Have you ever noticed that when a lot of people convert to Christianity, or convert to a different denomination or church within Christianity, they cease to become interesting or "real".
That person may have been interesting while he was seeking and exploring, because he was engaged in working to gratify the deep yearnings of his real-self. But after conversion and worsening with time; after he has sworn fealty to his church... then he incrementally becomes an obedient mouthpiece for... whatever he understands as the church's world-view.
His inner self is now harnessed-to, self-subordinated-to, an outer church agenda.
In converting to church-Christianity (of almost any church) such people voluntarily become human-parrots. They become utterly predictable in what they say and (apparently) think; because (like a corporate spokesman or Party commissar) they are saying and thinking whatever an institution has put-into them.
You ask a question, ask for an eveluation, press a button - and if you know what their church says, you know exactly what will come-out.
Such is, indeed, characteristic of "converts" in general. But those who are devout in their birth religion/ ideology may have always been like this - so we probably don't notice the difference in the "before and after" way that we do with converts. After all, maybe the cradle-communists or -religionists are not capable of anything else?
I think that this chosen obedient parroting, is why so many devout or convert church-Christians have so spectacularly failed to see the existential threat of "AI" - they fail this easy spiritual "test" because they have out-sourced their fundamental religious thinking.
And this failure is unfixable; there is no effective negative feedback, no tendency to a pendulum swing.
One who has handed ultimate authority to anything outside cannot learn; he can only respond to what his chosen external authority instructs him. If the external source does not learn; then neither will he learn.
This happens because such a person has made the choice and decision that ultimately external is better than internal.
Such a person has made it a baseline assumption that his understanding and knowledge of goodness, of value - of truth, beauty, and virtue - ought to come from outside of himself.
He has chosen to place himself in a position of ultimate and existential inferiority to some-thing which is external to himself.
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My belief is that this fundamental choice is a matter of soul - and the choice is between a soul voluntarily tethered to the external world, and therefore lost...
And, on the other hand; a world experienced, known, understood... from the soul.
Either we hand over our-selves to be assimilated into out-there; or else we root our ultimate understanding of out-there in our inner-souls.
This situation is real and active for some decades; the task is a matter of escaping from what has happened, and is still happening and worsening.
If Christians are to escape their current actuality of passively being swept-along in the stream of whatever current social mores and trends; clinging to a church which is also being swept-along by the same stream (and indeed the church is usually ahead of the individual, and leading the way, in terms of this-worldly corruption); then Christians must begin operating from some-thing that is outwith the stream.
For Christians, this escape ought to be straightforward (albeit not "easy") - if only they will allow it to be. Because Christians know that God is personal and loving of each individual person. We will therefore never be abandoned without divine help - whatever the surrounding level of societal and institutional evil.
To me this implies quite simply that there is (there "must be" - I see no effective alternative) a direct and unmediated - soul to soul - link between God and each individual person.
In other words; Christians can escape the fate of soul-loss, if they choose - but they must choose.
If individual persons do not so choose, then they will not escape.
(There is no incentive, and many disincentives, for institutions to save individuals from institutional-doom, from corruption and evil; when the consequence would be that the individual becomes ultimately autonomous of that institution. It is foolish and irresponsible to wait for externally-led/ -instructed salvation.)
So we individually must choose the inner over the outer, the sould over society; or else it will not happen.
And what we discover will get its value from the fact that it is personally experienced and validated, for that person, and because that person has taken responsibility for endorsing it.
Note: This inner guidance cannot then be handed-on to become secondhand guidance for other people or persons; because that would not then be an "inner", but merely a different kind of "outer".
It depends on what we want from our existence, and how much we want it.
Do we want what Jesus offered enough to experience and know, with- and from- our souls?
Or shall we place our ultimate faith somewhere outside?
Exactly where outside (church or corporation, religion or ideology) we place our ultimate arbitor will not, in the end, make much difference.
Only that which lies within can save us.
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