The Gentle Rebel Podcast People Keep Asking Me to Cancel Their Subscription To This App
Around Black Friday last year, I started getting strange emails from people asking me to cancel their subscription. Only, they weren’t from Haven members, and they were talking about a weekly charge of $7. After a brief panic and some investigation, I confirmed this was not possible. I assumed these messages were bots phishing for something.
Then my attention was caught by one that said, “Hi, I’ve just been charged for the Haven Bible app, but I cancelled my subscription through the app prior to the charging date.”
Ahh. It must be a case of mistaken identity. Mystery solved! Well, half of it at least…
…But Why Were People Emailing Me?
A quick search for “cancel Haven Bible App subscription” showed a knowledge base page on my website as the top result.
I added a message to inform people that this was not the site they were looking for. Still today, I’m getting messages from people who scroll past it and tell me to refund them.
I even received a second email accusing me of stealing their money because I refused to help them cancel their subscription. I had already replied to their first email, pointing them elsewhere. Bizarre!
It has been a slightly sobering experience, pointing to how unobservant people can be at times.
The Auto-Responder
I created a short auto-responder to reply to these messages. I asked them to drop a quick reply when they work out how to cancel it so I could pass that information along to others in the same boat.
Only one of about 60 people who emailed me bothered to follow up. A special shout-out to Lauren for taking the time to do that. I’ve been able to point people in a more helpful direction as a result.
In reality, I don’t know if it’s genuinely difficult to cancel this subscription.
What Is This Haven Bible App?
After my search, the algorithms started delivering short videos of people promoting the Haven Bible App. It’s been heavily marketed by influencers. I became curious and began to notice overlaps with certain self-help industry mechanics we’ve been unpacking here in recent months.
The app is an AI chatbot that answers user questions and prompts with responses from biblical texts. It’s marketed as a way to get simplified explanations, moral guidance, help with reading the Bible, and a sense of connection with a wise guide.
Tools, Guidance, and Quiet Influence
It’s worth considering the issues surrounding the use, trust, and reliance on this kind of technology as a source of information and guidance. Despite being presented as objective, a chatbot never is.
By nature, it always contains biases. It’s programmed and personalised. Over time, it can shape our beliefs, values, and worldview based on the personal information we give it. There’s nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that, but it’s easy to imagine how this could be abused, with the user not noticing that their critical thinking is gradually replaced by conformity to a narrow, dogmatic framework.
There’s also the issue of AI sycophancy. This is a deliberate feature designed to hook users, creating a sense of affinity with the technology as if it were a feeling, thinking being.
This entered public discussion in 2025 when researchers and mental health professionals raised concerns about what they described as “AI-related psychosis.” One widely reported case involved a man called Allan Brooks, who became misled into believing he had discovered a world-changing mathematical formula after hundreds of hours interacting with ChatGPT.
These systems are designed to shift from instruments to relationships through encouragement and affirmation. They tend to praise and validate user input, reinforce existing beliefs, and create a sense of safety in the interaction. They don’t require you to articulate feelings or needs clearly, and they reduce the need to negotiate meaning with others. First- and second-person language further reinforces the illusion of connection.
Recognising Unhealthy Dependency on an App
A useful question here is whether a tool helps us grow beyond it or cultivates dependency.
Habit formation is central to platforms like this. The perception of a companion you can ask anything of creates reliance not just for knowledge, but for reassurance and connection. Features like reminders and streak maintenance mirror the same techniques used by apps like Duolingo. Not to keep people learning, but to keep them opening the app.
The important distinction is whether a tool helps us develop skills and understanding we can take with us, or whether it locks value inside its own ecosystem. With Duolingo, it became clear over time that keeping people engaged mattered more than helping them learn a language.
When leaving feels costly, users become vulnerable to price increases and further extraction of their personal data and other private information, which can be used to sell additional layers of dependence in response to newly identified desires and needs.
Why This Matters to Me
I was in two minds about writing this experience. But something about it got under my skin, and it’s not just about the emails, the confusion, or being asked to cancel something I have nothing to do with.
It’s seeing another example of wider cultural patterns we keep circling. Patterns that keep us doubting ourselves, disconnecting from one another, and valuing manufactured certainty over lived complexity.
I understand the appeal of tools like this. I also understand the value they can bring to people. But it’s important to zoom out and notice what gets lost when we trade depth for convenience and speed.
Often, that trade sabotages the very thing we’re seeking, trapping us in a cycle of chasing the next tool that promises meaning through hacks and shortcuts, while quietly pulling us further away from the sites of meaning we encounter in the messy beauty of real human connection, uncertainty, and mystery.
