Published on July 26, 2024, 12:31 am

Imagine a stark reality where each of your actions, thoughts, and words are under constant watchful eyes. A centralized authority rates your worthiness based on a determining score, granting or denying basic rights accordingly. This may sound like an Orwellian dystopia, but it is the present-day reality for citizens in China with their social credit scoring system.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has strategically utilized this system to claim absolute control over its population under the guise of fostering trust and integrity. In essence, it is a tool for oppression. Citizens are judged based on various parameters – financial behavior, social interactions, intended compliance with their government’s standards foregrounding the implementation mechanism.

This intricate scheme adjusts rewards and penalties according to one’s alignment with the state-imposed standards—privileges greet compliant citizens while nonconformists face harsh penalties that stretch from job restrictions to public humiliation and travel bans.

Unsurprisingly, in such stifling environments where personal privacy and freedom are constantly compromised, both real news reports and trusted news sources become victims of cautious consumption. The echoing parallels drawn here also resemble the algorithmic practices of giants like Facebook and Twitter/X; these platforms manipulate visibility based upon user engagement.

Social media platforms have subtly created digital echo chambers allowing only acceptable opinions to be expressed freely while dissenters endure severe curtailment or silencing altogether. Notably, Christians upholding Biblical principles online find themselves suspended or banned since such beliefs clash against common progressiveness dominating online spaces.

Furthermore, these controlling systems promote popular opinion instead of nurturing objective truth which severely undermines biblical morality; pivoting more towards the majority rule accidently enabling fleeting societal hierarchies shifting between ‘acceptable’ actions overnight. History offers gruesome illustrations about societies favoring majority rule-based systems, commonly descending into atrocities targeting marginalized groups as witnessed during slavery periods or horror-crafted Holocausts executed by Nazi Germany.

The blueprint strategy behind China’s social credit system is visible in the increasingly dystopian characteristics of Western digital counterparts that curtailed freedom of speech and thought, leading to potential intimidation and discrimination towards vulnerable groups including religious or ethnic minorities like Jews, Uyghurs, and more intensely, Christians.

Inevitably with this system in place, Christians are bound to face intensified persecution. Historical parallels can be drawn from horrific persecutions during Emperor Nero’s reign where Christians were scapegoated for societal turmoil. Today, however, a craftily coded social credit system serves as the weapon for singling out devout followers who maintain biblical standards against secular moral codes which in turn interpret their obedience as “untrustworthy” or “subversive,” granting severe penalties accordingly.

Such persecuted instances are already surfacing today. More often Christian followers voicing biblical truths on marriage sanctity, life’s preciousness are being flagged as propagating hate speech on various social media platforms. The further society drifts from God’s set moral principles; followers find themselves corralled into conformance.

While The Book of Revelation paints ‘the beast’ symbolizing earthly powers conspiring against Christ – it is equally committed to silencing Christianity by leveraging every switch at its control center; it pushes Christian followers towards relying undeniably on faith alone. This brace roundabout monumental challenges starts with internal acceptance that not seen worldly showers would serve as reward, but it comes anchored in faith afterlife.

In essence, whether we speak about China’s aggressive domestic tactics or the ferociously multiplying digital forms making headway into western societies – they share an insidious goal set against Christ and his ‘other-half’. However terrifying these adversities promise to be – they also serve reminders glorifying Christ promising eternal peace while paying homage to discipleship’s costs amidst societal depravity shrouded in sin.