A Brief Foreword

First and foremost, that this is a more personal poetic essay and I want to clarify that my perspective on Christianity is based on my belief that it is entirely a human creation. I can entertain the existence of a god if we think of it as a kind of substance, fundamentally different from what religions typically conceive of as god. Worshipping this substance is as pointless as worshipping the laws of physics, which exist independently of us, though they do condition our lives. Thus, my view of what happened about 2000 years ago and continues to unfold today is purely secular.

I assume that Jesus did exist, but he was an ordinary man, the founder of a new and, in many ways, revolutionary Jewish sect (I use “sect” in the academic sense of the word). In this text, I aim to interpret this novelty, this Christian innovation of its time, highlighting its positive aspects and offering some criticism. I see Jesus and early Christianity primarily as a philosophical teaching and an attempt to reform the society of that time. While I am quite pessimistic about any effort that does not fundamentally change human nature at a level deeper than culture. But I still find it valuable to write about this in the hope that it might help make the world a more bearable place.

A Human Without Humanity

Is it possible to imagine a situation without violent death or even death at all? Can we build a society where there is no need to use others as a means to an end? In my opinion, no, but there are many caveats.

Every person has diverse desires that often need to be partially satisfied. These desires may change or stay the same, but they define our lives through adherence, compromise, or complete rejection. Living in a society, we inevitably encounter other people, who often become the means by which we try to make our lives more pleasant. Avoiding this is impossible and unnecessary, but in fulfilling one’s own desires, a person always risks making someone else’s life significantly worse or even ending it.

Many people choose to have an enemy as a legitimate resource to fulfill their needs. An enemy is necessary because if everyone is a friend, there is no one at whose expense desires, especially those with a violent impulse, can be satisfied. Most mass movements are built around the figure of an enemy. People organize around ways to exploit those they label as enemies, and a significant part of their ideology is built on how to satisfy themselves through the wrong, and then the right, other. Being kind is easy when you are full, but when food is scarce, friends can become resources to become kind again, albeit for a narrower circle of people. An ideology without an enemy and a religion without evil (at least in the form of a wrong lifestyle and those who follow it) thave no chance of surviving.

Everything a person is capable of is natural, because the potential to do so is inherent in their nature. Therefore, it is foolish to label violence, exploitation, and murder as unnatural components of humanity, while implying that somtheing else could be natural. For example, homosexuality, which has probably existed as long as humanity itself, is considered unnatural by some people, yet they rarely object to things like radios or cars, even though these appeared much later. The concept of “naturalness” has long (or always) served ideological structures, defining what is allowed and what is normal. Today, “naturalness” is the main weapon of those who can be called “modern right-wing,” although this tool was used differently in the past. Through this and similar concepts, many have tried to portray violence as something “unnatural,” as if it arose from the intrusion of evil forces or the corruption of good. They claim that violence and evil once did not exist, and they are not eternal, or if they are, they will cease to exist with the victory of conditional good.

Throughout human history numerous religious and ideological movements, especially in difficult times, have tried to address the terrible state of affairs they found themselves in. They aimed either to stop cruelty, violence and other disasters or adapt to them. Often, attempts to tackle these challenges not only fail to change anything but actually make things worse. This is because those who fight against “evil” are usually only unhappy with their position within the system, not with the system itself. I feel sad and disgusted watching people, drunk with desire, infantilely float along paths of exploiting others. But should we get rid of this? Before answering that question, we must ask ourselves: what does it mean to “get rid of” something, and what exactly is “this”? Given the complexity of this issue, any attempt to make such changes is doomed to become yet another example of human incorrigibility. This incorrigibility stems not from the victims of such “correction,” but from the perpetrators themselves. That is why I would say no to all such practices in general. Considering all of this, can we eliminate the lethal and particularly harmful manifestations of being human? I hope so.

Christianity as an Attempt

In this essay, I will focus on just one of these “currents” that attempted to address the challenges of being human. But its singularity is balanced by its significance and scale, as it became a way for a significant part of the world to adapt to life during some of the most brutal times in history. I will try to add to an already saturated picture, which seems to have no “white spots” left, but this does not deter me from developing another concept. For me, the aesthetic and artistic essence theoretical model is no different from that of a painting or poetry (after all, I think this about all the same). So, in this text, I will examine the phenomenon of Christianity, based on its main document — the New Testament.

I am neither a theologian nor a professional expert in the field, and I do not believe in the various interpretations of God that Christianity offers (at least those I have seen). This can be both a drawback and an advantage. Life, as I see it, is like a railway stop in the middle of nowhere, where new people constantly arrive and old ones leave. It’s a strange situation where previous generations arranged this place to make the waiting for the train a little more pleasant for the newly arrived. Death is the worst thing that can happen to a person, as it deprives them of choice and gives something that no one knows and cannot know about.

Today “the stop” is becoming cozier, and the desire to leave it for unclear prospects is diminishing. Therefore, alongside this, there is a noticeable decline in the popularity of religious beliefs (although it is difficult to define their exact boundaries), as they have simply lost their functionality. Many religions and ideologies try to make the temporary eternal, even through death. They preach that the train ride is a transfer from an unjust, terrible stop to an eternal, beautiful station that will undoubtedly resemble the previous life, making it desirable and comforting for mortals. For some reason, death should be a game changer, allowing people to crystallize their life’s experiences, making their best or worst moments eternal. But have religions, and specifically Christianity, been able to improve life, not just decorate death?

I am inclined to answer this question negatively. For me, the figure of Christ is, first of all, a symbol of failure.

It represents the collapse of yet another attempt to make people behave differently. Christ was meant to signify the impossibility of returning to the old “right” and “natural” way of life. It’s undoubtedly difficult to convince people to act and behave in a new way when they have been doing things the same way for centuries. To persuade them, especially people of that era, a supernatural event was needed to legitimize the demand for radical change — you cannot be as you were if what you were no longer exists, and this “no longer exists” is affirmed by a divine act.

It represents the collapse of yet another attempt to make people behave differently. Christ was supposed to mark the impossibility of returning to the old “right” and “natural” way of life. It is undoubtedly difficult to convince people to act and behave in a new way when they have been doing it the old way for centuries. To convince them (especially people of that era), a supernatural event was needed to legitimize the demand for radical change — you cannot be as you were if what you were no longer exists, and this “no longer exists” is affirmed by a divine act.

Provided that you manage to believe in this, because there are no changes that would equally affect everyone and prompt the same actions. That is why the concept of Jesus as the incarnation of God (there were active debates on this topic) was the most beneficial according to general Christian logic. If Jesus were recognized as just one of the prophets, then the legitimization of the separation from Judaism would suffer, this phenomenon would become something more mundane and understandable, not prompting a sense of living in a new era and starting to count years from the birth of Christ.

John the Baptist, another prophet like those you can find in the Old Testament, did not have the same influence, success, and power as Jesus did; he was only an “ordinary” prophet, an example that old methods work poorly. One could imagine that John was one of the main authors of the Christ project, as he himself was no longer suitable for this role; he needed a precedent through which the Old Testament could be replayed to abandon it, to cease being sons of Abraham (as he himself said according to the Gospel of Matthew). Judging by the New Testament, he significantly contributed to creating the figure of the savior among the people, voluntarily yielding to him in everything. However, these are all my personal guesses and dreams.

Along with the divine nature, as known, human nature was also combined in Jesus; this is necessary to build a bridge between the god-man and the flock. If he were God, he would be less accessible for consumption by people as a symbol. When a person sympathizes with Christianity, they most often sympathize with Christ or his mother, not God, because it is quite difficult to sympathize with the deity due to its nature, although it is written in Abrahamic religions that people are created in his image and likeness. Nevertheless, to win the hearts of “old type” Jews, Jesus uses a classic method of self-legitimation, he interprets new laws as a continuation of old ones, finding confirmation of new ideology in the dust of already well-known texts. There is nothing surprising in this, because if you want to destroy the old, you first need to rely on it.

The crucified Christ was supposed to be the final human sacrifice on the earthly altar; afterward, violence was to exist only in hell, hanging over every Christian like the sword of Damocles. Instead of sacrificing each other, he offered himself as an accessible source of fulfillment for everyone, an endless means and raw material adaptable to any desire. The New Testament is full of calls to choose him as the only possible object for exploitation, the only proper way to satisfy both the most innocent and the most brutal impulses.

In the Christian world, everyone is secondary, insignificant, and separated from each other for their own safety. Faith in Christ was intended to be a universal tool of sublimation, and everything leading to the “old life” and “old ways of satisfying desire” is seen as sin and temptation, a return to the state of “man to man is raw material.” This radical attempt to nullify everything we are accustomed to and love, like family, was an attempt to protect family from us or to protect everyone who is not family. Christ was supposed to become a virtual barrier, a distance between people, a virtual world for euphoria in the symbol and prayer, not in the crunch of another’s bones.

A Christian must minimize worldly concerns and devote themselves to the sacred, like a vessel into which a person pours their insides, having no more strength to keep them inside. God became man to stop being a tool for achieving desires and to become the desired itself. However, despite numerous “shoulds,” the efforts of those who contributed to the creation of Christianity failed; no qualitative changes occurred. The golden age of Christianity as an ideology is not much different in terms of victims and cruelty from the age of its decline. God, slightly updated with the image of Christ, continued to exist as a tool for hammering nails into numerous “eternal kingdoms on earth” by those who could use the power of the symbol.

I should mention that in this essay, I am mainly speculating about the original motive behind Christianity, especially considering the historical context in which it emerged. I see Christianity as one of the attempts to answer the questions I posed at the beginning of the essay. As we can see, it was a failed attempt, but aren’t they all?

During communion, Christianity symbolically or literally offers to eat the flesh and blood of Jesus, which is quite symbolic in the context that it is suggested to be satiated with him, to eat him so as not to eat others, to commune like a thirsty parasite at his armpits, so as not to torment ordinary people. This act is meant to satiate believers with him, preventing them from harming others. A Christian must build such a deep connection that would resemble such strong love that one would want to devour the object of admiration as if it were a small extremely cute kitten.

Only in this case can it be swallowed, and it should be, for otherwise there is no Christ in the person, no way to identify oneself with him, him with what one wants. In return, Jesus promises a clear reward system where every suffering, insult, and pain will be repaid with interest after death. This approach likely stemmed from the founders’ disillusionment with life and human nature. They knew that people would still seek the satisfaction of an unrestricted desire and would satisfy it by any available means. Instead of fighting this multifaceted drive, it is easier to change the means of satisfaction, offering solace through the promise of rewards after death rather than trying to achieve them now, which would cause even more chaos and horror.

Christianity’s task is to cultivate a desire for righteousness and an anticipation of the afterlife, rather than pre-death fulfillment, as it is the only real, and therefore, immeasurably sweeter. Christianity seems to aim at sterilizing part of the population, depriving them of the ability to engage in extreme violence, and along with it any powerful emotions, such as love, compassion, etc. Why? Because any Christian feeling should be based on projecting Christ onto the person to whom it is directed. A person should never be alone with another person; God should always be present within them. To feel the love of a Christian is to feel a gaze that looks at you but sees through you. I am not sure this feature is unique to Christianity, I believe it is quite widespread. For example, a Frenchman loves the idea of France within another Frenchman, which often serves as his version of Christ, a source of spiritual nourishment. This may not be the only example, nor as significant in the modern era, but it illustrates the point.

Christian-factory

The market is filled with unnecessary goods in the sense that people’s demand for these goods plays no role in the decision to produce them. A Christian simply must be and act in a certain way, like a factory serving the public sector.

In the eternal kingdom, a Christian expects direct fulfillment of their desires, with no intermediaries except God. To enter the highest layer of this kingdom, a Christian must produce a rather vague amount of good deeds. This place is pure consumption based on meaninglessly produced or unnecessarily produced products goods. God is not a consumer of the goods produced by a righteous person; he demands their creation, but, roughly speaking, he does not need them. A person creates righteous acts by divine order, not because they are needed by someone; the demand for them is not mandatory, and if they turn out to be needed by someone, it is not primarily important. The market is filled with unnecessary goods in the sense that people’s demand for these goods plays no role in the decision to produce them. Christian simply must be and act in a certain way, without relying on actual demand, profitability, consumer desires like a factory serving the public sector.

So, what could be the heavenly pleasure for this long-suffering factory? Pure, endless profits from government subsidies provided by the righteous nature of the enterprise. The person needs to do nothing more after driving themselves to ecstatic bankruptcy, performed according to the strict procedure of the divine bank. Self-sacrifice is like declaring bankruptcy, after which God-State will immediately save the enterprise and pay all the debts at its own expense. The “Christian” enterprise should not worry about its expenses, losses, or profits, and should not fear going bankrupt; on the contrary, it should strive for this. The Gospel contains numerous statements by Jesus about not worrying about what to eat, what to wear, and how to live tomorrow, because birds and plants do not do so, relying on God. A kind of armchair biology poorly versed in the issues of birds and plants. Such a strategy can theoretically be beneficial because, firstly, everything will be compensated in the eternal kingdom, and secondly, in a Christian society with its useless goods, a person will always find resources for survival. If everyone sees in each other an opportunity to produce good for the sake of blissful profit in another world, then already in this world everyone will have resources for life provided by others like them. Thus, God-system will take care of everyone if everyone enjoys through God, through the expectation of the reward of his kingdom. Such a system is possible only in a Christian society or a commune of people united in their drive for righteousness and impotent to each other. And here problems begin.

In my opinion, any collectivist ideology (and I believe all ideologies are collectivist, as they aim to influence and control masses of people) is conceived as a solid tree where individuals become the lifeblood of the collective, with barely perceptible clots of personal identity. However, almost immediately after birth, such a tree begins to be covered with cozy holes from inside and outside. Individual entities become more and more tangible, more and more independent and lustful for satisfaction through the earthly kingdom, not through the eternity offered by ideology. Even if eternity “exists” in history textbooks, where you can be recorded as a person who fought for a desire rooted in the exploitation of this world, you’ll still remain in the memory of descendants like set of lifeless letters and symbols also intended for pleasure.

One who enjoys the benefits of the tree, being a part of it, perceives themselves as an autonomous creature, and the resource for satisfying their desires seems to them an anonymous mass of the whole tree because it is so large that they cannot comprehend it. Large collectives, groups, and ideologies aimed at masses, which seek to unite a number of people within which it is impossible to know or communicate with each other, are doomed to become instruments of exploitation. They become resources for the most brutal and terrible manifestations of desire by those individuals who are tempted by this opportunity. Nevertheless, to some extent, everyone who associates themselves with a large collective uses this.For some, it will be satisfaction through being German because Goethe called himself German, and for others, it will be satisfaction through playing in the role-play game named history, as happened during the two world wars among countless other examples.

From the very beginning, these entities use the coziness of the tree as a unit but speak and act as a whole. The hollows they carve out for themselves, like typical forest birds, are not created at the expense of the nameless collective whole, but at the expense of other entities. One who enjoys through the tree, being a part of it, perceives themselves as an autonomous creature, and the resource for quenching desire seems to them an anonymous mass of the whole tree, because it is so large that they cannot comprehend it.

Authority structure

The most frequent reproach towards the church is that “there is nothing in the Bible about a hierarchical, supranational structure with the post of ‘pope’ or ‘patriarch’,” and this is true; deriving today’s churches from the Gospel requires interpretative efforts. Always, within even a small movement without clearly formed rules or leaders, there will be people who turn it into a machine to achieve their own goals, and then bequeath it to others.

In Christianity, the hierarchical-ideological structure is the church. It reminds me of a cult that glorifies the failure named “Christ.” It resembles a nation that has voluntarily taken a national tragedy as its existential core (as in most national narratives). It builds around it temples of sorrow, adorned with the lives and labor of people who contributed to its construction. It mourns what happened and is angry at those who allowed it, although, in reality, Christianity is nothing but the negative consequences of those events, it has become a tragic consequence itself over which it weeps. The church is a typical example of a large-scale organization that profits from ideologized people. Like all large collective symbolic structures, it is doomed to the appearance of people who achieve divine compensation in terrifying ways, harnessing enterprises subordinate to symbols to produce goods, which they then sell on markets wrong (formally) to ideology. The most frequent reproach towards the church is that “there is nothing in the Bible about a hierarchical, supranational structure with the post of ‘pope’ or ‘patriarch’,” and this is true; deriving today’s churches from the Gospel requires interpretative efforts. Always, within even a small movement without clearly formed rules or leaders, there will be people who turn it into a machine to achieve their own goals, and then bequeath it to others.

Christianity, as I see it, was initially conceived as a local, non-global movement with limited proselytizing potential. A Christian community was always meant to have an external, hostile force from which it needed to be saved and whose members it must love, much like a doctor loves a sick patient. The christian “flock” should be something like a socialist bloc among capitalist states. Not everyone is capable of perceiving the teachings of Jesus, hearing and understanding what he is trying to convey, and not everyone will have the seeds he sows take root, as Jesus repeatedly says. This undermines the proselytizing potential of Christ’s teaching, because it means not everyone is given the ability to hear his message and live righteously. She played along, likening herself to a dog, and begged her masters (as she called Jesus and his disciples) to heal her child. By the standards of that time, this might have been considered great magnanimity, but from today’s perspective, where Christianity has long been a world religion, it looks strange.

All his references to fruits and “by their fruits you will know them” strip Christianity of its revolutionary potential, implying that everything will become clear in the Kingdom of Heaven, and therefore, on earth, it is pointless to do anything with unrighteous people, except use them as a resource to produce righteous ones (that is, themselves). Additionally, ethnicity and origin play a significant role (despite Paul’s efforts to make Christianity a universal ideology). When a Canaanite woman approached Jesus asking him to heal her demon-possessed daughter, he said he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not to dogs like her. She plays along and, likening herself to a dog, begs her masters (as she calls Jesus and his disciples) to heal her child. She played along, likening herself to a dog, and begged her masters (as she called Jesus and his disciples) to heal her child. By the standards of that time, this might have been considered great magnanimity, but from today’s perspective, where Christianity has long been a world religion, it looks strange.

So despite the worldwide “success” of Christianity, it appears to me as an ideological structure intended for life in a semi-closed commune, where a unifying enemy must always loom on the horizon, serving as an exercise for cultivating faith. When Christianity became the world’s dominant, the largest and most powerful symbolic discourse, there were almost no enemies left. The backbone, designed for modest weight and height, began to crack, change, and eventually actively disintegrate, starting from the 17th century (if we are talking about the decline in popularity).

In this case, as in many others, good intentions led the protest to become what it initially opposed. Many Christian reformers will point this out, yet they are no better than their adversaries. From this perspective, Christianity seems analog, relying on ideological techniques to achieve a world without human-inflicted violence. Clearly, the knight became the dragon, and this design led to nothing. Those who developed Christian ideas in its early years perhaps wanted to displace all human craving beyond biological life, transforming it into enjoyment from the anticipation of enjoyment, the so-called spiritual. Due to the characteristic drive to death, or drive to righteousness and the reward it promises, they sought to avoid violent deaths and make the world a little calmer. If not within the broader world, then at least within a small commune. Is Christianity possible as a means of “salvation” from extreme forms of violence? No, because it is either another ideology that promotes violence or too small and insignificant to change anything on a large scale. Every ideology, no matter how good its program and intentions, is doomed to either change nothing (because it is too small) or become another tool for those who want to exploit others for their own satisfaction.

Future Chiristianity

If the “analog” method cannot bring about significant change, is there a “digital” method that would be more effective, reliable, and, most importantly, less dependent on human effort?

Yes, when technology allows us to do this.

To create a system that can’t be taken over by individuals for their own purposes, and that truly surpasses human limitations because it isn’t created by humans, we need something entirely different. It can’t be just another ideology that becomes a means of producing fleeting moments of pleasure between birth and death.

Christianity as a global non-ideological reality is only possible if the symbol and role of God are taken over by AI, which will not be human and will not crave, desire, love, or hate anything. This technological God will be everywhere and nowhere, able to recreate the world according to the rules written in the Bible, from the first to the last line. He will not metaphorically, through righteous living, but literally virtualize people, giving them the opportunity to live eternity in finiteness, where no one can die, or death will cease to be the end. Just as it is impossible to die on the internet, you can only move to another web space. To obtain the earthly and heavenly kingdom, or only the heavenly one, can be done by creating a God who will then create new versions of us, without biological bodies, immersed in digital and virtual infinity.

The Christian of the future should be a technoptimist because technology is what can reveal the image of God (and not through the Shroud of Turin). It hides the second, very necessary breath for all of Christianity. A Christian in spirit, not by scripture, should not rely on outdated human models of societal organization that have proven to fail in every attempt. Those who desire a fundamentally different world should view technological progress as an opportunity to eliminate humanity in the critically important aspects of our lives. Each new strain of ideology criticizes the previous one, offering “new” solutions to old problems. Being a product of its era, it perceives itself as eternal. This entire display aims to turn a function, an ordinary technology, into something that will outlive the need that brought it into existence. The fear of its own contingency forces the pager to inscribe itself into history as an immortal phenomenon of this world, independent of external circumstances, especially contemporary ones.

The world where Christ’s promises would be guaranteed is a world driven by technology, no longer influenced by humans. In this world, ideology will not be needed, as it will turn into non-human reality. You won’t be able to break the rule because it simply won’t be in your nature. You will no longer be able to kill another as it was done before because life is no longer the same, and death is no longer the same. Only technology can turn consciousness into a soul, a super-task that seems unattainable to us at the moment. But I remain hopeful that someday something understood as the human self will be able to traverse spaces without breaking into a pile of decaying flesh.