Christians should be longtermists

But, there is a particular demographic of people who number in the billions, but entirely lack any ability to advocate for themselves or their rights, or literally do anything:

Future people.

It seems reasonable to care about people who don't exist, but will exist in the future. To put it another way, we should want to be good ancestors.

For example, in 1983, a Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov received an alert from his country's early warning system. The United States had launched missiles at the Soviet Union.

Now, if Petrov had reported the attack, it could have quite easily escalated to all-out nuclear warfare between the two nations, leading to unimaginable death.

But, Petrov noticed some anomalies in the early warning system's report, and decided to violate his standing orders to pass the report up the chain of command.

That was a pretty good call, if you ask me.

Many who owe their life to him today were mere future people when he made his decision. And yet, part of what made his actions so admirable was the long-term effects that you and I can enjoy.

We can ask ourselves what we would do in a similar situation. Would we be good ancestors?

Say a meteor was heading towards Earth, and in a hundred years it would kill a lot of people. It makes sense to work on a program to stop the asteroid now, even though the people who will be affected by it don't exist yet. It seems morally wrong to simply ignore their well-being.

That's all well and good, but where the rubber meets the road is when we get to trade-offs.

Let's say stopping the hypothetical meteor is expensive. We could be spending that money on other life-saving programs like humanitarian aid. Both of these programs would do genuine good. So, where should we direct our resources? To people in the present or people in the future?

I think that plausibly the answer depends on how many future people will be affected. If the meteor deflection program would save billions of future lives and the humanitarian aid would save only millions of present lives, then it seems reasonable to spend the money on the meteor deflection program.

But if the meteor only posed a risk to a couple thousand lives, then we should prioritize present humanitarian aid.

Now, this may seem rather abstract. There aren't any deadly meteors hurtling towards Earth. Hopefully. So, it doesn't seem like this sort of trade-off exists in real life.

However, there are programs that could help a large number of future people that do practically nothing for present people. For example, some people are very worried that as biotechnology advances, humans will, intentionally or not, become capable of creating global catastrophic biological risks like diseases with the ability to kill billions of people.

The risk is so great that there are projects funded with money to develop countermeasures and policy governing these weapons, weapons that haven't even been invented yet.

Now, whether or not you buy this specific example, I think the general principle holds. Sometimes an action can be good because it helps a large number of future people even if it doesn't help anybody in the present.

Maybe you think this is a fairly trite conclusion. However, this can end up having some serious moral ramifications simply because the number of future people is so insanely large.

If we assume birth rates stay constant, then in a thousand years, roughly 130 billion people will be born. The number of people who have ever existed is only 117 billion.

Thus, future people and programs that improve their well-being can end up being enormously important just by virtue of their astronomical numbers.

But, there is a uniquely Christian concern I have with this whole line of reasoning.

Jesus is coming back.

The world as we know it may very well end within a hundred years, let alone a thousand. And if Jesus returns within my lifetime, then I'll have wasted a bunch of resources on non-existent future people and neglected the needs of real people in the here and now. That would be bad.

So, in light of the Second Coming, should Christians simply focus on people who presently exist rather than hypothetical future people?

I don't think so.

There's a particular turn-based video game I played where you could accumulate gold to buy stuff or invest it to get more gold at a later turn. When I was nearing the end of the game, it gave me a little warning, "Only five turns left."

I realized the best strategy was to immediately spend all the gold I had accumulated. There was no point to investing or saving the gold because the game was ending. That's what it looks like to only care about the present and ignore the future.

I think that it would be unbiblical for a Christian to live their life like this. Burning up all your resources as quickly as possible is completely rational if you know when the end is coming. In the video game, I had a little turn counter telling me exactly how much time was left.

But Jesus tells us that we will have no idea when he's returning. The Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

So, spending all your resources on the present implies you know when the end is coming. But Christians do not know when the end is coming. So, we should not spend all our resources on the present. Instead, we should allocate some of our resources on the future.

But doesn't scripture tell us to act like the second coming could be any moment?

Well, the main teachings on the subject, parables like the faithful servant, the thief in the night, and the 10 virgins emphasize readiness. That is, when the second coming occurs, you want to make sure you're not unprepared or in a state of sin.

So, living as if Jesus could return tomorrow entails ensuring that your own spiritual state is ready to meet Jesus at any time. However, continually renewing your mind is consistent with also funding a meteor deflection program.

In fact, a common term for long-term planning is cathedral thinking. Medieval cathedrals could take multiple generations to build, so the Christians who built these wonders with the intent to glorify God and inspire worshipers never got to see their work come to fruition in their lifetimes.

Now, I want to end with a more speculative argument. I actually think if we reason about the second coming probabilistically, then we have very strong evidence that Jesus will not be returning for centuries. This would make helping future people a straightforwardly rational decision.

Maybe you worry that we're not supposed to be applying probabilities to the second coming. If we're not supposed to be confident about when Jesus returns, should we really have confidence intervals?

And you know what? Fair enough. I'm mostly including this argument because it's fun to think about. So, feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Okay, here's the idea. Different Christians have different timelines for the Second Coming. Some eschatologies place the Second Coming further in the future. And since Jesus has not returned after a decent chunk of time, 2,000 years, the probabilities of these later eschatologies get a boost.

To illustrate, let's say we have two Christians, Alice and Bob. Alice believes that Jesus could return at any moment. However, Bob is a postmillennialist. He believes that Jesus will not return until Christianity has spread to every corner of the earth and the gospel has totally transformed the world. So, he has a later eschatology.

Let's imagine that every year for the past 2,000 years, you asked Alice, "Will Jesus return this year?" She would say, "I don't know, but he might." And if you ask Bob, he would say, "Of course not. You will need to wait because the gospel still has to transform the world."

This means that Bob's postmillennialism actually has a very good track record compared to Alice. Bob has made an absolute statement every year and has been correct 2,000 times. And having a good track record is strong evidence that your theory is true.

Now, Alice wasn't exactly wrong with any of her predictions, but she was still less right and therefore had a worse track record.

As an analogy, imagine two scientists are studying a volcano. The first says it has a 1% chance of erupting each year. The second says, "Actually, I think it has a 0% chance of erupting until an earthquake hits it." Then, there is no earthquake or eruption for 2,000 years. In such a scenario, we have very powerful evidence that the second scientist is right.

Now, a quick technical note. Nobody actually claims there is a 1% chance that Jesus will return this year. I think somebody like Alice would just say, "We simply don't know what the probability is." But no matter what probability Alice goes with, she'll either have to say it's low and therefore we shouldn't expect Jesus to return for a long time, or it's high and she therefore has a bad track record.

Funnily enough, we can actually mathematically model Alice's uncertainty. If someone says, "Jesus might return at any moment," then the median date they should expect Jesus to return is 4,000 AD.

If you want to see how one can derive this number with calculus and stuff, you can check out the link in the description. But here's a simpler intuitive argument. What percentage of the wait is over?

If Jesus returned in 2 million years, then we've completed 0.1% of the waiting for the second coming. But that seems like a surprisingly low number. If Jesus returned in 2 years, then we've completed 99.9% of the waiting, which seems like a surprisingly high number.

The number which minimizes the amount of surprisingness occurs when we finished 50% of the waiting. That places the second coming 2,000 years from now, so the median date for the second coming is about 4,000 AD.

Again, I admit this is a strange way to approach eschatology, but I think it's also really interesting. And the basic idea isn't too crazy.

If Christians at any time in the past 2,000 years said to themselves, "Maybe I should allocate some of my resources to helping future people," they would have been right to do so. So, it seems quite plausible we should do likewise.

And if you are interested in free one-on-one advising about how to use your career to have a maximum impact on future people, I recommend you check out this video sponsor, Christians for Impact. Their goal is to help you build a cathedral. Probably in a metaphorical sense of giving career advising related to biosecurity or nuclear safety or something. I mean, maybe they could help you get a job building a literal cathedral, but I don't know what the job market for that is like. Link is in the description.

Anyways, that's the end of this video. Thanks for watching. Remember, Christ died for our sins and rose again. Goodbye."