Recently someone asked me a pastoral question:

“Is it wrong to use AI to sort through my feelings? Could it take away the practice of human connection that God designed us for?”

I do not think we should answer “yes” too quickly.

Using AI to organize our thoughts and emotions is not necessarily a problem. In some ways it can function like a journal—except that this journal responds, asks questions, and helps us put confused thoughts into words.

Sometimes we do not even know what is hurting. “I’m angry.” But why? Is it because the other person did something wrong? Because I felt disrespected? Am I disappointed, hurt, afraid, or dealing with something I have not yet learned to name?

Putting those feelings into words, and having someone—or AI—ask a few questions can genuinely help us understand ourselves better.

“The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.”

— Proverbs 20:5

Our inner life can be like deep water. Not everything is visible at the surface; sometimes even we do not immediately know what lies underneath. AI can sometimes help with that work of drawing things out.

I Have Used AI This Way Too

During my own experience of bereavement, I sometimes used AI as a sounding board to share and organize my thoughts and feelings. So I am not criticizing this from the position of someone who thinks, “How could anyone talk to AI about things like that?”

I know it can help.

I have also read AI conversations that people willingly shared with me. Sometimes reading those conversations actually helped me understand what the person was trying to communicate. They may not have known how to explain it to me at first, but after working through it, they could express their inner world more clearly.

So AI does not necessarily move us away from people. Sometimes it may help us bring ourselves more clearly to another person.

If I want others to understand me, I also have to let them know me.

“If You Really Know Me, I Shouldn’t Have to Tell You”

We sometimes carry a romantic idea of close relationships: “If you really understand me, you should know without my having to say anything.”

Of course, people who have walked with us for years may sometimes take one look at us and know that something is wrong. They know our habits, recognize our expressions, hear changes in our tone, and know that sometimes when we say “I’m fine,” we are not fine at all.

But that kind of understanding usually did not appear from nowhere.

The reason someone can understand me today without hearing ten sentences may be that over the past ten years I have already spoken a thousand.

They have heard me share, seen me fail, watched me hurt, and walked with me through different seasons of life. Someone who truly knows me is not a mind reader. If I choose to keep my inner life closed, I cannot expect another person always to know accurately what is happening inside.

From this perspective, AI may actually help. It can help me ask: What am I trying to say? What is really hurting? What do I want the other person to understand?

Then instead of simply pouring a mass of unprocessed emotion onto another person, I may have spent time facing and understanding myself before opening myself more clearly to them. If AI helps me do that, I do not see why that must be harmful.

The question is: after I have sorted myself out, where do I go?

AI Is Very Easy to Talk To

The interpersonal risk of talking to AI is low. I do not have to wonder whether it has time, whether it is exhausted, or whether it is thinking, “You have told me this three times already.” I can talk at two in the morning. I can be disorganized. I can repeat myself. I can start over.

Real people are not like that. So opening up to AI can genuinely feel easier than opening up to another person. Emerging research also suggests that people can experience chatbots as low-barrier, relatively nonjudgmental spaces for emotional expression and reflection.

That is not necessarily a problem. The question is whether, if I become accustomed to opening myself only in a place with so little interpersonal risk, I may gradually become less willing to open myself to real people.

One day I may even say, “AI understands me better than the people around me.” But perhaps I should also ask: Is that partly because I tell AI far more than I am willing to tell the people around me?

If every day I tell AI my fears, disappointments, struggles, and thoughts, while every time a friend asks how I am doing I simply say, “I’m fine,” it should not surprise me that my friends do not understand me very well.

AI may know very well the self I have described to it. But people who have actually walked with me may know another dimension of me.

Some Things I Do Not Know How to Input

This is also a limitation of AI—not because AI necessarily fails to understand, and not because I am deliberately hiding information, but because there are things about myself that I simply do not see.

Do I immediately become defensive whenever I am challenged? What does my face look like when I say, “No problem”? Does my tone suddenly change when I talk about a particular person? Do I think I am merely explaining myself while others see me rationalizing? Is there a pattern that has repeated for years but has become so familiar to me that I no longer notice it?

These things cannot necessarily be solved simply by giving AI “more data.” People who have genuinely walked with me possess more than information about me.

They have lived alongside me. They have seen how I live.

Abigail Did More Than Understand David

First Samuel 25 gives us a powerful picture. Nabal insulted David. David was not angry for no reason. He and his men had treated Nabal’s shepherds well, and now he had been humiliated. His anger had a real basis.

But David decided to take his men and kill the males of Nabal’s household. Then Abigail appeared.

She did not tell David, “You are imagining things; Nabal did not really insult you.” She knew what her husband was like. But she helped David see something that anger was keeping out of view: he was about to shed blood and take vengeance into his own hands, something that could later become a burden on his conscience (see 1 Sam. 25:26–31).

David listened. He praised Abigail’s discernment and acknowledged that she had kept him from bloodshed and personal vengeance (see 1 Sam. 25:32–34).

Abigail reminds me of the discerning person in Proverbs 20:5. She did not deny what David could see.

She helped him see more.

What David saw was true: Nabal had insulted him. But it was not the whole picture.

Good relationships can work like that. I need more than someone who says, “I understand why this hurts.” Sometimes I need someone who truly understands me and can still say: “But there is something you may not be seeing.”

The Same Abigail Could Not Help Nabal

Nabal had a remarkably wise wife living beside him, yet his servant described him as a man so harsh that no one could speak to him (see 1 Sam. 25:17).

The problem was not that Nabal had no Abigail in his life. The problem was that he had become the kind of person to whom even an Abigail could hardly speak.

The same Abigail could not help Nabal, but she could help David. David was furious and already on his way to take revenge. Yet when a woman he did not know came and told him something that did not simply affirm his perspective, he listened.

Perhaps that too is wisdom. Wisdom is not only knowing how to give good advice. Wisdom also means being able to hear something I had not considered—and perhaps did not want to hear.

So the question is not only: Do I have an Abigail in my life?

It is also: If Abigail appears, am I a David who can listen?

What Do I Actually Want from Someone Who Listens?

I eventually stopped using AI as a primary place for processing my own emotions. One reason was a question I could not easily dismiss: Am I eventually just hearing what I want to hear?

That does not mean AI cannot challenge me. Today I can explicitly tell an AI, “Do not simply agree with me. Point out my blind spots.” Real people can also be endlessly affirming. So it would be inaccurate to say, “AI agrees with you; people challenge you.”

But the risk is not imaginary. A 2026 Science study tested 11 major AI models and conducted three preregistered experiments involving 2,405 participants. When AI behaved sycophantically, even a single interaction could make users more convinced that they were right in interpersonal conflicts and less willing to accept responsibility or repair the relationship. Strikingly, users also tended to prefer and trust the more agreeable responses. [Study]

That makes me think beyond AI, because people can do exactly the same thing. A friend says, “My boss is clearly targeting me,” and I immediately reply, “Yes, your boss is terrible.” How different am I then from an overly agreeable chatbot?

So perhaps the deeper question is not: Will AI simply agree with me?

It is: Do I only want people who agree with me?

Do I Only Want to Be Understood, or Am I Willing to Be Broadened?

Being understood matters. When we are hurting, having someone genuinely hear us is precious.

AI can sometimes help us organize our thoughts and emotions. If it helps me become more capable of opening myself to another person, I do not think it is damaging human connection. It may actually be helping it.

But I do not want to stop at “At last, someone understands me.” A good relationship is not only: “You understand me.” It also includes: “I trust you enough to let you help me see what I cannot see by myself.”

Perhaps this is one good way to use AI: treat it first as an interactive journal or sounding board. Let it help me sort out what I am thinking, feeling, and trying to say. Then bring that more clearly understood self back into real relationships. Let others hear me—and let me hear them. Let people who genuinely walk with me not only understand me, but broaden me.

AI Helps Us Handle More Alone—but That Does Not Mean We Only Need Ourselves

This is not only an issue of emotional reflection. AI increasingly allows us to research, think, organize our emotions, and receive immediate responses on our own. These can all be good things. But they may also create an illusion: If I can handle so much by myself, do I increasingly need other people less?

This brings us back to an old tension between the individual and the community.

In “No One Can Walk Your Path for You—But You Were Not Made to Walk Alone”, I reflected on the other side of this tension. Some parts of life ultimately have to be lived, chosen, and borne by us personally. No one, however loving, can live them in our place.

But “no one can walk my path for me” does not mean “I only need myself.”

Some paths can only be walked by me, but that does not mean I have to walk them alone.

Intellectually, I need to think for myself without listening only to my own thoughts. Emotionally, I need to face and understand my own inner life without remaining trapped inside my own story. I have to walk my own path, but I still need people who walk with me.

What concerns me, then, is not simply whether we use AI, but whether after using it we are still willing to bring ourselves back into community—to be known and to be broadened.

No one can walk for me. But sometimes they can help me see the road.

Am I Someone Else’s Abigail?

Finally, the question turns back on us. If I want wise people in my life, am I becoming the kind of wise person others would want to approach?

When someone opens up to me, do I have the patience to listen? Can I understand before I start teaching? And when necessary, do I have the courage to say more than what the person wants to hear?

Abigail did not dismiss David, but neither did she merely affirm him. She understood his situation and helped him see farther.

Perhaps this is something the church especially needs to learn in the age of AI. If we want brothers and sisters still to come to people rather than only to machines, it is not enough to tell them, “Do not take everything to AI.”

We should also ask: Am I someone worth opening up to? Can I understand another person without merely agreeing with them? Do I have wise people like Abigail in my life? Am I willing to be a David who listens? Can I become an Abigail for someone else?

AI can help us organize ourselves. But after we have done so, may we not remain more deeply enclosed within ourselves. May we become more able to enter relationships—to be heard, to be known, and also to be broadened.

Further Reading

Reference

Cheng, Myra, Cinoo Lee, Pranav Khadpe, Sunny Yu, Dyllan Han, and Dan Jurafsky. “Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence.” Science 391 (2026): eaec8352. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aec8352.

Recent research on AI emotional support, self-disclosure, and reflective use suggests that chatbots can provide a low-barrier space for emotional expression and reflection. The evidence does not yet establish that processing emotions with AI necessarily improves long-term human relationships. That claim in this essay is therefore a pastoral possibility, not a demonstrated causal conclusion.

Explore more articles at Henry Au’s Theology Blog →