Text: Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17; 3:1-9; Luke 11:4

Well, this past week I finally did it.  I’ve heard lots of people talking about it, read some articles, listened to a few podcasts about it.  I’m rarely an early adopter for these things, but figured there was no use being a very late adopter.  Have you tried it?  I did, and so far I’ve used it exactly once.  I finally signed up for a free account with ChatGPT. 

An email address, a password, and your birthday is all you need and you, too, can ask any question to this conversational Artificial Intelligence.  Just out of curiosity, how many of you have used ChatGPT or a similar kind of AI?  Not just with Google search results.

Before going any further, I feel compelled to pledge to you that I will never give a sermon written by AI no matter how good it gets at such things.  I will, however, be quoting from ChatGPT this morning, and will make it very clear that those are its words and not mine. 

The reason I signed up for an account this week was directly related to the sermon topic.  It’s the story of the Garden of Eden.  It’s the formation of the first human out of the dust, Adam. And the first woman from a rib from Adam’s side, Eve. The Creator places them in a garden, their home, with many trees for eating, except for one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, the Creator, does not want them to eat from the tree of knowledge “for in the day you eat of it, you shall die.”  That’s the claim the Lord God makes, and that’s the claim the serpent denies when it visits Eve.  “You will not die,” the serpent says, “for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 

That phrase, translated as “knowledge of good and evil,” can go a few different directions.  The one I find most compelling is that by naming two extremes on a continuum, good on one side, evil on the other, it also implies everything in between, more like knowledge from good to evil.  Kind of like we might say knowledge from A to Z.  Which makes it sound a little bit like a Dr. Seuss book, but you get the idea.  What the Creator may be holding back from the humans at this young stage in their existence, and what the serpent is trying to coax them into as quickly as possible, could be a full breadth of knowledge they currently don’t have.  The tree of knowledge from good to evil. 

It’s an origin story of humanity grasping after god-like knowledge they may not yet have the maturity to hold.     

Which is why I wanted to open a ChatGPT account.  I wanted to ask AI what it thought about itself in relation to this Garden of Eden story, with that particular slant in mind.  Here’s the question I typed in:

Can the emergence of AI be traced back to the Garden of Eden and the eating of the fruit where humans gained the knowledge of good and evil and became, as the serpent said, “like God?”  Please answer in 100 words or less.

I thought it was a pretty good question.  And I thought it gave a pretty good answer.  Which I’ll read in just a bit.

So here’s the thing about the serpent: It’s not wrong.  It may be, as Genesis describes it, “crafty,” or “clever,” or “shrewd,” or “intelligent,” as the version today said – however that single descriptive word is translated.  But it’s not wrong.  It’s not a liar.  Of Eve eating the fruit, the serpent says, “You will not die,” and when she eats it she doesn’t die, and neither does Adam who eats it soon after, at least not physically, at least not that day as the Lord God had warned.  The serpent said, “for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,” and they were.  They see their own nakedness.  The serpent said, “and you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” and they did know good and evil, or, from good to evil.  And they were “like God” in this newfound awareness.  The serpent tells the truth.

It’s a pretty big jump, going from dust and a rib one day, to being “like God” the next.  Ever since, we’ve been something between dust and divinity in how we’ve enacted what it means to be a human being.  All the way up to today.

The great Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson described the current human predicament this way: “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.  We thrash about.  We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life” (The Social Conquest of Earth, p. 7).

Which could make one curious whether the kinds of questions raised in this Garden of Eden story – Is this about giving in to temptation? Is it a coming of age story, inevitable if there’s a fruit that can be eaten, that we’ll eventually take a bite and deal with the consequences as they come?  Is Genesis give a warning of what follows when people veer outside the natural boundaries established for them?  Might it be a story of a woman-led liberation out of ignorance, into an open-eyed knowledge of existence?  Could being “like God” have an upside, along with a downside? 

It makes one curious whether the kinds of questions raised in this Garden of Eden story are the same kinds of questions we need to be asking ourselves within our Star Wars civilization, with our Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.  Technology like Artificial Intelligence, for example.

I wonder who we could ask.  Hey ChatGPT: Can the emergence of AI be traced back to the Garden of Eden and the eating of the fruit where humans gained the knowledge of good and evil and became, as the serpent said, “like God?”  Oh, and please keep it to 100 words or less so your answer doesn’t totally take over this sermon.

And here, dear congregants, is that answer, produced almost instantly, which I’ll take as clear evidence that ChatGPT had been thinking about this for a long time and was just waiting for someone to ask.

The comparison between AI’s emergence and the Garden of Eden is metaphorical, not historical. In the biblical story, eating the forbidden fruit symbolizes human consciousness and moral awareness, with the serpent’s claim that Adam and Eve would become “like God” reflecting a quest for knowledge and autonomy. Similarly, AI represents humanity’s pursuit of creating intelligence, mimicking human qualities, and “playing God.” Both raise ethical questions about the consequences of seeking knowledge—loss of innocence in Eden, and potential risks with AI—inviting reflection on the moral responsibilities involved in such advancements.

If you want to go further down that road you could ask it yourself and give it 500 words.

So yeah, at least according to this very self-referential question to AI about itself, this Garden of Eden story is still very much alive among us.  The serpent’s prophecy that we would become “like God,” at least in a certain kind of way, is playing itself out in real time.

It’s probably good to pause here and acknowledge the heavy baggage this Garden of Eden story brings with it.  A gendered reading has put Eve on the hook for the downfall of humanity.  It has been sexualized – Eve tempting Adam – to put the shame and blame on women for men’s poor behavior.  It has been used to say that humanity is inherently depraved, even children as soon as they are born.  It has fed into the mindset that there was once a good and perfect time in the past that if only we could return to, we could make ________ great again.  America, Germany, Russia.

Christian tradition has looked back at this Garden of Eden story as “The Fall.”  And one of the ways humanity has proven its own fallenness is how we’ve taken this wisdom story and twisted it out of shape.  My general approach to scripture is, never let 2000+ years of crappy interpretation get in the way of a good story.  While still acknowledging that religious trauma is a real thing not to be passed over lightly.

Had we started this Narrative Lectionary cycle at the beginning of Genesis, chapter 1, like we did last year, and read all the way up to chapter 3, we might have a more nuanced take on what it could mean to be “like God.”  Because in Genesis 1, being like God is a good thing, a blessing.  That’s where it says:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness….So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.  Male and female he created them.  God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over…every living thing that moves upon the earth.’” 

God-likeness in Genesis 1 is the responsibility to be what Indigenous Australian author Tyson Yunkaporta calls a “custodial species.”  To shape the world for the flourishing of life, which at times involves deciding what will increase and what will decrease.  God-likeness in Genesis 1 involves being a co-creator with God in the evolutionary unfolding of the world.  It comes with a blessing.   

God-likeness in Genesis 3 is a much more muddied affair.  As that one tree, and the words of the serpent indicate, it involves possession of a kind of knowledge we may or may not be ready to carry.  It includes having abilities and power we may or may not be able to direct in healthy ways.  We may use these powers to enrich ourselves and impoverish others.  We may have the smarts to build things whose unintended consequences we can’t foresee.  Being “like God” is a blessing (Genesis 1) and something of a curse (Genesis 3). 

To add another layer to this, the Narrative Lectionary has paired up one verse from the New Testament with today’s reading, a line from Luke chapter 11, part of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”  It’s a prayer that recognizes forgiveness as a divine characteristic, praying that we too might be “like God” in forgiving others and restoring relationships. 

So the question isn’t whether we are or aren’t “like God.”  There’s no going back to the innocence of the garden.  A better question, and more difficult one to live out, is how we can embody divine attributes – like forgiveness, justice, mercy, and reconciliation – while discerning which fruits we are not yet spiritually and morally mature enough to eat, even if the tree is right there for picking.  I, for one, would like to nominate nuclear weapons as a fruit of knowledge that would be better left uneaten, with all fruits already in hand tossed into the compost pile through a global treaty.  The potential misuses of AI also kind of freak me out, but I think I am going to ask it for a suggested itinerary for our family vacation next summer.

That verse from Luke’s gospel is a good directive toward a posture of prayer through all this.  Help us, Creator Spirit, to serve life rather than destroy it.  Guide us, Holy Wisdom, in humbly discerning what is good and necessary, and what we are not yet ready to handle responsibly.  Teach us, O Christ, to use our knowledge to be healers, to be justice-doers, and peace-makers.  And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.  Your kin-dom come on earth, as in heaven. Amen.