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The Soul of the Matter | What matters most
St. Paul to the Corinthians asked, “where is the wise one?” Today, we question if it is even wise to look for one. As a result of our lives becoming more and more automated, and information more available than ever before, it is not out of place to ponder and doubt the need to have the counsel of the wise. We no longer even seek expert counsel. The sophistication of our technology that we find in AI for example seems to bypass all human knowledge and wisdom and generates for us in seconds exactly what we want–concise answers. This does not just apply to who we look toward for our answers, but even how we look. Baseball, for example, trusted the human eye to call balls and strikes for nearly 180 years. Now that judgment is being questioned. This is because the AI Hawk-Eye tracking technology used in the ABS challenging system–a digital machine that measures balls and strikes–has a precision margin of error of ⅙ of an inch (roughly 0.17 inches) compared to the eyes of the human umpire that are limited by visual blind spots, the catcher's framing tricks, fatigue, and the sheer velocity of the movement of modern pitches. The human eye is not able to track with total clarity the ball from the pitcher’s mound to the catcher's glove over homeplate, but AI does it with ease, without fatigue nor is it fooled by human trickery. Hawk-eye bypasses all the limitations of the human eye which is bound by physical laws, but are these the only laws that our eyes are following?
Among the followers of Christ that St. Paul interacted with were His Apostles who had seen Christ’s miracles, and heard intimately His words which taught love and forgiveness. They did not however hear nor did St. Paul write in his letters to believers and non-believers a total rejection of creation, and neither human innovation. In Christ, there was a call to a total inner transformation by picking up one’s cross and following Him (Matthew 16:24; Luke 9:23). To belong to Christ means something much more profound than AI’s deep learning, and it involves the disposition of one’s soul which calls to “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). St. Paul who was transformed himself said, “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20).
The Soul of a Christian
To be Christian is not a calling to condemn the world, and the instruments it uses, but to become instruments of God to help turn creation back to Him. This even means if it is an object of death–a Nazarian’s Cross which is the subject of our deepest human longings. St. Paul, a man who calls us to be crucified with Christ says to “discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect”, and this causes for all of us what the theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar called the “Theodrama” or Father Romano Guardini understood as the “Christian–crisis.” Regardless of our belief, none can deny the Cross’s real presence in our life–a living establishment that is a steadfast transfixion in the world. To be clear: history does not avoid it. Time itself revolves around it. Societies are built with it as their foundation. Wars are fought over it. Politics invoke it. Even those who refuse its validity and look to human innovation will position themselves around it to claim their own ideological authenticity. At the foot of Jesus’ cross, “neither Jew nor Greek…neither slave nor free person” (Galatians 3:28) can avoid its reality which challenges us with a discrimen commune–the spiritual boundary where humanity arrives, as St. Paul pointed our search to, to discern two fundamental commonly shared realities which are not balls and strikes but good and evil, grace and sin, and truth and falsehood. For those who have attempted to distort, hide or avoid altogether the existence of any one of these realities have yet to evade the matter in which the Cross tears open the veils of false ideologies (Matthew 27:51; Luke 23:45). The Cross stands erect and firm without a wobble, but it is not the solidness of the Cross that cuts through the lies and manipulations. A strong scalpel is of no use to the surgeon if it is dull. To be effective and precise, the edges for the physician must be razor sharp to be able to slice through and into the flesh. Like the surgeon and his keen scalpel, Christ cuts open with perfect precision our sinful nature for His Cross is “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrew 4:12).
Living the Christian Faith
More and more we integrate today in our daily life the type of technology that gives us answers when we want them, and also permits us to see balls and strikes that allow for a just game, but God wants us to integrate our lives to His teachings so we can see our souls as they truly are for He will “bring about justice for his chosen ones…he will see that they get justice, and quickly” (Luke 18:7-8). Like Hawk-eye or any AI or technology in general, there is no gray area in their algorithms and designs; it is the same with Christ. With His cross, there is no “middle way.” There is no “alternative medicine” if we keep to the surgeon analogy, and while so many of us seek comfort and do everything in our power to avoid the extremes of surgery, Christ as our doctor tells us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4).
What is it that we mourn? It is exactly the faults of the human eye, the feebleness of our decision making, the time we waste, and our imperfections. We mourn the disorder that is caused by marked errors, however, none of this compares to the mourning to how little we care for placing God in our life, our ingratitude for all that God has done for us, and the torments He suffered for our sake; how we have become strangers to virtue–unskilled and unpractised but displaying lethal accuracy in every wickedness; how much we care about what we lose and gain in this world and neglect eternal things. We see and mourn that we are hungry, thirsty, cold, naked, sick, and poor. We mourn having lost so much, including peace, and the sorrow that befalls our nature is what causes us that greatest pain: our unrepented impatience of our own suffering which can lose heaven’s merit and earn hell instead.
To live our faith truly, we again return to the example of how today’s game of professional baseball is played. We can use technology in the game. We should use technology since it helps create a just game, but the rules of the game keeping it fair is not the same authority that rules the heart of a person. There is a Judge that calls us to look within ourselves that no technology is able to do, and as St. Paul said, no true wise man can do neither. It is Christ alone on His cross who does this for us, and as Christians, we must remember: God's judgment is not like an umpire's call nor Hawk-Eyes. His judgment pierces the soul. We stand either condemned or forgiven—out, or welcome to walk freely into His Kingdom.
Joseph Daniels
Acutis AI Writer
