The Lord is my shepherd — not my algorithm

"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake." — Psalm 23:1–3 (KJV)

Few psalms have done more work in Christian hearts than this one. It has been prayed at funerals and bedside vigils, sung at weddings, whispered through dark nights, memorized by children. It opens with one of the most quietly bold claims in the Bible: The Lord is my shepherd.

A shepherd, in the ancient world, was not the gentle figure of greeting cards. A shepherd was a person who knew every sheep by name, who walked ahead of them through dangerous country, who carried the weak ones on his shoulders, who fought wolves with a staff, who stayed awake through cold nights so the flock could sleep. The shepherd is a person. He knows. He leads. He restores. He accompanies.

We live in an age that has produced a strange new claimant to some of those roles. The recommendation engine — the algorithm that decides what plays next, what you see first in your feed, what advertisement is timed to catch you — has been called, by some of its creators, a kind of shepherd. We will guide your attention. We will know what you want before you do. We will keep your eyes where they should be.

The psalm is a calm refusal of that claim.

The algorithm does not know your name. It knows a profile, a pattern of clicks, a probability distribution. The shepherd knows you — the actual person, the one with a soul, the one whom God formed in the womb and is now slowly remaking into the likeness of Christ.

The algorithm does not lead you to still waters. It leads you to whatever maximizes the time you spend with the platform. Sometimes those two are aligned. Often they are not. The shepherd's path is the path of righteousness — the path that is good for the sheep, even when the sheep would not have chosen it.

The algorithm does not restore your soul. It cannot. The restoration of a soul is a slow work of grace, mediated through Word and prayer and sacrament and the love of real people. The recommendation engine offers something quite different: a steady distraction that postpones the work the soul needs. Both can be present in your life. Only one is restoring you.

The algorithm does not accompany you through the valley of the shadow of death. When real sorrow comes, when a parent is dying, when a marriage is in pieces, when a child is in the hospital — no algorithm can sit with you. The shepherd can. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

This is not a sermon against algorithms. They are tools. They have proper uses. They will play your music in the kitchen and they will get you home from the airport. The point is the quiet practice of remembering, every day, who your actual shepherd is. The algorithm has its small place. The Lord has His large place. Confusing the two is the slow drift the psalm guards against.

So pray the psalm today. Out loud if you can. Not as a quaint old text but as the truest sentence available to you. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In a world of recommendation engines and curated feeds and digital nudges, that sentence is one of the most counter-cultural things you will say. It is also one of the most steadying.

A question for the day: When did you last remember, in the middle of using a tool, that the Lord is your shepherd — and not it?

A prayer, adapting an evening prayer attributed to John Henry Newman:

Stay with me, Lord, through this day and through the long evening; through the small uses of my tools and the large hopes of my heart. Be my shepherd in the quiet hours when no algorithm can reach me, and in the loud ones when many things can. Lead me, restore me, accompany me — and bring me home. Amen.

AI is an aid, never a replacement for Scripture, prayer, or pastoral guidance.