Game Parable

Here’s a parable: This world is a game, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Some characters belong to the game; covenant people are just playing it.

I’ve been contemplating the alternate realities of inside versus outside the Covenant. We meet the rest of humanity in a fallen world, a sort of virtual reality that isn’t the real thing. They are rooted in a place of law covenants, while we are rooted in an eternal existence by grace. They belong to this false reality; it’s all they have. When it goes, they will go with it.

We have symbolic language, parables declaring to us some conceptual framing of these things, but nobody can declare to you in propositional terms exactly how and why God decides who belongs to this world and who is marked for rising above it. The only thing really clear to us is that there is a difference. Creation does not respond to us the same as them. We have connections outside this reality that the rest of the world cannot comprehend. They don’t have access to a keyboard and mouse, or a game controller.

In a discussion, someone asserted that it’s a Christian duty to have children under our Christian identity so that we can take over the world. That is so loaded with nonsense that it’s hard to parse from a spiritual point of view. Obviously, this is the words of someone obsessed with conquering this world on its own terms. They want to “change the world”. It won’t happen.

To embrace that choice puts you outside the Covenant of Christ. It does put you squarely into the territory of the Covenant of Noah, though. Over the years I’ve written a great deal about the Covenant of Noah, and some good friends still don’t get the relationship between Christ and Noah.

Noah is this world. It’s how things work now; the Covenant of Moses is no longer in effect. Moses is an empty shell, an artifact worthy of examination, but having no life or power. It’s game code from a previous edition. Moses is how we understand Noah. In that sense, you can learn from Moses how Noah works; the differences are within our grasp. I’ve written a little about that.

But Noah is confined to this life. It points to something better and higher, same as Moses did, but is not that higher thing in itself. The Covenant of Christ is that higher thing. Christ is not rooted in this world, but in Heaven. It adds a whole different dimension, connecting a higher reality to this simulation in which we live. We are real outside of this world. The Covenant of Christ tells us how to break out of the simulation.

Thus, we learn from Noah the rules that confine the players in this simulation. They might be aware of the higher reality in some sense, but they cannot possibly understand it. We are granted the enlightenment to understand it if we will. We have to think outside the game, use capabilities that are not confined by the simulation.

But back to this so-called “Christian duty” — it’s a reflection of the rules of the game. It not a uniquely Christian idea. It works that way under Noah; it works that way for humans who belong to this world. Christians have a different approach based on entirely different assumptions.

Growing the Kingdom of Christ is a matter of spiritual birth, not natural birth. Just because you grow up in a Christian family, it doesn’t mean you’ll be a Christian, depending on how you use the terminology. The definition of “Christian” is ambiguous in our vernacular. It means “following Christ” as your Lord. The idea is that you are wholly His, a feudal subject. It implies eternal spiritual birth, but in practice that isn’t always the case. It’s a popular rhetorical device to insist on a pure definition of the term, but in practice it simply does not exist. We have no way to verify; all we have is limited evidence to support a working assumption about whether someone is a true family member of Christ.

The simulation allows for high-functioning bots that don’t appear to be NPCs (non-playing characters) in this game. Get used to it. Some of them will be your earthly family members, people you grow to love or maybe hate, but they will be significant in your life. You are obliged by the conduct of the game to invest some strong emotional ties to some people, and you cannot verify whether they have an identity outside the game.

A couple of my siblings didn’t manifest any evidence of an eternal identity. They didn’t even do a good job of playing by Noah, much less Christ. Nothing I say or do changes the situation. Yet, I must confess it was the influence of my parents that brought me to Christ. They didn’t help too much beyond the introduction, but my point is that you cannot count on a Christian identity resulting in a changed world.

Raising children in a Christian home is no guarantee at all. We are obliged by the game to try, but it’s a crap shoot and the simulation produces varying random results. You can improve your chances by building a covenant community, but the difference is marginal. There is no apparent history of anyone actually trying to do that. Nothing about the mainstream church comes close enough. Have you seen how church people live, how the kids grow up mostly no different from the rest of the world? Do you understand that church girls are more likely to fornicate than those outside? Ask any PUA; church is the best place to find their prey.

No, the growth of genuine eternal family in Christ is not by fleshly birth, but by spiritual birth. The whole of God’s Covenant people could simply stop having babies and we’d still grow from people converting, people who grew up in non-Christian homes. And you see, that’s the uniquely Christian answer. The way to grow a covenant community is mostly a matter of Christ touching those who were born into the game, who didn’t know they were eternal or Elect.

In absolute terms, the limiting factor for growth of the Kingdom is how many Elect are out there who don’t yet know their identity. For us as players in the game, we simply participate in God’s programming. He’s the developer who decides what happens, in the sense that the algorithms are all His doing, along with live adjustments to suit His tastes. He’s watching the game server closely. The most we can decide is the degree to which we participate and take advantage of the algorithms.

Trying to raise children with a strong covenant background is a good use of the Noah algorithm, but it’s not a uniquely Christian play. We conquer because of all the NPCs who don’t have any existence outside the game; they have no capacity to recognize a higher reality. We can come out with a good score in the end, but those who belong to the game will end when the game ends.

Addenda: Someone asked if I can fit the Devil and the Elohim Council into this parable. The Elohim Council are hired technicians, systems administrators with no skin in the game. Their permissions are limited; only God has root access. However, the Devil and his allies are trying to skim off the profits from the game.