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.
9 comments:
Excellent points. God does not want us to be Christians (gasp!) but spiritually free and independent in Christ. There is a difference.
@William. Thanks.
IMO This is something that most Christians are unable or unwilling to acknowledge - but I think it is true and indeed unavoidable here-and-now (although it was not always and everywhere true, although I suspect that it has always been true at the moment of choice wrt salvation).
This is an excellent articulation of why externally-oriented Christianity no longer really works (and cannot work) and why doubling down on externals only exacerbates the problem.
Your point about such externally-oriented Christians utterly failing to see the obvious spiritual dangers of AI, to say nothing of other Litmus Test issues, underscores the gravity of the situation. And no amount of quoting or parroting twelfth-century philosopher-saints helps matters. How can such glaring spiritual failures be justified if you claim the doctrine/theology/philosophy you follow and tout has it all figured out and everyone else is just plain wrong?
I've given up debating or discussing anything with Christian parrots who erect walls of text that amount to little more than regurgitated doctrines, abstractions, logic-spells, and philosophy. They are stuck in places I don't want to be and am happy to avoid revisiting.
William's comment about being spiritually free and independent in Christ hits the mark. It's the only viable way forward.
@Frank. Thank you. I think this is a real and fundamental problem - and apparently unavoidable. There is a tremendous psyop at work, operating on people's sense of guilt and fear of pride - and fear of exclusion.
But at the same time, in practice (rather than theory) the promised warm immersive religious community is either too feeble to suffice or does not exist.
The obvious reason for non-recognition of ‘AI’ in particular is that parroting from a known body of material *is* what a large language model does — and likewise, a deliberately-non-thinking convert maintains a model of what a proper follower of the system of doctrines should think and say. Both cases produce a ‘system’ that is non-learning and expresses overwhelming confidence in its conclusions. Meanwhile rejecting ‘AI’ depends on a clear perception of what conscious beings have that the machine doesn’t.
@Serhei: Yes - That's it!
So I've thought about my response to this all day, including if I should respond! However, here goes:
1) You talk about churches being carried along in the stream. The Catholic Church has not been carried along in the stream. It opposes abortion, contraception, homosexuality, divorce, contraception, surrogacy, euthanasia, and any number of other fashionable casues. I actually can't think of any other force or institution that goes against the stream like the Catholic Church. Has it pandered to political correctness too much in recent decades? Yes, but that doesn't change this basic truth.
2) "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." OK. But isn't there a huge danger, shown again and again, that people think they hear the voice of God when they are really hearing their own ego, delusions, pride, etc, etc? How many religious founders insisted God was speaking directly to them? And yet their creeds contradict each other wildly. Doesn't that show the need for an external authority?
3) I don't find converts at all less interesting than seekers. Chesterton is hardly boring, nor is Newman, nor is CS Lewis. You may say these are exceptions, but I don't even think its' true of your ordinary convert. Personally I have a bottomless appetite for conversion stories. The acceptance of a doctrine is one thing; what that means to the person, the emotional journey, is individual.
@Mal
1. The short answer is 2020.
But if you don't see it, then no argument can convince.
2. What you say is true about ego, delusions, pride, etc, etc, but everything you say in criticism of individual persons is true - and much more so - about human institutions, especially as of here and now. The churches also wildly contradict *themselves* - across time, and at any time, and about core matters.
We need inner authority; not an external authority that is factually bound to have been first chosen by ourselves.
Contradictions are part of life, the question is - whose job is it to sort them out when they are important contradictions?
Do we do our best ourselves and starting now - for our own personal spiritual satisfaction? Or do we unsee or defend the contradictions, while waiting and waiting for the church to do something, or not.
The problem is not individual spirituality and its variations (because different people have different priorites and problems, and the human mind and time is limited), the problem is when individuals try to make their personal insights (inevitably a "work in progress") into a static objective system for everybody.
@Mal 3. I think Chesterton certainly became duller (compared with his early writings) after he had settled into his conversion, and saw himself as an apologist or propagandist - a defender of other people's ideas.
The same probably applies to CSL, indeed he stopped writing theology and engaging in controversy and moved into fictional and devotional Christian writings. I think, partly to avoid stale repetition. He needed to keep thinking and exploring.
Conversion stories are indeed exciting, and fascinating; but it is what comes after, down the line, that is so terribly disappointing. And, for me, this disappointment about the "what happened next?" is an insight or feeling of much greater significance than most Christians would like to acknowledge.
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