A popular game goes from endlessly engaging to pointless with one small change, and that same flaw is at the core of the Christian worldview.
Consider the game of chess. The modern version is substantially different from the original, which mimicked the components of an army. If we evolve the modern game a little more, it may help us find Jesus, so let’s do that and invent Superchess. If you’re familiar with modern chess, you’ll find much that’s the same. For example, the board is the same eight-by-eight grid of squares. Pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, and the king and queen move in the conventional manner.
The big change is the object of the game. No longer is it to checkmate the opposing king. With Superchess, you win when you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.
That’s a pretty bad game, but why? It’s because the motivations within the game—capturing your opponent’s pieces while defending against their attempts to do the same, controlling territory, attacking the enemy king, and so on—have nothing to do with the object of the game. It’s like a game of football where the two teams struggle mightily to score the most points . . . and then the winner is decided by a coin flip at the end.
Let’s expand on this Superchess idea. Take it to encompass all human experience, and we have the Game of Christianity. This is ordinary reality filtered through a Christian worldview, and it’s far more complicated than any board game. In this game, there are good things such as love, friendship, possessions, accomplishments, experiences, and personal victories. We also find bad things such as illness, death, sorrow, financial difficulties, regret, and personal defeats. Players try to maximize the good things and minimize the bad.
We humans are immersed in this sea of complexity with strong motivations pulling us in conflicting directions. We seek out and share advice for how to balance these motivations—how to leave the world better than we found it, who to model ourselves after, and what a life well lived looks like, for example. The correct path through a problem or even through life itself is often not obvious. And yet, the rules of the Game of Christianity make clear that, in the big picture, none of that matters. You win the game when you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.
Having the object so disconnected from the motivations in the game is terrible game design. The realities of life are essential—you ignore them at your peril—and yet they are meaningless diversions from the actual goal. But this is the Christian worldview. It dismisses the importance of the only reality we know exists and confidently points to a vague supernatural reality for which there is no evidence.
Continue to chapter 45.
Image source: Peter Kambey via Pexels
Notes
Finding Jesus Through Board Games: The inspiration for this topic came from the Atheist Experience TV show “Argument from Game Design,” episode 616, August 2, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzYfCVAzG2Q.
2-Minute Christianity 
“Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior” is the same as following the example of a leader who teaches love for our neighbors and being of service to them even to the point of death. This is in contrast to accepting a Roman like leader as Lord and Savior who asks us to die for the glory of the Empire.
Of course this worldview is different than a game of combat like chess. Where your argument breaks down is that people who practice an authentic version of Christianity want to maximize the good things and minimize the bad.
The example you provide is a straw man argument of people who claim to be Christian yet practice much like they worship a Roman emperor or seek to escape reality. None of these things are true of authentic Christianity.
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“people who practice an authentic version of Christianity want to maximize the good things and minimize the bad.”
*Everyone* wants to maximize the good and minimize the bad. That’s why the comparison is a good one–accepting Jesus is very different from maximizing good and minimizing bad. Accepting Jesus is very different from what we know makes sense in life.
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Your words are very similar to the Romans that persecuted Christians in the 1st and 2nd century.
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zarhoth: I can’t see in my words anything about persecuting anyone.
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Please name the Christian theologians whose works you have read? What exposure do you have of how Christianity is actually practiced?
To say that “Accepting Jesus” is very different from maximizing good and minimizing bad begs the question of what you offer as a superior ethical and moral framework? You are not stating that Christians are just a different way. You are demeaning Christians as adhering to an inferior value system.
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First, I’ve been a Christian. Second, I’ve read many apologists’ books and articles but very little about what it takes to be a good Christian. That would be quite a lot, given how fragmented Christianity is.
Accepting Jesus is just that–accepting Jesus. Being good and avoiding is not at all the same thing. The overlap, I suppose, is that someone accepting Jesus would feel compelled to (or drawn to) doing good things.
“To say that “Accepting Jesus” is very different from maximizing good and minimizing bad begs the question of what you offer as a superior ethical and moral framework?”
Huh? You think that accepting Jesus will automatically translate to maximizing good and minimizing bad? There are non-Christians who are much more moral than either of us.
“You are demeaning Christians as adhering to an inferior value system.”
How does this follow? Accepting Jesus isn’t a moral act.
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How is it that you who claims to have been a Christian and read the works of Christian apologists, separate the meaning of “Accepting Jesus” from accepting the the teachings of Jesus? I have never met a pastor or attended a congregation that makes this distinction.
Many times you have claimed the Bible should be read literally and inerrantly as composed by an all powerful deity (God). Even the fundamentalists I know that say things to this effect will be reasonable when read specific passages of scripture. Why is your critique shaped around this extreme notion when in practice is doesn’t exist?
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zarhoth said: “[how can you] separate the meaning of “Accepting Jesus” from accepting the the teachings of Jesus?”
You’re saying these are the same thing?
“Why is your critique shaped around this extreme notion when in practice is doesn’t exist?”
*What* extreme notion? That the Bible should be allowed to speak for itself rather than rephrasing the awkward parts?
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Of course they are the same thing. What sense would it make to mention any historical figure and not what they stood for?
The Bible is just a book. Its what you put into practice as an individual and as a community that matters.
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Accepting Jesus as your lord and savior means that and only that. How you follow the teachings of Jesus and the Bible, which are ambiguous, is a different thing. Even if the meaning of the Bible was plain to everyone, our ability to follow Jesus’s teachings would vary. People’s ambition and motivation are all over the map, and how they followed those teachings in their lives would vary.
“The Bible is just a book. Its what you put into practice as an individual and as a community that matters”
And that will look different depending on which Christian you’re looking at.
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Last I checked each of us was slightly different so it might be healthy that how Christianity is practiced depends on who you are looking at. You are the only person I have met to date that sees a significant difference between accepting Jesus and following the teachings of Jesus. Each of us is wired up differently and maybe this is the cause rather than what Jesus taught.
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That’s curious. I’ve come across, more than once, an article that makes that distinction. “If I accept Jesus as the only path to salvation, am I good? Or is there more?”
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Sounds like marketing. When you actually meet and talk to the people behind it, things are much more reasonable. Truth be told there are fundamentalists who believe in all kinds of crazy things. What is salvation if it is not a hope for a better and more just world? The answer is little more than brand loyalty sort of like having a favorite beer.
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“When you actually meet and talk to the people behind it, things are much more reasonable.”
Oh? Half of all Catholics in France don’t believe in God.
“Truth be told there are fundamentalists who believe in all kinds of crazy things.”
I hope you’re sitting down, because it’s not just Christian fundamentalists who believe crazy things.
“What is salvation if it is not a hope for a better and more just world?”
Is this a trick question? Salvation is getting your butt into heaven. Making the world better for your having lived in it is a nice thing, but it isn’t salvation.
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Salvation as it was understood at the time of Jesus is a community wide healing. You are right that for centuries it was advertised like the notion of Heaven as a reward for good behavior. Can’t comment on French Catholics though it sounds like the same marketing problem where people were taught to believe in an anthropomorphic God that directed our lives. This is meant to refer to how we embrace the teachings and this changes how we live our lives.
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