Jimmy Song is a Christian Bitcoin programmer and author who has recently written a book called "Thank God for Bitcoin: The Creation, Corruption, and Redemption of Money" with a group of his contemporaries. In this episode of Theology Applied, we discuss Bitcoin and the theology of money.
00:00:00.580Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.
00:00:10.400Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.
00:00:13.580This is another episode of Theology Applied.
00:00:15.800Today I am privileged to have as a guest a new friend of mine.
00:00:20.080His name is Jimmy Song, and he's recently written a book.
00:00:23.440I actually have it here, so I'll go ahead and hold it up.
00:00:26.080But he's co-authored a book with a group of his contemporaries.
00:00:29.340It's called Thank God for Bitcoin, the creation, corruption and redemption of money.
00:00:35.680So tonight's episode is going to be interesting.
00:00:38.080We're going to be talking about Bitcoin, something that I'll just go ahead and be honest up front.
00:00:42.920I know little to nothing about, but just having lunch with him just a few weeks ago, getting to know him and getting to hear his case for the morality of Bitcoin as a currency and the immorality and corruption of our current nation's currency.
00:00:58.960was just incredibly interesting. So I think tonight, you could maybe call the episode this,
00:01:04.800A Theology of Bitcoin, and broader, probably, A Theology of Money. So without further ado,
00:01:11.420our guest, Jimmy Song, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your YouTube channel,
00:01:16.080podcast, or consulting, books that you've authored, all that kind of stuff?
00:01:20.600Yeah, so I'm a programmer, and I've been one since I graduated college, which was
00:01:25.50023 years ago. So I've been a programmer for most of my life, actually, I started when I was like
00:01:31.000nine, like programming on little computers and stuff like that. But that's, that's been my
00:01:34.600vocation for quite a while. I got into Bitcoin in 2011. And, and, you know, I've been working at
00:01:41.560I had been working at a bunch of startups all along then. And 2013, I started contributing
00:01:48.760to open source projects that are related to Bitcoin for your audience that doesn't know what
00:01:53.480an open source project is. It's sort of like a lot of free software that exists. You know,
00:01:58.460developers sort of contribute to those. Linux is a popular one. A lot of free tools out there
00:02:03.700are open source. You know, Bitcoin is one of those open source projects. So I'm one of those
00:02:10.180programmers that's in the open source community. I started getting into it. I worked for a bunch
00:02:16.220of different Bitcoin companies. I went off on my own in 2017. I started a little seminar for
00:02:22.640programmers to teach them the Bitcoin protocol and all of the programming things that are involved
00:02:27.980in that. I started speaking at a lot of different Bitcoin conferences all over the world. I think
00:02:34.1002018, I hit five of the seven continents. I missed Africa and Antarctica, like traveling and doing
00:02:42.500that. I have a Twitter, Jimmy Song, that's got 200,000 followers. I have a YouTube channel,
00:02:51.400off-chain with Jimmy Song. That's got 28,000 subscribers. I publish articles on Medium. I
00:03:00.100publish a newsletter every week, jimmysong.substack.com. I have a podcast, Bitcoin Fixes
00:03:06.680This, which comes out once a week, although I have like a special episode that I'm debuting
00:03:11.660later tonight. So, you know, lots of different things and lots of different stuff. But yeah,
00:03:17.720I'm a Christian. I have been for all my life.
00:03:21.840Pretty much, you know, like it was kind of a surprise to me that I got to bring that together in this book that I wrote with some other Christian Bitcoiners.
00:03:32.020Thank God for Bitcoin. And it really started kind of as a as like a Bible study slash book study.
00:03:38.540And it evolved from there. I've written two other books, Programming Bitcoin by O'Reilly.
00:03:44.540Uh, O'Reilly is sort of like the premier tech tech book publisher, not just in the United States, but all over the world. And, uh, and, uh, the little Bitcoin book, which was a book I had the privilege of writing with seven other coauthors, um, about like what Bitcoin is, uh, for sort of like, um, a lay audience.
00:04:05.720So that's just a portion of what I do. I forget sometimes like all the different things I'm doing, but that's pretty much everything that I do has some form of Bitcoin involved.
00:04:19.040And hopefully I can help your audience understand the theology of money and the theology of Bitcoin.
00:04:25.040That's awesome. That's really cool. All right. Well, let's go ahead and just dive right in.
00:04:29.640Real quick, you kept saying programming Bitcoin. Is that the same thing, again, complete novice here, but is that the same as like mining for Bitcoin? What is programming for Bitcoin?
00:04:41.540Well, programming Bitcoin is, so ultimately it's all software and programming sort of software on top of Bitcoin, for example, like programming a wallet. A wallet is basically something to keep your Bitcoin safe.
00:05:51.140So it's a major way in which the entire Internet works, right?
00:05:55.100Like you need something like that in order to make sure that things are secure.
00:06:00.440And so, you know, I do teach a lot of that.
00:06:04.000And there's, you know, I taught a class for a semester at the University of Texas, like
00:06:11.780just teaching a bunch of graduate students this exact material.
00:06:14.580So it's a lot of fun for me being able to do that because at one point I wanted to be
00:06:19.320a math professor, but instead I did a startup.
00:06:22.780So I got to kind of do a little bit of that. And God's brought me to a place where I could try all of these things that I thought I would never get to do.
00:06:32.500Right. That's awesome. Great. Okay. So just as nuts and bolts, as kind of as simple as possible, could you explain the concept of Bitcoin to someone like me who has no understanding of Bitcoin? What is Bitcoin?
00:06:48.600Yeah, what is Bitcoin? Great question. And it is something that a lot of people butcher. Usually they'll say something like it's a money for nerds, it's internet money, it's, you know, it's just this digital form of money or something like that. And the way I like to describe Bitcoin is this, decentralized, digital and scarce money. And all of those words mean something.
00:07:09.960So what is decentralized? Decentralized money is something like gold, something that you don't need any permission from anyone to go and try to get. So a lot of people are into gold mining, right? Or there are a lot of big gold mining companies anyway. They go and mine for gold. They dig for gold in various places. We usually call them gold mines.
00:07:31.020But they are in the business of mining gold out from the ground. That is decentralized because you don't need anyone's permission to do it. There's no central gold authority that gives you permission to go mine for gold or not.
00:07:44.880um there that's decentralized uh versus centralized something centralized is something
00:07:52.120like the u.s dollar or something like that which the fed prints and if you try to print your own
00:07:58.100money um they will arrest you right the secret service will come and arrest you because only
00:08:03.620the central uh central bank of the united states and the treasury are allowed to like print the
00:08:08.960bills or uh expand the money supply or whatever um but this is true of a lot of other things right
00:08:14.220uh like american airline miles if you have fake american airline miles that's fraud and you know
00:08:20.640it's only the american airlines corporation that can issue points for uh the miles for
00:08:25.700american airlines similar with uh you know world of warcraft or something like that
00:08:29.820they issue all of the gold in the world of warcraft game and if you uh you know somehow
00:08:35.420hack at it and uh come up with your own way to come uh create new uh world of warcraft gold in
00:08:42.300the game, they would like cut you off from the game and like not let you do it. There's a central
00:08:47.400producer, right? And that's the big difference between centralized and decentralized is that
00:08:51.740centralized, you have somebody in control that gets in the middle of all of these transactions.
00:08:58.160And that's essentially the dollar system today. Now, what does it mean?
00:09:01.920That's where a lot of room for corruption can sneak in. All of a sudden, you can start expanding
00:09:06.780currency when there's actually not any more resources. The nation could actually be an
00:09:11.620economic downturn turmoil and you start printing more money and it's this it's this fake illusion
00:09:18.660that that you're you know it's inflation and all those kinds of things so yeah i mean not only that
00:09:23.420i the the main thing that having some party in the middle that's always in the middle of the
00:09:28.280transaction does is it creates what we call a moral hazard right they they they can print for
00:09:34.800themselves or confiscate or do all sorts of nefarious things. And we'll definitely get to1.00
00:09:43.140it. But basically, it creates a whole set of really bad incentives. But digital is all about
00:09:51.140whether it's online or physical. And gold is obviously very physical. And this is one of the
00:09:57.160properties that make it kind of a weak currency. And this is what led to fiat money in the first
00:10:02.480place is that uh it's very inconvenient to transport or store or anything because it's
00:10:08.920physical you you it actually has a place and location and that means that if you don't secure
00:10:14.120it properly people will just come and take it and this is you know uh like the story in the bible of
00:10:19.380uh of the man who was uh the uh the samaritan that you know uh helped the guy out that was robbed
00:10:26.840why was he robbed in the first place it's because he had you know these bare instruments like gold
00:10:32.320or whatever. People don't do that for your checks from your checking account because they can't
00:10:37.860sign it and the bank will figure it out and that sort of thing. So the physical nature of gold is
00:10:44.160one thing, but the digital nature of the dollar is actually why the justification anyway for a lot
00:10:51.540of central banks to make them digital because it is enormously convenient, especially for
00:10:56.640trade over distance. So in the old days, they used to have like these wildcat banks in the
00:11:02.860West and so on. And they would have like bills of exchange or whatever. These could be redeemed
00:11:09.600for gold, but they carried those so that you didn't have to actually carry the gold with you.
00:11:15.080If you carried the gold with you, someone robs you, then you lose the gold. But if you carried
00:11:19.940the bill of exchange with you and somebody robs you, well, they take the bill of exchange, but
00:11:24.460then they they try to cash it with, you know, your signature, they can arrest them and so on.
00:11:29.840So it was a lot safer to to do that sort of thing. And, you know, that's sort of like a very
00:11:35.860rudimentary version of why, you know, sort of currencies became digital is that it ultimately
00:11:42.980it's because it became much more convenient. And, you know, these days, you know, almost all
00:11:48.520transactions are digital. If you're using your credit card, that's absolutely digital. If you're,
00:11:52.880you know, buying something online, that's obviously digital, almost like cash is actually
00:11:58.060kind of not frowned upon in a lot of places these days. We can talk about why that is. But Bitcoin
00:12:05.920is both decentralized and digital. And this is something that we never had before. Almost
00:12:10.320everything digital, that was something like money or had money like properties. We talked about
00:12:15.600American Airlines miles, World of Warcraft gold, even the US dollar, they're all centralized.
00:12:21.420The thing about Bitcoin that's unique is that it's decentralized and digital. And in addition to that, it's also perfectly scarce. There will never, ever be more than 21 million Bitcoin.
00:12:32.600So to answer your question, what is Bitcoin? It is decentralized, digital and scarce money. And all of those things are there for a particular reason, which is to make it the best form of money that we've ever had, in a sense.
00:12:50.900Explain. That's a great explanation. Real quick, explain. You said there will never be any more than 21 million Bitcoin. What does that mean?
00:13:00.760That means that currently there's about 18 and a half million Bitcoin. So part of the design of Bitcoin was, OK, you need some way to get Bitcoin into the hands of people.
00:13:14.100And this is sort of like the bootstrapping problem for any sort of currency. If it's something centralized like the US dollar or something like that, or, you know, this happens in Latin American countries all the time, they revalue the currency and say, okay, you know what, throw out your old notes, you can convert them to these new notes.
00:13:34.140they have to get out the new currency, right?
00:13:37.120They'll usually name it something different.
00:13:39.120It goes from, you know, the peso to like a real or something like that.
00:13:59.120and it was designed by an anonymous programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto.
00:14:03.320We have no idea who this person is. And it's sort of like the deep throat of our time. And a lot of people sort of investigate this. I get calls from reporters still about, hey, do you think this person is Satoshi or whatever? But anyway, the whole idea is that you have this currency and you need to put it into existence.
00:14:23.580So the way it works is that you can mine for Bitcoin, right? And I told you before that it is decentralized. It's decentralized in the same way that gold mining is decentralized. Like anyone can go, I can go into my backyard and try to dig for gold. I'm probably not going to be successful because I don't happen to be very good at it, but it's decentralized in the same way.
00:14:46.720Anyone with a computer or a smartphone or anything can try to mine for gold, but you're
00:14:51.260probably not going to be successful because your computer or your phone is not very good
00:15:38.980So let's go finish the 21 million first.
00:15:42.920So the design of the protocol was that, you know, at the very beginning, you get there was 50 Bitcoin that would be mined every 10 minutes.
00:15:52.900OK, so 50 every 10 minutes. So for the first two hundred thousand blocks and that that number is chosen because two hundred ten thousand times 10 minutes is two million, two point one million minutes and two point one million minutes is roughly four years.
00:16:09.140so every four years um for the first four years there were 50 mined every block um so 210 000
00:16:18.800times 50 is 10.5 million so there were 10.5 million bitcoins that were created in the first
00:16:26.320four years the next four years it's 25 so it goes from 50 to 25 so um every 10 minutes it's 25 bitcoin
00:16:35.600per 10 minutes. And it does that for 210,000 blocks. So 25 times 210,000 is 5.25 million.
00:16:43.740So 10 and a half million plus 5.25 million. Then the next four years was 12 and a half. So it
00:16:50.860halved again. So it went from 20, 50 to 25 to 12.5. And 12 and a half times 210,000 is 2.625
00:17:03.420million Bitcoin. So 10.5, 5.25, and so on. So currently, we're in the era where each block gets
00:17:14.9806.25 Bitcoin. And then, you know, this era will end in about three years. And then after that,
00:17:22.640it'll be 3.125, and then it'll halve again, and so on. So asymptotically, if you add all of those
00:17:30.120up um it's kind of like adding one plus uh one half plus one quarter plus one eighth or whatever
00:17:35.840and if you know any math that ends up that sum is two uh similarly this sum is 21 million and that's
00:17:42.720it gotcha that's all there is uh but notice that you can have fractions of bitcoin it goes all the
00:17:47.940way down to eight decimal places um and you know you uh so it's not uh the smallest unit of bitcoin
00:17:55.500is actually one satoshi and 100 million satoshi equals one bitcoin which is 100 million yeah 100
00:18:03.220million so so it divides way more than the u.s dollar so the u.s dollar divides down to the penny
00:18:09.860which is uh you know you know fairly small amount like it actually costs more than a penny to
00:18:15.620produce a penny i'm sure you've heard that um with bitcoin it goes all the way down to a satoshi
00:18:20.660which currently is worth about like one twentieth of a penny.
00:18:24.900So it's way less, way more divisibility than the penny.
00:18:32.100How much is one Bitcoin worth right now? Do you know?
00:18:39.980So, and it's been kind of going crazy over the past few months
00:18:44.360and it does have a lot of volatility, you know,
00:18:47.680But, you know, back when it started, it was worth absolutely nothing. And very few people were mining. Nobody really knew about it. The few people that did like thought it was kind of like a fun project for, you know, anarcho-capitalist cypherpunks or something like that.
00:19:03.340And then, you know, 2010 came around, it started gaining momentum. And the thing that put Bitcoin on the map was 2010 WikiLeaks lost its PayPal account. So PayPal, they used to have a donation, you know, PayPal account, so people can donate to WikiLeaks so they can, you know, expose more things from the government and so on.
00:19:25.940But PayPal got a tremendous amount of pressure from the Department of Justice. And they said, okay, we can't service this account anymore. And they just cut them off. And at the time, WikiLeaks was looking around for some way to still take donations.
00:19:42.540and then they found bitcoin and uh and essentially they started taking donations in bitcoin they
00:19:49.760they started in 2011 fun fact they're still running off the donations from 2011 because
00:19:56.880bitcoin's price has increased so much so uh you know you know obviously it was like way less than
00:20:03.100a dollar back then so and it's like 56 000 now so they've done really well as a result but it comes
00:20:09.500back to this sort of like financial censorship uh that's inherent in a lot of this stuff uh but
00:20:15.380uh and you know we can definitely talk about that as christians get more persecuted around the world
00:20:20.280uh and even in the united states right where we're being labeled like uh you know domestic
00:20:25.240terrorists or something like that there's a there's a very decent chance that our bank accounts
00:20:30.720might be taken away much in the same way that paypal uh sort of cut off uh wikileaks uh
00:20:35.880account against that so yeah so okay so decentralized yeah no that's very helpful
00:20:42.760so decentralized digital and scarce now help me theologically what is it about a currency being
00:20:51.900decentralized and digital and scarce that makes it more moral than our current form of currency
00:20:59.460today that makes it more righteous and in line with biblical principles why should christians
00:21:04.460care about Bitcoin? Yeah. And that's an excellent question. And we cover a lot of it, obviously,
00:21:10.700in this book. But the main thing is that when you put a third party or some centralized controller
00:21:17.620over a currency, it produces all sorts of moral hazards. So a moral hazard is the ability to
00:21:24.360benefit yourself at the expense of everybody else. And this is something that happens with
00:21:29.260the current fiat monetary system all the time um so uh just as as sort of like a thought experiment
00:21:36.300and something to sort of uh get get your juices flowing in your brain um think about the last
00:21:42.360you know say 50 years or so where are the best and the brightest people in the world going to
00:21:49.320right now like these are the people the the uh 21 year olds that just graduated from harvard or
00:21:54.920Stanford or MIT, where are they going? What industry have they been going for the last 50
00:21:59.440years? Well, a lot of them have been going into tech, but a lot of them have been going into
00:22:04.280investment banking, right? Investment banking is the place to be. Now, why are they going into
00:22:10.600there? Is it because they all have such a passion for investment banking that this is the thing
00:22:16.160that they've wanted to do all their lives? Not really. It's because that industry happens to be
00:22:22.280very near what we would call the money printer, the people that can produce more money. And all
00:22:28.380banks kind of have this ability to print more money. And it's not just the central bank,
00:22:33.680the Federal Reserve that gets to print money, it's everybody underneath them. In fact,
00:22:37.960every loan is really new money being printed. And the thing about printing money is that
00:22:44.400when you print some amount of money, you are diluting everyone else's savings.
00:22:50.300So in a way, every time you print money, you you are stealing from everybody else. You're stealing value from everyone else. And this is this is the sort of like the theology of it is that, you know, we're told not to steal. Right.
00:23:05.000God gives us property rights. This is a right that God gave to us and encoded in the Eighth Commandment, thou shalt not steal. It belongs to them or it is in their care that God gave them.
00:23:21.520And and this is the thing with with the current monetary system, vast majority of people like keep their wealth in some form of something liquid, right? Like something like money or stocks or whatever. The ability to dilute means that they can they can kind of the central money printer can kind of take that away.
00:23:43.640And this produces all sorts of really ill incentives, including sort of the federal government we have now. So since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created, you know, like deficits have exploded and everything else. I don't need to tell you about all of that.
00:23:59.780But a large reason for why all of that has happened is because when you have a central bank, and they're euphemistically called the lender of last resort, governments can spend however much money they want.
00:24:16.500So it used to be like sort of under hard money or whatever, you would have a budget of $3 trillion.
00:24:23.120Well, now you can spend $3 trillion, and that's it.
00:24:26.260if you wanted to spend any more, you would have to get into debt and you would have to find people
00:24:30.500that were willing to lend to you. And this was often very exorbitant because governments aren't
00:24:36.440very good at paying back debt. So, you know, they would charge like 8, 10, 12 percent and they'd be
00:24:41.740like, well, we can't afford that because the next year's tax revenue, we won't have a budget for
00:24:45.820that and so on. Instead, the system we have now is that if you if you have three trillion in tax
00:24:53.200revenue and you can spend $5 trillion or $6 trillion or whatever amount you want, the deficit
00:24:59.840or the amount that needs to be made up just gets sold as treasury bonds. Now, that's roughly the
00:25:07.200equivalent, but whatever the market doesn't buy, the Federal Reserve buys. They essentially print
00:25:13.700money into existence so that the government can spend however much they want. And in fact,
00:25:19.660we have like a 27 trillion dollar federal deficit the m2 money supply which is one measure of all
00:25:27.160of the dollars that exist is only like 19 and a half trillion so that tells you that a lot of that
00:25:34.220the the monetary expansion has been at the feet of government they that they've been expanding
00:25:39.420money continuously by always sort of like deficit spending and they need to do that because they
00:25:45.300don't get enough tax revenue, and they have all of these services that they need to continue to
00:25:49.820fund. So what does that do? Like from a moral perspective, it first of all, it makes politics,
00:25:55.700it makes absolutely everything political, because the government can and will do almost anything.
00:26:03.120It used to be that, you know, we'd have personal responsibility that you're responsible for
00:26:08.440yourself. And the government is really there to make sure that, you know, fairness is observed,
00:26:13.580that if somebody is committing fraud, that somebody can adjudicate, if there's external
00:26:18.500threats that we can defend against it and things like that. Instead, it's become this, you know,
00:26:24.740like responsible for everything, because in a sense, what everyone is asking is, well, if you,
00:26:30.160you know, they can print money whenever they want. So when people ask, well, then why aren't
00:26:35.640you taking care of me? Right? Why can't I get health care from you? Why can't I get, you know,
00:26:41.400housing from you? Why can't you do all of these things? Don't you have the moral imperative now
00:26:47.260to take care of me now that you can print whenever you want? If you're printing for the sake of doing
00:26:54.460X, Y, or Z, well, why aren't you doing that for me? So it puts this enormous burden on essentially
00:27:00.960the central authority. And it gives them enormous amounts of power because they have this power to
00:27:07.240print money and that means that they can fund any program they want uh you know like go uh start
00:27:13.020wars wherever they want uh you know create all sorts of uh boondoggle programs to employ whoever
00:27:20.700like they they can do basically anything and in a sense they feel morally obligated to because they
00:27:26.860they have the power of money printing and uh and and that whole the whole system becomes sort of
00:27:33.520very uh very political uh it's it's no longer about whether or not uh you know you should
00:27:39.900collect taxes and do do whatever it's it's all about i want you to do this versus i want you
00:27:45.800to do that right i want you to spend money on this war or i want you to spend money on my health care
00:27:52.540or i want you to spend like it it becomes like sort of like a tug of war for the resource which
00:27:58.680is the federal money printer. Before it used to not be like that. And governments used to be much,
00:28:04.500much smaller for a very good reason, because they couldn't be. Instead, it's completely bloated.
00:28:12.200And essentially, all of those people, all of the edifice of all of these social programs and
00:28:18.000pretty much all of the regulation and everything, they end up rent seeking. And this is something
00:28:24.120that uh i think you can look up in timothy i think the bible basically calls them busy bodies right
00:28:29.260people that are just sort of like looking like they're doing something when they're actually
00:28:33.240not providing value um and and the bible condemns them for a very good reason but we got an entire
00:28:39.360government in fact most companies have large portions of busy bodies or rent seekers all over
00:28:45.560the place because you have the money printer that is able to fund all of them and uh and that in
00:28:51.520turn causes an economy to be filled with a bunch of zombie companies right like uh companies that
00:28:56.980you're not sure what they actually do but they they're really good at getting federal subsidies
00:29:01.860so they they continue to exist despite not really providing that much value to society
00:29:07.840so um you you get all these weird incentives you get uh and you know you you even get like uh
00:29:15.540you know, changes to sort of like how people behave a lot. People instead, instead of like
00:29:22.240saving, they consume because that is like just so readily available to them. You know, how many
00:29:27.380people do you know that get into like insane amounts of credit card debt, because they can
00:29:31.920get things right now. And, and again, that's debt, right? That that that's created out of thin air,
00:29:37.180that's money printed on behalf of the people that are spending with the credit card. And of course,
00:29:42.140they have to sort of like be enslaved afterwards and that it causes all sorts of evil in in
00:29:49.240civilization and at at the root of it is the monetary system and it is a corrupt cesspool
00:29:55.740of theft that that has uh caused a lot of these ills that we see today that's yeah that makes a
00:30:05.140lot of sense let me um let me ask you this you've mentioned a couple times now and so i just want
00:30:10.040you to flesh it out a little bit more but you said when somebody offers a loan you know or you
00:30:14.580mentioned just briefly the credit cards scenario that you know that somebody can have that instant
00:30:18.820gratification right and i remember me and you were talking about this when we had lunch together
00:30:22.440you know in olden days you you know if you wanted something you would have to take maybe it takes
00:30:26.600seven years like jacob worked for rachel you know seven years and he got leah and he worked seven
00:30:31.640more years got rachel but but the work was up front the reward was after the work was done
00:30:36.820right and and it's hard even teaching that principle to our children these days let's let's
00:30:41.060do the work first and then we reap you know i mean that that's that is biblical there's sowing
00:30:45.340and reaping right there's planting and harvest that's just the way god's when we think of god
00:30:50.920as the creator it's his world that's the way he set it up he set things in motion to where you
00:30:55.620don't you don't get to eat something um and then and then pay for it afterwards and so anyway so
00:31:09.820So I always think that when somebody gives a loan, right, if I loaned money to a friend
00:31:14.560or something like that, I would actually be giving someone something that I actually have.
00:31:18.980But it seems like you're implying that we have credit card companies or we have the
00:31:22.860federal government, you know, or even in the housing market, banks that are actually essentially
00:31:28.800printing. They're not actually loaning a resource to someone else that they actually have. They're
00:31:34.800printing that's fake. Could you explain that? Am I right? Is that what you're saying?
00:31:38.920Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that is something that a lot of people don't understand.
00:31:42.780So say you're getting a mortgage, right? A lot of people, that's their biggest purchase of their
00:31:47.240lives. Say the house is like $500,000 or something, and you get a loan for $400,000.
00:31:54.240Where does that $400,000 come from? Usually, currently, like a 30 year mortgage, you know, is at around 3%. So is there somebody on the other end, right? If it was like you said, is there somebody on the other end that's like, okay, you know what, I will lend this money for 30 years and get a 3% annual return. And I'm fine with that for and has $400,000.
00:32:20.480See, I always thought the bank had $300,000, like legitimate resources, was giving it to me, if that's the loan that I'm taking, and was content because I thought, you know, they had a lot of money, but real money that they actually possessed, and they were content to get slow returns.
00:32:41.040But it sounds like what you're about to say is, no, the bank writes on a napkin or something like that.
00:32:45.740You know, we're giving you three, but they never had it in the first place.
00:32:48.440No, they don't. That's right. Because there's no investor that would take a 3% return over 30 years. That takes way too long. The term of the loan is too long. And they wouldn't do it. There are lots of investments that get way more than 3%. So for them, it doesn't make any sense.
00:33:08.900So what is going on? How are they getting this money? Well, they print it into existence. They create the loan on your behalf in the same way that they create loans for businesses, in the same way that the central bank creates money for the benefit of the federal government.
00:33:27.420Every loan in this economy, in the central bank backed fiat economy, almost every loan is basically off of, you know, created into existence. And this is the privilege that banks have. And not a lot of people understand this, but this is what's called fractional reserve banking.
00:33:47.240They might have $10 in deposits, but they loan out $100.
00:33:52.040And the way they do that is they just put $100 in their account, and here it is, right?
00:33:59.140And in fact, that 10% reserve requirement has been completely eliminated.
00:34:03.680So basically, every bank can print as much as they want.
00:34:08.060So it used to be in the past that if you had like $300,000 in the vault or something like that,
00:34:16.340And there were five different homeowners that wanted a loan. Well, you would have to sort of negotiate with them because you only had that one, you know, they all want $300,000. You could only lend to one of them. This is called opportunity cost, right? You have to evaluate which one is best because if you lend to the wrong one, then you might not make as much money as you might or even get back your money.
00:34:43.520but instead what a bank does is if you meet a certain standard then you lend to all of them
00:34:48.420and they can because this is sort of federally regulated and in fact the mortgage itself is
00:34:54.620insured by somebody called fanny and freddy so all all of that is there there's no risk to the
00:35:00.340bank at all right and they they get to collect interest on it on money that they created out
00:35:06.240of thin air and and that's money that they didn't even work to whereas you and me we would have to
00:35:11.100work really really really hard to store up that money and then lend it out which means that we
00:35:16.160don't we can't do certain things because we're putting that money on pause real money and we'd
00:35:20.520have to wait 30 years and for us to get rich that way we'd have to be like vampires with like a
00:35:25.580thousand year long lifespans and stuff like yeah so it's exactly exactly yeah oh it's completely
00:35:31.700not fair and and and the thing is like they the the bank benefits and you uh the the loan loaner
00:35:38.260benefits right because obviously they're getting this loan the bank obviously benefits because
00:35:42.740they're getting to collect interest and uh and you know they've created this money into existence
00:35:48.320and this is and it costs yeah this is the key to economics who those two benefit but what just
00:35:55.360happened who's the actual one hurting what are the unseen effects well the unseen effect is that
00:36:00.520everybody's dollar is diluted just a little bit by the amount that it was expanded and this is
00:36:06.520something that a lot of a lot of people sort of overlook it's like well i got a loan i'm fine
00:36:10.960right like that you know it helped me or it helped my neighbor like what's what's the big deal right
00:36:15.820like uh how how can you condemn that well you have to recognize that the u.s dollar everyone that has
00:36:21.800the u.s dollar is now diluted by that much um and it's not and it's not just people in the united
00:36:27.720states the biggest holders of u.s dollars are actually abroad it's people in third world
00:36:33.180countries right that where their own currency is so bad that they use dollars uh to transact in a
00:36:39.140lot of stuff right i i have a friend from nigeria timmy who wrote the book uh wrote my second book
00:36:44.100with me and we were talking about the dollar and you know someone was saying you know oh they
00:36:48.400the nigerians they use the naira you know they don't care about the dollar he's like are you
00:36:52.320kidding me the dollar was the most important currency in my entire life i i couldn't care0.66
00:36:57.460less about the naira if i had the dollar because that was the staple currency for me right uh and
00:37:03.240and you're you're you're really diluting their savings wow you're and that that's the thing that
00:37:10.360a lot of people don't get and so every loan um that that comes into existence and this is at
00:37:16.400every level this is for companies right like they they issue corporate bonds or whatever
00:37:20.700and uh you know a lot of banks and uh commercial banks and stuff buy them up uh out of using money
00:37:27.080created in the same way if it if it meets like a certain bond grade or whatever you know they'll
00:37:32.860just buy it right like this this is how the whole system works um the entire system is based on
00:37:39.160debt that comes from nothing uh and it dilutes everybody else every time so what happened
00:37:45.040the incentives in the system then are everybody is up to their eyeballs in debt and this is true
00:37:51.820at the consumer level at the company level at the government level and this is very obvious
00:37:56.840Because if you're keeping it in cash, well, you're constantly getting diluted.
00:38:02.020But if you're in debt, then you're okay.
00:38:04.340Because in a sense, as it expands, it'll get cheaper to pay off.
00:38:14.220Because, I mean, the Proverbs all throughout the scripture, especially the Proverbs, talk about the wisdom and the diligence and just the ethics of working hard and preparing and storing up.
00:38:25.680But what you're saying is that with our current system of economics and the way that we do things in our current form of currency, it actually pays to – instead of to store up, the person who stores up, it's actually like moth and rust are in real time on a daily basis eating up part of his storehouse.
00:38:44.540But the person who has debt, there's like this anti-moth and rust that's actually chipping away at his debt, making his debt smaller.
00:38:52.480So he's actually, so the guy in debt is actually, so, so the word of God tells us not to be in debt because, because it doesn't benefit you. The person who is in debt is a slave to the lender. But you're saying that because our system has become so corrupt in some ways, yes, the person in debt is still a slave, but they actually should be more of a slave.
00:39:15.000And if they actually were more of a slave, if it actually was more of slavery, like the Bible says, to be in debt, we probably would have less people so haphazardly willing to put themselves into debt.
00:39:26.840That's probably why we have so many debtors, because debt often doesn't feel real.
00:39:32.300It doesn't actually feel the way that biblically it should.
00:39:37.760And a lot of people are in debt and in slavery and don't even know that they're in slavery, right?
00:39:42.860Right. How many people do you know that still have like student loans that they're paying off?
00:39:46.900Right. And why would you at this point, if I had student loans, like my wife and I, we worked really, really hard to pay off student loans in the first couple of years of our marriage.
00:39:55.760And at this point, it's like if I had student loans, I wouldn't be trying to pay it off with with with the the threat, you know, because that's what it actually is.
00:40:03.940But, you know, the promise of of Biden, you know, and and hey, we'll just we'll do fifty thousand dollars and not just ten thousand, but fifty thousand dollars.
00:40:12.700And when you think who has $50,000 worth of school loan debt, it's not really those people who are impoverished.
00:40:19.000It's not really the poorest of the poor.
00:40:20.460The people with $50,000 in school loans are typically people who are bigger earners, people with better careers, the people who don't need their debt paid off.
00:40:30.040And if that happens, because I think sometimes people who don't actually have an understanding of economics, I don't have much of an understanding about Bitcoin, but I know a little bit about economics.
00:40:41.280I appreciate Thomas Sowell. I just finished reading his basic economics. And I certainly understand, by God's grace, his word and theology and that theology should be applied to all of life. That's what we want to do on this podcast is let's apply theology to money. Let's apply it to Bitcoin, all these things.
00:40:58.180And so if you understand economics and you understand theology, then one of the things that you should be able to understand is like, because what you're talking about is a civil theft.
00:41:08.860It's, you know, and it's like we know that it's wrong to steal from our neighbor as citizens, but then somehow we think that when governments do it, that it's all of a sudden it's not immoral.
00:41:19.920And so all that being said, my point is just to say that if school loans get paid off, then all of a sudden what you're doing is you're incentivizing people to get into debt.
00:41:31.060And those who worked really, really hard to pay off their debt, you're actually stealing from them.
00:41:35.900It is stealing because all the money that my wife and I worked to pay off, if school loans are just going to get paid off by someone else, then it's like we were robbed $30,000.
00:41:47.360savings is being diluted by the we should have kept that money and i could have invested that
00:41:52.300into a house that's appreciating in value and you know and but but we were taught dave ramsey i think
00:41:59.040of it like pay off your debt first pay off your debt first and uh but it doesn't actually sound
00:42:04.800like it's working it works in god's world and and this is god's world but i think it's so it's so
00:42:11.460corrupt right now it's been twisted right the fiat world has uh has all of the wrong incentives
00:42:17.260and you do get into debt and you do get into slavery but a lot of people don't even recognize
00:42:22.020that they're in slavery that they're uh you know like slaves to their appetites for example i mean
00:42:27.400how many people are overweight right now um you know the this whole system is like encourages
00:42:34.580consumption because yeah you can you can have anything you want right now because we will print
00:42:39.900money for you so you can have it right now only thing is uh you're going to be you know in debt
00:42:44.860for and enslaved to us for like the next 20 years how many people do you know like work jobs that
00:42:50.740they hate right because it pays a lot of money and why do they need that money because usually
00:42:57.300it's some sort of lifestyle but usually it's some form of debt uh of some kind that they already
00:43:02.620consumed and this is the thing if you if you keep getting into this mentality of consume now pay it
00:43:08.980off later it has an effect on your soul and it it changes the way you think about things and uh
00:43:15.480and unfortunately this has also come into the church many of whom buy like these giant beautiful
00:43:21.900buildings that right they can't possibly afford but they're quote-unquote doing it in faith
00:43:27.600when in reality they're just getting into getting into slavery to the bank and ultimately what that
00:43:35.220usually ends up in is uh you know even if they're some somewhat successful they end up
00:43:40.300finding alternative means of revenue including like renting out their church for preschools
00:43:45.180during the week or you know like uh having lots of weddings there so they can pay off their mortgage
00:43:50.420uh you know like uh you know having all sorts of those right and those things wouldn't necessarily
00:43:56.540be inherently wrong but but ultimately the big idea that what i think what you're getting at is
00:44:01.220what it ultimately leads to is compromise and in the sense that like all right like well we
00:44:06.400you know it's not just the pastor's salary but but we have this massive you know loan that we
00:44:11.840have to pay this massive mortgage and and then all of a sudden you know maybe attendance starts
00:44:17.000to dwindle or people don't like that the pastor's preaching faithfully and he's preaching with
00:44:20.720courage and he's attacking things you know in in the cultural sphere that aren't in line and in
00:44:26.760submission to the will of christ and people are leaving and and it's just this constant temptation
00:44:32.060to for for the the ministry the theology the preaching um to compromise to compromise to
00:44:38.520compromise yeah i i think we talked about this before and i i really like the way you put it
00:44:43.720um you know you can either uh you know a lot of nice christians have a hard time with the truth
00:44:49.440and uh and this is because you know when you're nice you you don't want to like contradict people
00:44:54.740or whatever. I think the actual real way we're supposed to be is not be so nice. But if you're
00:45:01.220a church and you're super nice, you get a lot of congregants. And this is just the fact you get
00:45:06.260more, more people that are tithing and so on. So like the truth gets compromised. And in a sense,
00:45:12.480you are a slave to the bank, because, right, you know, the money that you have to pay off is
00:45:17.500ultimately at the root of all of these decisions that slowly eroded, you know, the doctrine of
00:45:23.940of what's supposed to be. This is a sad reality of a lot of churches today. And, and I've seen
00:45:30.560a lot of them like way too much that and like just compromise in ways. I mean, like, even just
00:45:36.740like thinking about what what happened with Ravi Zacharias, and how he was like, leading this whole
00:45:40.920like double life and everything. I mean, the reason why he was he was like invited to everything
00:45:47.100and like, what was because he was just so nice, right? But why did he want to expand that ministry
00:45:53.040so big i there there's parts of parts of uh you know uh parts of parts of uh wanting to be famous
00:46:00.640or whatever but there was always this like sort of availability of dead and and things like that
00:46:06.060to expand the ministry a little more and it's like okay the size of the ministry look at look
00:46:10.900at how many people i'm reaching becomes more important than being faithful to god's work
00:46:15.880right like he was like invited to a mormon church didn't say anything about how they were wrong or
00:46:20.680anything and you know like right yeah there's so many ways in which you end up compromising
00:46:25.860for for the money yeah it's just slavery so you can be you can be a slave to the fear of man
00:46:32.440right so you want people's approval you want fame you want glory but you absolutely that you know
00:46:37.200can be a slave monetarily that you know the the debtor is slave to the lender and all these things
00:46:44.080are going to have an effect and this is why all christians but especially ministers of the gospel
00:46:49.400should keep themselves pure from worldliness, that they shouldn't be enslaved to the lust of
00:46:55.000the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. And so by God's grace, when I was
00:47:00.200pastoring in San Diego, I've recently now moved to Texas, as you know, and planting a new church,
00:47:05.180Covenant Bible Church, the north side of Austin. But when I was in San Diego, and I learned how to
00:47:10.280grow a church, and I also have some really great experience in how to shrink a church, you know,
00:47:15.040And, but, but during my last couple of years of, of my church shrinking strategies, you know, as I was, you know, we preached first Timothy and I, you know, I, I would, we'd get to hard text and instead of breezing over it, I'd slow down.1.00
00:47:28.700We did first Timothy chapter two, verse nine through 15, where it talks about how women will be saved through childbearing and how a woman should learn, you know, she should be submissive and she should be quiet.0.91
00:47:40.780And these kinds of things that do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.0.85
00:47:44.960So I slowed down, did four weeks on that.0.99
00:47:46.960And I was just telling our guest on another episode of Theology Applied that each of those four weeks, the church lost 10 people a week.
00:47:57.160Within one month, we lost close to 40 people.
00:48:00.780But my whole point is to say, part of the reason why I could afford to do that was because I had a modest salary with the church.
00:48:09.940I had already learned how to live on little, my wife and I were free from debt. And the church
00:48:15.400didn't own any property, although we wanted to, we certainly I wanted the church to get to get
00:48:20.180a building, I wasn't thinking really about I mean, the things you're saying are really,
00:48:23.760really interesting. And it's convicting. And I've got a lot, you're leaving me with a lot to think
00:48:27.340about. But you know, we were renting a school, we didn't have a mortgage with the church, we had a
00:48:31.840very low overhead with the church, we were saving every single month, because partly because my
00:48:36.920salary was probably too low but we were we were saving you know easily 10 grand a month with the
00:48:42.860church and so every time i saw people leave and i know this sounds vain some of our listeners will
00:48:48.220be like what i can't believe you think like that i'm telling you your pastor thinks like this
00:48:51.880i'm not saying it's it's the the predominant thought in his mind but every time we saw people
00:48:56.100leave i thought we can afford it now i didn't want them to leave as a pastor as a shepherd
00:49:01.400i wanted to leave the 99 go for the one and i often did i'd have conversations with them i mean
00:49:06.120Now, I made it hard for people to leave, sometimes too hard.
00:49:08.780There were some people I probably just should have let go.
00:49:10.720But, you know, as a shepherd, I wanted to bring them back.
00:49:13.680I was like, I know you're offended, but I really don't think you should be.
00:51:01.160And you can say, well, maybe the real solution is for pastors just to be bivocational.0.95
00:51:04.560Well, that opens up a whole other can of worms in terms of like there's a reason why the Bible talks about the worker deserving the wages.
00:51:10.920Don't muzzle the ox while he treads the grain.
00:51:13.120And the Bible relates that to the pastor.
00:51:15.640A lot of pastors, there's nothing wrong with being bivocational.
00:51:17.960And that does give you a certain financial freedom to be courageous and bold and not give in to the fear of man and what your parishioners might think.
00:51:26.760But at the same time, the bivocational guy, he doesn't have 40 hours a week to be reading the commentaries, to be diving as deep into the scripture.
00:51:35.500So I know bivocational pastors, and they just simply cannot, there's just not enough time in the week for them to devote as much time pastoring and shepherding the flock and studying the word of God to publicly preach.
00:51:46.660But then I know guys who are vocational pastors, and they've got, you know, a better shot at being well learned and well versed in the scripture and spending time counseling their parishioners, but there's this leverage as far as they need that paycheck.
00:52:02.840And so it's just like, there's always at some angle, it's like, it's easy to be owned, but it, you know, and to be a slave to either the fear of man or to be a slave to mammon to money.
00:52:16.100But it sounds like one, at least practical strategy that you're kind of recommending to get out from some of that slavery is for individuals not to be in debt and also for churches not to be in debt.
00:52:30.220And and you're kind of saying that maybe that even affects whether or not a church should should have a building.
00:52:36.800It's one thing to own it outright to actually save up, you know, four million dollars or whatever it costs.
00:52:42.200But to have that mortgage, it sounds like you're saying that's maybe not the best thing to do.
00:52:47.700No, I think it's unbiblical. I think it ultimately ends up corrupting the church.
00:52:54.540And the thing is, like all of these things work together. Right.
00:52:57.020those people that left your church well they went to the church next door that's like super nice and
00:53:03.140has a beautiful building and has a mortgage the thing is like there there's temptations for uh
00:53:08.520the congregants to go go somewhere where um you know they'll be more you know satisfied because
00:53:15.820you know they're not being condemned for uh you know sins uh that they're practicing in their
00:53:21.700life and and instead they'll go to the pastor that'll tell them what they want to hear i mean
00:53:26.380to me, that's what prosperity preaching is all about, right? It's, it's worshiping, you know,
00:53:32.060I'm worshiping money anyway. So can you tell me, give me a justification for why God says that's
00:53:37.940okay? You know, that, that to me is what that is. And, and, you know, all of these things work
00:53:43.800together. And it is very, very difficult to find churches that are courageous. And we just saw this
00:53:52.660with with the entire coronavirus stuff right right you know they every single one of them
00:53:59.000seem to uh well not every single one there there's some notable exceptions and whatnot but
00:54:04.000they seem to just uh just comply with whatever government said they folded quickly yeah because
00:54:10.920in a sense they've built their identity on this niceness uh to to to a degree and you know there
00:54:17.660they also might be taking ppp loans or you know right i was going to ask you so what do you think
00:54:23.060because i know a lot of pastors and churches that took the the triple p loans arch so that's another
00:54:27.920thing like our church did you know not only did i leave the church with money in the bank but but
00:54:33.000also we we on principle didn't even apply uh for one of those loans because even though it's
00:54:38.900forgivable um i i'm still under the impression that if you take the king's coin you become the
00:54:44.200king's man and i don't want to be the only king whose man i want to be is king jesus um not not
00:54:50.560king trump or king biden so what did you think about churches taking the triple p loans what
00:54:55.260what do you think so let me let me let me talk about the businesses that took the triple p loans
00:54:59.580and how that completely affects the economy because uh because i i don't think this is very
00:55:05.120obvious to a lot of people yeah it helps a lot of those businesses stay alive fine that that much is
00:55:10.300true and to a large degree the government caused the crisis so they're uh they're they're helping
00:55:15.720them out and there there's some justice in that but think about think about what happens with
00:55:20.400these businesses who are they serving now it used to be that businesses served the customer right
00:55:25.820like the they they were trying to fulfill the needs of the customer in some way shape or form
00:55:31.280with their good or service and that that's what a business should be there it's to provide value
00:55:37.420to somebody else. To me, that's what it means to love your neighbor. It's to provide value to them
00:55:42.440in a fair exchange. And that's totally fine. But you take the PPP loan, what happens? Well,
00:55:48.260now you are much more concerned with fulfilling the terms of the PPP loan, especially if it can
00:55:52.760be forgiven. In which case, you don't care as much about your customers anymore. And in fact,
00:55:57.440I've experienced this, I tried to book an appointment with a service that I like. And
00:56:01.760they were like, you know what, we don't have enough workers, because we want to make sure
00:56:04.920that this PPP loan lasts a long time. So we're only hiring, like, we only have certain number
00:56:10.600of slots. And I'm like, this would never happen with a normal business, you wouldn't turn a
00:56:14.700customer away. Because, you know, you want to make sure that they're satisfied. Instead, they
00:56:20.340what they've done is they're stretching it out, we want to make sure we fulfill the everything to
00:56:25.680the letter. And that that's what they do. Now, thinking about it in a church context, that's
00:56:31.220what churches do too right like who are you serving right these businesses are serving the
00:56:36.400government uh whatever the terms of the ppp loan are instead of their customer for a church there's
00:56:42.760a there's a much bigger calling here who are you serving you should be serving god instead you are
00:56:48.260serving the terms of this loan and that that's that those are that's a big problem i mean you
00:56:54.080you can't serve both you really can't that's right somebody said that you can't serve two masters who
00:56:59.360was that i the whole time you're talking i kept thinking about joseph um i i just finished reading
00:57:06.240uh genesis you know and and uh and it's just interesting i kept thinking about you know when
00:57:11.460joseph became you know second in command you know only second to pharaoh himself and god elevated
00:57:16.840him and gave him favor and pharaoh had this dream that god you know enabled joseph to interpret
00:57:21.720the seven years of plenty and then seven years followed by seven years of famine um it's
00:57:27.700interesting because what happened is during the seven years of of plenty um they had a tax on all
00:57:33.880of egypt where they had to give the fifth to pharaoh 20 um and and you hear that and you're
00:57:40.020like 20 that's a lot and then i it's like oh wait i live in america i guess it's you know somewhat
00:57:45.400you know but uh it's funny i mean in in old testament books like with israel you know they
00:57:50.600used to say that you know uh if you have a king like for instance like samuel you know with the
00:57:55.000people we want a king we want a king and samuel he's dejected and and you know the lord says they
00:57:59.680have not rejected you as prophet but they've rejected me as god and uh but before you you
00:58:05.080know go and give them what they want they're asking be careful what you wish for the israel0.98
00:58:08.640is asking for something wicked but go ahead i'm going to give them what they want i'm going to0.77
00:58:12.540use you samuel to anoint a king um but before you do i want you to tell them what they're getting
00:58:18.380themselves into and and so then samuel gives them the warning of like if you have a king
00:58:22.880this is what it's going to look like that you know your sons are going to be you know drafted
00:58:28.020into his militia and your daughter is going to be using this way and you're going to have to pay
00:58:31.620taxes here and this and that and one of the things is that if you have a king he might be such a
00:58:36.560tyrant one day down the line that you might have to pay almost 10 percent in taxes that's what
00:58:42.060that's what the bible says a tenth a whole tenth of what you have and and you look at that and
00:58:47.520that's i mean this is literally the word of god saying to israel like if you get a king it might
00:58:51.520be so oppressive, so tyrannical, so horrible that you might have 10% in taxes. And then you think
00:58:58.140of where we're at as a nation. So my point is in the midst of Pharaoh knowing, because the God of
00:59:05.480heaven gave him a supernatural dream and empowered Joseph to interpret it, knowing that there would
00:59:09.880be seven years of basically no crops, no harvest, no resources, no food. And then seven years before
00:59:16.020that of plenty, under that dire of a situation, they only took 20%, right? So that's a very
00:59:23.280supernatural thing. But the whole point that I'm trying to make is this, seven years of taking a
00:59:27.400fifth from all the Egyptians to Pharaoh. And then it was after earning, right, creating, storing up,0.90
00:59:36.120they actually had the grain in silos. They actually had the resources. It wasn't just
00:59:41.460Pharaoh printing money. It was like, no, I actually have all this grain. And then what
00:59:45.480happened was when the seven years of famine hit, uh, each year the people would come to get
00:59:50.040allotments and they, and they had from giving their, their 20, you know, their 20% to Pharaoh
00:59:54.800from seven years of planning, they could give, you know, hand in these, I don't know what it was,
00:59:59.900if it was a printed receipt or whatever it was, but they could go and they could say, Hey, this
01:00:03.340is the taxes that I paid. And they would get a return and they'd get a return and they'd get a
01:00:06.740return. Now, uh, finally they ran out of that. They ran out of their money that they could buy
01:00:11.940grain with and so then they eventually had to sell uh the land and themselves so they sold the
01:00:17.880livestock first and then they eventually had to sell the land and so by the end of that that seven
01:00:23.040years of plenty and then the seven years of famine pharaoh owned everything he owned the land of
01:00:28.100everyone except for his priest because they had like an allotment from pharaoh but all the people
01:00:32.820of egypt they were they were a completely owned nation they were it's it's ironic but egypt and
01:00:39.600this is before egypt enslaved israel uh but egypt prior to being uh to to being captors
01:00:47.180enslaving israel they were enslaved themselves uh they had to sell not just not just use their
01:00:53.100money but eventually they had to sell themselves and their land they no longer had any property
01:00:58.400it all belonged to pharaoh in in some way some shape or form or another and and i feel like that's
01:01:05.140It sounds like from what you're saying that in many ways, that's kind of where we're at, except Pharaoh at least earned it in the sense that Pharaoh actually took a 20% tax from people, actually had the grain.
01:01:18.620And it sounds like we're in the process, maybe we're already there, but we're on our way to being owned by our government, by our civil magistrate, except they didn't even store things up in order.
01:01:32.160and then we bought it back from them to enslave ourselves they just had a magical machine and just
01:01:37.820printed grain or the illusion of grain and and started buying up all the people whether it be
01:01:43.840i i feel like there are people in the government who are probably just just in glee you know i mean
01:01:49.240just so happy with with covid because triple p loans and we own this business we own this church
01:01:57.300we own this we own that we like and but but it didn't cost them anything they didn't have to
01:02:03.180open a silo and let out real tangible grain they just came up with this ppp loan and and it's just
01:02:11.560i i'm just saying all that to say i mean that was a dire circumstance with joseph and it still
01:02:18.500sounds better than the situation we're in because at least it was the seven years of plenty first
01:02:22.840and there was actually grain stored up and there was actually you know it was real and uh and so
01:02:28.620it is scary to think like the things that you're saying to think like where we're headed and it
01:02:33.980sounds like you think that bitcoin may be the solution so i so what let me let me kind of wrap
01:02:40.120up the episode with this what can christians do then what should christians do to get out of
01:02:45.480slavery to get out of debt but but also knowing that we still live in in a nation that that's
01:02:52.260the way we do money in america isn't isn't really great so so how can christians get out of debt
01:02:58.580which is good and biblical right but then not be penalized by their savings constantly being
01:03:04.380depleted through inflation and what should how should christians what should christians do right
01:03:09.220now to build wealth and to be financially wise. Yeah. And this is the value proposition of Bitcoin
01:03:16.560is that it is essentially a savings technology. This is what money should be. It allows you to
01:03:21.760store value instead of having it sort of taken away from you by the central bank money printers.
01:03:28.160And you can opt out of the system by buying some Bitcoin. And if you use that as your savings,
01:03:33.320it will last because it is perfectly scarce. There's 21 million. So whatever portion you buy
01:03:39.300will still be the same portion. The denominator on the US dollar constantly changes. It grew like
01:03:46.16030% last year alone. So that tells you that your savings are being diluted if you keep it in
01:03:52.920dollars. This is why people put it in real estate or stock because it stores value better. But those
01:03:58.480those have been essentially hyperinflating over the last year because of all of the money printing
01:04:04.200that's going on instead you can opt out of the system and and go with bitcoin and this is what
01:04:09.800a lot of people are doing a lot of companies are doing it a lot of uh you know um insurance companies
01:04:15.680are doing it endowments are doing it they're um and and they're they're all doing it because they
01:04:20.000see the same thing that a lot of bitcoiners do uh and hopefully you do which is that the rest of the
01:04:25.240system is just printing money like crazy and as a result of that like everything uh there's no safe
01:04:32.680place to put money really um bitcoin is one of the few places where you know i mean admittedly
01:04:38.360it's fairly young but uh it's it's 12 years old but fiat money as it exists today only started
01:04:44.820in 1971 so it's only 50 years old and every uh the average lifespan of a fiat currency according
01:04:51.320to a study of like 800 different fiat currencies is 23 years. So in a sense, it's like it never
01:04:58.460really works out when you have somebody in the middle all the time. But with Bitcoin, this is
01:05:04.600hard money. This is perfectly scarce. And in a way, it gives us a way out of the current system.
01:05:10.740You can save in it and do something with it. And, you know, by God's grace, because of how it's
01:05:18.560appreciated, a lot of people have been able to pursue what God's calling is, uh, for them instead
01:05:25.040of, uh, you know, working a job that you don't like to pay off debts on that you spent on stuff
01:05:31.140that you didn't even really want. Right. Like that, that's the unfortunate situation. A lot
01:05:35.540of people find themselves in. Uh, so we, we see, uh, at least, uh, me and my coauthors that wrote
01:05:42.440the book we see this as the redemption of money it's it's something that brings us closer to that
01:05:48.760principle of sowing and reaping that you uh you laid out earlier you get to sow and reap instead
01:05:54.020of having it constantly eaten by uh moth and dust and whatever it's it's it's something that stores
01:06:01.140value and uh and you know that that that's closer to what god intended than the current monetary
01:06:08.400system, which is a cesspool of that. Yeah, I love it. And I, I think, you know, some of our listeners,
01:06:14.820I could just kind of hear in the back of my head, then playing the devil's advocate and maybe
01:06:18.140pushing back and saying, but Joel, doesn't Jesus say that, that, that the only place to store true
01:06:24.340riches that moth and rust never destroy, it just, it's not Bitcoin, it's not anything, it's not here
01:06:30.500on earth, it's in heaven. And I think, you know, if any listeners thinking that, I think what I
01:06:35.860would say, and I think what Jimmy would agree with is, absolutely, heaven is the only surefire
01:06:41.220place where you're not stolen from, and you're not robbed, and where your treasure endures
01:06:47.480forever and appreciates throughout eternity. And yet, part of what we want to do as image bearers
01:06:57.880of the living God, and part of what we want to do as Christians is not just merely fulfilling
01:07:02.820the Great Commission in terms of conversions and baptism and preaching the gospel and discipling,
01:07:08.680making disciples. But part of the Great Commission, we always forget this part, is that we teach
01:07:13.760people to obey all of Christ's commands. And part of what the gospel does is first and foremost,
01:07:18.660it saves sinners by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But part of what good gospel work also
01:07:24.580does in teaching those sinners now redeemed to obey all of Christ's commands is that the gospel
01:07:31.500in the kingdom of christ as it expands like a mustard seed it starts small but but it begins
01:07:37.040to grow like a little bit of yeast working its way through the whole batch of dough the kingdom of
01:07:42.280god this gospel advancement and teaching people discipling them and teaching them to obey all
01:07:47.120christ's commands it pushes back the curse that's that jesus it's not just that he's coming back
01:07:53.440one day to re jesus is redeeming the world now he is ruling and reigning currently seated at the
01:07:59.900right hand of his father, and one by one, his enemies are being made subject to him and being
01:08:05.080placed as a footstool underneath his feet. The world is getting better. Poverty is becoming
01:08:10.360more scarce, and wealth is something that is growing. And so part of our duty as Christians
01:08:17.320is first and foremost to preach the gospel, to make disciples, to see people saved by the grace
01:08:22.120of God, to baptize them into the name of the triune God. But in all of our life, in entertainment and
01:08:28.580in media and in vocation and work and medicine and in money, we want to work to apply biblical
01:08:35.580principles and push back the curse. And we know that the curse will never be completely pushed
01:08:40.980back until Christ returns. And in the new heavens and the new earth, that's the place where moth
01:08:47.080and rust will never destroy, even an ounce. But that doesn't mean that we can't improve things
01:08:51.780now. That doesn't mean that we can't build better barns now that are more protective and more wise
01:09:22.680It actually could be that they're actually
01:09:24.940doing something righteous right when the bible in the old testament talks about defending the
01:09:29.440defenseless right uh protecting the poor from being oppressed by rulers and by the rich and um so i
01:09:37.560don't i don't know everything that there is to know about bitcoin i feel like i learned a ton
01:09:41.340tonight i feel like our listeners learn a ton tonight but from what i can tell right now it
01:09:45.740It does sound like at least a possible strategy of God, by his grace, through not just people, but Christians like Jimmy, pushing back the curse and redeeming money.
01:10:00.200Jesus is redeeming not just people, but this world.0.60