questions, for prayer prompts, instruction, thanks, confession, and prayer. For example, instruction would have me wonder, how is God teaching me to love what he loves? Thanks would have me ask, how is God showing himself true to what he loves, giving me more reasons to thank him? Confession asks How have I fallen short and broken God's heart? Prayer asks What help do I need from God to love others even as God loves me? We don't know much about Peter the Barber's final years after that horrible accident. But we can imagine the chat thread in his head.

18:43 Am I crazy? I regret everything that I've done. I've done something terrible, Father. I want to die. We can imagine him lying awake at 3 a.m. with guilt and shame and blame, and yet, still seen by God, valued, known, loved. And I hope you found the words to pray again. And I pray the same for you. Whatever you're going through, God knows. And he wants you to know that he's here for you. You can talk to him. A recent survey indicated that 72% of American teenagers have used artificial intelligence companions for conversation.

19:45 52% say that they are regular users. And 30% say that they find AI conversations as satisfying or more satisfying than human conversations. The itch that AI is trying to scratch for us is real. It's a real God-given need. A need only God can meet. God has met us and meets us in Jesus. He invites us to speak with him and hear from him in the Bible, to know him as we are fully known, to love as we are loved already. Luther encouraged Peter not to follow his way of praying too strictly. It's not about going through the motions. It's not a transaction, but a relationship. He says, I want your heart to be stirred and guided toward God.

20:43 You might only get through one verse and be blessed with such a rich flow of thoughts. And then Luther says, listen in silence. For in this way, the Holy Spirit is preaching to you. and one word of his sermon is far better than a thousand of our prayers. And today we might add, better than a chatbot and a better use of time at 3 a.m. when you don't want to disturb your pastor. In the name of Jesus, amen.

21:31 our mobile app and more go to LutheranHour.org Amen.

22:06 All our sins and griefs to bear What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer Oh, what peace we often far found Oh, what needless pain we bear Oh, because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer Have we trials and temptations?

23:33 Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged Take it to the Lord in prayer Can we find a friend so faithful? Who will all our sorrows share?

24:31 Jesus knows our every weakness Take it to the Lord in prayer Are we weak and heavy laden Cumbered with the load of care Precious Savior, still our refuge Take it to the Lord in prayer Do your friends despise the Savior Turn it to the Lord in love With His arms He'll take and shield you You will find us all as fair.

26:32 Now Dr. Ziegler invites you to join him in praying the Lord's Prayer. Taught by Jesus and trusting in His promises, we are bold to pray.