Mr. Beast isn’t exactly known for his profundity. On his ridiculously popular YouTube channel, he routinely presents crazy challenges to people, blows up stuff, and gives away a lot of money, after which he will often ask the person if they want to risk all that money to do one more challenge.
Now Mr. Beast has put those antics together into a game show that starts with 2,000 people and ends with one person winning the jackpot of $5 million. But the show isn’t so much a game as it is a revealing social experiment. Mr. Beast sets up situations where contestants have to make very tough decisions — decisions that test your priorities and your willingness to do things for yourself at others’ expense. In these situations, we get to see what means more to someone — prize money (which will also mean the shame of a community who now labels them “selfish”), or the appearance of being a selfless saint and having “integrity.” It is a fascinating unfolding of events. As you watch, you realize this game that you thought was all about money is a game about judgment, shame, and guilt. And in case you’re not aware of how powerful those are, Beast Games is about to reveal it to you!
Let me give you one particularly revealing example: the contestants were divided into four groups and asked to pick a captain. Mr. Beast told them it needed to be someone they trusted (great setup by Mr. Beast). Each group elected their captain, then the captains went to the top of a tower looking down on their teammates who were at ground level. Once there, Mr. Beast told the captains that he was going to put an increasing amount of money on the large LED screen behind them, and at any time the captain could hit their button to take the bribe money. There’s just one catch: if they took the bribe, they would disqualify their entire team, sending them home. The captain, however, would not only win the money, but also get to stay in the game. Now remember, this is a game and these people have only “known” each other for a few days.
The amount of bribe money went higher and higher — $100k … $250k …. $500k … $700k, getting up to $1 million. Not one of the captains hit their buttons. All four captains passed on $1 million and eliminating one hundred people from the game — a game, I remind you, which is won by the elimination of players and a game you signed up for in order to win money. That scene ends with all four teams remaining in the game and celebrating their fearless and committed captain. “My integrity was not up for sale,” one captain proclaimed.
Watching this show we have to ask: who passes on a free million dollars and better chances at winning an additional five million in a gameshow? A contest where everyone came to win money and the odds of getting sent home are high. Well, the answer is, of course — people whose number one desire in life is to be declared righteous; a desire that is even greater than the desire to win a crazy amount of money that could change your life forever.
We believe righteousness is earned through our moral efforts. In this righteousness contest, the law serves as referee, saying, “Good people do these things, therefore, if you do these things you’ll be good,” and “Don’t be selfish, selfish people are not good people.” The cost of losing this righteousness game is guilt and shame. So how much is this righteousness worth? Apparently, enough to turn down $1 million and the opportunity to remove 25% of their opponents in a race towards $5 million. In other words, so valuable that you can’t put a price on it.
Each of the team captains was lauded as someone who loved others more than they loved themselves (without using those words of course). They were the “good ones,” the ones with integrity, the ones who put the needs of the community above their own “selfish” needs and desires. They lost the money, but at least for a moment they kept their righteousness.
Take the specific circumstances out, and this situation is familiar to all of us — shame and guilt leading us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do — living out of a fear of how we might be viewed by others. More specifically, the thing we fear the most: being condemned by others for not living according to the assumed law of the land.
The desire of humanity to be declared righteous is not a new one. Mr. Beast is just helping us see how far we might go to earn our merit badge. Yet the contest simultaneously illustrates how little righteousness we actually have, how scarce a commodity it is. Sure, social pressure to not betray your team had something to do with it. But would the esteem of perfect strangers really be so valuable if it were already possessed in abundance? As much as we might like to think we have it all together, our everyday failures say otherwise. If righteousness is a possession, it is too slippery to grasp.
Turns out the only solution to this age-old problem is not to earn your righteousness by your deeds, but rather to give up on that entirely. This is, after all, the message of Christianity. Christianity’s answer to the problem of our unrighteousness is not strategies and encouragement to do better. Christianity recognizes that righteousness can only ever be received, not earned. Any righteousness you and I cobble together could never be enough. And thank God it doesn’t have to be. Because the very thing we would do anything for is precisely what God gives freely. Or as the apostle Paul one wrote, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
So go ahead, take the $1 million bribe! Send the other contestants home with nothing. Then go and win that $5 million. Your righteousness is already accounted for.
Watched the show with my kids, and it provided plenty of opportunities for conversation. Appreciate your take on it.
What if the ‘captains’ weren’t operating out of a sense of ‘earning’ their righteousness but living from it? That is to say, their already-obtained righteousness urged them to act altruistically and save their fellow contestants. God doesn’t need your good deeds, said Luther, but your neighbor does…and all that.
Then again, it was a game show, and the ‘value’ of saving their fellow teammates may have paid off for them later when they were on the chopping block. That might have been worth far more than the $1m bribe.
Thanks Ryan — good take. And speaking of take, they should have taken the money, as the show didn’t get any easier from there.