This post was not written with or by AI.
I wanted to explore how AI could help deepen my faith. I enjoyed using Claude to research topics which were on my mind. It does a good job finding and quoting scripture but a poor job of letting me explore surrounding verses. I wanted an experience similar to what I was having but optimized to get me into scripture and not stay in chat.
Let’s set aside the fact that LLMs hallucinate scripture, Sojourn solves that but it’s for another post.
I used a few weeks of latent time to think about what was missing in my experience with Claude. I wanted a very lightweight way to peek into scripture with similar lightweight ways to fully immerse myself in it. I also wanted a way to work back to earlier context. I sketched out how that would look and it turned out that I loved the experience - (see Sojourn - Bible Study). Here’s how it looks.
I thought that others may appreciate exploring scripture this way. I published the app to TestFlight and shared it with people I knew. Turns out that they did like it!
The feedback motivated me to publish it on the App Store to the world for free. Would strangers find it as useful as friends? Turns out, yes. They also liked it!
Devotional time is deeply personal and Sojourn’s privacy policy reflects that. The app doesn’t ask for any information before you can use it and chats are never saved.
Getting people out of chat and into scripture
So how do I know strangers find it useful? Well, two anonymous metrics. Many use the app multiple times a week and many exit the chat and get deep into scripture. Here’s an example of a conversation that lasted 18 minutes and followed a common pattern of chat ⭢ scripture ⭢ chat ⭢ scripture. Notice they spent 13 minutes in scripture. That’s 13 minutes well spent!
This has me really optimistic about positive uses of AI for faith. I encourage other Christ followers to do the same and think about ways AI can be a means and not the end.