As an east Asian growing raised by a non-Christian family, I never got to systematically learn about the doctrine of Christianity. I only had a very superficial and scattered understanding about it, but not how the whole theological system comes together.
When touring the churches and theological sites in Paris and Milan, I got to really dig into it, analyze it from logical, philosophical, and game theoretical viewpoints, and come up with what I’d say a pretty good understanding about how the whole system works.
Below I’ll try to explain the whole system assuming that God, Jesus and co are real.
Mechanism Design
Once upon a time, for some reason, God decided to create a physical universe and install a physical ruling class with an image of itself to govern and cultivate the lands. However, it didn’t want to just hand out power to this new being. He wanted to selectively grant power to battle tested individuals that bootlick on their own will.
So it created the first 2 humans, let them corrupt, declaimed them as traitors, let them reproduced a lot more traitors, then sent Jesus to tell them about the redemption route.
If a human accepted the redemption route, all their sins would be transferred to Jesus, and they would be able to start accumulating virtue points. After God decided that there are enough battle tested bootlickers for his new world, it’ll activate the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, upgrading the bodies and souls of all the bootlickers/Christians, sending all non-believers to hell, and also upgrading the physical universe.
During the upgrade, the souls of the believers would be strengthened, and they’ll be given a new superhuman body free of decay and incapable of sinful thoughts. Then they’ll be given a class in the new hierarchy in the new Earth based on their virtue score.
The formula to calculate the virtue score is
$$S = \alpha \dfrac{\text{virtue points}}{\text{capacity}} + \beta$$
Where virtue points is the positive karma you accumulated during your lifetime, and capacity is your wealth, intelligence, capability etc. The higher the S, the higher rank you’d be in the new Earth, ruling more cities.
This may sound dystopian, but in the new Earth, no one would be able to have any sinful thoughts i.e. greed pride lust jealousy etc. The only incentive to get higher in the ruling hierarchy is for higher fulfillment, contributing more to the world.
Virtue point is not just dependent on your raw output but also your motives. If you give your underaged sons to the clergies for them to molest with the primary motive of getting a higher rank in the new Earth, you get zero virtue points. Only if your primary motive is based on virtues will you get virtue points.
And to encourage both the wealth and the poor to contribute a lot, the score is divided by your capacity.
Not only actions but also thoughts get accounted in the ledger. So God is essentially also a thought police.
Since after the 2nd coming you won’t be able to generate any sinful thoughts, these testaments are not to functionally train the humans to be good at the new job, but as an indicative exam to pick out the souls with the best quality to practice God’s will. It’s kind of like our education system, where you get scored on how much you can absorb about theoretical subjects that have nothing do with your future jobs, but it serves as an indicator of your mental capability,
FAQ
- Q: Why don’t I just die rn and wait for Jesus’s second coming to get transcended?
- A: If you die rn then you can get no more virtue points. If you live and keep contributing you’ll get more virtue points and get a higher rank in the new Earth.
- Q: I’m broke and will never be able to out compete the millionaire Brando Sando in donation to the Mormon church, what’s the point of me contributing anything then?
- A: Brando Sando has a high capacity in creating rigid magic systems and selling novels written in serviceable prose, meaning his denominator in virtue score calculation would also be higher. If you donate half your pre-tax income to the Mormon church you can still win Brando Sando even if he sells a billion copies of Mistborn.
Determinism and Free Will
Surprisingly, even with creationism, the debate of free will still exists.
There are many branches of Christianity, and we can classify them into 3 believes.
- inconsistent logic: omniscience, non-deterministic, and have free will
- copium logic: omniscience, deterministic, and have free will
- consistent logic: non-omniscience, non-deterministic, and have free will
Omniscience and Non-Deternimistic
Most mainstream Christianity branches believe in this including Catholism. They think God is omniscience, knowing everything including all the future (foreknowledge), but the world is still not deterministic and humans have free will.
This is self contracdictory because if God knows you’ll cheat on June 7th, you cannot choose to not cheat on that day, meaning your future is pre-determined. You have no capability to alter your route. Your entire life is on a pre-determined track since God can see the entirety of your future and it cannot be wrong.
This means your life is deterministic and you have no free will.
Omniscience and Deterministic
Calvinism believes that God dictates the entire trajectory of you on birth, which is full determinism. Same as modern compatibilism, to preserve free will, they alter the definition of free will to make you feel like you still have it. But by libertarian free will, which is the only logical definition of free will, you don’t.
Non-Omniscience and Non-Deterministic
Since the traditional definition of omniscience implies determinism, Open Theism modified the definition of omniscience to exclude free will. God is still omniscience, but free will is something special, so God can’t foresee your decisions.
Critics cite biblical prophecies as counter arguments, but prophecies don’t need to be predictions, it can be declarations. Since God is omnipotent, it can act in real time to make something happen. If God said something would happen 1000 years later, it just needs to make that happen 1000 years later to fulfill prophecy.
In this framework, the future remains non-deterministic, and free will is preserved. This is the only logically consistent framework.
Learnings
I thought Christianity would be full of inconsistencies and loopholes, but after being battle tested for 2000 years, most holes were patched. The result is a surprisingly robust mechanism design with serving God as the dominant strategy for believers.