A Virtual Gospel

Yesterday, Ezra Klein of Vox interviewed Yuval Hariri, the Israeli author of Sapiens and his latest, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. In Homo Deus Harari envisions humanity’s future (including its likely end) with specific focus on technology and artificial intelligence. Near the end of the interview, Harari makes this claim about religion generally, and Christianity in particular:

You can think about religion simply as a virtual reality game. You invent rules that don’t really exist, but you believe these rules, and for your entire life you try to follow the rules. If you’re Christian, then if you do this, you get points. If you sin, you lose points. If by the time you finish the game when you’re dead, you gained enough points, you get up to the next level. You go to heaven.

Now, I’m hardly qualified to comment on AI or other cutting-edge technological developments, but Christianity I know decently well. And this description bears no resemblance to the Christianity I profess, nor the Christianity of Jesus’ followers throughout the past two millennia.

The root issue, of course, is the notion of merit. Do Christians do anything whatsoever to merit their own salvation? That is, do Christians really “earn” or “lose” points by our good and bad deeds, respectively, hoping somehow to attain a high enough score to pass through those famed pearly gates? Harari certainly thinks so, but the Bible teaches otherwise.

Paul, for example, says quite clearly, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Our salvation is by grace (unmerited favor) alone, not by our deeds; no works involved, so no boasting allowed. Now, if you’ve ever played video games, you know much boasting succeeds a new high score, so Harari’s view of Christianity and Paul’s seem to be at odds.

So, as I read the interview, I was deeply troubled as I considered my own culture, and what misperceptions those around me might have about Christianity. I have had conversations with many people throughout the years that have echoed Harari’s sentiments about religion. Most do not understand grace, which means they do not understand the gospel, and can have no good understanding of why Jesus came to live among us before dying in place of us and rising again. In other words, we are surrounded by people who have rejected (or are at the least unpersuaded by) a version of Christianity completely foreign to the teaching of Jesus and his Apostles. They have rejected not the gospel, but their own misperceptions about the gospel.

Many who profess to be Christians reviewed the Vox interview, or gave it brief treatment on Twitter and elsewhere. In general, the tenor of the response was, “We can’t believe how dumb you are to misunderstand Christianity so badly.” I have to confess, I found this response wanting. I’d much rather our response had been, “How badly we have failed our culture, if we haven’t made clear what the gospel really teaches!” (I’d have liked to have seen some Christians engage Vox and Harari with what the gospel really says, to see if the seed might not just fall on good soil.)

This is the challenge I see for the church going forward: to communicate the gospel clearly and persuasively to a culture that doesn’t want to hear what they don’t understand. I believe that will take a few critical steps (repeated ad infinitum until glory):

1. We need to present the bad news of humanity’s plight before the good news of the gospel will make sense. People today believe they are pretty good, and therefore probably could “score enough points” to earn their way into heaven. This is in marked contrast to Paul’s description of humanity apart from Christ (cf. Romans 3:10-18).
2. We need to bear the name of Christ with much more humility and expressed repentance than we normally do. My question here is have we given the impression that we earned our salvation? Listening to Christians speak—especially when it comes to social or political issues—one might very well draw that conclusion. The church has been notoriously guilty of adopting a holier-than-thou mentality, leading to the same self-righteousness and hypocritical judgment that Jesus stridently condemned in the Pharisees of his day.
3. We need to make very clear the distinction between Christianity and the other world religions. We live in a tolerant, pluralistic society. One will often hear that all religions are basically the same, in that they all teach the same basic moral requirements. Now, if Christianity is just one more set of rules to follow so that you can earn enough points to get to heaven, then truly it is the same as the other religions. I’d be hard pressed to argue that Jesus is the only way. But if, as the Bible teaches, Christianity is not a set of rules to be followed, but rather a grand story of God’s unfolding plan of redemption accomplished through the sacrificial death of his Son, then Jesus is, as he himself said, “the way, the truth, and the life”—and no one can come to God apart from him (John 14:6).
4. We need to do a better job explaining why Jesus came and why Jesus died. In many ways, this is just restating the last point in different words. What is the heart of Christianity? Not that sinners try to claw their way back into God’s good graces by dint of their effort, but rather this: “While we were still sinners [trying to claw or not], Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus came to live the perfect life we were called to live but unable to live because of our sin nature. Then he took our place—bore our punishment in his body, absorbed the full force of God’s fierce anger at our sin on the cross—that we might take his place, welcomed as beloved, righteous children of God by faith: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). I am loved by God because of Jesus, not because of anything I have done.

I was reminded as I read the interview, that this is not a video game, and certainly is not an alternative reality. In a video game, when you die, you start over and try again. There are no consequences for making the wrong decision other than wasting even more of your life in front of a flickering screen. But this is no game. Eternity is at stake. Will the church answer the call and proclaim the good news of the gospel clearly and persuasively, or will we whine about how misunderstood we are while the world around us perishes?