There is much concern among the creative community about AI, Artificial Intelligence.  I take no stand on this controversy but following is a piece I produced using Artificial Intelligence.

I used ChatGPT.  I started with this prompt:

I have a theory that popular love songs are really expressions of love of God. Please write a brief essay supporting this theory. Use quotes from actual songs in your argument.

I received a short essay but I wanted more so I used this prompt:

Could you include I Will Follow Him and All of Me in the analysis. Also consider these songs as a modern equivalent of Psalms from the old testament.

I received another short essay but I wasn’t satisfied.  The tone was too mechanical and I wanted it to be more descriptive.  I used this prompt:

Ok, please rewrite in a more descriptive style. Pretend you are William Faulkner. Also, include a relevant discussion of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley.

That was it!  Below is the result.  I am most pleased with it.  Will say I had to go through it and edit out the superfluous use of dashes.  That is a dead ringer for AI and I would recommend  including no dashes instructions in your prompt.

A Reflection on Love Songs as Prayers to God

There are songs that climb the walls of the heart like ivy, slow and sure, uninvited but inevitable. These songs reach across time and dust and brokenness to touch something too old for memory and too sacred for words. They play on radios in our kitchens, in the dark hush of cars parked beside cornfields or coastline, in the long and quiet hallways of our private recollections. Though they parade themselves as love songs, crooning softly of “you” and “me,” of leaving and returning, of heartbreak and union, they are, many of them, something older. Something eternal.

They are prayers. They are psalms. Not the kind sung with robes in a cathedral, but modern ones, wrapped in melody rather than scripture, voiced through pianos and guitars instead of lyres, spoken through microphones rather than temple incense.

They are love songs to God.

Begin with I Will Follow Him, that anthem of loyalty so fierce it borders on madness, even martyrdom. “I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go,” she sings. This is not flirtation, nor is it the whim of passing affection. It is surrender. It is covenant. This is the kind of blind, relentless devotion found in the wilderness, in the aching resolve of Ruth who once said, “Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God.” It is not the whimper of infatuation. It is the battle cry of the faithful. To follow Him is to give up comfort, security, and even the self. This small song, written for popular ears and echoed through stadiums and silver screens, holds within it the burning core of true devotion.

Then there is All of Me by John Legend. Its phrasing may be simple, but it is reverent at its root. “All of me loves all of you.” Not part, not most, not only the easy pieces. The whole. It is an offering, complete and unguarded, like the psalmist who cried, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” To love in full, including flaws and fears, is not merely romantic. It is sacred. When he sings, “You’re my end and my beginning,” we hear the echo of Revelation: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

And what of I Will Always Love You, that hymn of farewell, born in simplicity by Dolly Parton and set ablaze by Whitney Houston’s voice? “Bittersweet memories, that is all I’m taking with me.” The parting aches with grief, but it is dignified. There is a reverence in the letting go. “I hope life treats you kind, and I hope you have all you’ve dreamed of.” These are not the words of a scorned lover. They are a benediction. They resemble the final verses of the Psalms of lament, where the worshipper does not always understand the hand of God but blesses Him still. In sorrow and silence, the sacred still speaks.

Adele’s Someone Like You feels drenched in romantic longing, yet something older hums beneath it. “Never mind, I’ll find someone like you.” That line is laced with grief, but also with trust, trust that something greater than our own desire is unfolding. “I wish nothing but the best for you, too.” These words carry the weariness of Job, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Resigned, resilient, seasoned by sorrow, yet still able to offer blessing.

Even Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud brushes against eternity, though it enters gently. “When your legs don’t work like they used to before, and I can’t sweep you off of your feet…” he begins. Time creeps forward, and yet love remains. “And, darling, I will be loving you till we’re seventy.” The statement carries more than romantic weight. It hints at the everlasting. At love that persists when the flesh fails. “People fall in love in mysterious ways,” he sings. Faith is not so different. It is a falling toward something unseen, something unknowable, something we believe in despite ourselves.

Finally, there is Can’t Help Falling in Love, the soft surrender of Elvis Presley. “Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you.” There is no defense, no logic. The heart moves. “Take my hand, take my whole life too.” These are not simply vows of affection. They are offerings. The whole life is placed upon the altar, without knowing what will be asked in return. Like Abraham with Isaac, the song does not negotiate, it gives. The fool rushes in not because he is reckless, but because he sees what the wise do not. The soul recognizes what the mind resists. And it kneels.

In all of these songs, what appears as a cry to another person is often, perhaps always, a cry to the Divine. The “you” may seem earthly, but behind it stands something larger. A presence that is sometimes near, sometimes far, yet always longed for. These are not merely songs for lovers or spouses. They are songs that remember something older than romance, something etched into the marrow of the human soul; the longing to be known, to be received, to return to the One who made us.

This is the spirit of the Psalms. Cries of joy and sorrow, of praise and protest, written from palaces and caves, from the lips of kings and shepherds alike. “My soul thirsts for you like a parched land,” wrote the psalmist. That same thirst lives still. It rises in new melodies, sung through earbuds and whispered in lonely bedrooms, voiced not in Hebrew poetry but in the universal language of longing.

Let us not dismiss these songs as trifles, as fleeting notes meant to fill silence. Let us hear in them the sacred ache. Let us recognize that perhaps every “I love you” is also “Thou art my God.” Perhaps every chorus is a psalm, waiting not to be understood but to be felt. Not with the ears, but with the soul.

And the soul listens.
She always has.

Now Look at This

By tweaking the text a little you can avoid issues with AI detection tools.  In this case I removed and substituted EM Dashes for other types of punctuation and got it down to 4% chance the content was created by AI.