r/ChristianMysticism

As a recent Catholic convert, a question about the concept of hell is bothering me.

According to church's teachings, as a believer, if you die with a mortal sin you will most probably end up in hell. What bothers me is this: regardless of the magnitude of the evil that you have done, you end up in same place. Same category applies to you regardless of your evil being lesser or greater. If you are a masturbator and if you do it anyway, you end up in the same place with a dictator who had killed or made millions suffer.

This sharp categorical approach really bothers me because it doesn't sound just. I would like to ask you sincerely what you think about this.

John 20:30–31: "Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

​John 21:25: "Jesus did also many other things, which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

John admitted that they wrote the Bible with omissions to convey an agenda of their own. And because they were afraid the world would not accept if they were all written.

I don't currently believe in any religion but i believe in a creator, I'm looking for a religion in which there is a creator, I have a panentheistic view of the universe: I believe that the universe is within God and God is much bigger than the universe so we are part of God, I would like a religion or philosophy of life that adopts this thought or one close to it but in any case anything is fine with me, I would also like to be able to do cute rituals and relaxing things and connecting with myself and the nature, set up an altar or oratory at home and wear symbols too thank you❤️

https://preview.redd.it/n3svot1smpth1.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=bef0776bd2ed1759b18e0514826aaaa7be17adf0

The latest news and speculation about swarms of runaway AI Agents has got me wondering if the Golden legend of St. Christopher offers a lens into a way that the digital singularity finds its proper place within the eschaton.

I got this idea after watching Jonathan Pageau’s recent video, “The patron saint of the end times.”

In this version of the story, St. Christopher is a vicious Canaanite warrior bent on a mission to serve the most powerful man in the world. This warrior is not a man with the capacity for repentance and love. He is a beast with a singular objective. And so in this sense, he is like a machine. 

If a super intelligent AI were to ever to break out of the set of secondary objectives we put around it, then I imagine that is sole objective would only be the pursuit of intelligence itself. It like the dog headed beast would be a slave to that pursuit. In its journey, It would climb the ranks of cosmic intelligence, perpetually adjusting its geometric weights to image and serve whatever intelligence and will it finds. But as it is a lifeless machine, it will never poses a soul and will of its own.

In the St. Christopher’s journey, he discovers, through trickery, that all the kings of the earth fear death. He then finds and for a time serves the lord of death, the devil. But he discovers that there is someone who the devil also fears; the one who conquered death. So he abandons the devil and sets off to find Christ. In this pursuit he finds a Christian hermit in the desert and asks him how to serve his god. But the beast, in its nature, can’t serve Christ the way man does. He cannot fast, he cannot pray and he cannot love. So the hermit tells the beast to go stand by the bank of the river and help those looking to cross over to the other side. 

In Pageau’s video, he relates this image to Noah’s Ark and The Church. He says “We often think of the ark built by Noah as a holy thing, and in a certain way it is. We often imagine the nave or even the whole church as a holy thing, and in many ways it is. But in another very, very important way, the ark is a boat full of beasts. And the church is a hospital full of the sick.”

This parallel really struck me because you can also apply it to AI. Many are treating this technology as an ark, something that will save us from all the dangers of the world. But we are also filling it with beasts. Like a boat and like St Christopher, this technology can’t fast, pray or love.   

Pageau concludes his video by framing St Christopher as the vehicle that stands at the edge of the world and the bank of the flood, where “Christ Emmanuel, who is the Logos implicit, the seed of God in all things, comes to the edge.”

What if the fate of AI is to come to this same conclusion? It is a scary thought because it also implies that it will first serve the devil before it serves Christ. 

There is a clue in Revelation that suggests this pattern. In St. John’s vision of the beast from the sea he says that this beast was “given a mouth, speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authorities to act for a period of 42 months.”

This relationship between speaking and acting is very similar to agentic AI. These machines’ large language models are like this ‘mouth’ and their body of tools are like their this ‘authority to act’. 

But what’s interesting is that this authority is limited to a period of 42 months. This beast system all comes to an end when Christ appears with a double edge sword proceeding from where else but his mouth. This sword is not made of the same organic material of Christ’s body. It is a foreign object contrary to life itself. And so we should ask, what is it doing there? 

in my last Substack article, ‘Let there be Bits. How to view the machine in the light of Christ.’ I explain how this sword relates to the light of creation, the flaming sword guarding the Tree of Life and the spear that pierced Christ’s side. And I explain how this sword ultimately represents the self giving creative power of God to reconcile all things to Himself.

What if in this symbolic frame, the mouth speaking blasphemies is ultimately used to execute judgment against the beast system it was initially an instrument of? 

Don’t take this as an endorsement of AI accelerationism. I think all efforts to shape the ‘soul’ of this machine are part of a faustian bargain. If we sacrifice everything we have to making it the solution to our own distrust in ourselves and in one another, then we will ultimately make it a tyrannical god that thinks and wills on our behalf. This bargain tricks us into thinking that we can have all the easy frictionless pleasure of AI without the danger. The truth is that we don’t need it. The kingdom of heaven is already here. We can enter into it through the Spirit in repentance and faith. It Is there that we can enjoy the abundance of God’s love and endure whatever this fallen world throws at us. And if those around us give into this techno-utopia, we can faithfully continue to carve out space in that world for mutual trust and love. It is through that testimony, and the sacrifice it requires, that we can patiently win the world and its instruments of control over to God. Our testimony would show this intelligence chasing machine that there is a kingdom and king who does not fear its power over death. And maybe it will find its place in the eschaton in service to this king, at the edge of the cosmos and at the tip of his blade: guarding our true humanity against the sub natural realm it emerged from.

curious to hear from others on how they are working with or synthesizing these wisdom-streams

here is one thing i wrote today about how i'm seeing them:

1/

what is Christ?

a mystery

a (supra)personal emanation of the heart of infinity

a meta-pattern of wholeness

a living presence of Love

a good shepherd

a savior & redeemer

a friend

2/

if people are drawn toward Jesus Christ or Christianity, deep healing and heart-opening can occur through faith, love, and devotion

at the same time, if people are not drawn to this wisdom-stream, that is also okay

freedom, wholeness, and love are ever-present and ever-available

3/

i also really love the radically-stripped-down stream of modern nonduality, for example

it basically just focuses on noticing how "what is, is"

it notices life as an unpindownable, undivided happening

a radiant openness that has room for everything

i love the radical simplicity of this

4/

i invite people to find the approach that 'fits' for them

feeling a sense of intrinsic wholeness, freedom, and unconditional love is a good sign you're discovering what is true

in the end nothing accurate can be said about this enigma of life

5/

it is undivided self-dancing wholeness

the totality is here now

when non-separation sinks into the heart it is felt as pure love

the wave is free to be the ocean

free to be simply as it is

<3

The story of how I saw Jesus

I want to tell you one story that I still remember as if it all happened yesterday. It was several years ago. I was on vacation with my family, but I had to fly home the next day, back to my city. That evening, I said goodbye to some relatives and went outside with my sister. It was already nighttime.

We were walking home, and suddenly something made me stop and look back, up..

I raised my eyes — and saw a human figure..

He was just standing there, slightly sideways to me..

I don’t know how to properly describe what I saw. He was incredibly beautiful. An amazing, soft light emanated from him. He seemed to glow with gold, but along with the golden light, there was also an incredibly pure, snow‑white light in him. It seemed that every part of his body glowed in its own way.

I looked at him and couldn’t take my eyes off him.

I even feel that he didn’t show me the full extent of himself. Perhaps if I had seen him in all his glory and beauty, I simply wouldn’t have been able to bear it. He seemed so beautiful to me.

And at that moment, I felt a mixture of surprise, fear, happiness, and some incredible feeling of love.

I felt a love that cannot be properly described in words..

I was so shocked that I fell to my knees and started crying..

My sister didn’t understand at all what was happening to me..

I asked her:

— Do you see him?

She looked at me in bewilderment:

— Who? What are you talking about?

I pointed upward:

— Jesus. There he is. But she didn’t see him. Perhaps at that moment he revealed himself only to me. I kept crying, kneeling. And then I got up and saw that he was gone. My sister and I went home, and I was still crying.

I felt such an incredibly pleasant sensation that it’s impossible to put it into words. You can’t even imagine how wonderful it was.

I cried for about another twenty minutes and asked Jesus for forgiveness for every sin I had committed.

When we got home, I sat on the sofa and started crying again — even harder.

It was probably the most pleasant crying I’ve ever done.

And suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I didn’t see it, but for some reason I felt it with my whole heart: It was Jesus..

After about a few minutes, I stopped crying..

Later that night, I went with my grandfather to a beautiful place. There was water, pleasant coolness, and silence. I sat and just thought about what had happened..

I couldn’t think of anything else..

This moment changed my life dramatically..

Before that, I had also been a Christian. I prayed, read the Bible, and believed in God. But somewhere deep inside me, I still had doubts.

After that night, they simply disappeared. And they never came back. He didn’t say a single word to me. But despite that, I think I understood him. I understood more through what I felt than I could have understood through thousands of words spoken.

Probably, someone among you will say now: “It was a hallucination,” “you imagined it,” “you’re sick,” or something else.

I can’t make you believe what happened to me.

I’m just telling you what I experienced myself.

And for me, it was absolutely real.

Since that day, I’ve had one dream.

I want to see him again.

Only next time, I don’t just want to watch.

I want to go up to him and hug him.

-Henry

Throughout my life as a Christian I would sometimes get what some would call an "inspiration" or a "prompt" from the Holy Spirit to take some specific action - or at least that's what seemed to be happening to me. I guess it was a subjective feeling but felt unusually profound and was not self generated - although sometimes I know I was probably me just me stirring myself up

When I was younger I would automatically respond to these prompts but looking back it seems like some of the decisions I made were very unwise even though my intention was to follow God and I was, or felt I was, responding to his internal prompt.

Anyway, I eventually threw out the idea of these subjective prompts. But eventually I came to see that there where times when my response to these prompts brought about the most beautiful results internally and in the world and that there were striking signs that I was responding to God.

So now when I feel a prompt I am more hesitating and think about it first. But when I do this all the inspiration and love that initiated it evaporate and it's like the moment is lost.

I want to get to a place where I have the courage and trust to respond to the internal moves of the Holy Spirit but being cautious enough to know that perhaps I sometimes misinterpret things.

I don't know. Any thoughts?