Technology is not all bad, but it is not all praiseworthy, either. Upon one recent technological product in particular, the television, St Lawrence of Chernigov lays a heavy judgment:
‘The God-pleasing Holy Elder used to say, "Blessed, and thrice-blessed is the man who does not desire, and who will not see the abominable face of the Antichrist. He who sees him and hears his blasphemous words, his promises of all earthly treasures, he will be deceived and will go to meet him and bow down to him. He will perish together with him and will burn in the eternal fire."
‘They asked the Elder, "How will all this come to pass?" The holy Elder said with tears, "In the holy place, the abomination of desolation will stand. And it will show the foul seducers of the world. And they will be deceiving the people who have fallen away from God, and will perform false miracles. And after them, the Antichrist will appear. And the whole world will see him at the same time."
‘Then the fathers asked the Elder, "Where in the holy place? In the church?" The Venerable one answered, "Not in the church, but in every house. In the corner, where the holy icons now stand and hang, there will stand captivating devices which will delude the people. Many will say, 'We need to watch and listen to the news.' And behold, in the news the Antichrist will appear. He will mark his people with the seal, and he will hate Christians. The last persecutions of the Christian soul who will refuse to receive the mark of Satan will begin. A Christian will not be able to neither buy nor sell anything. But despair not, the Lord will not abandon His children. There is no need to fear.’
If that is how negatively he viewed TVs, we can only imagine what he would think of current technology – smart phones and the like that have made screens omnipresent.
The metaverse, the idea of a 3D, immersive, internet-connected, virtual world introduced by Mark Zuckerberg recently, will only amplify the deceptive and destructive effects of our screens.
Separation from Reality
. . . Which is to say, separation from God. The creation, as Fr Dumitru Staniloae would say, is meant to draw us into dialogue with God. Every creating thing – a person, a tree, a horse, a cabbage – has a mystical depth at its center (St Maximus the Confessor called it the logos), which makes it what it really is. This logos is filled with the energies of Christ, by Whom they were spoken into existence. This is why we feel a certain awe and joy when we are in the natural world: God is near us then, speaking to us through the logoi of his creatures. The Saints who have purified themselves are able to see these logoi, and to experience a deep union with and knowledge of God.
But things like movies, augmented reality, video games, and so on, take us out of the creation filled with God’s words and Presence and place us in a world created in the image of fallen man, where the Presence of God is greatly diminished. The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church draw a sharp distinction between the images one experiences at the advanced stages of a healthy spiritual life and those seen in the realm of fantasy:
‘One of the goals of the spiritual life is indeed the attainment of a spiritual knowledge (q.v.) which transcends both the ordinary level of consciousness and the subconscious; and it is true that images, especially when the recipient is in an advanced spiritual state, may well be projections on the plane of the imagination of celestial archetypes, and that in this case they can be used creatively, to form the images of sacred art and iconography. But more often than not they will simply derive from a middle or lower sphere, and will have nothing spiritual or creative about them. . . .
The rest is at https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/invitation-metaverse.
Also in Italian:
https://www.geopolitica.ru/it/article/un-invito-al-metaverso
And Russian:
https://katehon.com/ru/article/priglashenie-v-metavselennuyu
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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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