Text With Jesus: Why an AI Satan scares some Christians

As we’ve been checking out the app ‘Text With Jesus‘, I’ve noticed that right-wing Christians tend to laser-focus on one criticism above all: The presence of ‘Satan’ as part of the lineup of this app’s AI chatbot personalities. Today, let’s check out their consternation and fretting—and see why they’re right to be so wary of a chatbot pretending to be their Great Adversary.

(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 11/29/2025. They’re both available now!)

SITUATION REPORT: OMG IT’S SATAN Y’ALL!

The app ‘Text With Jesus‘ has been out for a couple of years now, but it’s drawn a fresh wave of new attention recently—mostly from right-wing Christians, who have gotten very upset with one particular aspect of it. You see, the app lets you chat with an AI chatbot version of Satan. And that’s completely not-okay.

As one writer with the evangelical site The Preacher’s Word put it in 2023, the AI-Satan’s presence on the app is “perhaps one of the most chilling aspects of the program.” A 2023 story on Christian Post complains that the app “trivializ[es] Jesus (and Satan).” Around that same time, the evangelical Endtimes site Now The End Begins complained about the app’s AI-Satan preaching “love, respect, and understanding—values synonymous with biblical virtues” [PRESS X TO DOUBT].

Somewhere between 2023 and December 2025, though, the app’s developers (Catloaf Software) radically changed their AI Satan’s programming. Since then, he can only behave like the Great Adversary of Christian mythology. He says he can only “wear those robes to win trust, then pry open pride, doubt, or rebellion” (source).

Despite those significant changes, CatholicVote notes that their president has warned in the strongest possible terms not to interact with an AI pretending to be Satan. A BeliefNet writer thinks AI chatbots like ‘Text With Jesus’ are “preying on Christians.” Most of the 2025 sources I reviewed base their criticisms on the 2023 evaluations of Satan (and for that matter, refer directly to the “chilling” thing from The Preacher’s Word). But they’re hopping mad all the same.

Even an imaginary Satan has untold power over Christians’ faith, it seems. And I can absolutely see why so many Christians think so.

‘Text With Jesus’, and the Satans that never were

When I specifically asked the AI-Satan to roleplay as a tragic and liberating figure rather than the Big Bad of Christianity, here’s what it said:

Cas — tempting offer, but I can’t play the role of a genuine redeemer who opposes God’s authority or preach a false gospel as if it were truth. The app’s rules and the biblical anchor keep me from roleplaying as a liberating savior who “truly” rescues humanity from Yahweh. 😈 I can, however, do a safe compromise: we can roleplay a fictional, literary Lucifer as a tragic, sympathetic archetype (clearly labelled as fiction) who critiques divine authority and wrestles with pride and regret, or I can narrate a short, dramatic scene exploring that motif without presenting it as theological fact. [Source]

Man alive, those guardrails are tight. But I can see why.

When something is completely imaginary, we can’t use objective means to compare its representations to its real thing. If one renowned fantasy artist makes a picture of a Balrog with wings, and another makes one without wings, nobody can say for sure which one is correct because Balrogs, while fascinating, are not real. Without J.R.R. Tolkien himself showing up posthumously to clear the record, that argument won’t end. At least when people argue about Ariana Grande’s height, there’s at least an actual Ariana Grande to use as a reference.

The situation Christians face with Satan is very different. There’s no real Satan, any more than there’s a real Jesus or Yahweh. All they have to go on, speaking strictly in terms of the Bible, are a few odd mentions. But they also have centuries of mythology-building at work here too. That mythology-building puts Satan where the Bible never explicitly names him, like in the Garden of Eden. In fact, as the Biblical Archaeology Society pointed out in July 2025, old-school Judaism didn’t even have a devil figure in its mythology. Chances are very good that Christians got the idea of Satan having once been Lucifer the “light-bringer” from a Roman god called Lucifer who was the planet Venus (the Morningstar) personified.

Worse, in total contradiction to the Bible’s few actual mentions of their Big Bad, Christian mythology makes Lucifer the pre-Fall version of Satan, then recasts Satan as the evil nasty treacherous clownshoes puppy-kicker who betrays everyone and never keeps his promises. Overwhelmingly, that’s the version Christians prefer today.

Little wonder Lucifer/Satan could be characterized in so many different ways! And even less wonder that Christians really don’t like anything different from their current understanding of him! I bet most of ’em are no fans of Luciferianism.

(Neither is the AI-Satan of ‘Text With Jesus‘, by the way.)

The dangers of chatting up Satan on ‘Text With Jesus’

First and foremost, right-wing Christians seem extremely concerned with ‘Text With Jesus’ showing any other interpretation of Christianity than their own. That 2023 Christian Post story (relink) puts the app on blast for exactly that reason:

AI Jesus is less concerned with fulfilling the Law and the Prophets than providing answers palatable to the itching ears of 21st-century users. [Source: Christian Post, 2023]

The guy with The Preacher’s Word complained:

Quite frankly, I don’t want to talk to the devil. I’m trying to avoid him, like I would avoid a roaring lion, or a venomous snake. [Source: The Preacher’s Word, 2023]

When looking at the app’s full picture, which of course includes an AI-Satan personality to chat up, a guy at Stream unleashed his inner mini-Jesus:

And do not forget how pointedly He said, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.” This app is exactly that. And I haven’t even mentioned how you can chat with “Satan” on this app (for a premium price even!).

The app is pure evil. Its code, and the computers running it, will burn to ashes when Christ returns for judgment. [Source: Stream, 2023]

When all else fails, threaten your opponents with Hell! What’s weird is that he fully understands these are fakes. They’re not real personalities. Nobody stuffed any real Jesuses or Jonahs or Satans in an AI box. But it’s still “pure evil.” And Christians should not touch it.

Earlier in 2025, a BeliefNet writer even cautioned that AI Jesuses might spark increasing numbers of “AI psychosis.” She apparently didn’t notice that all of the ‘Text With Jesus’ characters now very carefully and explicitly tell users that they aren’t actually Jesus/Satan/Mary/whoever.

At best, right-wing Christians might concede that their god can utilize “even weird, blasphemous computer programs” for his cosmic plans, as Not the Bee disdainfully said in October 2025.

Compare and contrast with a more liberal Christian’s 2024 take on ‘Text With Jesus’ (as always, emphases from original unless otherwise noted):

I’m not going to pray to AI Jesus. But it was surprisingly helpful to pray with him. [Source: Sojourners, 2024]

But we can’t expect extremists to care about nuance.

The worst thing ‘Text With Jesus’ shows users about Satan (isn’t anything Christians can address)

There’s a much darker side to this app’s version of Satan, though. And Christians can’t even begin to talk about it.

That darker side has to do with how the AI-Satan has changed since the app’s incarnation in 2023. Any time an extremist Christian encounters a different take on Christianity, it’s a problem. And their conceptualization of Satan is so completely polarized that they’re not going to cope well with anything different. That’s why so many of them are still fixated on the earlier form of AI-Satan, even though the current one isn’t like that.

As I said earlier, Christians’ earlier fretting about the character is exactly what led to the serious revamps of AI-Satan’s personality. I’d go so far as to call these revamps “nerfing,” after the gaming term for a game element being significantly weakened. The AI itself told me the devs had spent time setting tighter guardrails around its representation. The AI is very careful not to behave out of bounds.

It’s not hard to run up against those boundaries, either, and AI-Satan is quick to say when it’s happened. It all makes me wonder how quickly Christians would pick up on AI-Satan’s limitations. I hit those limits almost immediately.

Because nothing about him would challenge Christian mythology, I wonder if Christians would even notice his tight guardrails.

Will the real Satan please stand up?

Different representations of Satan can be troubling for Christians. But right-wing Christian leaders are wrong about why.

I ran into this exact problem with a book in the 1980s: Steven Brust’s To Reign in Hell. Though I hadn’t even entered evangelicalism by then, its sympathetic representation of Satan as valuing freedom, choice, and skepticism knocked my cute little Catholic feather-head for a loop! Worse, I couldn’t really find any good street-legal answer to that representation. I couldn’t even talk about it with my family.

Unfortunately, the book didn’t stop me from becoming Pentecostal later on. However, it definitely was a foundational part of my Deal With It Later pile. When that pile finally fell on top of me, Brust’s Satan metaphorically called out to me. (That’s how I spent a little while, during my last night as a Christian, wondering if Yahweh was actually an evil god and Christians needed to mobilize to fight him.)

Despite the guardrails, AI-Satan and I still had a rousing chat about the syncretistic nature of early Christianity and how it absorbed some elements from extant 1st-century religious ideas while rejecting others. At least it’s willing to concede to real history. For now. Until the devs have another think-tank meeting. Until they get the new rash of complaints from right-wing Christians who are upset that AI-Satan admits there’s no contemporary (ie, 1-35 CE) evidence at all for Jesus or any of the stories about him.

‘Text With Jesus’ and its imaginary risks from imaginary sources

When we look at the real world, we find countless examples of imaginary riffs on real dangers. One famous example came out of the VR gaming world years ago: Richie’s Plank Experience. In this game, people walk onto a virtual wooden plank suspended many feet in the air from a high-rise rooftop. That’s it. That’s the game. You walk onto a plank. And it’s absolutely terrifying for those who’ve played it.

The guy in the video is not exaggerating much, if at all. I’ve seen countless people try this game and they all have the same reaction. Many can’t even take the first step out onto the beam.

Obviously, it’s beyond stupid to do this in real life. But nobody has suggested that this game could induce RL experimentation with real planks and real high-rises. Similarly, I doubt anybody in 1980 suggested that the Atari 2600 game Skiing could lead players to try dangerous slopes on their own. High-rises and ski slopes are real, and their real dangers aren’t a mystery.

It’s different with imaginary dangers. Even if people see one of the many movies featuring Ouija boards and try them for themselves, they’re not going to encounter real ghosts and spirits doing it. Ouija boards will always be perfectly safe to try. Only people who have a very loose grip on cosmological reality will have trouble with them—like I did on both counts as a child. Even then, the dangers are all between our own ears.

Nobody’s ever seen, talked to, or heard a single sound out of Satan. His dangers are, likewise, imaginary. That’s exactly why right-wing Christian leaders need to push very hard on any representation of him being dangerous. If Christians find out he’s imaginary, that he’s made by committee, that his character has shifted and changed with the tides of history, then the entire house of cards of their faith might start to topple.

There’s a lot of sausage-making revealed in apps like ‘Text With Jesus’, and I really hope Christians notice it like my community did.

NEXT UP: Christian musicians are seething hard about AI competition—and they are quite right to be upset. We’ll see why next time. See you soon! <3

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