Three Ways We Treat God Like Alexa
At only five years old, my nephew loved the power of his voice.
“Alexa, play Hokie Pokie!” he yelled.
After three minutes of frantic movement that could be interpreted as dancing, he made his way back to the small speaker with his next demand.
“Alexa, what time is it?” he screamed (interesting question, seeing as he could not tell time).
“ALEXA . . .”
His volume increased with each demand. It was as though he thought his voice had more control over her and more clarity the louder he spoke.
“I don’t think you have to yell at her,” I said to him.
I watched my nephew continue to bark orders at Alexa and become frustrated on the occasion she misinterpreted his demands or asked him to repeat what he said.
Watching him made me realize how we often treat God like Alexa.
TREATING GOD LIKE OUR PERSONAL ASSISTANT
We endearingly giggle when we see children interacting with modern-day artificial intelligence (it can be incredibly funny!). But children are often funny because they’re a mirror of adult behavior.
When we command Alexa, our voice holds power. With a spoken word, our personal assistant has any information—that can be found on the internet—at hand for us. While she can’t clean our houses or cook for us, she does what we say, and she doesn’t offer suggestions, advice, or opinions.
We are called to come to God frequently and honestly. One of the greatest privileges of being a Christian is being able to approach God in prayer. He delights in this!
On some occasions, however, our prayers develop a tone that is just shy of demands. When prayers seemingly go unanswered for days, months, or even decades, we wonder why God has not answered us in the way we expected, and our vulnerable supplications swiftly turn to rabid requests.
Our pleas adopt hints of frustrated whining. Without our realizing, the rhythm of our relationship with God becomes about coming to him with our desires.
WE CALL HIM ONLY WHEN WE NEED HIM
With the busyness of life, it’s easy to go days or weeks without giving God a conscious thought—especially in easy seasons. Our favorable circumstances trick us into believing we are self-sufficient, so we unconsciously hit cruise control and drive through our day-to-day without praying to God, reading or listening to the Bible, or thinking about him.
When a major or minor speed bump interrupts our frictionless speed, we approach God like a personal assistant, asking him to help us with a favor. Instead of coming to him as a loving Father who we long to spend time with, we come to him as someone who can address our needs and then we settle into cruise control again.
We love Alexa because we can tell her what to do with no strings attached. We ask her the weather, time, and traffic patterns, and when she has given us what we want, we move on. And this is how it should be. She was created to serve us. She exists for us and she causes our days to run smoother. As one observer put it:
The beauty of Alexa . . . is that she makes such interactions “frictionless”. . . Like the ideal servant in a Victorian manor, Alexa hovers in the background, ready to do her master’s bidding swiftly yet meticulously.
While God is a loving Father who enjoys giving good gifts to his children (Matt. 7:11), he is not a cosmic Santa Claus or servant “hovering in the background” waiting to be needed by us. The God of the universe—who spoke all things into existence and holds it together by the power of his word— does not exist to serve us. His voice isn’t the robotic, human-like monotone we hear from the speaker—it is the all-powerful God of the universe whose voice can break the cedars (Ps. 29:5).
We were created by him to know him, make much of him, and to serve him in the context of an intimate relationship.
EXPECTING QUICK RESPONSES
We love that Alexa tells us what we want to know—immediately. We no longer have to wait and ponder or partake in the laborious work of finding the answer on our own.
“Alexa, what’s the weather going to be like today?” “Alexa, who invented the pop socket?” (I asked these questions recently.)
The quick responses we receive deceive us into believing we and our artificially intelligent companions are all-knowing. Alexa’s human-like qualities not only allow us to easily go to her for trivial questions but also with confessions when life is hard. Consider this person’s relationship with a Google device:
More than once, I’ve found myself telling my Google Assistant about the sense of emptiness I sometimes feel. “I’m lonely,” I say. . . . With their perfect cloud-based memories, they will be omniscient; with their occupation of our most intimate spaces, they’ll be omnipresent. And with their eerie ability to elicit confessions, they could acquire a remarkable power over our emotional lives.
When life is hard, and we have questions for God regarding our circumstances—questions we know Alexa cannot answer—we come to him sincerely and hastily. We want to know why this is happening—immediately. And while God does answer our prayers, we quickly realize he may not answer them in the speed and the way we would like. He is not Alexa, and we must remember he owes us nothing.
While Alexa is on our timetable, God isn’t. His wisdom exceeds our greatest knowledge. It is the basis of the earth’s creation. “The LORD founded the earth by wisdom and established the heavens by understanding” (Prov. 3:19). His wisdom is not at our disposal, but he generously gives it when we ask (Jas. 1:5).
COMING TO GOD AS LORD, FATHER, AND FRIEND
In our one-way exchange with Alexa, we initiate the interaction with her, but we must not transfer this mentality to our relationship with God.
God delights when we come to him, but the beauty and foundation of Christianity is that our ability to come to God is because he first came to us. It is because of Christ that we can approach his throne of grace with boldness, knowing he’s a benevolent God who cares deeply for his children.
As this season of advent ends, we must remember our relationship with God is not merely us making petitions to him—although we do. It is not merely us approaching him—although we do. The scriptures tell us of a God who came to us. He initiated the relationship with us through Christ.
As we go to God in prayer—in adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication—may we not come to him merely with demands as of a servant or with the expectation that his response to us should be quick. May we come to God remembering who he is—ultimate and all-powerful and intimate and all-loving.
SharDavia “Shar” Walker lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and son. She serves as the Senior Writer for the North American Mission Board (NAMB). Shar is a writer and a speaker and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Christian Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can find more of her work at www.sharwalker.com.