God’s Proof of Work

Note: This is a transcript from a video you can access by clicking the image above.

A few years ago I was sitting in the cafeteria at school when a friend asked me the question: If God can do anything, including forgive sins, why would he go through the trouble of sending Jesus to die for those sins. 

I’ve wondered about this for a long time.

The whole thing seemed a bit arbitrary to me.

If God can literally do anything, then why would he bother going through the lengthy process of being born, growing up, dying, rising again, and ascending back to heaven. What is the point?

If God is omnipotent, could he not simply say the word and sins would be forgiven?

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One of the ways Jesus’ sacrifice has been traditionally understood is to trace the history of the ancient Jewish sacrificial system.

The Jewish people were required by God to bring animals to the temple to be sacrificed on their behalf.

In part of the Abraham story, there is this moment where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to him.

Now previous to this, God had sworn to Abraham that through Isaac he was going to have more descendants than there are stars that he could count in the sky. 

Abraham, knowing this promise, proceeds to prepare the sacrifice (presuming that God would raise his son back to life afterward), and gets all the way to the point of raising the knife over Isaacs’s body.

Suddenly, at that moment a voice yells at Abraham telling him to stop and Isaac is spared. 

In his place, a ram is offered instead.

Through this God learns of Abraham’s devotion and love for him, in that he’s willing to give up even his own son for him.

This is not an arbitrary story, but functions as a prophetic reenactment that points us to the story of Jesus.

It also sets the stage for something called substitutionary atonement.

In the same way that the ram was exchanged for Isaac, so too Jesus’ death is exchanged for ours.

Yet the question still remains: if God can do anything, including forgive sins, why require this at all?

Well, let me ask you this, how familiar are you with Bitcoin’s proof of work?

Proof-of-Work speaks of the energy necessary to produce Bitcoin.

More generally speaking, “You need proof of work to embody skin in the game in the marketplace.” – Robert Breedlove

It’s analogous to the effort necessary to produce gold – which has been the dominant form of money for the last 5000 years.

Gold is so difficult to find, that even with growing technology and machines used to mine it, the inflation rate is only about 2% of the global supply.

Meaning, that if there are 100 tonnes of gold in existence today, next year there will be 102 tonnes and so on.

In a similar way, Bitcoin over time becomes exponentially harder and harder to mine until its new supply will become completely exhausted, sometime near the year 2140.

The point is, new Gold and Bitcoin can only be produced by sacrificing lots of energy.

What does this mean?

It means the supply is scarce.

This preserves its market value.

Anyone, worldwide, can expend energy and turn it into Bitcoin.

The underlying principle is that real-world sacrifice of energy ensures scarcity and therefore, ensures value.

The harder it is to produce, the more valuable it becomes.

In this way, the value is proportional to the sacrifice.

So if you own a gigantic Bitcoin mining farm, with a whole football field covered in ASICs connected to a nuclear generator, you will be compensated handsomely in the amount of Bitcoin you receive in return, because you’re sacrificing so much energy to obtain it.

If you’re just running Bitcoin mining software on an old laptop, you will be compensated far less.

Because the value is proportional to the sacrifice.

Proof-of-work is one of the greatest features of Bitcoin.

It anchors it in the physical world.

Physical energy is expended, digital value is produced.

It’s also a fair system in that it allows anyone in the world to be a part of it, you don’t need to be rich to start.

Contrast this to another, more prevalent system called Proof of Stake.

Proof of Stake has become more and more well-known with Ethereum’s plan to move away from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

In Proof of Work, a miner is rewarded for expending energy to solve the cryptographic problem, block after block.

In Proof of Stake, a user “stakes” their coin and is paid more based on how much they have.

In this system, wealth is rewarded, not work.

If you stake the most Ethereum, you get more Ethereum as payment.

Play this out over many years and you get greater and greater wealth discrepancy.

This is eerily similar to our current financial world… our “fiat” system.

In Canada, where I live, work is being rewarded less and less, and asset ownership is being rewarded more and more.

Case and point, the average home price in Canada rose more than the average Canadian made from their salary.

There was almost no immigration into Canada in 2020 due to the border being closed, so why would this be?

Think about how utterly bonkers this is.

Someone with money can simply buy an asset, hold it for a year then sell it.

They’ve contributed nothing to society by doing that.

On the other hand, we have someone who worked for a full year – like 2000 hours of work – by the sweat of their brow, solving problems and serving others.

They contributed to society, they gave value.

And they are compensated only the same amount as the other guy who bought and sold something.

It’s nuts!

Rich people know this, and they use this to the system to their advantage.

If you’re not familiar with the term, look up the Cantillon effect, which essentially explains how when someone is close to the fiat government money printer (such as many rich people who can buy assets) they can parasitically leech on the system, by being rewarded simply because they are rich.

Ultimately what we find here is this is a false reality.

It’s disconnected from the laws of nature – basic things like cause and effect.

You can’t leave the earth’s gravity without exerting a massive amount of energy.

You can’t become a master musician without expending a massive amount of effort, practicing.

In the same way, running on Proof-of-Work, Bitcoin is rooted in the laws of nature.

A difficult problem is presented, a real problem, and therefore it takes a massive amount of effort to solve it.

When a miner solves this problem, he/she contributes to securing the Bitcoin network and is rewarded with new Bitcoin as a result.

So, back to our question:  why did God send Jesus to die? Why didn’t he just snap his fingers to forgive sins?

I believe one of the ways to understand this is that by doing this, God is showing something akin to proof of work.

You see, our sin is a real problem, it’s not some fictitious thing.

You experience this in your life when someone wrongs you – like really hurts you, even maliciously attacks you.

You can’t simply say the word and move on.

You may try, but the pain and the anger will linger and fester.

And to forgive – to truly release that person and what they did against you – it requires suffering on your part – you need to swallow that most bitter pill in order to move on with your life.

Now, if you can, imagine the sins of world history.

All the lives lost, all the murder, all the lies, all the little selfish choices made time and time again that lead to the suffering of others.

There is a massive cost to be paid.

Therefore, there is a massive amount of work to be done.

For God to snap his fingers and say, it’s forgiven, is akin to pretending it never happened.

If this were the case, God would not be just.

So what does God do?

The infinite God gives the one thing that costs him something – he gives himself.

He comes down to earth and pays the price himself.

By Jesus coming to earth, God is performing what you could call the ultimate Proof of Work.

And much like Bitcoin’s proof of work is a bridge that transforms physical energy to digital energy, Christ’s physical death drops an absolute nuclear bomb of energy in the spiritual realm.

One single expenditure of infinite energy that once and for all undoes all the wrongs of the human race.

It’s been undone in the spiritual, for those who exercise trust in Jesus.

It will one day be wiped out completely.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that just as the value of Bitcoin is proportional to the expenditure of energy needed to gain it.

So Christ’s sacrifice demonstrates how much God values you and me.

His sacrifice of infinite proportion shows his love for you.

Love is more than just a feeling, love requires a measure of sacrifice for an object or person external to yourself.

It’s fundamentally putting someone else, their hopes, dreams, their well-being ahead of your own.

God did this – here, physically, in the real world.

And in doing so he demonstrated Proof of Work.

On that note, I would encourage you, if you haven’t before, to do some research on the existence of and the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. 

Even the Bible itself tells us that if this didn’t happen, then the entire Christian faith can be written off.

I would suggest looking into the works of N.T. Wright or William Lane Craig on this topic.

I hope you found this helpful.

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