>Heh, looks like you never repented for stealing that pokemon card in elementary school

whatever answer I give it's unlikely you would care about it

you would recognize the sins you have committed and be genuinely repentent about it, yes

shrug
I'm not a Christian but I've read the Bible
I suggest you do too

You might consider here the sublime writings of Saint Paul, Saint Ignatius, or Boethius has they were in prison, perhaps undergoing torture, and awaiting grizzly deaths. They are no longer reliant on any outward good. They aren't people who will stop being happy if they lose their money, or GF, or drugs, or friends. They know why they act and see it as the highest good, even onto torture and death.

But illumination doesn't come out of the blue. Jesus says his yolk is light but then also describes following him as bearing a cross. How can it be both?

Because it is hard to leave sin when one is in sin. Once one has left it is joyful. Accepting torture and death like Origen or maiming like St. Maximus was easy, where as recognizing one's own lack of freedom, slavery to sin, and past transgressions and taking the steps to overcome them is not.

Unfortunately, the Christian tradition of ethical theory, meditation, and contemplation, as well as the ascetic practices have really been washed out of the popular image. This is sad, because people never move beyond spiritual milk. Christ isn't just promising salvation from punishment, some sort of get out of jail free card. Christ is offering union with the divine, ecstatic theosis, to be one with God.

Personally, I miss nothing of my old life. I do regret my old relationships because they were inauthentic, mere simulacrum of true love. But it took me a long time to even get here, and I am still in sin.

As Saint Bonaventure puts it, the world is a ladder handed down by grace to us. We can choose to climb or we can stay consumed by created things.

The most direct, shortest work might be Thomas Merton's The Inner Experience. It's not very long but gets at the contemplative element. Unfortunately, there isn't a huge focus on freedom. Saint John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul too, but it's less accessible and less theoretic (it's a spiritual guide for the already devote).

For freedom, my favorite is actually not an explicitly Christian book. It's Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism in Plato and Hegel. However, Wallace's Plato almost seems to have more in common with the Patristic's version of Plato than Plato, and he mentions Christian authors quite a bit. It's a bit academic but fairly successful. It only goes into a sort of literature review slog in a few places and they are skippable (this is where he catalogs modern writers sort of early on and the Hegel chapter; I like Hegel, but the chapter gets into a lot of minutes, whereas the Plato chapters — most of them — are more practical).

For a more mystical perspective, I really like William Harmless' Mystics. Harmless has a real gift for letting ancient and medieval writers speak in their own voice through careful excerpts while giving appropriate background. It's a good mix too, Merton, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Bonneventure, Hildegard, Evargrius Pontus, Miester Eckhart, and then he also covers Rumi and Dogen as a Sufi/Zen comparative study. Harmless' books on Saint Augustine is also phenomenal, basically all the greatest hits compiled, as is his book on the Desert Fathers, although that is a bit more historical.

Mystics seems out of print but it is on Libgen. So is Wallace who is unfortunately expensive because it is an academic publication.

And then Light From Light is a good compilation with Origen, Augustine, Saint John of the Cross, Eckhart, etc. But less good intros.

Of course that list skews a bit Catholic/pre-split Western. There are some Greek writers I really like too: Saint Maximus, Saint Gregory of Nysa, Saint Denis being big ones. But they all lean a bit more theoretical.

There are some Orthodox and Protestant writers as well, but I am less familiar with them.

it's not quite that
you have to try not to sin
actively choosing to "goon to troony furry porn" shows that you don't have the holy spirit within you
you have to work on yourself as well to show the works of the holy spirit within you

just don't do it, you can very easily avoid it by not downloading it
also, if you have repented, why would you want to continue sinning like that?

Presumably because Christians are human and so frick up and get tempted by things, just like other humans

It is first thought followed by action. If you are a victim of "wrongthink" (addiction, trauma, etc. conditions of the mind) then the sins follow as actions. These conditions result from the actions of the world. That is why God always forgives. The purpose of the church is supposed to be to strengthen and give fellowship against our worse natures, but while the harvest is great, there are few prepared that know how to work the field. This means there are few equipped to help and lead and instead judge and hinder. This leads to the cycle of anger, apostasy, and either outright rejection of God or the misattributing God with evil.

No. Even people who spend their time gooning don't like how they are controlled by their desires. I don't think anyone remotely familiar with the pornography industry would say it is "good" either.

See:

Christian moral teaching is only going to make sense in the context of a relationship with God.

You don't start by understanding. As Saint Augustine puts it, we have faith so that we might understand. One can doubt if anything is good or true. Maybe you were switched at birth and your parents aren't your parents, etc. But it is impossible to understand anything if one sticks to radical skepticism. You don't learn physics by doubting everything in your textbook, and you don't grow in knowledge of the faith by refusing to engage with it.

Conversion involves metanoia, a changing of the mind. One wants to know God, as all men naturally want to know (Aristotle's opening lines). It is wanting to know what is truly good, not just what seems good or what others say is good that allows us to transcend current belief, desire, circumstance, and instinct and become truly self determining (Plato). You can't be free if you're just an effect of other causes.

Christianity is ultimately a religion of freedom. Romans 7 is probably the pound for pound most influential text for the philosophy of free will. There Saint Paul describes how he does what he hates and is ruled over by desire. He is dead in sin, not a biological death, but a death of any true autonomy and personhood. He is only resurrected by Christ, the Logos.

For man can only be free if he knows why he acts, does what he thinks is good, and can know the true good.

Metanoia is generally supported by ascetic practice, a sort of exercise to train the rational part of the soul to rule over the spirited and appetitive parts. To be self determining.

Here is where moral discipline comes in at first. But the person is merely continent in Aristotle's terminology. They want vice but act virtuously because they want to know the true good and be free. It's only with illumination, knowledge of the Good, why God's law is what it is, that one enters the state of virtue where everything is easy.

It's not about some simple binary. What Christ offers is an ascent, a bridge, divine union, theosis. God offers a deeper happiness, one that isn't contingent on mutable creatures that can always be lost. A transformation of the person, deeper, more loving relationships.

Sin is its own punishment. People will be punished for their sins as justice requires. It is not our place to judge, we are to forgive everyone.

Many theologians hypothesize a sort of universalism, a universal return of all created things (Saint Maximus, Eriugena). However, consider also that evil has no part in God. Evil is a privation, a lack of essence, failure to fulfill the human telos. So the question might not be so much "will something of all creatures return to God," but "how much?" A person marred by sin will have very little that can be compatible with God. Their relationship with God will be defined by the punishment justice demands — theirs is not a soul prepared for union. There will be those in the "outer darkness," where there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

yeah and israelites were the chosen people
until they weren't because they refused to do what God asked of them constantly even though they could have just done wanted of them
you can be forgiven, if you want to