The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Should Christians Consider Bitcoin？

00:00:00.580 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:00:10.400 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:13.580 This is another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:15.800 Today I am privileged to have as a guest a new friend of mine.

00:00:20.080 His name is Jimmy Song, and he's recently written a book.

00:00:23.440 I actually have it here, so I'll go ahead and hold it up.

00:00:26.080 But he's co-authored a book with a group of his contemporaries.

00:00:29.340 It's called Thank God for Bitcoin, the creation, corruption and redemption of money.

00:00:35.680 So tonight's episode is going to be interesting.

00:00:38.080 We're going to be talking about Bitcoin, something that I'll just go ahead and be honest up front.

00:00:42.920 I 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.

00:00:58.960 was just incredibly interesting. So I think tonight, you could maybe call the episode this,

00:01:04.800 A Theology of Bitcoin, and broader, probably, A Theology of Money. So without further ado,

00:01:11.420 our guest, Jimmy Song, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your YouTube channel,

00:01:16.080 podcast, or consulting, books that you've authored, all that kind of stuff?

00:01:20.600 Yeah, so I'm a programmer, and I've been one since I graduated college, which was

00:01:25.500 23 years ago. So I've been a programmer for most of my life, actually, I started when I was like

00:01:31.000 nine, like programming on little computers and stuff like that. But that's, that's been my

00:01:34.600 vocation for quite a while. I got into Bitcoin in 2011. And, and, you know, I've been working at

00:01:41.560 I had been working at a bunch of startups all along then. And 2013, I started contributing

00:01:48.760 to open source projects that are related to Bitcoin for your audience that doesn't know what

00:01:53.480 an open source project is. It's sort of like a lot of free software that exists. You know,

00:01:58.460 developers sort of contribute to those. Linux is a popular one. A lot of free tools out there

00:02:03.700 are open source. You know, Bitcoin is one of those open source projects. So I'm one of those

00:02:10.180 programmers that's in the open source community. I started getting into it. I worked for a bunch

00:02:16.220 of different Bitcoin companies. I went off on my own in 2017. I started a little seminar for

00:02:22.640 programmers to teach them the Bitcoin protocol and all of the programming things that are involved

00:02:27.980 in that. I started speaking at a lot of different Bitcoin conferences all over the world. I think

00:02:34.100 2018, I hit five of the seven continents. I missed Africa and Antarctica, like traveling and doing

00:02:42.500 that. I have a Twitter, Jimmy Song, that's got 200,000 followers. I have a YouTube channel,

00:02:51.400 off-chain with Jimmy Song. That's got 28,000 subscribers. I publish articles on Medium. I

00:03:00.100 publish a newsletter every week, jimmysong.substack.com. I have a podcast, Bitcoin Fixes

00:03:06.680 This, which comes out once a week, although I have like a special episode that I'm debuting

00:03:11.660 later tonight. So, you know, lots of different things and lots of different stuff. But yeah,

00:03:17.720 I'm a Christian. I have been for all my life.

00:03:21.840 Pretty 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.

00:03:32.020 Thank God for Bitcoin. And it really started kind of as a as like a Bible study slash book study.

00:03:38.540 And it evolved from there. I've written two other books, Programming Bitcoin by O'Reilly.

00:03:44.540 Uh, 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.

00:04:05.720 So 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.

00:04:19.040 And hopefully I can help your audience understand the theology of money and the theology of Bitcoin.

00:04:25.040 That's awesome. That's really cool. All right. Well, let's go ahead and just dive right in.

00:04:29.640 Real 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?

00:04:41.540 Well, 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.

00:04:57.520 That's essentially what a wallet is.

00:04:59.940 You need programmers to create that software that can keep your Bitcoin safe.

00:05:04.560 There's also the Bitcoin core software.

00:05:08.360 This is what you call a node on the Bitcoin network.

00:05:12.260 And this is what checks all of the Bitcoin transactions and the Bitcoin blockchain, if you've ever heard of that word out.

00:05:19.980 We'll get to it, I promise, exactly what that is, including Bitcoin mining and all that.

00:05:25.940 But I teach them all about the Bitcoin protocol and all of the elements that go into it, how it's designed.

00:05:31.860 And, you know, it requires actually quite a bit of math.

00:05:36.800 So, you know, there's something called public key cryptography.

00:05:39.700 That's a critical part of it.

00:05:41.500 So that's what I teach.

00:05:45.020 Yeah.

00:05:46.340 What was that word again?

00:05:48.180 Say it again.

00:05:49.400 Public key cryptography.

00:05:51.140 So it's a major way in which the entire Internet works, right?

00:05:55.100 Like you need something like that in order to make sure that things are secure.

00:06:00.440 And so, you know, I do teach a lot of that.

00:06:04.000 And there's, you know, I taught a class for a semester at the University of Texas, like

00:06:11.780 just teaching a bunch of graduate students this exact material.

00:06:14.580 So it's a lot of fun for me being able to do that because at one point I wanted to be

00:06:19.320 a math professor, but instead I did a startup.

00:06:22.780 So 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.

00:06:32.500 Right. 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?

00:06:48.600 Yeah, 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.

00:07:09.960 So 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.

00:07:31.020 But 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.

00:07:44.880 um there that's decentralized uh versus centralized something centralized is something

00:07:52.120 like the u.s dollar or something like that which the fed prints and if you try to print your own

00:07:58.100 money um they will arrest you right the secret service will come and arrest you because only

00:08:03.620 the central uh central bank of the united states and the treasury are allowed to like print the

00:08:08.960 bills or uh expand the money supply or whatever um but this is true of a lot of other things right

00:08:14.220 uh like american airline miles if you have fake american airline miles that's fraud and you know

00:08:20.640 it's only the american airlines corporation that can issue points for uh the miles for

00:08:25.700 american airlines similar with uh you know world of warcraft or something like that

00:08:29.820 they issue all of the gold in the world of warcraft game and if you uh you know somehow

00:08:35.420 hack at it and uh come up with your own way to come uh create new uh world of warcraft gold in

00:08:42.300 the game, they would like cut you off from the game and like not let you do it. There's a central

00:08:47.400 producer, right? And that's the big difference between centralized and decentralized is that

00:08:51.740 centralized, you have somebody in control that gets in the middle of all of these transactions.

00:08:58.160 And that's essentially the dollar system today. Now, what does it mean?

00:09:01.920 That's where a lot of room for corruption can sneak in. All of a sudden, you can start expanding

00:09:06.780 currency when there's actually not any more resources. The nation could actually be an

00:09:11.620 economic downturn turmoil and you start printing more money and it's this it's this fake illusion

00:09:18.660 that that you're you know it's inflation and all those kinds of things so yeah i mean not only that

00:09:23.420 i the the main thing that having some party in the middle that's always in the middle of the

00:09:28.280 transaction does is it creates what we call a moral hazard right they they they can print for

00:09:34.800 themselves or confiscate or do all sorts of nefarious things. And we'll definitely get to 1.00

00:09:43.140 it. But basically, it creates a whole set of really bad incentives. But digital is all about

00:09:51.140 whether it's online or physical. And gold is obviously very physical. And this is one of the

00:09:57.160 properties that make it kind of a weak currency. And this is what led to fiat money in the first

00:10:02.480 place is that uh it's very inconvenient to transport or store or anything because it's

00:10:08.920 physical you you it actually has a place and location and that means that if you don't secure

00:10:14.120 it properly people will just come and take it and this is you know uh like the story in the bible of

00:10:19.380 uh of the man who was uh the uh the samaritan that you know uh helped the guy out that was robbed

00:10:26.840 why was he robbed in the first place it's because he had you know these bare instruments like gold

00:10:32.320 or whatever. People don't do that for your checks from your checking account because they can't

00:10:37.860 sign it and the bank will figure it out and that sort of thing. So the physical nature of gold is

00:10:44.160 one thing, but the digital nature of the dollar is actually why the justification anyway for a lot

00:10:51.540 of central banks to make them digital because it is enormously convenient, especially for

00:10:56.640 trade over distance. So in the old days, they used to have like these wildcat banks in the

00:11:02.860 West and so on. And they would have like bills of exchange or whatever. These could be redeemed

00:11:09.600 for gold, but they carried those so that you didn't have to actually carry the gold with you.

00:11:15.080 If you carried the gold with you, someone robs you, then you lose the gold. But if you carried

00:11:19.940 the bill of exchange with you and somebody robs you, well, they take the bill of exchange, but

00:11:24.460 then they they try to cash it with, you know, your signature, they can arrest them and so on.

00:11:29.840 So it was a lot safer to to do that sort of thing. And, you know, that's sort of like a very

00:11:35.860 rudimentary version of why, you know, sort of currencies became digital is that it ultimately

00:11:42.980 it's because it became much more convenient. And, you know, these days, you know, almost all

00:11:48.520 transactions are digital. If you're using your credit card, that's absolutely digital. If you're,

00:11:52.880 you know, buying something online, that's obviously digital, almost like cash is actually

00:11:58.060 kind of not frowned upon in a lot of places these days. We can talk about why that is. But Bitcoin

00:12:05.920 is both decentralized and digital. And this is something that we never had before. Almost

00:12:10.320 everything digital, that was something like money or had money like properties. We talked about

00:12:15.600 American Airlines miles, World of Warcraft gold, even the US dollar, they're all centralized.

00:12:21.420 The 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.

00:12:32.600 So 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.

00:12:50.900 Explain. That's a great explanation. Real quick, explain. You said there will never be any more than 21 million Bitcoin. What does that mean?

00:13:00.760 That 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.

00:13:14.100 And 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.

00:13:34.140 they have to get out the new currency, right?

00:13:37.120 They'll usually name it something different.

00:13:39.120 It goes from, you know, the peso to like a real or something like that.

00:13:43.420 But that happens all the time.

00:13:45.400 And the way they do that is they convert the old currency to a new currency or something.

00:13:49.620 But when you're bootstrapping a brand new currency,

00:13:51.600 you have to have some way to make it possible for other people to get it.

00:13:56.820 So the way Bitcoin was designed,

00:13:59.120 and it was designed by an anonymous programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto.

00:14:03.320 We 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.

00:14:23.580 So 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.

00:14:46.720 Anyone with a computer or a smartphone or anything can try to mine for gold, but you're

00:14:51.260 probably not going to be successful because your computer or your phone is not very good

00:14:56.660 at it.

00:14:57.360 I mean, it's certainly better than doing it by hand.

00:15:00.040 You can literally try to mine by hand if you wanted to, but some guy tried it.

00:15:05.820 I think it took him like a day and a half to do one.

00:15:08.740 A modern mining machine does a trillion in about one second.

00:15:12.920 So that gives you an idea of like the order of magnitude.

00:15:17.720 A trillion what? Are you talking about gold or back to Bitcoin?

00:15:20.880 Back to Bitcoin. So instead of, all right, all right.

00:15:23.980 So let me describe binding real quick because that's essentially what we're talking about.

00:15:28.420 Because a second ago, you said there's only, there could only be 21 million.

00:15:32.160 And then you just said a trillion.

00:15:33.920 Oh, yeah, that's a trillion hashes per second.

00:15:37.520 So I'll describe what that is.

00:15:38.980 So let's go finish the 21 million first.

00:15:42.920 So 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.

00:15:52.900 OK, 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.

00:16:09.140 so every four years um for the first four years there were 50 mined every block um so 210 000

00:16:18.800 times 50 is 10.5 million so there were 10.5 million bitcoins that were created in the first

00:16:26.320 four years the next four years it's 25 so it goes from 50 to 25 so um every 10 minutes it's 25 bitcoin

00:16:35.600 per 10 minutes. And it does that for 210,000 blocks. So 25 times 210,000 is 5.25 million.

00:16:43.740 So 10 and a half million plus 5.25 million. Then the next four years was 12 and a half. So it

00:16:50.860 halved again. So it went from 20, 50 to 25 to 12.5. And 12 and a half times 210,000 is 2.625

00:17:03.420 million Bitcoin. So 10.5, 5.25, and so on. So currently, we're in the era where each block gets

00:17:14.980 6.25 Bitcoin. And then, you know, this era will end in about three years. And then after that,

00:17:22.640 it'll be 3.125, and then it'll halve again, and so on. So asymptotically, if you add all of those

00:17:30.120 up um it's kind of like adding one plus uh one half plus one quarter plus one eighth or whatever

00:17:35.840 and if you know any math that ends up that sum is two uh similarly this sum is 21 million and that's

00:17:42.720 it gotcha that's all there is uh but notice that you can have fractions of bitcoin it goes all the

00:17:47.940 way down to eight decimal places um and you know you uh so it's not uh the smallest unit of bitcoin

00:17:55.500 is actually one satoshi and 100 million satoshi equals one bitcoin which is 100 million yeah 100

00:18:03.220 million so so it divides way more than the u.s dollar so the u.s dollar divides down to the penny

00:18:09.860 which is uh you know you know fairly small amount like it actually costs more than a penny to

00:18:15.620 produce a penny i'm sure you've heard that um with bitcoin it goes all the way down to a satoshi

00:18:20.660 which currently is worth about like one twentieth of a penny.

00:18:24.900 So it's way less, way more divisibility than the penny.

00:18:32.100 How much is one Bitcoin worth right now? Do you know?

00:18:34.980 It is currently worth $56,000.

00:18:38.660 So, yeah.

00:18:39.980 So, and it's been kind of going crazy over the past few months

00:18:44.360 and it does have a lot of volatility, you know,

00:18:47.680 But, 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.

00:19:03.340 And 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.

00:19:25.940 But 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.

00:19:42.540 and then they found bitcoin and uh and essentially they started taking donations in bitcoin they

00:19:49.760 they started in 2011 fun fact they're still running off the donations from 2011 because

00:19:56.880 bitcoin's price has increased so much so uh you know you know obviously it was like way less than

00:20:03.100 a dollar back then so and it's like 56 000 now so they've done really well as a result but it comes

00:20:09.500 back to this sort of like financial censorship uh that's inherent in a lot of this stuff uh but

00:20:15.380 uh and you know we can definitely talk about that as christians get more persecuted around the world

00:20:20.280 uh and even in the united states right where we're being labeled like uh you know domestic

00:20:25.240 terrorists or something like that there's a there's a very decent chance that our bank accounts

00:20:30.720 might be taken away much in the same way that paypal uh sort of cut off uh wikileaks uh

00:20:35.880 account against that so yeah so okay so decentralized yeah no that's very helpful

00:20:42.760 so decentralized digital and scarce now help me theologically what is it about a currency being

00:20:51.900 decentralized and digital and scarce that makes it more moral than our current form of currency

00:20:59.460 today that makes it more righteous and in line with biblical principles why should christians

00:21:04.460 care about Bitcoin? Yeah. And that's an excellent question. And we cover a lot of it, obviously,

00:21:10.700 in this book. But the main thing is that when you put a third party or some centralized controller

00:21:17.620 over a currency, it produces all sorts of moral hazards. So a moral hazard is the ability to

00:21:24.360 benefit yourself at the expense of everybody else. And this is something that happens with

00:21:29.260 the current fiat monetary system all the time um so uh just as as sort of like a thought experiment

00:21:36.300 and something to sort of uh get get your juices flowing in your brain um think about the last

00:21:42.360 you know say 50 years or so where are the best and the brightest people in the world going to

00:21:49.320 right now like these are the people the the uh 21 year olds that just graduated from harvard or

00:21:54.920 Stanford or MIT, where are they going? What industry have they been going for the last 50

00:21:59.440 years? Well, a lot of them have been going into tech, but a lot of them have been going into

00:22:04.280 investment banking, right? Investment banking is the place to be. Now, why are they going into

00:22:10.600 there? Is it because they all have such a passion for investment banking that this is the thing

00:22:16.160 that they've wanted to do all their lives? Not really. It's because that industry happens to be

00:22:22.280 very near what we would call the money printer, the people that can produce more money. And all

00:22:28.380 banks kind of have this ability to print more money. And it's not just the central bank,

00:22:33.680 the Federal Reserve that gets to print money, it's everybody underneath them. In fact,

00:22:37.960 every loan is really new money being printed. And the thing about printing money is that

00:22:44.400 when you print some amount of money, you are diluting everyone else's savings.

00:22:50.300 So 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.

00:23:05.000 God 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.

00:23:21.520 And 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.

00:23:43.640 And 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.

00:23:59.780 But 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.

00:24:16.500 So it used to be like sort of under hard money or whatever, you would have a budget of $3 trillion.

00:24:23.120 Well, now you can spend $3 trillion, and that's it.

00:24:26.260 if you wanted to spend any more, you would have to get into debt and you would have to find people

00:24:30.500 that were willing to lend to you. And this was often very exorbitant because governments aren't

00:24:36.440 very good at paying back debt. So, you know, they would charge like 8, 10, 12 percent and they'd be

00:24:41.740 like, well, we can't afford that because the next year's tax revenue, we won't have a budget for

00:24:45.820 that and so on. Instead, the system we have now is that if you if you have three trillion in tax

00:24:53.200 revenue and you can spend $5 trillion or $6 trillion or whatever amount you want, the deficit

00:24:59.840 or the amount that needs to be made up just gets sold as treasury bonds. Now, that's roughly the

00:25:07.200 equivalent, but whatever the market doesn't buy, the Federal Reserve buys. They essentially print

00:25:13.700 money into existence so that the government can spend however much they want. And in fact,

00:25:19.660 we have like a 27 trillion dollar federal deficit the m2 money supply which is one measure of all

00:25:27.160 of the dollars that exist is only like 19 and a half trillion so that tells you that a lot of that

00:25:34.220 the the monetary expansion has been at the feet of government they that they've been expanding

00:25:39.420 money continuously by always sort of like deficit spending and they need to do that because they

00:25:45.300 don't get enough tax revenue, and they have all of these services that they need to continue to

00:25:49.820 fund. So what does that do? Like from a moral perspective, it first of all, it makes politics,

00:25:55.700 it makes absolutely everything political, because the government can and will do almost anything.

00:26:03.120 It used to be that, you know, we'd have personal responsibility that you're responsible for

00:26:08.440 yourself. And the government is really there to make sure that, you know, fairness is observed,

00:26:13.580 that if somebody is committing fraud, that somebody can adjudicate, if there's external

00:26:18.500 threats that we can defend against it and things like that. Instead, it's become this, you know,

00:26:24.740 like responsible for everything, because in a sense, what everyone is asking is, well, if you,

00:26:30.160 you know, they can print money whenever they want. So when people ask, well, then why aren't

00:26:35.640 you taking care of me? Right? Why can't I get health care from you? Why can't I get, you know,

00:26:41.400 housing from you? Why can't you do all of these things? Don't you have the moral imperative now

00:26:47.260 to take care of me now that you can print whenever you want? If you're printing for the sake of doing

00:26:54.460 X, Y, or Z, well, why aren't you doing that for me? So it puts this enormous burden on essentially

00:27:00.960 the central authority. And it gives them enormous amounts of power because they have this power to

00:27:07.240 print money and that means that they can fund any program they want uh you know like go uh start

00:27:13.020 wars wherever they want uh you know create all sorts of uh boondoggle programs to employ whoever

00:27:20.700 like they they can do basically anything and in a sense they feel morally obligated to because they

00:27:26.860 they have the power of money printing and uh and and that whole the whole system becomes sort of

00:27:33.520 very uh very political uh it's it's no longer about whether or not uh you know you should

00:27:39.900 collect taxes and do do whatever it's it's all about i want you to do this versus i want you

00:27:45.800 to do that right i want you to spend money on this war or i want you to spend money on my health care

00:27:52.540 or i want you to spend like it it becomes like sort of like a tug of war for the resource which

00:27:58.680 is the federal money printer. Before it used to not be like that. And governments used to be much,

00:28:04.500 much smaller for a very good reason, because they couldn't be. Instead, it's completely bloated.

00:28:12.200 And essentially, all of those people, all of the edifice of all of these social programs and

00:28:18.000 pretty much all of the regulation and everything, they end up rent seeking. And this is something

00:28:24.120 that uh i think you can look up in timothy i think the bible basically calls them busy bodies right

00:28:29.260 people that are just sort of like looking like they're doing something when they're actually

00:28:33.240 not providing value um and and the bible condemns them for a very good reason but we got an entire

00:28:39.360 government in fact most companies have large portions of busy bodies or rent seekers all over

00:28:45.560 the place because you have the money printer that is able to fund all of them and uh and that in

00:28:51.520 turn causes an economy to be filled with a bunch of zombie companies right like uh companies that

00:28:56.980 you're not sure what they actually do but they they're really good at getting federal subsidies

00:29:01.860 so they they continue to exist despite not really providing that much value to society

00:29:07.840 so um you you get all these weird incentives you get uh and you know you you even get like uh

00:29:15.540 you know, changes to sort of like how people behave a lot. People instead, instead of like

00:29:22.240 saving, they consume because that is like just so readily available to them. You know, how many

00:29:27.380 people do you know that get into like insane amounts of credit card debt, because they can

00:29:31.920 get things right now. And, and again, that's debt, right? That that that's created out of thin air,

00:29:37.180 that's money printed on behalf of the people that are spending with the credit card. And of course,

00:29:42.140 they have to sort of like be enslaved afterwards and that it causes all sorts of evil in in

00:29:49.240 civilization and at at the root of it is the monetary system and it is a corrupt cesspool

00:29:55.740 of theft that that has uh caused a lot of these ills that we see today that's yeah that makes a

00:30:05.140 lot of sense let me um let me ask you this you've mentioned a couple times now and so i just want

00:30:10.040 you to flesh it out a little bit more but you said when somebody offers a loan you know or you

00:30:14.580 mentioned just briefly the credit cards scenario that you know that somebody can have that instant

00:30:18.820 gratification right and i remember me and you were talking about this when we had lunch together

00:30:22.440 you know in olden days you you know if you wanted something you would have to take maybe it takes

00:30:26.600 seven years like jacob worked for rachel you know seven years and he got leah and he worked seven

00:30:31.640 more years got rachel but but the work was up front the reward was after the work was done

00:30:36.820 right and and it's hard even teaching that principle to our children these days let's let's

00:30:41.060 do the work first and then we reap you know i mean that that's that is biblical there's sowing

00:30:45.340 and reaping right there's planting and harvest that's just the way god's when we think of god

00:30:50.920 as the creator it's his world that's the way he set it up he set things in motion to where you

00:30:55.620 don't you don't get to eat something um and then and then pay for it afterwards and so anyway so

00:31:02.380 So that makes a lot of sense.

00:31:03.520 But you mentioned like with credit card or loans, you mentioned that being in relation

00:31:08.040 to printing.

00:31:09.820 So I always think that when somebody gives a loan, right, if I loaned money to a friend

00:31:14.560 or something like that, I would actually be giving someone something that I actually have.

00:31:18.980 But it seems like you're implying that we have credit card companies or we have the

00:31:22.860 federal government, you know, or even in the housing market, banks that are actually essentially

00:31:28.800 printing. They're not actually loaning a resource to someone else that they actually have. They're

00:31:34.800 printing that's fake. Could you explain that? Am I right? Is that what you're saying?

00:31:38.920 Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that is something that a lot of people don't understand.

00:31:42.780 So say you're getting a mortgage, right? A lot of people, that's their biggest purchase of their

00:31:47.240 lives. Say the house is like $500,000 or something, and you get a loan for $400,000.

00:31:54.240 Where 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.

00:32:20.480 See, 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.

00:32:41.040 But it sounds like what you're about to say is, no, the bank writes on a napkin or something like that.

00:32:45.740 You know, we're giving you three, but they never had it in the first place.

00:32:48.440 No, 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.

00:33:08.900 So 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.

00:33:27.420 Every 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.

00:33:47.240 They might have $10 in deposits, but they loan out $100.

00:33:52.040 And the way they do that is they just put $100 in their account, and here it is, right?

00:33:59.140 And in fact, that 10% reserve requirement has been completely eliminated.

00:34:03.680 So basically, every bank can print as much as they want.

00:34:08.060 So it used to be in the past that if you had like $300,000 in the vault or something like that,

00:34:16.340 And 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.

00:34:43.520 but instead what a bank does is if you meet a certain standard then you lend to all of them

00:34:48.420 and they can because this is sort of federally regulated and in fact the mortgage itself is

00:34:54.620 insured by somebody called fanny and freddy so all all of that is there there's no risk to the

00:35:00.340 bank at all right and they they get to collect interest on it on money that they created out

00:35:06.240 of thin air and and that's money that they didn't even work to whereas you and me we would have to

00:35:11.100 work really really really hard to store up that money and then lend it out which means that we

00:35:16.160 don't we can't do certain things because we're putting that money on pause real money and we'd

00:35:20.520 have to wait 30 years and for us to get rich that way we'd have to be like vampires with like a

00:35:25.580 thousand year long lifespans and stuff like yeah so it's exactly exactly yeah oh it's completely

00:35:31.700 not fair and and and the thing is like they the the bank benefits and you uh the the loan loaner

00:35:38.260 benefits right because obviously they're getting this loan the bank obviously benefits because

00:35:42.740 they're getting to collect interest and uh and you know they've created this money into existence

00:35:48.320 and this is and it costs yeah this is the key to economics who those two benefit but what just

00:35:55.360 happened who's the actual one hurting what are the unseen effects well the unseen effect is that

00:36:00.520 everybody's dollar is diluted just a little bit by the amount that it was expanded and this is

00:36:06.520 something that a lot of a lot of people sort of overlook it's like well i got a loan i'm fine

00:36:10.960 right like that you know it helped me or it helped my neighbor like what's what's the big deal right

00:36:15.820 like uh how how can you condemn that well you have to recognize that the u.s dollar everyone that has

00:36:21.800 the u.s dollar is now diluted by that much um and it's not and it's not just people in the united

00:36:27.720 states the biggest holders of u.s dollars are actually abroad it's people in third world

00:36:33.180 countries right that where their own currency is so bad that they use dollars uh to transact in a

00:36:39.140 lot of stuff right i i have a friend from nigeria timmy who wrote the book uh wrote my second book

00:36:44.100 with me and we were talking about the dollar and you know someone was saying you know oh they

00:36:48.400 the nigerians they use the naira you know they don't care about the dollar he's like are you

00:36:52.320 kidding me the dollar was the most important currency in my entire life i i couldn't care 0.66

00:36:57.460 less about the naira if i had the dollar because that was the staple currency for me right uh and

00:37:03.240 and you're you're you're really diluting their savings wow you're and that that's the thing that

00:37:10.360 a lot of people don't get and so every loan um that that comes into existence and this is at

00:37:16.400 every level this is for companies right like they they issue corporate bonds or whatever

00:37:20.700 and uh you know a lot of banks and uh commercial banks and stuff buy them up uh out of using money

00:37:27.080 created in the same way if it if it meets like a certain bond grade or whatever you know they'll

00:37:32.860 just buy it right like this this is how the whole system works um the entire system is based on

00:37:39.160 debt that comes from nothing uh and it dilutes everybody else every time so what happened

00:37:45.040 the incentives in the system then are everybody is up to their eyeballs in debt and this is true

00:37:51.820 at the consumer level at the company level at the government level and this is very obvious

00:37:56.840 Because if you're keeping it in cash, well, you're constantly getting diluted.

00:38:02.020 But if you're in debt, then you're okay.

00:38:04.340 Because in a sense, as it expands, it'll get cheaper to pay off.

00:38:09.180 You're right.

00:38:11.000 So actually working hard, storing up.

00:38:14.220 Because, 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.

00:38:25.680 But 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.

00:38:44.540 But 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.

00:38:52.480 So 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.

00:39:15.000 And 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.

00:39:26.840 That's probably why we have so many debtors, because debt often doesn't feel real.

00:39:32.300 It doesn't actually feel the way that biblically it should.

00:39:35.580 Would you agree with that?

00:39:36.860 Yeah, absolutely.

00:39:37.760 And a lot of people are in debt and in slavery and don't even know that they're in slavery, right?

00:39:42.860 Right. How many people do you know that still have like student loans that they're paying off?

00:39:46.900 Right. 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.

00:39:55.760 And 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.

00:40:03.940 But, 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.

00:40:12.700 And when you think who has $50,000 worth of school loan debt, it's not really those people who are impoverished.

00:40:19.000 It's not really the poorest of the poor.

00:40:20.460 The 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.

00:40:30.040 And 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.

00:40:41.280 I 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.

00:40:58.180 And 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.

00:41:08.860 It'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.

00:41:19.920 And 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.

00:41:31.060 And those who worked really, really hard to pay off their debt, you're actually stealing from them.

00:41:35.900 It 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.

00:41:47.360 savings is being diluted by the we should have kept that money and i could have invested that

00:41:52.300 into a house that's appreciating in value and you know and but but we were taught dave ramsey i think

00:41:59.040 of it like pay off your debt first pay off your debt first and uh but it doesn't actually sound

00:42:04.800 like 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

00:42:11.460 corrupt right now it's been twisted right the fiat world has uh has all of the wrong incentives

00:42:17.260 and you do get into debt and you do get into slavery but a lot of people don't even recognize

00:42:22.020 that they're in slavery that they're uh you know like slaves to their appetites for example i mean

00:42:27.400 how many people are overweight right now um you know the this whole system is like encourages

00:42:34.580 consumption because yeah you can you can have anything you want right now because we will print

00:42:39.900 money for you so you can have it right now only thing is uh you're going to be you know in debt

00:42:44.860 for and enslaved to us for like the next 20 years how many people do you know like work jobs that

00:42:50.740 they hate right because it pays a lot of money and why do they need that money because usually

00:42:57.300 it's some sort of lifestyle but usually it's some form of debt uh of some kind that they already

00:43:02.620 consumed and this is the thing if you if you keep getting into this mentality of consume now pay it

00:43:08.980 off later it has an effect on your soul and it it changes the way you think about things and uh

00:43:15.480 and unfortunately this has also come into the church many of whom buy like these giant beautiful

00:43:21.900 buildings that right they can't possibly afford but they're quote-unquote doing it in faith

00:43:27.600 when in reality they're just getting into getting into slavery to the bank and ultimately what that

00:43:35.220 usually ends up in is uh you know even if they're some somewhat successful they end up

00:43:40.300 finding alternative means of revenue including like renting out their church for preschools

00:43:45.180 during the week or you know like uh having lots of weddings there so they can pay off their mortgage

00:43:50.420 uh you know like uh you know having all sorts of those right and those things wouldn't necessarily

00:43:56.540 be inherently wrong but but ultimately the big idea that what i think what you're getting at is

00:44:01.220 what it ultimately leads to is compromise and in the sense that like all right like well we

00:44:06.400 you know it's not just the pastor's salary but but we have this massive you know loan that we

00:44:11.840 have to pay this massive mortgage and and then all of a sudden you know maybe attendance starts

00:44:17.000 to dwindle or people don't like that the pastor's preaching faithfully and he's preaching with

00:44:20.720 courage and he's attacking things you know in in the cultural sphere that aren't in line and in

00:44:26.760 submission to the will of christ and people are leaving and and it's just this constant temptation

00:44:32.060 to for for the the ministry the theology the preaching um to compromise to compromise to

00:44:38.520 compromise yeah i i think we talked about this before and i i really like the way you put it

00:44:43.720 um you know you can either uh you know a lot of nice christians have a hard time with the truth

00:44:49.440 and uh and this is because you know when you're nice you you don't want to like contradict people

00:44:54.740 or whatever. I think the actual real way we're supposed to be is not be so nice. But if you're

00:45:01.220 a church and you're super nice, you get a lot of congregants. And this is just the fact you get

00:45:06.260 more, more people that are tithing and so on. So like the truth gets compromised. And in a sense,

00:45:12.480 you are a slave to the bank, because, right, you know, the money that you have to pay off is

00:45:17.500 ultimately at the root of all of these decisions that slowly eroded, you know, the doctrine of

00:45:23.940 of what's supposed to be. This is a sad reality of a lot of churches today. And, and I've seen

00:45:30.560 a lot of them like way too much that and like just compromise in ways. I mean, like, even just

00:45:36.740 like thinking about what what happened with Ravi Zacharias, and how he was like, leading this whole

00:45:40.920 like double life and everything. I mean, the reason why he was he was like invited to everything

00:45:47.100 and like, what was because he was just so nice, right? But why did he want to expand that ministry

00:45:53.040 so big i there there's parts of parts of uh you know uh parts of parts of uh wanting to be famous

00:46:00.640 or whatever but there was always this like sort of availability of dead and and things like that

00:46:06.060 to expand the ministry a little more and it's like okay the size of the ministry look at look

00:46:10.900 at how many people i'm reaching becomes more important than being faithful to god's work

00:46:15.880 right like he was like invited to a mormon church didn't say anything about how they were wrong or

00:46:20.680 anything and you know like right yeah there's so many ways in which you end up compromising

00:46:25.860 for for the money yeah it's just slavery so you can be you can be a slave to the fear of man

00:46:32.440 right so you want people's approval you want fame you want glory but you absolutely that you know

00:46:37.200 can be a slave monetarily that you know the the debtor is slave to the lender and all these things

00:46:44.080 are going to have an effect and this is why all christians but especially ministers of the gospel

00:46:49.400 should keep themselves pure from worldliness, that they shouldn't be enslaved to the lust of

00:46:55.000 the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. And so by God's grace, when I was

00:47:00.200 pastoring in San Diego, I've recently now moved to Texas, as you know, and planting a new church,

00:47:05.180 Covenant Bible Church, the north side of Austin. But when I was in San Diego, and I learned how to

00:47:10.280 grow a church, and I also have some really great experience in how to shrink a church, you know,

00:47:15.040 And, 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

00:47:28.700 We 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

00:47:40.780 And these kinds of things that do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. 0.85

00:47:44.960 So I slowed down, did four weeks on that. 0.99

00:47:46.960 And 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.

00:47:57.160 Within one month, we lost close to 40 people.

00:48:00.780 But 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.

00:48:09.940 I had already learned how to live on little, my wife and I were free from debt. And the church

00:48:15.400 didn't own any property, although we wanted to, we certainly I wanted the church to get to get

00:48:20.180 a building, I wasn't thinking really about I mean, the things you're saying are really,

00:48:23.760 really interesting. And it's convicting. And I've got a lot, you're leaving me with a lot to think

00:48:27.340 about. But you know, we were renting a school, we didn't have a mortgage with the church, we had a

00:48:31.840 very low overhead with the church, we were saving every single month, because partly because my

00:48:36.920 salary was probably too low but we were we were saving you know easily 10 grand a month with the

00:48:42.860 church and so every time i saw people leave and i know this sounds vain some of our listeners will

00:48:48.220 be like what i can't believe you think like that i'm telling you your pastor thinks like this

00:48:51.880 i'm not saying it's it's the the predominant thought in his mind but every time we saw people

00:48:56.100 leave i thought we can afford it now i didn't want them to leave as a pastor as a shepherd

00:49:01.400 i wanted to leave the 99 go for the one and i often did i'd have conversations with them i mean

00:49:06.120 Now, I made it hard for people to leave, sometimes too hard.

00:49:08.780 There were some people I probably just should have let go.

00:49:10.720 But, you know, as a shepherd, I wanted to bring them back.

00:49:13.680 I was like, I know you're offended, but I really don't think you should be.

00:49:16.140 This is what God's word says.

00:49:17.520 Can I answer your questions?

00:49:18.860 Do you have concerns?

00:49:20.260 But, you know, some people just didn't stick around. 0.94

00:49:23.220 And with the people that I couldn't save, meaning they're not a Christian, but I couldn't save as far as keep them in the church,

00:49:30.640 for those individuals, the one thing, it hurt relationally. It was sad. It was painful. But

00:49:37.440 the one thing that I didn't have in addition to all that hanging over my head was, will I be able

00:49:42.980 to get a paycheck this month? Because I knew financially we can afford to lose 40 people,

00:49:48.720 50 people, 60 people, because my salary was low. The overhead of the church overall was low. And

00:49:54.820 even when I left the church, a lot of pastors, I knew another pastor who I of course won't name,

00:49:59.820 But he resigned from ministry and he left his church and he left them with nothing.

00:50:05.900 They had like literally zero dollars in the bank.

00:50:09.880 And by God's grace, I was able to move to Texas to plant a new church and still leave the church behind with about $600,000 in the bank.

00:50:19.500 $600,000 is dwindling because of all the inflation and the things you're talking about.

00:50:23.840 So they need to do something.

00:50:25.320 Maybe they take that $600,000 and put it in Bitcoin.

00:50:27.440 I don't know. But the point is, you know, I was able to leave them with something.

00:50:31.720 And all I'm saying is theologically, because some of our guests are, what is this?

00:50:35.180 But what's the biblical principle?

00:50:36.840 Having money in the bank as a church and not having a massive overhead and not having a mortgage,

00:50:42.120 there was a freedom for me as a pastor when it came to how courageous I could be.

00:50:50.180 And you might just say, well, you should have had that freedom no matter what.

00:50:53.540 Yeah, sure. Sure.

00:50:55.140 But at the same time, I also have to feed my wife and children.

00:50:59.100 I have certain responsibilities.

00:51:01.160 And you can say, well, maybe the real solution is for pastors just to be bivocational. 0.95

00:51:04.560 Well, 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.

00:51:10.920 Don't muzzle the ox while he treads the grain.

00:51:13.120 And the Bible relates that to the pastor.

00:51:15.640 A lot of pastors, there's nothing wrong with being bivocational.

00:51:17.960 And 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.

00:51:26.760 But 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.

00:51:35.500 So 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.

00:51:46.660 But 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.

00:52:02.840 And 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.

00:52:16.100 But 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.

00:52:30.220 And and you're kind of saying that maybe that even affects whether or not a church should should have a building.

00:52:36.800 It's one thing to own it outright to actually save up, you know, four million dollars or whatever it costs.

00:52:42.200 But to have that mortgage, it sounds like you're saying that's maybe not the best thing to do.

00:52:47.700 No, I think it's unbiblical. I think it ultimately ends up corrupting the church.

00:52:54.540 And the thing is, like all of these things work together. Right.

00:52:57.020 those people that left your church well they went to the church next door that's like super nice and

00:53:03.140 has a beautiful building and has a mortgage the thing is like there there's temptations for uh

00:53:08.520 the congregants to go go somewhere where um you know they'll be more you know satisfied because

00:53:15.820 you know they're not being condemned for uh you know sins uh that they're practicing in their

00:53:21.700 life and and instead they'll go to the pastor that'll tell them what they want to hear i mean

00:53:26.380 to me, that's what prosperity preaching is all about, right? It's, it's worshiping, you know,

00:53:32.060 I'm worshiping money anyway. So can you tell me, give me a justification for why God says that's

00:53:37.940 okay? You know, that, that to me is what that is. And, and, you know, all of these things work

00:53:43.800 together. And it is very, very difficult to find churches that are courageous. And we just saw this

00:53:52.660 with with the entire coronavirus stuff right right you know they every single one of them

00:53:59.000 seem to uh well not every single one there there's some notable exceptions and whatnot but

00:54:04.000 they seem to just uh just comply with whatever government said they folded quickly yeah because

00:54:10.920 in a sense they've built their identity on this niceness uh to to to a degree and you know there

00:54:17.660 they also might be taking ppp loans or you know right i was going to ask you so what do you think

00:54:23.060 because i know a lot of pastors and churches that took the the triple p loans arch so that's another

00:54:27.920 thing like our church did you know not only did i leave the church with money in the bank but but

00:54:33.000 also we we on principle didn't even apply uh for one of those loans because even though it's

00:54:38.900 forgivable um i i'm still under the impression that if you take the king's coin you become the

00:54:44.200 king's man and i don't want to be the only king whose man i want to be is king jesus um not not

00:54:50.560 king trump or king biden so what did you think about churches taking the triple p loans what

00:54:55.260 what do you think so let me let me let me talk about the businesses that took the triple p loans

00:54:59.580 and how that completely affects the economy because uh because i i don't think this is very

00:55:05.120 obvious to a lot of people yeah it helps a lot of those businesses stay alive fine that that much is

00:55:10.300 true and to a large degree the government caused the crisis so they're uh they're they're helping

00:55:15.720 them out and there there's some justice in that but think about think about what happens with

00:55:20.400 these businesses who are they serving now it used to be that businesses served the customer right

00:55:25.820 like the they they were trying to fulfill the needs of the customer in some way shape or form

00:55:31.280 with their good or service and that that's what a business should be there it's to provide value

00:55:37.420 to somebody else. To me, that's what it means to love your neighbor. It's to provide value to them

00:55:42.440 in a fair exchange. And that's totally fine. But you take the PPP loan, what happens? Well,

00:55:48.260 now you are much more concerned with fulfilling the terms of the PPP loan, especially if it can

00:55:52.760 be forgiven. In which case, you don't care as much about your customers anymore. And in fact,

00:55:57.440 I've experienced this, I tried to book an appointment with a service that I like. And

00:56:01.760 they were like, you know what, we don't have enough workers, because we want to make sure

00:56:04.920 that this PPP loan lasts a long time. So we're only hiring, like, we only have certain number

00:56:10.600 of slots. And I'm like, this would never happen with a normal business, you wouldn't turn a

00:56:14.700 customer away. Because, you know, you want to make sure that they're satisfied. Instead, they

00:56:20.340 what they've done is they're stretching it out, we want to make sure we fulfill the everything to

00:56:25.680 the letter. And that that's what they do. Now, thinking about it in a church context, that's

00:56:31.220 what churches do too right like who are you serving right these businesses are serving the

00:56:36.400 government uh whatever the terms of the ppp loan are instead of their customer for a church there's

00:56:42.760 a there's a much bigger calling here who are you serving you should be serving god instead you are

00:56:48.260 serving the terms of this loan and that that's that those are that's a big problem i mean you

00:56:54.080 you can't serve both you really can't that's right somebody said that you can't serve two masters who

00:56:59.360 was that i the whole time you're talking i kept thinking about joseph um i i just finished reading

00:57:06.240 uh genesis you know and and uh and it's just interesting i kept thinking about you know when

00:57:11.460 joseph became you know second in command you know only second to pharaoh himself and god elevated

00:57:16.840 him and gave him favor and pharaoh had this dream that god you know enabled joseph to interpret

00:57:21.720 the seven years of plenty and then seven years followed by seven years of famine um it's

00:57:27.700 interesting because what happened is during the seven years of of plenty um they had a tax on all

00:57:33.880 of egypt where they had to give the fifth to pharaoh 20 um and and you hear that and you're

00:57:40.020 like 20 that's a lot and then i it's like oh wait i live in america i guess it's you know somewhat

00:57:45.400 you know but uh it's funny i mean in in old testament books like with israel you know they

00:57:50.600 used to say that you know uh if you have a king like for instance like samuel you know with the

00:57:55.000 people we want a king we want a king and samuel he's dejected and and you know the lord says they

00:57:59.680 have not rejected you as prophet but they've rejected me as god and uh but before you you

00:58:05.080 know go and give them what they want they're asking be careful what you wish for the israel 0.98

00:58:08.640 is asking for something wicked but go ahead i'm going to give them what they want i'm going to 0.77

00:58:12.540 use you samuel to anoint a king um but before you do i want you to tell them what they're getting

00:58:18.380 themselves into and and so then samuel gives them the warning of like if you have a king

00:58:22.880 this is what it's going to look like that you know your sons are going to be you know drafted

00:58:28.020 into his militia and your daughter is going to be using this way and you're going to have to pay

00:58:31.620 taxes here and this and that and one of the things is that if you have a king he might be such a

00:58:36.560 tyrant one day down the line that you might have to pay almost 10 percent in taxes that's what

00:58:42.060 that's what the bible says a tenth a whole tenth of what you have and and you look at that and

00:58:47.520 that's i mean this is literally the word of god saying to israel like if you get a king it might

00:58:51.520 be so oppressive, so tyrannical, so horrible that you might have 10% in taxes. And then you think

00:58:58.140 of where we're at as a nation. So my point is in the midst of Pharaoh knowing, because the God of

00:59:05.480 heaven gave him a supernatural dream and empowered Joseph to interpret it, knowing that there would

00:59:09.880 be seven years of basically no crops, no harvest, no resources, no food. And then seven years before

00:59:16.020 that of plenty, under that dire of a situation, they only took 20%, right? So that's a very

00:59:23.280 supernatural thing. But the whole point that I'm trying to make is this, seven years of taking a

00:59:27.400 fifth from all the Egyptians to Pharaoh. And then it was after earning, right, creating, storing up, 0.90

00:59:36.120 they actually had the grain in silos. They actually had the resources. It wasn't just

00:59:41.460 Pharaoh printing money. It was like, no, I actually have all this grain. And then what

00:59:45.480 happened was when the seven years of famine hit, uh, each year the people would come to get

00:59:50.040 allotments and they, and they had from giving their, their 20, you know, their 20% to Pharaoh

00:59:54.800 from seven years of planning, they could give, you know, hand in these, I don't know what it was,

00:59:59.900 if it was a printed receipt or whatever it was, but they could go and they could say, Hey, this

01:00:03.340 is the taxes that I paid. And they would get a return and they'd get a return and they'd get a

01:00:06.740 return. Now, uh, finally they ran out of that. They ran out of their money that they could buy

01:00:11.940 grain with and so then they eventually had to sell uh the land and themselves so they sold the

01:00:17.880 livestock first and then they eventually had to sell the land and so by the end of that that seven

01:00:23.040 years of plenty and then the seven years of famine pharaoh owned everything he owned the land of

01:00:28.100 everyone except for his priest because they had like an allotment from pharaoh but all the people

01:00:32.820 of egypt they were they were a completely owned nation they were it's it's ironic but egypt and

01:00:39.600 this is before egypt enslaved israel uh but egypt prior to being uh to to being captors

01:00:47.180 enslaving israel they were enslaved themselves uh they had to sell not just not just use their

01:00:53.100 money but eventually they had to sell themselves and their land they no longer had any property

01:00:58.400 it all belonged to pharaoh in in some way some shape or form or another and and i feel like that's

01:01:05.140 It 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.

01:01:18.620 And 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.

01:01:32.160 and then we bought it back from them to enslave ourselves they just had a magical machine and just

01:01:37.820 printed grain or the illusion of grain and and started buying up all the people whether it be

01:01:43.840 i i feel like there are people in the government who are probably just just in glee you know i mean

01:01:49.240 just so happy with with covid because triple p loans and we own this business we own this church

01:01:57.300 we own this we own that we like and but but it didn't cost them anything they didn't have to

01:02:03.180 open a silo and let out real tangible grain they just came up with this ppp loan and and it's just

01:02:11.560 i i'm just saying all that to say i mean that was a dire circumstance with joseph and it still

01:02:18.500 sounds better than the situation we're in because at least it was the seven years of plenty first

01:02:22.840 and there was actually grain stored up and there was actually you know it was real and uh and so

01:02:28.620 it is scary to think like the things that you're saying to think like where we're headed and it

01:02:33.980 sounds like you think that bitcoin may be the solution so i so what let me let me kind of wrap

01:02:40.120 up the episode with this what can christians do then what should christians do to get out of

01:02:45.480 slavery to get out of debt but but also knowing that we still live in in a nation that that's

01:02:52.260 the way we do money in america isn't isn't really great so so how can christians get out of debt

01:02:58.580 which is good and biblical right but then not be penalized by their savings constantly being

01:03:04.380 depleted through inflation and what should how should christians what should christians do right

01:03:09.220 now to build wealth and to be financially wise. Yeah. And this is the value proposition of Bitcoin

01:03:16.560 is that it is essentially a savings technology. This is what money should be. It allows you to

01:03:21.760 store value instead of having it sort of taken away from you by the central bank money printers.

01:03:28.160 And you can opt out of the system by buying some Bitcoin. And if you use that as your savings,

01:03:33.320 it will last because it is perfectly scarce. There's 21 million. So whatever portion you buy

01:03:39.300 will still be the same portion. The denominator on the US dollar constantly changes. It grew like

01:03:46.160 30% last year alone. So that tells you that your savings are being diluted if you keep it in

01:03:52.920 dollars. This is why people put it in real estate or stock because it stores value better. But those

01:03:58.480 those have been essentially hyperinflating over the last year because of all of the money printing

01:04:04.200 that's going on instead you can opt out of the system and and go with bitcoin and this is what

01:04:09.800 a lot of people are doing a lot of companies are doing it a lot of uh you know um insurance companies

01:04:15.680 are doing it endowments are doing it they're um and and they're they're all doing it because they

01:04:20.000 see the same thing that a lot of bitcoiners do uh and hopefully you do which is that the rest of the

01:04:25.240 system is just printing money like crazy and as a result of that like everything uh there's no safe

01:04:32.680 place to put money really um bitcoin is one of the few places where you know i mean admittedly

01:04:38.360 it's fairly young but uh it's it's 12 years old but fiat money as it exists today only started

01:04:44.820 in 1971 so it's only 50 years old and every uh the average lifespan of a fiat currency according

01:04:51.320 to a study of like 800 different fiat currencies is 23 years. So in a sense, it's like it never

01:04:58.460 really works out when you have somebody in the middle all the time. But with Bitcoin, this is

01:05:04.600 hard money. This is perfectly scarce. And in a way, it gives us a way out of the current system.

01:05:10.740 You can save in it and do something with it. And, you know, by God's grace, because of how it's

01:05:18.560 appreciated, a lot of people have been able to pursue what God's calling is, uh, for them instead

01:05:25.040 of, uh, you know, working a job that you don't like to pay off debts on that you spent on stuff

01:05:31.140 that you didn't even really want. Right. Like that, that's the unfortunate situation. A lot

01:05:35.540 of people find themselves in. Uh, so we, we see, uh, at least, uh, me and my coauthors that wrote

01:05:42.440 the book we see this as the redemption of money it's it's something that brings us closer to that

01:05:48.760 principle of sowing and reaping that you uh you laid out earlier you get to sow and reap instead

01:05:54.020 of having it constantly eaten by uh moth and dust and whatever it's it's it's something that stores

01:06:01.140 value and uh and you know that that that's closer to what god intended than the current monetary

01:06:08.400 system, which is a cesspool of that. Yeah, I love it. And I, I think, you know, some of our listeners,

01:06:14.820 I could just kind of hear in the back of my head, then playing the devil's advocate and maybe

01:06:18.140 pushing back and saying, but Joel, doesn't Jesus say that, that, that the only place to store true

01:06:24.340 riches that moth and rust never destroy, it just, it's not Bitcoin, it's not anything, it's not here

01:06:30.500 on earth, it's in heaven. And I think, you know, if any listeners thinking that, I think what I

01:06:35.860 would say, and I think what Jimmy would agree with is, absolutely, heaven is the only surefire

01:06:41.220 place where you're not stolen from, and you're not robbed, and where your treasure endures

01:06:47.480 forever and appreciates throughout eternity. And yet, part of what we want to do as image bearers

01:06:57.880 of the living God, and part of what we want to do as Christians is not just merely fulfilling

01:07:02.820 the Great Commission in terms of conversions and baptism and preaching the gospel and discipling,

01:07:08.680 making disciples. But part of the Great Commission, we always forget this part, is that we teach

01:07:13.760 people to obey all of Christ's commands. And part of what the gospel does is first and foremost,

01:07:18.660 it saves sinners by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But part of what good gospel work also

01:07:24.580 does in teaching those sinners now redeemed to obey all of Christ's commands is that the gospel

01:07:31.500 in the kingdom of christ as it expands like a mustard seed it starts small but but it begins

01:07:37.040 to grow like a little bit of yeast working its way through the whole batch of dough the kingdom of

01:07:42.280 god this gospel advancement and teaching people discipling them and teaching them to obey all

01:07:47.120 christ's commands it pushes back the curse that's that jesus it's not just that he's coming back

01:07:53.440 one day to re jesus is redeeming the world now he is ruling and reigning currently seated at the

01:07:59.900 right hand of his father, and one by one, his enemies are being made subject to him and being

01:08:05.080 placed as a footstool underneath his feet. The world is getting better. Poverty is becoming

01:08:10.360 more scarce, and wealth is something that is growing. And so part of our duty as Christians

01:08:17.320 is first and foremost to preach the gospel, to make disciples, to see people saved by the grace

01:08:22.120 of God, to baptize them into the name of the triune God. But in all of our life, in entertainment and

01:08:28.580 in media and in vocation and work and medicine and in money, we want to work to apply biblical

01:08:35.580 principles and push back the curse. And we know that the curse will never be completely pushed

01:08:40.980 back until Christ returns. And in the new heavens and the new earth, that's the place where moth

01:08:47.080 and rust will never destroy, even an ounce. But that doesn't mean that we can't improve things

01:08:51.780 now. That doesn't mean that we can't build better barns now that are more protective and more wise

01:08:57.520 and more just.

01:08:59.040 It's not just about protecting our stuff,

01:09:01.360 but it's more moral, it's more righteous,

01:09:03.420 it's more just, and it is more pleasing to the Lord.

01:09:06.740 And so money is not the root of all evil.

01:09:09.560 As we know, it's the love of money.

01:09:11.540 And someone who's simply trying to be wise

01:09:13.540 and protect wealth and protect the wealth of others,

01:09:17.080 that doesn't mean that they're an idolater necessarily.

01:09:19.920 That doesn't mean that they are sinning

01:09:21.300 or greedy necessarily.

01:09:22.680 It actually could be that they're actually

01:09:24.940 doing something righteous right when the bible in the old testament talks about defending the

01:09:29.440 defenseless right uh protecting the poor from being oppressed by rulers and by the rich and um so i

01:09:37.560 don't i don't know everything that there is to know about bitcoin i feel like i learned a ton

01:09:41.340 tonight i feel like our listeners learn a ton tonight but from what i can tell right now it

01:09:45.740 It 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.

01:10:00.200 Jesus is redeeming not just people, but this world. 0.60

01:10:03.540 This is God's world.

01:10:04.780 He loves it.

01:10:05.680 He's not just going to throw it away.

01:10:07.440 When Christ returns, it's not for the earth to just be wadded up and thrown away like trash.

01:10:13.000 He is redeeming the cosmos, and even the creation itself is groaning with eager expectations to be restored.

01:10:19.560 And that involves not just plants and trees, but all things, including currency.

01:10:24.980 And so, Jimmy, I just want to say thank you so much for you coming on the show.

01:10:28.860 And real quick, we always do a bonus question for our club members.

01:10:33.480 So let me wet the appetite.

01:10:36.300 If you're not a responder, that's what we call our club members.

01:10:38.440 I encourage you guys to become a responder, sign up, support this ministry, pray for us, and you'll get to listen to the bonus question.

01:10:45.160 Here's the bonus question.

01:10:47.160 Jimmy, do you think that Bitcoin will significantly increase in its value in terms of its relation to the U.S. dollar in the near future?

01:10:55.740 Or do you feel like it might already be a little bit inflated?

01:10:59.300 aside from the moral motivations that we've already discussed, do you think that Bitcoin

01:11:03.520 is a wise investment in the near future over this next year in today's economic climate with the

01:11:12.080 changes in politics and all that kind of stuff? So that's our question. Real quick, let's go ahead

01:11:16.380 and end the episode. And Jimmy will come back on for a few minutes and answer that. But real quick,

01:11:21.080 could you tell our listeners how they can keep up with you and how they can follow you and see what

01:11:25.540 god's doing in your life uh well i'm available on twitter at jimmy song i have a website

01:11:31.920 programming bitcoin.com uh it has links to all my books uh i also do a podcast bitcoin fixes this

01:11:39.280 which you can find on itunes and uh wherever you find the podcast uh and uh yeah you you can all

01:11:47.220 all of those channels uh plus my newsletter jimmy song.substack.com that's a technical

01:11:52.220 newsletter so probably okay uh not necessarily uh as interesting maybe for some of our listeners

01:11:58.280 yeah yeah uh not technical but if you're technical yeah that's where you can find me cool great and

01:12:04.200 then one last time i just want to go ahead and plug his book one more time we got thank god for

01:12:08.120 bitcoin uh the creation corruption and redemption of money he co-authored this with a bunch of

01:12:14.780 authors and i remember when we got lunch asking you like what was that like to write a book with

01:12:19.300 eight people, but it sounds like it was a blast. I encourage you guys to get a copy. Where can they

01:12:24.100 get this, Jimmy? They can get it on Amazon. We're working on the audio book, but you can get a

01:12:30.920 paper copy or on the Kindle, hopefully hardcover pretty soon. Cool. Thanks, Jimmy. As a special

01:12:37.500 thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our

01:12:41.760 store. To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.com slash offer. We highly

01:12:48.060 recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved? If you or someone you know has wrestled with

01:12:52.960 doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource. As a reminder, to get this offer,

01:12:58.240 go to rightresponseministries.com slash offer. And thank you for your generous support.

The NXR Podcast - March 17, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Should Christians Consider Bitcoin？

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