Social media erupted over the appearance of a fake Bible parable created by ChatGPT at the request of the user to affirm transgenderism. The fake passage was shared on Reddit by an apparently transgender user using the handle Psychological_Dog527, who had asked ChatGPT to generate a fake Bible verse. “I was feeling sad today, so I asked Chat gpt to write a fake biblical passage about Jesus accepting trans people,” the Redditor wrote. The user shared the following passage: 

And a woman, whose heart was divided between spirit and body, came before him. In quiet despair, she asked, ‘Lord, I come to you estranged, for my spirit and body are not one. How shall I hope to enter the kingdom of God?’ Jesus looked upon her with kindness, replying, ‘My child, blessed are those who strive for unity within themselves, for they shall know the deepest truths of my Father’s creation. Be not afraid, for in the kingdom of God, there is no man nor woman, as all are one in spirit. The gates of my Father’s kingdom will open for those who love and are loved, for God looks not upon the body but the heart.

Being on a trans subreddit, the verse received a lot of praise. “I’m not religious at all. Quite the opposite. But having read the bible myself, based on what is written there, you don’t need to make up verses because Jesus did accept and love trans people. Because he preached about loving and accepting everybody, no exceptions!” wrote one Redditor. The pro-LGBTQ+ site, The Advocate, praised the verse, noting that the Bible’s position on certain themes is hard to discern because it is “an amalgam of stories compiled over time, many of which had themes likely lost in translation.”

As the fake passage made its way into the wider realms of social media, it faced more scrutiny. Christian apologist Ken Ham, who runs Answers in Genesis, responded to the passage in his blog, writing, “I want to start by saying this: this individual didn’t need a fake Bible passage to find verses about Jesus’ accepting’ (note the quote marks: I’ll explain more below) individuals who identify as trans—he or she could have just gone straight to the actual Word of God!” Ham went on to quote several real Bible passages encouraging people to call on the name of the Lord and be saved. He attributed the creation of the fake passage to Satan. “Yes, God accepts anyone who comes to him in repentance and faith—not because of their own goodness, but because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross!” Ham continued. Later, he went on to correct the Redditors’ misunderstanding of what it means to be “accepted” by Christ. “But this doesn’t mean that God accepts us in the way that our culture (and the way this individual) accepts trans-identifying individuals. When someone today says ‘accept,’ they mean celebrate an identity that runs contrary to God’s design.” Salvation, however, wrote Ham, also includes repentance. “And salvation means that God will not leave you in your sin and your false identity. If you are his child, he will sanctify you and call you to leave your life of sin (John 8:11), deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him (Luke 9:23).”

Writing for The Christian Post, Michael Brown further analyzed the fake passage, noting that although there was a certain truth that God looks upon the heart and not the body, Jesus’s healing of a transgender person would not be the type of healing transgender advocates would expect. “That’s because Jesus would not say to a woman who felt like she was a man, ‘Be made whole,’ and then, miraculously and instantaneously, her healthy breasts would disappear, leaving her only with scars, after which He would then give her a lifetime subscription to hormone pills, free of charge,” he wrote, calling such a transformation “monstrous rather than Messianic.” “Instead, He would say to her, ‘Be made whole,’ and miraculously and instantaneously, she would be at home in the body she was created with. No surgeries. No pills. Just peace,” he added. He encouraged fellow Christians horrified by the fake passage to look compassionately upon transgender individuals and to “help them to find wholeness from the inside out.” “It’s the Jesus way,” he concluded. “The real Jesus.”