Jimmy Song argues Bitcoin is a moral necessity, contrasting its scarcity with fiat currency's "civil theft" via deficit spending and fractional reserves that erode global savings. He links money printing to biblical violations of stewardship and debt slavery, noting how high church overhead compromises doctrinal courage, citing a 40-person congregation loss when his debt-free ministry taught on women's submission. While PPP loans shift loyalty to the state like Pharaoh's Egypt, Song champions Bitcoin as a "savings technology" to redeem money against inflation, urging Christians to store value eternally while acknowledging heaven remains the only true treasure. [Automatically generated summary]
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Programming Bitcoin Wallets00:07:11
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Hi, this is Pastor Joel Weber with Right Response Ministries.
This is another episode of Theology Applied today.
I am privileged to have as a guest a new friend of mine.
His name is Jimmy Song, and he's recently written a book.
I actually have it here, so I'll go ahead and hold it up.
But he's co authored a book with a group of his contemporaries.
It's called Thank God for Bitcoin The Creation, Corruption, and Redemption of Money.
So tonight's episode is going to be interesting.
We're going to be talking about Bitcoin, something that I'll just go ahead and be honest up front.
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 was just incredibly interesting.
So I think tonight you could maybe call the episode this A Theology of Bitcoin.
And broader, probably a theology of money.
So, without further ado, our guest, Jimmy Song, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your YouTube channel, podcast, or consulting, books that you've authored, all that kind of stuff?
Yeah.
So, I'm a programmer and I've been one since I graduated college, which was 23 years ago.
So, I've been a programmer for most of my life, actually.
I started when I was like nine, like programming on little computers and stuff like that.
But that's been my vocation for quite a while.
I got into Bitcoin in 2011.
And, you know, I, Been working at, I had been working at a bunch of startups all along then.
And in 2013, I started contributing to open source projects that are related to Bitcoin for your audience that doesn't know what an open source project is.
It's sort of like a lot of free software that exists.
Developers sort of contribute to those.
Linux is a popular one.
A lot of free tools out there are open source.
Bitcoin is one of those open source projects.
So I'm one of those programmers that's in the open source community.
I started getting into it.
I worked for a bunch of different Bitcoin companies.
I went off on my own in 2017.
I started a little seminar for programmers to teach them the Bitcoin protocol and all of the programming things that are involved in that.
I started speaking at a lot of different Bitcoin conferences all over the world.
I think in 2018, I hit five of the seven continents.
I missed Africa and Antarctica, like traveling and doing that.
I have a Twitter.
Jimmy Song, that's got 200,000 followers.
I have a YouTube channel off chain with Jimmy Song that's got 28,000 subscribers.
I publish articles on Medium.
I publish a newsletter every week, jimmy song.substack.com.
I have a podcast, Bitcoin Fixes This, which comes out once a week, although I have like a special episode that I'm debuting later tonight.
So, you know, lots of different things and lots of different stuff.
But yeah, I'm a Christian.
I have been for all my life.
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.
Thank God for Bitcoin.
And it really started kind of as a Bible study slash book study and it evolved from there.
I've written two other books Programming Bitcoin by O'Reilly.
O'Reilly is sort of like the premier tech book publisher, not just in the United States, but all over the world.
And the Little Bitcoin book, which was a book I had the privilege of writing with seven other co authors about what Bitcoin is for sort of like a lay audience.
So that's just a portion of what I do.
I forget sometimes all the different things I'm doing, but that's pretty much everything that I do has some form of Bitcoin involved.
And hopefully, I can help your audience understand the theology of money and the theology of Bitcoin.
That's awesome.
That's really cool.
All right.
Well, let's go ahead and just dive right in.
Well, 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?
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.
Right.
That's essentially what a wallet is.
You need programmers to create that software that can keep your Bitcoin safe.
There's also the Bitcoin core software.
This is what you call a node on the Bitcoin network.
And this is what checks all of the Bitcoin transactions and the Bitcoin blockchain, if you've ever heard of that word.
We'll get to it, I promise.
Exactly what that is, including Bitcoin mining and all that.
But I teach them all about the Bitcoin protocol and all of the elements that go into it, how it's designed.
It requires actually quite a bit of math.
So there's something called public key cryptography that's a critical part of it.
So that's what I teach.
What was that word again?
Say it again?
Public key cryptography.
So it's a major way in which the entire internet works, right?
Like you need something like that in order to make sure that things are secure.
And so I do teach a lot of that.
I taught a class for a semester at the University of Texas, just teaching a bunch of graduate students this exact material.
So it's a lot of fun for me being able to do that because at one point I wanted to be a math professor, but instead I did a startup.
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.
So that's awesome.
Great.
Just as nuts and bolts, as kind of a simple as possible, could you explain the concept of Bitcoin to someone like me who has no understanding of Bitcoin?
What is Bitcoin?
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 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.
All right.
So, What is decentralized?
Decentralized Digital Money00:10:52
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.
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.
That's decentralized versus centralized.
Something centralized is something like the US dollar or something like that, which the Fed prints.
And if you try to print your own money, they will arrest you, right?
The Secret Service will come and arrest you because only the central bank of the United States and the Treasury are allowed to print the bills or expand the money supply or whatever.
But this is true of a lot of other things, right?
Like American airline miles.
If you have fake American airline miles, that's fraud.
It's only the American Airlines Corporation that can issue points for the miles for American Airlines.
Similar with World of Warcraft or something like that, they issue all of the gold in the World of Warcraft game.
And if you somehow hack at it and come up with your own way to create new World of Warcraft gold in the game, they would cut you off from the game and not let you do it.
There's a central producer, right?
And that's the big difference between centralized and decentralized, you have somebody in control.
That gets in the middle of all of these transactions.
And that's essentially the dollar system today.
Now, what that is.
And that's where a lot of room for corruption can sneak in.
Absolutely.
That all of a sudden you can start expanding currency when there's actually not any more resources.
The nation could actually be in economic downturn, turmoil, and you start printing more money.
And it's this fake illusion that it's inflation and all those kinds of things.
Yeah, I mean, not only that, the main thing that having some party in the middle that's always in the middle of the transaction.
Does it create what we call a moral hazard, right?
They can print for themselves or confiscate or do all sorts of nefarious things.
And we'll definitely get to it.
But basically, it creates a whole set of really bad incentives.
But digital is all about whether it's online or physical.
And gold is obviously very physical.
And this is one of the properties that make it kind of a weak currency.
And this is what led to.
Fiat money in the first place is that it's very inconvenient to transport or store or anything because it's physical.
It actually has a place and location.
And that means that if you don't secure it properly, people will just come and take it.
And this is like the story in the Bible of the man who was the Samaritan that helped the guy out that was robbed.
Why was he robbed in the first place?
It's because he had these bare instruments like gold or whatever.
People don't do that for your.
You know, checks from your checking account because they can't sign it and the bank will figure it out and that sort of thing.
So, you know, the physical nature of gold is one thing, but the digital nature of the dollar is actually why, you know, the justification, anyway, for a lot of central banks to make them digital because it is enormously convenient, especially for trade over distance.
So, in the old days, they used to have like these wildcat banks in the West and so on, and they would have like bills of exchange or whatever.
These could be redeemed for gold, but they carried those so that you didn't have to actually carry the gold with you.
If you carried the gold with you, someone robs you, then you lose the gold.
But if you carried the bill of exchange with you and somebody robs you, well, they take the bill of exchange, but then they try to cash it with your signature, they can arrest them and so on.
So it was a lot safer to do that sort of thing.
And that's sort of like a very rudimentary version of why currencies became digital.
Ultimately, it's because it became much more convenient.
And these days, almost all transactions are digital.
If you're using your credit card, that's absolutely digital.
If you're buying something online, that's obviously digital.
Cash is actually kind of not frowned upon in a lot of places these days.
And we can talk about why that is.
But Bitcoin is both decentralized and digital.
And this is something that we never had before.
Almost everything digital that was something like money or had money like properties, we talked about American Airlines Miles, World of Warcraft.
Gold, even the US dollar, they're all centralized.
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 Bitcoins.
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.
Explain.
That's it.
That's a great explanation.
Real quick, explain.
You said there will never be any more than 21 million Bitcoin.
What does that mean?
That means that currently there's about 18 and a half million Bitcoin.
So part of the design of Bitcoin was okay, you need some way to get Bitcoin into the hands of people, right?
And this is sort of like the bootstrapping problem for any sort of currency.
If it's something centralized like the US dollar, 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.
They have to get out the new currency, right?
They'll usually name it something different.
It goes from, you know, the peso to like a real or something like that.
But that happens all the time.
And the way they do that is they convert the old currency to a new currency or something.
But when you're bootstrapping a brand new currency, you have to have some way to make it possible for other people to get it.
So The way Bitcoin was designed, and it was designed by an anonymous programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto.
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.
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.
Anyone with a computer or a smartphone or anything can try to mine for gold, but you're probably not going to be successful because your computer or your phone is not very good at it.
I mean, it's certainly better than doing it by hand.
Like you can literally try to mine by hand if you wanted to, but it's.
Some guy tried it.
I think it took him like a day and a half to do one.
A modern mining machine does a trillion in about one second.
So that gives you an idea of like the order of magnitude.
A trillion what?
Are you talking about gold or back to Bitcoin?
Back to Bitcoin.
So instead of, all right, all right.
So let me describe mining real quick because that's essentially what we're talking about.
Because a second ago you said there could only be 21 million and then you just said a trillion.
Oh, yeah.
That's a trillion hashes.
Per second.
So I'll describe what that is.
So let's go finish the 21 million first.
So, the design of the protocol was that at the very beginning, there were 50 Bitcoin that would be mined every 10 minutes.
So, 50 every 10 minutes.
So, for the first 210,000 blocks, and that number is chosen because 210,000 times 10 minutes is 2.1 million minutes.
And 2.1 million minutes is roughly four years.
So, every four years, for the first four years, there were 50 mined every 10 minutes.
Block.
So 210,000 times 50 is 10.5 million.
So there were 10.5 million Bitcoins that were created in the first four years.
The next four years, it's 25.
So it goes from 50 to 25.
So every 10 minutes, it's 25 Bitcoin per 10 minutes.
And it does that for 210,000 blocks.
So 25 times 210,000 is 5.25 million.
So 10.5 million plus 5.25 million.
Then the next four years was 12.5.
So it It halved again.
So it went from 50 to 25 to 12.5.
And 12 and a half times 210,000 is 2.625 million Bitcoin.
So 10 and a half, 5.25, and so on.
So currently we're in the era where each block gets 6.25 Bitcoin.
And then this era will end in about three years.
And then after that, it'll be 3.125, and then it'll have again, and so on.
So, asymptotically, if you add all of those up, it's kind of like adding one plus one half plus one quarter plus one eighth or whatever.
And if you know any math, that sum is two.
Similarly, this sum is 21 million, and that's it.
Gotcha.
That's all there is.
But notice that you can have fractions of Bitcoin, it goes all the way down to eight decimal places.
And so it's not.
The smallest unit of Bitcoin is actually one Satoshi, and 100 million Satoshi equals one Bitcoin, which is 100 million.
Yeah, 100 million.
Financial Censorship Risks00:02:42
So it divides way more than the US dollar.
So the US dollar divides down to the penny, which is a fairly small amount.
It actually costs more than a penny to produce a penny.
I'm sure you've heard that.
With Bitcoin, it goes all the way down to a Satoshi, which currently is worth about 120th of a penny.
So it's way less, way more divisibility than the penny.
How much is one Bitcoin worth right now?
Do you know?
It is currently worth $56,000.
So, yeah.
So, and it's been kind of going crazy over the past few months and it does have a lot of volatility.
But 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 anarcho capitalist cypherpunks or something like that.
And then 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 PayPal account, so people can donate to WikiLeaks so they can expose more things from the government and so on.
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 him off.
And at the time, WikiLeaks was looking around for some way to still take donations.
And then they found Bitcoin, and essentially they started taking donations in Bitcoin.
They started in 2011.
Fun fact they're still running off the donations from 2011 because Bitcoin's price has increased so much.
So obviously it was like way less than a dollar back then.
And it's like $56,000 now.
They've done really well as a result, but it comes back to this sort of like financial censorship that's inherent in a lot of this stuff.
But, and you know, we can definitely talk about that as Christians get more persecuted around the world, and even in the United States, right?
We're being labeled like, you know, domestic terrorists or something like that.
There's a very decent chance that our bank accounts might be taken away, much in the same way that PayPal sort of cut off WikiLeaks accounts against them.
So, yeah.
So, okay, so decentralized, yeah, no, that's very helpful.
So, decentralized, digital, and scarce.
The Moral Case for Scarcity00:08:03
Now, help me theologically what is it about a currency being decentralized and digital and scarce that makes it more moral than our current form of currency today?
That makes it more righteous and in line with biblical principles.
Why should Christians care about Bitcoin?
Yeah, and that's an excellent question.
And we cover a lot of it, obviously, in this book.
Thank you, yeah.
But the main thing is that when you put a third party or some centralized controller over a currency, it produces all sorts of moral hazards.
So, a moral hazard is the ability to benefit yourself at the expense of everybody else.
And this is something that happens with the current fiat monetary system all the time.
So, just as sort of like a thought experiment and something to sort of get your juices flowing in your brain, think about the last.
You know, say 50 years or so, where are the best and the brightest people in the world going to right now?
Like these are the people, the 21 year olds that just graduated from Harvard or Stanford or MIT.
Where are they going?
What industry have they been going for the last 50 years?
Well, a lot of them have been going into tech, but a lot of them have been going into investment banking, right?
Investment banking is the place to be.
Now, why are they going into there?
Is it because they all have such a passion for investment banking that You know, this is the thing that they've wanted to do all their lives.
Not really.
It's because that industry happens to be very near what we would call the money printer, the people that can produce more money.
And all banks kind of have this ability to print more money.
And it's not just the central bank, the Federal Reserve, that gets to print money.
It's everybody underneath them.
In fact, every loan is really new money being printed.
And the thing about printing money is that.
When you print some amount of money, you are diluting everyone else's savings.
So, in a way, every time you print money, you are stealing from everybody else.
You're stealing value from everyone else.
And this is the sort of like the theology of it is that we're told not to steal, right?
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.
And this is the thing with the current monetary system vast majority of people 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 kind of, the central money printer can kind of take that away.
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.
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.
So it used to be like sort of under hard money or whatever, you would have a budget of $3 trillion.
Well, now you can spend $3 trillion and that's it.
If you wanted to spend any more, you would have to get into debt and you would have to find people that were willing to lend to you.
And this was often very exorbitant because governments aren't very good at paying back debt.
Uh, you know, they would charge like 8%, 10%, 12%, and they'd be like, Well, we can't afford that because then next year's tax revenue, we won't have a budget for that, and so on.
Instead, the system we have now is that if you have three trillion in tax revenue and you can spend five trillion or six trillion or whatever amount you want, the deficit or the amount that needs to be made up just gets sold as treasury bonds.
Now, that's roughly the equivalent, but whatever the market doesn't buy.
The Federal Reserve buys it, they essentially print money into existence so that the government can spend however much they want.
And in fact, the we have like a 27 trillion dollar federal deficit, the M2 money supply, which is one measure of all of the dollars that exist, is only like 19 and a half trillion.
So that tells you that a lot of that the monetary expansion has been at the feet of government, they've been expanding money continuously by always sort of like deficit spending, and they need to do that because.
They don't get enough tax revenue and they have all of these services that they need to continue to fund.
So, what does that do, like from a moral perspective?
First of all, it makes politics, it makes absolutely everything political because the government can and will do almost anything.
It used to be that we'd have personal responsibility, that you're responsible for yourself.
And the government is really there to make sure that fairness is observed, that if somebody is committing fraud, that somebody can adjudicate.
If there's external threats that we can defend against it and things like that.
Instead, it's become this, you know, like responsible for everything because, in a sense, what everyone is asking is, well, if you, you know, they can print money whenever they want.
So when people ask, well, then why aren't you taking care of me, right?
Why can't I get health care from you?
Why can't I get, you know, housing from you?
Why can't you do all of these things?
Don't you have the moral imperative now to take care of me now that you can print money?
Whenever you want.
If you're printing for the sake of doing X, Y, or Z, well, why aren't you doing that for me?
So it puts this enormous burden on essentially the central authority and it gives them enormous amounts of power because they have this power to print money.
And that means that they can fund any program they want, you know, like go start wars wherever they want, you know, create all sorts of boondoggle programs to employ whoever.
Like they can do.
Basically, anything.
And in a sense, they feel morally obligated to because they have the power of money printing.
And the whole system becomes sort of very political.
It's no longer about whether or not you should collect taxes and do whatever.
It's all about, I want you to do this versus I want you to do that.
I want you to spend money on this war, or I want you to spend money on my healthcare, or I want you to spend.
It becomes sort of like a tug of war for the resource, which is the federal money printer.
Before it used to not be like that, and governments used to be much, much smaller for a very good reason because they couldn't be.
Instead, it's completely bloated.
And essentially, all of those people, all of the edifice of all of these social programs and pretty much all of the regulation and everything, they end up rent seeking.
And this is something that I think you can look up in Timothy.
I think the Bible basically calls them busybodies, right?
People that are just sort of like looking like they're doing something when they're actually not providing value.
And the Bible condemns them for a very good reason.
But we got an entire government.
In fact, most companies have large portions of busybodies or rent seekers all over the place because you have the money printer that is able to fund all of them.
Dilution of Savings00:14:24
And that in turn causes an economy to be filled with a bunch of zombie companies, right?
Like companies that you're not sure what they actually do, but they're really good at getting federal subsidies.
So they continue to exist despite not really providing that much value to society.
So, you get all these weird incentives.
You get, and you even get like changes to sort of like how people behave.
A lot of people, instead of like saving, they consume because debt is like just so readily available to them.
How many people do you know that get into like insane amounts of credit card debt because they can get things right now?
And again, that's debt, right?
That's created out of thin air.
That's money printed on behalf of the people that are spending with the credit card.
And of course, they have to sort of like be enslaved afterwards.
And that it causes all sorts of evil in civilization.
And at the root of it is the monetary system.
And it is a corrupt cesspool of theft that has caused a lot of these ills that we see today.
That's, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Let me ask you this.
You've mentioned a couple of times now.
And so I just want you to flesh it out a little bit more.
But you said when somebody offers a loan, You know, or you mentioned just briefly the credit cards scenario that, you know, that somebody can have that instant gratification, right?
And I remember me and you were talking about this when we had lunch together.
You know, in olden days, you know, if you wanted something, you'd have to take maybe it takes seven years, like Jacob worked for Rachel, you know, seven years and he got Leah and he worked seven more years, got Rachel.
But the work was up front, the reward was after the work was done, right?
And it's hard even teaching that principle to our children these days let's do the work first and then we reap, you know.
I mean, that is biblical.
There's sowing and reaping, right?
There's planting.
And harvest.
That's just the way God's, when we think of God as the creator, it's his world.
That's the way he set it up.
He set things in motion to where you don't get to eat something and then pay for it afterwards.
And so, anyway, so that makes a lot of sense.
But you mentioned like with credit card or loans, you mentioned that being in relation to printing.
So I always think that when somebody gives a loan, right?
If I loaned money to a friend or something like that, I would actually be giving someone something that I actually have.
But it seems like you're implying.
That we have credit card companies or we have the federal government, you know, or even in the housing market, banks that are actually essentially printing.
They're not actually loaning a resource to someone else that they actually have.
They're printing this fake.
Could you explain that?
Am I right?
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
And that is something that a lot of people don't understand.
So, say you're getting a mortgage, right?
A lot of people, that's their biggest purchase of their lives.
Say the house is like, you know, $500,000 or something, and you get a loan for $400,000.
Where does that $400,000 come from?
Usually, currently, like a 30 year mortgage 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 to do.
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 they had a lot of money but real money that they actually possessed and they were content to get slow returns.
But it sounds like what you're about to say is no, the bank writes on a napkin or something like that, you know, we're giving you three, but they never had in the first place.
No, no, they don't, that's right, because there's no investor that would that would take a three percent return over 30 years, right?
Like that that takes way too long.
The term of the long loan is.
Too long, and uh, and they wouldn't do it right.
Like, uh, there are lots of investments that get way more than three percent, so for them, it doesn't make any sense.
So, what is going on?
How are they getting this money?
Well, they print it into existence, they create the loan on your behalf, um, in the same way that they create loans for businesses, they that in the same way that the central bank uh creates uh creates money for the benefit of the federal government, all of all every loan.
In this economy, in the central bank backed fiat economy, almost every loan is basically 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.
They might have $10 in deposits, but they loan out $100.
And the way they do that is they just put $100 in their account, and here it is.
And in fact, that 10% reserve requirement has been completely eliminated.
So basically, they can.
Print that every bank can print as much as they want.
So if they get, it used to be in the past that if you had like $300,000 in the vault or something like that, 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, 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.
Get your money back.
Make as much money as you might, or even get back your money.
But instead, what a bank does is if you meet a certain standard, then you lend to all of them, and they can because this is sort of federally regulated.
And in fact, the mortgage itself is insured by somebody called Fannie and Freddie.
So all of that is there's no risk to the bank at all, right?
And they get to collect interest on it on money that they created out of thin air.
And that's how they do it.
Money that they didn't even work to.
Whereas you and me, we would have to work really, really, really hard to store up that money and then lend it out, which means that we can't do certain things because we're putting that money on pause, real money, and we'd have to wait 30 years.
And for us to get rich that way, we'd have to be like vampires with like a thousand year long lifespans and stuff like that.
Yeah.
So it's exactly, exactly.
Yeah.
Oh, it's completely not fair.
And the thing is, the bank benefits and the loaner benefits, right?
Because obviously they're getting this loan.
The bank obviously benefits because they're.
Getting to collect interest and they created this money into existence.
And this is the key to economics.
Those two benefit, but what just happened?
Who's the actual one hurting?
What are the unseen effects?
Well, the unseen effect is that everybody's dollar is diluted just a little bit by the amount that it was expanded.
And this is something that a lot of people sort of overlook.
It's like, well, I got a loan, I'm fine.
It helped me or it helped my neighbor.
What's the big deal, right?
Like, how can you condemn that?
Well, you have to recognize that the US dollar, everyone that has the US dollar is now diluted by that much.
And it's not just people in the United States.
The biggest holders of US dollars are actually abroad.
It's people in third world countries, right?
Where their own currency is so bad that they use dollars to transact in a lot of stuff, right?
I have a friend from Nigeria, Timmy, who wrote my second book with me.
And we were talking about the dollar, and someone was saying, Oh, the Nigerians, they use the Naira.
They don't care about the dollar.
He's like, Are you kidding me?
The dollar was the most important currency in my entire life.
I couldn't care less about the Naira if I had the dollar because that was the stable currency for me.
And you're really diluting their savings.
Wow.
And that's the thing that a lot of people don't get.
And so every loan that comes into existence, and this is at every level, this is For companies, right?
Like they issue corporate bonds or whatever.
And, you know, a lot of banks and commercial banks and stuff buy them up out of using money created out of the same way.
If it meets like a certain bond grade or whatever, you know, they'll just buy it, right?
Like this is how the whole system works.
The entire system is based on debt that comes from nothing.
And it dilutes everybody else every time.
So, what happened?
The incentives in the system then are.
Everybody is up to their eyeballs in debt.
And this is true at the consumer level, at the company level, at the government level.
And this is very obvious because if you're keeping it in cash, well, you're constantly getting diluted.
But if you're in debt, then you're okay because, in a sense, as it expands, it'll get cheaper to pay off.
You're right.
And it's very important.
So actually working hard, storing up, because I mean, the Proverbs all throughout the scripture, especially the Proverbs talk about.
You know, how the wisdom and the diligence and the, you know, just the ethics of working hard and preparing and storing up.
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.
But the person who has debt, there's like this, like, like anti, Moth and rust that's actually chipping away at his debt, making his debt smaller.
So he's actually, so the guy in debt is actually, so the word of God tells us not to be in debt 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.
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.
That's probably why we have so many debtors, because debt often doesn't really feel real.
It doesn't actually feel real.
The way that biblically it should.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, absolutely.
And a lot of people are in debt and in slavery and don't even know that they're in slavery, right?
How many people do you know that still have like student loans that they're paying off, right?
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.
And at this point, it's like if I had student loans, I wouldn't be trying to pay it off with the threat, you know, because that's what it actually is.
But, you know, the promise.
Of Biden, you know, and hey, we'll just do $50,000 and not just $10,000, but $50,000.
And when you think who has $50,000 worth of school loan debt, it's not really those people who are impoverished.
It's not really the poorest of the poor.
The people with $50,000 of school loans are typically, you know, people who are bigger earners, people who with better careers, the people who don't need their debt paid off.
And if that happens, you know, like, 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.
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 let's apply theology to money, let's apply it to Bitcoin, all these things.
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.
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.
And so, all that being said, my point is just to say that, like, if school loans get paid off, then all of a sudden what you're doing is you're incentivizing people to get into debt.
And those who worked really, really hard to pay off their debt, you're actually stealing from them.
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 by 30,000.
Your savings is being diluted by the unemployment.
We should have kept that money and I could have invested that into a house that's appreciating in value.
And, you know, but we were taught, Dave Ramsey, I think of it like, pay off your debt first, pay off your debt first.
And it doesn't actually sound like it's working.
It works in God's world.
And this is God's world.
But I think it's so corrupt right now.
It's been twisted, right?
The fiat world has.
Has all of the wrong incentives, and you do get into debt and you do get into slavery.
But a lot of people don't even recognize that they're in slavery, that they're, you know, like slaves to their appetites, for example.
I mean, how many people are overweight right now?
You know, this whole system is like encourages consumption because you can have anything you want right now because we will print money for you so you can have it right now.
Only thing is, you're going to be, you know, in debt for and enslaved to us for like the next.
20 years.
How many people do you know like work jobs that they hate?
Right.
Because it pays a lot of money.
And why do they need that money?
Because usually it's some sort of lifestyle, but usually it's some form of debt of some kind that they already consumed.
And this is the thing if you keep getting into this mentality of consume now, pay it off later, it has an effect on your soul and it changes the way you think about things.
Breaking Debt Slavery00:13:37
And unfortunately, this has also come into the church.
Many of whom buy like these giant, beautiful buildings that they can't possibly afford, but they're quote unquote doing it in faith.
When in reality, they're just getting into slavery to the bank.
And ultimately, what that usually ends up in is even if they're somewhat successful, they end up finding alternative means of revenue, including renting out their church for preschools during the week or having lots of weddings there so they can pay off their mortgage, having all sorts of ministries.
Right.
And those things wouldn't necessarily be inherently wrong.
But ultimately, the big idea that I think what you're getting at is.
What it ultimately leads to is compromise in the sense that, like, all right, like, well, we, you know, it's not just the pastor's salary, but we have this massive, you know, loan that we have to pay, this massive mortgage.
And then all of a sudden, you know, maybe attendance starts to dwindle or people don't like that the pastor's preaching faithfully and he's preaching with courage and he's attacking things, you know, in the cultural sphere that aren't in line and in submission to the will of Christ.
And people are leaving.
And it's just this constant temptation to, For the ministry, the theology, the preaching to compromise, to compromise, to compromise.
Yeah, I think we talked about this before, and I really like the way you put it.
You know, you can either be, you know, a lot of nice Christians have a hard time with the truth.
And this is because, you know, when you're nice, you don't want to like contradict people or whatever.
I think the actual real way we're supposed to be is not be so nice.
But if you're a church and you're super nice, you get a lot of congregants.
And this is just the fact you get more.
More people that are tithing and so on.
So, like, the truth gets compromised.
And in a sense, you are a slave to the bank because, you know, the money that you have to pay off is ultimately at the root of all of these decisions that slowly eroded, you know, the doctrine of what's supposed to be.
And this is a sad reality of a lot of churches today.
And I've seen a lot of them like get into way too much debt and like just compromise in ways.
I mean, like, even just like thinking about what happened with Ravi Zacharias.
And how he was like leading his whole like double life and everything.
Um, I mean, the reason why he was like invited to everything and like what was because he was just so nice, right?
But why did he want to expand that ministry so big?
I there, there, there's parts of parts of uh, you know, uh, parts of uh, wanting to be famous or whatever, but there was always this like sort of availability of debt and and things like that to expand the ministry a little more.
And it's like, okay, the size of the ministry, look at look at how many people I'm reaching.
Becomes more important than being faithful to God's word, right?
Like, he was invited to a Mormon church, didn't say anything about how they were wrong or anything.
And, you know, like, right, yeah, there's so many ways in which you end up compromising for the money.
Yeah, it's just slavery.
So, you can be a slave to the fear of man, right?
So, you want people's approval, you want fame, you want glory, but you absolutely can be a slave monetarily that the debtor is slave to the lender.
And all these things are going to have an effect.
And this is why.
All Christians, but especially ministers of the gospel, should keep themselves pure from worldliness, that they shouldn't be enslaved to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
And so, by God's grace, when I was pastoring in San Diego, I've recently now moved to Texas, as you know, and planting a new church, Covenant Bible Church, the north side of Austin.
But when I was in San Diego, and I learned how to grow a church, and I also have some really great experience in how to shrink a church.
But during my last couple of years of my church shrinking strategies, Um, you know, as I was, you know, we preached first Timothy, and I, you know, I would get to hard text, and instead of breezing over it, I'd slow down.
We did first Timothy chapter 2, verse 9 through 15, where it talks about how women will be saved through childbearing, and how you know, yes, you know, she should be submissive and she should be quiet, and these kinds of things do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.
So I slowed down, did four weeks on that, and I was just telling our guest on um, on uh, another episode of Theology Applied, uh, that you know, that.
Each of those four weeks, the church lost 10 people a week.
Within one month, we lost close to 40 people.
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.
I had already learned how to live on little.
My wife and I were free from debt.
And the church didn't own any property, although we wanted to.
I wanted the church to get a building.
I wasn't thinking really about it.
I mean, the things you're saying are really, really interesting and it's convicting.
And I've got a lot, you're leaving me with a lot to think about.
But we were renting a school.
We didn't have a mortgage with the church.
We had a very low overhead with the church.
We were saving every single month, partly because my salary was probably too low, but we were saving easily 10 grand a month with the church.
And so every time I saw people leave, and I know this sounds vain, some of our listeners will be like, What?
I can't believe you think like that.
I'm telling you, your pastor thinks like this.
I'm not saying it's the predominant thought in his mind, but every time we saw people leave, I thought, We can afford it.
Now, I didn't want them to leave.
As a pastor, as a shepherd, I wanted to leave the 99, go for the one, and I often did.
I'd have conversations with them.
I mean, I made it hard for people to leave, sometimes too hard.
There were some people I probably just should have let go.
But, you know, as a shepherd, I wanted to bring them back.
I was like, I know you're offended, but I really don't think you should be.
This is what God's word says.
Can I answer your questions?
Do you have concerns?
But, you know, some people just didn't stick around.
And with the people that I couldn't save, meaning they're not a Christian, but I couldn't save as far as keeping them in the church, for those individuals, The one thing it hurt relationally, it was sad, it was painful.
But the one thing that I didn't have in addition to all that hanging over my head was will I be able to get a paycheck this month?
Because I knew financially we can afford to lose 40 people, 50 people, 60 people because my salary was low.
The overhead of the church overall was low.
And even when I left the church, a lot of pastors I knew another pastor who I, of course, won't name, but he resigned from ministry and he left his church and he left them with nothing.
They had Like, literally, zero dollars in the bank.
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.
$600,000, it's dwindling because of all the inflation and things you're talking about.
So they need to do something.
Maybe they take that $600,000 and put it in Bitcoin.
I don't know.
But the point is, I was able to leave them with something.
And all I'm saying is theologically, because some of our guests are, what is this?
But what's the biblical principle?
Having money in the bank as a church and not having a massive overhead and not having a mortgage, there was a freedom for me as a pastor when it came to how courageous I could be.
And you might just say, well, you should have had that freedom no matter what.
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
But at the same time, I also have to feed my wife and children.
I have certain responsibilities.
And you could say, well, maybe the real solution is for pastors just to be bivocational.
Well, that opens up a whole nother can of worms in terms of like, there's a reason why the Bible talks about.
The worker deserves the wages, don't muzzle the ox while he treads the grain.
And the Bible relates that to the pastor.
A lot of pastors, there's nothing wrong with being bivocational, 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.
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.
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.
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.
And so it's just like there's always at some angle, it's like it's easy to be owned, but, you know, and to be a slave to either the fear of man or to be a slave to mammon, to, to, To money.
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.
And you're kind of saying that maybe that even affects whether or not a church should have a building.
It's one thing to own it outright, to actually save up $4 million or whatever it costs, but to have that mortgage, it sounds like you're saying that's maybe not the best thing to do.
No, I think it's unbiblical.
I think it ultimately ends up corrupting the church.
And the thing is, like, all of these things work together, right?
Those people that left your church, well, they went to the church next door that's like super nice and has a beautiful building and has a mortgage.
The thing is, like, there are temptations for the congregants to go somewhere where, you know, they'll be more satisfied because, you know, they're not being condemned for, you know, sins that they're.
Practicing in their life, and instead they'll go to the pastor that'll tell them what they want to hear.
I mean, to me, that's what prosperity preaching is all about, right?
It's worshiping, you know, I'm worshiping money anyway.
So, can you tell me, give me a justification for why God says that's okay?
You know, that to me is what that is.
And, you know, all of these things work together.
And it is very, very difficult to find churches that are courageous.
And we just saw this with the entire coronavirus stuff.
Right.
Right, you know, they every single one of them seem to uh, well, not every single one, there's some notable exceptions and whatnot, but most they seem to just uh, just comply with whatever government said because they folded quickly, yeah, because in a sense they've built their identity on this niceness, uh, to to to a degree, and you know, they're they also might be taking PPP loans or you know, right?
I was going to ask you, what do you think?
Because I know a lot of pastors and churches that took the the triple P loans, arch, so that's another thing.
Like our church, you know, not only did I leave the church with money in the bank, but also we, on principle, didn't even apply for one of those loans because even though it's forgivable, I'm still under the impression that if you take the king's coin, you become the king's man.
And I don't want to be the only king whose man I want to be is King Jesus, not King Trump or King Biden.
So, what did you think about churches taking the triple P loans?
What do you think about that?
So, let me talk about the businesses that took the triple P loans and how that completely affects the economy.
Because I don't think this is very obvious to a lot of people.
Yeah, it helps a lot of those businesses stay alive.
Fine, that much is true.
And to a large degree, the government caused the crisis.
So they're helping them out.
And there's some justice in that.
But think about what happens with these businesses.
Who are they serving now?
It used to be that businesses serve the customer, right?
Like they were trying to fulfill the needs of the customer in some way, shape, or form with their good, Or service, and that's what a business should be.
There, it's to provide value to somebody else.
To me, that's what it means to love your neighbor, it's to provide value to them in a fair exchange, and that's totally fine.
But you take the PPP loan, what happens?
Well, now you are much more concerned with fulfilling the terms of the PPP loan, especially if it can be forgiven, in which case you don't care as much about your customers anymore.
And in fact, I've experienced this.
I tried to book an appointment with a service that I like, and they were like, Oh, you know what?
We don't have enough workers because we want to make sure that this PPP loan.
Lasts a long time.
So we're only hiring, like, we only have a certain number of slots.
And I'm like, this would never happen with a normal business.
You wouldn't turn a customer away because you want to make sure that they're satisfied.
Instead, what they've done is they're stretching it out.
We want to make sure we fulfill everything to the letter.
And that's what they do.
Now, thinking about it in a church context, that's what churches do too, right?
Like, who are you serving?
These businesses are serving the government.
Uh, whatever the terms of the PPP loan are, instead of their customer for a church, there's a much bigger calling here.
Who are you serving?
You should be serving God, instead, you are serving the terms of this loan, and that's that.
Those are that's a big credit.
Serving God Not Loans00:05:34
I mean, you can't serve both, you really can't.
That's right.
Somebody said that you can't serve two masters.
Who was that?
Uh, I the whole time you're talking, I kept thinking about Joseph.
Um, I just finished reading uh, Genesis, you know, and and uh.
And it's just interesting.
I kept thinking about, you know, when Joseph became, you know, second in command, you know, only second to Pharaoh himself, God elevated him and gave him favor.
And Pharaoh had this dream that God, you know, enabled Joseph to interpret the seven years of plenty and then seven years followed by seven years of famine.
It's interesting because what happened is during the seven years of plenty, they had a tax on all of Egypt where they had to give the fifth to Pharaoh, 20%.
And you hear that and you're like, 20%, that's a lot.
And then I, It's like, oh, wait, I live in America.
I guess it's somewhat, you know, but it's funny.
I mean, in Old Testament books, like with Israel, you know, they used to say that, you know, if you have a king, like for instance, like Samuel, you know, with the people, we want a king, we want a king.
And Samuel, he's dejected.
And, you know, the Lord says, they have not rejected you as prophet, but they've rejected me as God.
And, but before you, you know, go and give them what they want, they're asking, be careful what you wish for.
The Israel is asking for something wicked, but go ahead.
I'm going to give them what they want.
I'm going to use you, Samuel, to anoint a king.
But before you do, I want you to tell them what they're getting themselves into.
And so then Samuel gives them the warning of, like, if you have a king, this is what it's going to look like that, you know, your sons are going to be, you know, drafted into his militia and your daughter is going to be used in this way and you're going to have to pay taxes here and this and that.
And one of the things is that if you have a king, he might be such a tyrant one day down the line that you might have to pay almost 10% in taxes.
That's what the Bible says a tenth, a whole tenth of what you have.
And you look at that and that's, I mean, this is literally the word of God saying to Israel, like, if you get a king, it might be so oppressive.
So tyrannical, so horrible that you might have 10% in taxes.
And then you think of where we're at as a nation.
So, my point is in the midst of Pharaoh knowing, because the God of heaven gave him a supernatural dream and empowered Joseph to interpret it, knowing that there would be seven years of basically no crops, no harvest, no resources, no food.
And then seven years before that of plenty, under that dire of a situation, they only took 20%, right?
So, that's a very supernatural thing.
But the whole point that I'm trying to make is this.
Seven years of taking a fifth from all the Egyptians to Pharaoh.
And then it was after earning, right?
Creating, storing up.
They actually had the grain in silos.
They actually had the resources.
It wasn't just Pharaoh printing money.
It was like, no, I actually have all this grain.
And then what happened was when the seven years of famine hit, each year the people would come to get allotments.
And they had from giving their 20% to Pharaoh from seven years of plenty, they could give, you know, hand in these.
I don't know what it was, if it was a printed receipt or whatever it was, but they could go and they could say, Hey, this is the taxes that I paid, and they would get a return, and they'd get a return, and they'd get a return.
Now, finally, they ran out of that.
They ran out of their money that they could buy grain with.
And so then they eventually had to sell the land and themselves.
So they sold the livestock first, and then they eventually had to sell the land.
And so by the end of that seven years of plenty and then the seven years of famine, Pharaoh owned everything.
He owned the land of everyone except for his priest, because they had like an allotment from Pharaoh.
But all the people of Egypt.
They were a completely owned nation.
It's ironic, but Egypt, and this is before Egypt enslaved Israel, but Egypt, prior to being captors enslaving Israel, they were enslaved themselves.
They had to sell, not just use their money, but eventually they had to sell themselves and their land.
They no longer had any property.
It all belonged to Pharaoh in some way, some shape or form or another.
And I feel like that's.
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.
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, and then we bought it back from them to enslave ourselves.
They just had a magical machine and just printed grain.
Or the illusion of grain and started buying up all the people, whether it be a.
I feel like there are people in the government who are probably just in glee, you know, I mean, just so happy with COVID because triple P loans.
And we own this business, we own this church, we own this, we own that.
But it didn't cost them anything.
They didn't have to open a silo and let out real, tangible grain.
They just came up with this PPP loan.
And it's just, I'm just saying all that to say, I mean, that was a dire circumstance with Joseph.
And it still sounds better than the situation we're in, because at least it was the seven years of plenty first.
And there was actually grain stored up, and there was actually, you know, it was real.
Storing Value with Bitcoin00:02:46
And so it is scary to think like the things that you're saying, to think like where we're headed.
And it sounds like you think that Bitcoin may be the solution.
So, let me kind of wrap up the episode with this.
What can Christians do then?
What should Christians do to get out of slavery, to get out of debt, but also?
Knowing that we still live in a nation that's the way we do money in America isn't really great.
So, how can Christians get out of debt, which is good and biblical and right, but then not be penalized by their savings constantly being depleted through inflation?
And what should Christians do right now to build wealth and to be financially wise?
Yeah.
And this is the value proposition of Bitcoin it is essentially a savings technology.
This is what money should be.
It allows you to store value instead of having it sort of.
Of taken away from you by the central bank money printers.
And you can opt out of the system by buying some Bitcoin.
And if you use that as your savings, it will last because it is perfectly scarce.
There's 21 million.
So whatever portion you buy will still be the same portion.
The denominator on the US dollar constantly changes.
It grew like 30% last year alone.
So that tells you that your savings are being diluted if you keep it in dollars.
People put it in real estate or stock because it stores value better.
But those have been essentially hyperinflating over the last year because of all of the money printing that's going on.
Instead, you can opt out of the system and go with Bitcoin.
And this is what a lot of people are doing.
A lot of companies are doing it.
A lot of insurance companies are doing it.
Endowments are doing it.
And they're all doing it because they see the same thing that a lot of Bitcoiners do.
And hopefully you do, which is that the rest of the system is just.
Printing money like crazy.
And as a result of that, like everything, there's no safe place to put money really.
Bitcoin is one of the few places where, you know, I mean, admittedly, it's fairly young, but it's 12 years old.
But fiat money as it exists today only started in 1971.
So it's only 50 years old.
And the average lifespan of a fiat currency, according to a study of like 800 different fiat currencies, is 23 years.
So in a sense, it's like it never really works out when you have somebody in the middle all the time.
Time.
But with Bitcoin, this is hard money.
This is perfectly scarce.
And in a way, it gives us a way out of the current system.
You can save in it and do something with it.
Redeeming the Curse of Money00:07:21
And by God's grace, because of how it's appreciated, a lot of people have been able to pursue what God's calling is for them instead of working a job that you don't like to pay off debts that you spent on stuff that you didn't even really want.
Right.
Like that, that's the unfortunate situation a lot of people find themselves in.
So, yeah, we see at least me and my co authors that wrote the book, we see this as the redemption of money.
It's something that brings us closer to that principle of sowing and reaping that you laid out earlier.
You get to sow and reap instead of having it constantly eaten by moth and dust and whatever.
It's something that stores value and, and, You know, that's closer to what God intended than the current monetary system, which is a cesspool of theft.
Yeah, I love it.
And I think some of our listeners, I could just kind of hear in the back of my head them playing the devil's advocate and maybe pushing back and saying, but Joel, doesn't Jesus say that the only place to store true riches that moth and rust never destroy, it's not Bitcoin, it's not anything, it's not here on earth, it's in heaven?
And I think if any listener is thinking that, I think what I would say, and I think what Jimmy would agree with, is absolutely, heaven is the only surefire place where.
Where you're not stolen from and you're not robbed, and where your treasure endures forever and appreciates throughout eternity.
And yet, part of what we want to do as image bearers of the living God, and part of what we want to do as Christians is not just merely fulfilling the Great Commission in terms of conversions and baptism and preaching the gospel and discipling, making disciples, but part of the Great Commission, we always forget this part, is that we teach people to obey all of Christ's commands.
And part of what the gospel does is, first and foremost, it saves sinners by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
But part of what good gospel work also does in teaching those sinners now redeemed to obey all of Christ's commands is that the gospel and the kingdom of Christ, as it expands like a mustard seed, it starts small, but it begins to grow like a little bit of yeast working its way through the whole batch of dough.
The kingdom of God, this gospel advancement and teaching people, discipling them, and teaching them to obey all of Christ's commands, it pushes back the curse.
That's that Jesus.
It's not just that he's coming back one day to read.
Jesus is redeeming the world now.
He is ruling and reigning currently, seated at the right hand of his father.
And one by one, his enemies are being made subject to him and being placed as a footstool underneath his feet.
The world is getting better.
Poverty is becoming more scarce, and wealth is something that is growing.
And so, part of our duty as Christians is first and foremost to preach the gospel, to make disciples, to see people saved by the grace of God, to baptize them.
Into the name of the triune God.
But in all of our life, in entertainment and in media and in vocation and work and medicine and in money, we want to work to apply biblical principles and push back the curse.
And we know that the curse will never be completely pushed back until Christ returns.
And in the new heavens and the new earth, that's the place where moth and rust will never destroy even an ounce.
But that doesn't mean that we can't improve things now.
That doesn't mean that we can't build better barns now that are.
More protective and more wise and more just.
It's not just about protecting our stuff, but it's more moral, it's more righteous, it's more just, and it is more pleasing to the Lord.
And so, money is not the root of all evil.
As we know, it's the love of money.
And someone who's simply trying to be wise and protect wealth and protect the wealth of others, that doesn't mean that they're an idolater necessarily.
That doesn't mean that they are sinning or greedy necessarily.
It actually could be that they're actually doing something righteous, right?
When the Bible in the Old Testament talks about defending the defenseless.
Right, protecting the poor from being oppressed by rulers and by the rich.
And so I don't know everything that there is to know about Bitcoin.
I feel like I learned a ton tonight.
I feel like our listeners learned a ton tonight.
But from what I can tell right now, 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.
Jesus is redeeming not just people, but But this world, this is God's world.
He loves it.
He's not just going to throw it away.
When Christ returns, it's not for the earth to just be wadded up and thrown away like trash.
He is redeeming the cosmos and even the creation itself is groaning with eager expectations to be restored.
And that involves not just plants and trees, but all things, including currency.
And so, Jimmy, I just want to say thank you so much for you coming on the show.
And real quick, we always do a bonus question for our club members.
So let me wet the appetite.
If you're not a responder, that's what we call our club members.
I encourage you guys to.
To become a responder, sign up, support this ministry, pray for us, and you'll get to listen to the bonus question.
Here's the bonus question Jimmy, do you think that Bitcoin will significantly increase in its value in terms of its relation to the US dollar in the near future?
Or do you feel like it might already be a little bit inflated?
Aside from the moral motivations that we've already discussed, do you think that Bitcoin is a wise investment in the near future over this next year in today's economic climate with the changes in politics and all that kind of stuff?
So that's.
That's our question.
Real quick, let's go ahead and end the episode, and Jimmy will come back on for a few minutes and answer that.
But, real quick, could you tell our listeners how they can keep up with you and how they can follow you and see what God's doing in your life?
Well, I'm available on Twitter at Jimmy Song.
I have a website, programmingbitcoin.com.
It has links to all my books.
I also do a podcast, Bitcoin Fixes This, which you can find on iTunes and wherever you find podcasts.
And yeah, you can all of those channels, plus my newsletter, jimmy song.substack.com.
That's a technical newsletter.
So probably not necessarily as interesting.
Maybe for some of our listeners.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not technical, but if you're technical, yeah, that's where you can find me.
Cool.
Great.
And then one last time, I just want to go ahead and plug his book one more time.
We got Thank God for Bitcoin, the creation, corruption, and redemption of money.
He co authored this with a bunch of authors.
And I remember when we got lunch asking you, like, what was that like to write a book with eight people?
But it sounds like it was a blast.
I encourage you guys to get a copy.
Where can they get this, Jimmy?
Just Amazon?
You can get it on Amazon.
Okay.
We're working on the audiobook, but you can get a paper copy or on the Kindle, hopefully hardcover pretty soon.
Cool.
Thanks, Jimmy.
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