Samuel Carter was a man who had built his life upon logic, science, and control. As the CEO of a prominent tech company, he had perfected the art of managing data, predicting outcomes, and optimizing efficiency. Yet, despite his success, an unshakable emptiness gnawed at him—one that his algorithms could not explain.

One rain-soaked evening, exhausted from back-to-back meetings, Samuel collapsed into his leather chair and stared at the city lights flickering through his office window. A sharp pain pulsed behind his eyes, and he rubbed his temples. *This is absurd. I’ve achieved everything. Why do I still feel so lost?*

How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter' authors on what went wrong - Los Angeles  Times

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he opened his eyes, he was no longer in his penthouse office. Instead, he stood in an endless field of golden wheat, swaying under a sky so impossibly blue it stole his breath. The air smelled sweet, like sunlight and earth, a stark contrast to the sterile scent of his corporate life.

*Am I dreaming?*

Before he could rationalize further, a man appeared before him—dark-haired, maybe in his thirties, dressed in simple clothes that seemed to glow faintly. Samuel’s throat tightened. He didn’t know how, but he recognized him immediately.

“Samuel,” the man said, his voice warm yet commanding.

“Jesus…” Samuel barely whispered the name, his scientific mind revolting against the impossibility. *This is my fatigue. A hallucination.*

Jesus smiled, eyes deep with an ageless knowing. “Does it matter if you believe I’m real, if what I say changes you?”

Samuel hesitated. A lifetime of skepticism warred with something deeper—an unnamed longing. “Why me?”

“Because you are listening.”

And with those words, Samuel felt something shift inside him, as if a locked door had been cracked open. The wheat around them rustled, each stalk whispering—not words, but *presence.* A sense of belonging.

The second night, Samuel found himself before a vast mirror stretching beyond the horizon. It didn’t reflect his face—not at first. Instead, it showed fragments: himself as a child, frightened and studying obsessively to earn his father’s approval. Himself as a young man, ruthless in ambition, trading compassion for success.

“These are the versions of you that think love must be earned,” Jesus said, appearing beside him.

Samuel swallowed hard. His reflection shifted again—showing moments he had buried: comforting a grieving employee, laughing with an old friend, feeling pure joy at a sunset.

“But these moments… they were forgettable,” Samuel muttered.

“No. They were *real.* Love doesn’t need to be grand to matter.” Jesus touched the glass. “Your worth isn’t in what you achieve. It’s in who you already are.”

Tears burned Samuel’s eyes. His father’s words echoed in his mind: *”You’ll never be enough.”* For the first time, he wondered—what if that was a lie?

The third night, the field transformed into an illuminated garden. Every vine pulsed with life—except one, strangling a dying tree.

“Unforgiveness,” Jesus said, carefully unwinding the vine. “It doesn’t punish others. It poisons *you.*”

Samuel clenched his fists. “I can’t just forget the past.”

“Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. It’s *freeing* yourself.”

He led Samuel to the most withered plant of all—Samuel’s own self-resentment. As Jesus removed its thorns, Samuel felt a weight lift, replaced by a quiet strength.

On the fourth night, a river of liquid light flowed before them, fish darting in perfect harmony.

“You’ve spent your life chasing purpose,” Jesus said. “Yet it was never in what you *did,* but in how you *loved.*”

Samuel knelt, watching the water ripple. His reflection showed not a titan of industry, but simply… a man. Flawed. Human.

A whisper: *”Your greatest work isn’t your company. It’s your heart.”*

Elon Musk used to dismiss the idea of an all-powerful God that judged the actions of individual humans — the type of pronouncement that made him a hero for the atheist community.

“There’s certainly things we don’t understand about the universe, but I’m less convinced that there’s some superconsciousness watching over our every movement and kind of evaluating it against some criteria and deciding whether we’re going to go to one place or another when we die,” he told “The Office” star Rainn Wilson (yes, really) in a 2013 interview. “I think that’s unlikely.”

“If there’s some superconsciousness, where did the superconsciousness come from?” he pondered further. “So I think the most likely explanation is that complexity evolved from simplicity, that simple elements over time combined to become more complex and arrive at what we are.”

Now it sounds like Musk’s thinking has evolved: after fully committing himself and tens of millions of his dollars to getting former president Donald Trump reelected, Musk is now pandering to the Christian right.

During a Pennsylvania town hall last week, he claimed that he now believes in the “teachings of Christ,” including the principles “‘love thy neighbor’ and ‘Turn the other cheek,’ which is very important for forgiveness.” Musk also took aim at the Middle East, arguing that the “endless cycle of violence” there was because they didn’t “forgive the transgressions of others” — instead of how most historians would frame the conflict as the disastrous effects of European colonialism echoing through history, like in Musk’s native South Africa. The remarks highlight Musk’s rapidly changing political and social alignment. Following his acquisition of Twitter, the billionaire has repeatedly made it clear that his ideology has shifted to the far right. He’s also spent much of the last two years evangelizing the teachings of Christianity.

“Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness,” he wrote in a late 2022 tweet. “I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.” Musk has stopped short of claiming that he believes in God specifically, claiming that he’s “not a particularly religious person,” during a live-streamed chat with far-right pundit Jordan Peterson earlier this year when he said that “I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise.” But despite claiming that he believes in loving thy neighbor and turning the other cheek — harmless ideas that many Christians do embrace — his actions tell a dramatically different story.

Musk has a long track record of demonizing the trans community, including his daughter, going on crass and racist tirades, furthering debunked anti-immigrant conspiracies, treating canvassers of his political action committee like dirt, firing workers at his companies on essentially no grounds, turning a blind eye to systemic racism at Tesla’s factories, and reportedly forbidding his own children from meeting their grandmother.

The final ascent was brutal. With each step, Samuel shed pieces of himself—his obsession with control, his fear of failure. Halfway up, he fell, expecting to crash. Instead, the mountain itself cradled him.

“Surrender isn’t weakness,” Jesus said, pulling him up. “It’s trust in something greater.”

At the summit, the sunrise painted the sky in hues beyond description. Samuel saw the truth: every choice, every pain, every joy—connected in a tapestry of meaning.

“What now?” he breathed.

“Now,” Jesus smiled, “you live.”

Samuel woke in his office, tears drying on his cheeks. The city hummed outside, unchanged. But *he* was different.

That morning, he canceled his meetings. He called his estranged sister. He walked through the office, seeing not employees, but *people.* Later, he donated anonymously to a struggling shelter, not for tax breaks, but because it felt right.

He didn’t need to understand the “how” of his dreams. The *why* was enough