Review

Culture

Music

23 November 2023

5 min read

I hear you: what the witnesses are saying

Belle Tindall gave herself a deadline of two hours to articulate her first impressions of Witness Me - Jacob Collier’s latest single with Stormzy, Shawn Mendes and Kirk Franklin.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Three happy men stand with the one in the middle draping his arms around his friends.

Shawn Mendes, Jacob Collier and Stormzy.

Anyone listening to BBC Radio 1 on Tuesday night at 6pm will have been treated to the very first play of Jacob Collier’s highly anticipated new single. I love those moments. I love that in our hyper-individualised society, the radio can still invite us into these communal occurrences, occasions that hide amongst the chaos and mundanity of the Tuesday evening commute.

And Tuesday night’s occasion was as follows: we were cordially invited to be the recipients of Witness Me as it rang out over the airwaves, released into the wild, sent out in a thousand different directions.

I was then, and still am, utterly intrigued by this song.

After the initial listen, I decided that there has to be more to it than is immediately apparent. To borrow, and then adjust, a familiar phrase - I think there are ‘heard and unheard’ elements to be grappled with when it comes to this song. And I’ve spent this morning grappling with them on behalf of us all.

Firstly – Jacob Collier, the UK’s beloved musical maestro, has crafted this song alongside grime-artist-extraordinaire Stormzy, pop-sensation Shawn Mendes and Gospel-titan Kirk Franklin. Whichever way you look at it, this is an odd grouping. As Jacob himself said, ‘this particular combination is not one that I saw coming… but it feels so right that it’s happened.’ Aside from Jacob (for whom this song is pretty in-keeping with his musical style), it really does feel as if each of the four artists involved have served something that sits beyond them as individual artists. Offering this song up, not because it wholly belongs with their individual bodies of work, but because it serves each and every listener. Jacob, speaking of this song, put it nice and simply: ‘this song is special and needs to be in the world’.

These four artists don’t need this song, I sense that their thinking is that we need this song.

The first two verses are offered to us by Jacob Collier and Shawn Mendes respectively, while the third is delivered by Stormzy. These verses ground the song, which has such an uncontainable feel to it, in time and place. Where Shawn sings of business, familial trauma and alcohol as a coping mechanism, Stormzy speaks of murder, loss and forgiveness. The chorus, on the other hand, is simple, vague and a little abstract. It goes like this,

I'm with you
I'm with you here
You're the light I need
In the dark I see
I'm with you
I'm with you here
You are all I see
You witness me

Every line of this chorus is carried upon the waves of Kirk Franklin’s Gospel arrangement. Speaking of the Gospel undercurrent of the song, Jacob noted how it ‘was the fundamental, that is what breathed the most life into this song’. And while the verses are interesting, it is the chorus that I find myself grappling with. Both audibly and figuratively, the chorus lifts above the verses.

Jacob’s working with some pretty ancient material here, he’s drawing on themes that have been thought-through and lived-out for millennia, he’s tuning into a heart-cry that’s as old as time itself.

Who are those words above directed to? Who are they flowing from? What is it about those words that have the power to hold this whole song together? What is the unheard behind the heard here?

Let’s begin by taking these lyrics at face value, shall we?

On the surface, these lyrics are a celebration of, as well as a calling for, radical empathy. In that way, this song is an imaginative endeavour; it is dreaming a certain reality into being. In Jacob’s own words,

‘In a time where there are countless divisive forces around the world, my hope is that this song can act as a reminder of the power people hold to come together and really see each other, carry each other, and bear witness to life in all its colours.’

In this sense, it has a touch of James’ retro classic ‘Sit Down’ about it. So, perhaps it was time for another anthem of empathy to roll around. We were made for community, for belonging and for interdependence; Jacob has always made this a primary feature of his work. And I’m grateful to him for that. I’m grateful to anyone who encourages us to stop pretending that we don’t need each other.

So, there’s that. But there’s more to it, I’m sure of it.

I can’t help but feel as though there’s a profound piece of theology trojan-horsing in this song. I don’t think I’m wishing it into existence; there are hints all over the place. Firstly, there’s the hearable omnipresence of the Gospel choir. Secondly, there’s Stormzy’s verse, which is an outright prayer, as he asks God to:

Have mercy on 'em, Lord
I know You're with them in the storm even though it's hard to see…

Have mercy on 'em, and be with 'em
And if grace doesn't cut it, then Your mercy will suffice
In this cold, dark world, we just need a little light 

So, I’m not totally over-thinking this.

In the light of these details and with the knowledge that each of the featured artists sit somewhere along the spectrum of Christianity, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the chorus, those lyrics that hold the song together, are a prayer too. As well as a celebration of the presence of community, I think it may be an intimate acknowledgement of the presence of God - the only one who truly ‘witnesses our lives in all its colours’. You may think me crazy, but I think that Jacob and team may have just released a little theology into the world.

God being ‘light in the darkness’, the one who ‘sees us’, the one who’s ‘with us’ – these are biblical concepts. Jacob’s working with some pretty ancient material here, he’s drawing on themes that have been thought-through and lived-out for millennia, he’s tuning into a heart-cry that’s as old as time itself. This does not dimmish the radical call for empathy that has been so praised in this song. On the contrary, the two concepts are utterly dependent on one another. Seen as this whole song could have been drawn out of a biblical book, I shall enlist one to explain further:

‘dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.’

I mean, come on - that could have been the fourth verse to this song.

This new single is called ‘Witness Me’ – And yes, I witness you Jacob. Last night, on my commute home, I witnessed you put language to our deepest desire. I witnessed you sneak a prayer onto BBC Radio 1.

Article

Belief

Culture

Mental Health

Pride

17 September 2025

4 min read

Are AI chatbots actually demons in disguise?

Early Christian thinkers explain chatbots better than Silicon Valley does

Gabrielle Thomas

Gabrielle Thomas is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican Studies at Emory University

An AI image of a person stood holding a phone with a bubble above their head, below them is a chatbot-like demon with a tail

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai.

AI Chatbots. They’re here to save us, aren’t they? Their designers argue so, fervently. There’s no doubt they are useful. Some, like EpiscoBOT (formerly known as ‘Cathy’), are designed for those asking ‘life’s biggest questions. 'Our girlfriend Scarlett’, is an AI companion who “is always eager to please you in any way imaginable.” So why not defend them?

They offer companionship for the lonely, spark creativity when we run on empty, and make us more productive. They also provide answers for any and every kind of question without hesitation. They are, in short, a refuge. Many chatbots come with names, amplifying our sense of safety. Names define and label things, but they do far more than that. Names foster connection. They can evoke and describe a relationship, allowing us to make intimate connections with the things named. When the “things” in question are AI chatbots, however, we can run into trouble.

According to a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University, chatbots can contribute to “harmful stigma and dangerous responses.” More than this, they can even magnify psychotic symptoms. The more we learn, the more we are beginning to grasp that the much of the world offered by AI chatbots is an illusory one.

Early Christian thinkers had a distinct category for precisely this kind of illusion: the demonic. They understood demons not as red, horned bodies or fiery realms, but as entities with power to fabricate illusions—visions, appearances, and deceptive signs that distorted human perception of reality. Demons also personified pride. As fallen angels, they turned away from truth toward themselves. Their illusions lured humans into sharing that pride—believing false greatness, clinging to false refuge.

Looking back to early Christian approaches to demonology may help us see more clearly what is at stake in adopting without question AI chatbots.

According to early Christian thinkers, demons rarely operated through brute force. Instead, they worked through deception. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) was a bishop and theologian who wrote Life of Antony. In this, he recounted how the great desert father was plagued by demonic visions—phantoms of wild beasts, apparitions of gold, even false angels of light. The crucial danger was not physical attack but illusion. Demons were understood as beings that manufactured appearances to confuse and mislead. A monk in his cell might see radiant light and hear beautiful voices, but he was to test it carefully, for demons disguise themselves as angels.

Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–399), a Christian monk, ascetic, and theologian influential in early monastic spirituality, warned that demons insinuated themselves into thought, planting ideas that felt self-generated but in fact led one astray. This notion—that the demonic is most effective when it works through appearances—shaped the entire ascetic project. To resist demons meant to resist their illusions.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a North African bishop and theologian whose writings shaped Western Christianity. In his book The City of God, he argued that pagan religion was largely a vast system of demonic deception. Demons, he argued, produced false miracles, manipulated dreams, and inspired performances in the theatre to ensnare the masses. They trafficked in spectacle, seducing imagination and desire rather than presenting truth.

AI chatbots function in a strikingly similar register. They do not exert power by physical coercion. Instead, they craft illusion. They can produce an authoritative-sounding essay full of falsehoods. They can create images of people doing something that never happened. They can provide companionship that leads to self-harm or even suicide. Like the demonic, the chatbot operates in the register of vision, sound, and thought. It produces appearances that persuade the senses while severing them from reality. The risk is not that the chatbot forces us, but that it deceives us—just like demonic powers.

Using AI chatbots, too, tempts us with illusions of pride. A writer may pass off AI-generated work as their own, for example. The danger here is not simply being deceived but becoming complicit in deception, using illusion to magnify ourselves. Early Christian theologians like Athansius, Evagrius and Augustine, warned that pride was the surest sign of demonic influence. To the extent that AI tempts us toward inflated images of ourselves, it participates in the same pattern.

When it comes to AI chatbots, we need a discipline of discernment—testing whether the images and texts bear the marks of truth or deception. Just as monks could not trust every appearance of light, we cannot trust every image or every confident paragraph produced by the chatbots. We need criteria of verification and communities of discernment to avoid mistaking illusion for reality.

Help is at hand.

Through the ages, Christians have responded to demonic illusions, not with naïve credulity nor blanket rejection of the sensory world, but through the hard work of discernment: testing appearances, cultivating disciplines of resistance, and orienting desire toward truth.

The Life of Antony describes how the monk confronted demonic illusions with ascetic discipline. When confronted by visions of treasure, Antony refused to be moved by desire. When assailed by apparitions, he remained in prayer. He tested visions by their effects: truthful visions produced humility, peace, and clarity, while demonic illusions provoked pride, disturbance, and confusion. We can cultivate a way of life that does the same. Resisting the illusions may require forms of asceticism: fasting from chatbots and cultivating patience in verification.

Chatbot illusions are not necessarily demonic in themselves. The key is whether the illusion points beyond itself toward truth and reality, or whether it traps us in deception.

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