Pastor Ben Haley, welcome to the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
Thank you for having me, Jordan.
All right, man.
So again, for those who aren't familiar with who you are, what you do, why don't you give
a brief intro to all those folks out there?
Yes.
Pastor Ben Haley.
I am an ordained pastor in the PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, and I'm currently serving
as the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in College Station, a church plant that
I've been going now for a little over eight years. Love it. And in terms of just kind of your walk
with the Lord, basically when we have Christians on the podcast, we kind of ask them, before we
talk about their orange pill moment, we want to hear about their Jesus pill moment. So why don't
you kind of share that with us? How did you come to know the Lord? Yeah, thanks. So my story grew up
my parents divorced when I was four.
And I kind of lived a pretty,
might say split life,
lived with my mother,
but then had, you know,
visitation with my dad every other weekend
and that sort of thing.
And when I was with mom,
we went to church.
And when I was with dad,
if we were not at the farm,
if we were at the farm,
my grandmother took me to church.
If we weren't,
dad and I kind of hung out on Sunday mornings.
And so I lived with my mom, kind of became involved in the Baptist church that I was a part of,
and got baptized when I was eight or nine, but didn't really understand what was going on.
And our life was pretty chaotic.
My mom was into our second marriage that was pretty bad.
And my dad's health was failing, and I'm an only child.
Um, and so, you know, some pretty tough years in there.
Um, and this actually will intersect some with my Bitcoin story, but, uh, my parents
worked hard, but my dad was a high school basketball coach.
Uh, so they, they don't make a lot of money and my mom didn't have a college degree and
she was working hard.
Um, my grandparents had a big part in my life on my dad's side for sure, uh, living at the
farm.
Um, so I always had kind of what I needed, but in the, in the middle of that, I was like, I gotta,
I gotta make a life. Like I'm on, I'm on my own. Not to say people weren't loving me well, but
it really was like, I've got to carve out. And so I kind of plunged myself into academics, um,
and went to a, uh, two year boarding school in Mississippi that was, um, a math and science
school and kind of what year was this what year was this this would have been uh i graduated high
school in 96 okay and then um we didn't have a lot of money my mother was going through her second
divorce at the time my dad had retired early because he had kidney failures type 1 diabetic
um and so my parents were like we don't have any money you can't take any loans you can't work in
college, but you got to go to college. So they'd been telling me that for a couple of years, which
meant I got to find scholarships. And, um, so I ended up going to Delta State University in
Mississippi. It's a kind of a small state school because they, they paid for my college. Um, and so
went there and, uh, pleasure fraternity, uh, in, in college and, uh, kind of, you know, was not
really doing the church thing at all.
But then it was January of my freshman year
when you have what's called Hell Week.
That's just a code for initiation week.
And one of the brothers in the fraternity was a Christian.
And when it's Hell Week,
you have to do whatever the actives say, right?
You're a pledge of fraternity.
You just have to do whatever they tell you to do.
And so me and a good friend of mine, Bubba,
That was his name.
Bubba's a great guy.
Me and Bubba were like really tight.
We were both pre-med, pre-dental.
And so Brad, this guy Brad, he was like, you and Bubba got to go to this Bible study with me.
And so we had to go.
And so we went to this minister's house and there was about 25, 30 students there.
And he starts talking about the Bible.
And I'm like, I have never heard anybody talk about the Bible like this.
I mean, it was powerful. And so, you know, uh, we got initiated that week and then we didn't have to do anything. I was like, man, I got to go back to that Bible study. I ain't never heard anybody talk about the Bible like that.
Wow. And so I kept going. And the minister, who's still a dear mentor in my life, he just took me under his wing.
And then he was like, hey, we got this beach conference in May. You want to go with us?
And I'm like, heck yeah, I'll go to the beach, you know. And I was like, I don't have any money.
He's like, we'll pay for it. I was like, all right. So I went to this beach conference.
Well, that Bible study was. Was this down in Florida? What beach were you at?
Illa Guna Beach Christian Retreat Center, which now in my ministry career, I think I've spent 23 weeks of my life at that place.
But anyway, so we went to this beach conference and there was all these, they were, they were past, you know, we had large group times and then we had seminars.
And I went to everything and, you know, I was more excited about the three on three basketball, you know, tournament there.
But anyway, we got in the car to come back, and we were in a 15-passenger van, a bunch of students, and the minister put me in the front of the van.
We had a nine-hour drive back.
And I was like, Ricky, I didn't understand anything anybody said.
Like, what is this?
Like, what?
And he just preached the gospel to me for like nine hours.
Then I went home for the summer.
I went over the summer because I was working on the farm and bagging groceries, the local grocery store.
And anyway, I remember emailing him.
This was in 97.
I sent him an email and I was like, what is grace?
Like, what is that?
To kind of tell you that I was so steeped in establishing the sense that I needed to establish myself in life.
Right.
What is grace?
And he sent me a couple of books.
One little book called From Religion to Christ.
It's a little commentary on Nicodemus' conversion.
It was really good.
It had a powerful impact.
So anyway, went back.
I wasn't a Christian.
Went back to school that fall.
I'd been involved in cheating in class.
And for the record, I've since confessed all that to the dean.
And several years later, I went back.
And anyway, so I was just not doing good.
I mean, and, but I was still going to RUF, the Bible study.
And the minister.
What is, what is RUF?
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
RUF is the National Campus Ministry Agency for the PCA.
And it's pretty large nationwide ministry.
So anyway, that was what that thing was.
I didn't know what it was at the time.
But I just knew this minister was loving me and praying for me.
And, and anyway, so I, ironically, I was actually leading music because I could play the guitar and he didn't have anybody and he knew I wasn't a Christian, but he didn't care.
He was like, he just wanted me, he needed somebody and he wanted me as close as possible, which I just really love.
But anyway, so fast forward, uh, sophomore year fall.
I'm just like, I'm just under the, what I now know is under the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Right.
And I came home for Christmas break and I grabbed my climate tree stand and I went to the woods to deer camp and I climbed a pine tree every day in my climate stand.
But I took a Bible with me.
I started reading the Psalms and I got Psalm 32.
You know, bless the man whose transgressors are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
And then on into that Psalm, like my strength was sapped, it was in the heat of summer.
And I was like, Lord, I feel this.
What is going on?
I need you.
And I became a Christian.
And then I came back, and I was presented with the same opportunity to engage in some sin patterns, and I just said no.
And I called my minister, and I was like, I said no.
I said no.
He's like, boy, I think you've become a Christian.
And so that's my—and then so got involved in RUF, and I was still pre-med in college, but simultaneously joined a church, got involved in the church.
started helping with youth group, started discerning a call to ministry over about a two-year period, married Beth.
And then when she finished college, we actually moved to Jackson.
I went to Reform Seminary in Jackson.
Did RUF for four years at Hans Community College and nine years of RUF at Texas A&M
and now in my ninth year planting at Redeemer.
So there you go.
Two kids.
Hannah's 21.
She's a junior at A&M.
Nathan's a freshman at Mississippi State.
Yep.
There you go.
That's wild.
So tell me, well, tell me as much as you want to tell me about how you met Beth and what that looked like.
Yeah, so Beth showed up a year after me.
This is a funny story, too.
She showed up at Delta State.
She was a year behind me.
I was, again, this was fall of my sophomore year.
And like I said, I was leading music at RUF, but like I was still living in sin.
Yeah.
And she showed up.
And I'm like...
That is the most amazing girl I've ever seen in my entire life.
And I remember sitting in the cafeteria with my minister.
He's like, boy, that girl's a Christian.
You know?
That girl got the ghost.
That girl's a Christian.
And so I just, he said, you need to focus on the relationship with the Lord and what he's doing in your life.
And I did.
And, you know, I got on my knees and I begged Jesus to save me in those moments.
But anyway, about five minutes after I became a Christian, I asked Beth out.
So, yeah, we met at RUF, and we got married pretty young.
I was 21.
She was 20.
So middle of her junior year.
Yep.
That's great.
Yep.
Love it.
She still is the most amazing woman I've ever met in my life, for the record.
Again, I won't confirm that because I'm also married, but I can confirm she's an awesome lady.
She's awesome.
She's a winner.
Okay, so Ben, so then now tell us your Bitcoin story.
So you were a minister.
When did you become a minister?
2004, I was ordained.
I had done three years of youth ministry from 01 to 04, but officially ordained in June of 2004.
Okay, so you're ministering in Mississippi and other places?
In Mississippi until I was 30. We moved here in 08 for me to do RUF at Texas A&M.
Yep.
Gotcha. Okay. And so now kind of you can go whatever path you want to. Tell us your Orange
Bell story. What did that look like?
Yeah. So the stories kind of intersect, right? So in the sense that the scarcity of being a child
of divorced parents, you know, my mother grew up below the poverty line. And again, my family were
all basketball coaches. And so we weren't just like loaded or anything, but anyway.
So one of the things that, um, you know, being a child of divorced parents, kind of lower income,
um, money is always an issue. Um, it's just an issue. And so you have, you know, when you're a
kid, you're like, mom, can I go do this? We need to ask your dad, you know? And, and so I, I had
to kind of manage that.
For the record,
I love my parents.
My dad passed away in 02
from competition with diabetes.
My mother's an amazing woman
and she and I have talked at length
about all those days
and those hard, hard days
that she had,
that we had together, et cetera.
But anyway,
just kind of that constant
back and forth of like,
I want to go to Philmont.
I need somebody to pay.
Can somebody help me pay for this?
I was in the Boy Scouts.
I want to go to Philmont.
I want to go on the second trip.
And it's like,
we don't have any money.
and it was just back and forth.
And then, you know, another story I had kind of taken note here is when my dad,
you know, I spent every other weekend with him, but then on my off weeks,
he'd come take me out to eat.
He lived about 30 minutes away.
And I just remember getting in the car with him one time, and he was just like,
I don't have enough money for us to go get us home to eat.
And I wasn't mad or anything, but my point there is when you're a child,
you make these subconscious childhood vows.
It's very important, I think, for a person to go back
and kind of think about these subconscious childhood vows that you make.
And one of those vows that I now look back and realize I made was
I will never need anything from anybody in my life.
I will make sure, especially financially, that I will not go without.
And so you kind of fast forward, and that means that I plunge myself into academics.
I'm like, I got to get ahead.
I've got to find a really high-paying job.
I do not want to worry about money.
And so that's kind of tracking in me.
And I became a Christian, and of course the Lord begins to work in my heart in a lot of ways.
I will say on the flip side of that story, my family was very generous.
Even with what little they had.
So, and one of the things my mother had me do when I was little, I can't even remember, is, you know, the marshmallow crane jars, the glass ones that you would make Rice Krispie Treats out of?
So, she cleaned those out.
She cleaned two of them out.
And she screwed the lid back on the top.
And they're empty.
And she cut a hole in the top of each.
And she labeled one tithe and the other one life savings.
And she said, no matter what, this is what we do.
And it was just, boom, right there.
And so that's one of her legacies that I really, really appreciate.
But anyway, the other side is like my grandmother was always slipping me money, you know.
And the culture, the old Southern culture of we're going to help out family was very much present in my family system that I very much appreciate.
So kind of got those two parallel things going.
So anyway, my dad was actually a high school economics teacher while he was a basketball coach.
And he was always preaching about economics.
I didn't know what economics was, but now that I'm in this Bitcoin journey, I remember all these things he used to say.
So anyway, one of the things he started preaching to me early is like, you got to get a Roth IRA.
You got to do a Roth IRA.
Like they came out, I don't know when they came out, early 90s, mid 90s, something.
He's like, this is what you got to do.
And so I just listened to him.
So I had a little extra money left over from my scholarship.
So I started a Roth IRA when I was 20 years old.
Wow.
Anyway, then my dad passed away, and the little money that he left us, I stuck it in right off the race.
Dumped it in, yeah.
So, you know, fast forward to last year, 2024, January 2024.
You know, I'm looking at my returns, and I had set it up as, like, fairly aggressive.
Like, you know, and this is also part of my Bitcoin mindset.
It's like, man, I got riches coming in heaven, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's go with what we think might be a good idea.
Let's not live in, you know, my counselor says I'm a thrill seeker.
Anyway, but I have my own versions of that, like church planting and Bitcoin.
But anyway, so anyway, fast forward, you know, I'm looking at my returns.
Well, it'd been like 20 years since I'd put a little money in the Roth,
and I hadn't been good about contributing all the time to it, on and off, you know.
And I was like, 8% return in 20 years.
I'm like, everybody told me that was the right thing.
We were hardcore Dave Ramsey when we first got married.
Like we were the envelope system.
Yeah.
Um, and I will say over the years, that childhood vow, you know, of, I'll never, we will never
have a need for money.
Didn't always, wasn't, wasn't always good.
It really wasn't.
I mean, like my wife, remember my wife called me one time, we had two little babies and I
was out, I was maybe 30 minutes away from her at a conference room.
She called me and she's like, and I'd always told her, I was like, hey, when there's a thunderstorm nearby, we got to cut the air conditioning off because we can't afford to replace it.
She called me and she's like, honey, we're dying from heat.
Can I please turn the air on?
And one of my friends looked at me and he was like, I mean, he lit into me.
And I was like, he's right.
So there was definitely these negative expressions of this childhood vow that cost my family that I am ashamed of.
So anyway, so I'm looking at my Roth IRA returns.
I'm looking at some of my other retirement returns.
And I'm like, at the same time, Beth grew up with Joel Bumgar.
No way.
Shout out to Joel.
They were in youth group together.
Get out of here.
And Joel's been very successful.
He's a hard worker.
He built a business for 10 years, from the decade of 00 to 10,
he was the only company in Mississippi that grew 100 per year for 10 straight years Oh my gosh He extremely brilliant Well he sold his company and he public about this
He gave a ton of that money away.
He just gave it away.
Yeah.
And then he ran for office.
He was an eight-year Mississippi State,
state of Mississippi representative,
and then he discovered Bitcoin.
Well, Joel is just, when the ETFs got approved in January,
he just starts posting on Facebook every single day about this thing.
And I'm like, and I'm just like, what is this thing that he keeps talking about?
It's wearing me out, you know?
And I was like, the problem is Joel's conviction unnerved me a little bit
because I was like, here's a guy I trust a lot.
here's a guy who's 100% dedicated first and foremost to Jesus.
And here's a guy that's technically very savvy.
I mean, he built computers down to the circuits.
I mean, and so he's talking about this thing.
And all of a sudden, so I'm looking at my returns on my Roth,
and he's talking about this Bitcoin thing.
And I'm like, I need to look at this.
so for about six weeks i just read everything he had i watched all of his videos i watched all the
videos he recommended this was in about march of last year and this is what happened within a week
of me like it clicking for me and it going i can't unsee yep the history of money the history of fiat
currency, what is the nature of money, how is fiat, you know, debasement, inflation, everything
that I've been reading. I was like, I can't unsee all of that. At the same time, my wife gets
diagnosed with stage three cancer, right in the middle of that. And so we're in the middle of this
orange pilling moment, Beth gets diagnosed with stage three cancer, and we kind of have a discussion.
She's like, I was like, baby, we're about to go all in on Bitcoin.
Like, you know, and she's like, we had had a Zoom with Joel, Beth, and I together.
We did that.
I said, hey, let's sit down together.
He spent over an hour with us just kind of talking through all the different concerns there.
And so what happened was Beth's diagnosed with state-free cancer.
I needed a healthier, I needed a healthy way to deal with that.
And so I began to study Bitcoin on my off time at night and evenings, hundreds of hours studying, reading, listening to podcasts, connecting with guys like you and Tim Fox and Jim at Magnalia.
And so I just plunged in as far as like, what is this understanding this?
And that happened kind of throughout the summer.
And then in October of 24, somewhere in there, September, October, BlackRock comes out with their paper essentially promoting or might say like recommending that all portfolios have some percentage of allocation towards Bitcoin.
And I kind of went, that is big.
And then it hit me.
It hit me like, wait a minute.
we should study this the institution of the church we should study this
yeah this is this is something that i have a personal conviction about but now we have
the largest asset manager in the world producing a paper that says you might want to look into this
yeah so i literally cooked up that overture and i'll explain if you'd like me to i can explain
kind of an overture.
Yeah, exactly.
Explain what that is for folks.
Yeah.
So in the PCA, we have a book of church order, for example.
And if you would like to see changes made to that book of church order, or you would
like the denomination to study a specific subject that's related to the health of the
church, for example, or some sort of theological, you know, doctrinal aberrations that are floating
out there in society that we would like to study and address. The way you do that is you write
what's called an overture and you say, you know, I would like the General Assembly to consider
making this change in the Book of Church order. For example, we make little tweaks to the BCO
often because we have a judicial case and we feel like we realize we got a gap or we got a
loophole somewhere. We need to kind of close that in and stuff like that. Okay. Just real quick,
back up a little bit and kind of describe what, what kind of stuff is in the book of church order.
Is it, is it like theological stuff? Is it like cases of stuff that's happened? What does it look
like? Yeah. So, you know, there's, you know, there's our system of, it's our system of government.
So it's like how, you know, how you ordain pastors, what are sessions, what is session meeting, how often should you have sessions as elders?
How do you, and then you've got like discipline cases.
is how do you handle a pastor who's committed a sin or is in theological error,
or how does a congregant file a complaint against the action of a session?
And you have the Director of Public Worship, Part 3.
Some of it is binding with the sacraments.
Some of it is just beautiful language on what worship looks like.
And so that's the bulk of our book of church order.
And it's a thing that we take vows to.
We basically say, hey, we're going to work this way.
And if we want to change things, we can bring these overtures through a presbytery.
So I wrote this overture in December and I sent it to my presbytery.
And the overture was to encourage churches, presbyteries, and our denominational agencies to study the wisdom of including Bitcoin in their respective balance sheets.
That was the overture.
And then you have all of these whereases, which is kind of the rationale for why you think that's a good idea.
You might quote the BCO.
You might quote the Westminster Confession.
You quote the Bible.
You might quote current research.
And so it's kind of a one-sheet executive summary of the subject matter that you would like for our denomination to consider.
So it comes to our presbytery and it actually passed our presbytery in January of 25, which means it will automatically go to the overtures committee at General Assembly that meets two days before the General Assembly.
So you have all of these overtures that come from all of these different presbyteries that could be dealing with different changes, proposed changes to our books to Georgia, could be dealing with, you know, again, these theological doctrinal studies that you would like to see done, things like that.
They all come together, Overtures Committee, two days before General Assembly.
And General Assembly is kind of the national meeting of our denomination.
Coincidentally, or you might say providentially, I actually happened to be the Overtures Representative for our Presbytery this year.
I'd actually been elected in 24, but when my wife got diagnosed with cancer, I didn't go to General Assembly.
So they delayed my appointment for a year.
Anyway, so, and you can jump in and interrupt questions.
What I was just going to say is give us like two or three examples of other overtures that maybe have been implemented into the BCO or maybe that haven't.
Or just what are some issues that in the past few years that have gotten their own overture?
Man, it's really, it could be micro or it could be macro.
It can be micro on, hey, we did a study and we actually think two-thirds of people need to be present instead of three-fourths on this particular kind of boat.
It could be, you know, clarifying, you know, like we did one a couple of years ago to kind of cement the chaplain status, our military chaplain status.
And that gave them a better freedom and a better kind of, how do I say it, status with the military.
Because we as their denomination endorsed, hey, this is their status.
And so they needed that.
And for us, so it's all those kinds of, that's a macro thing.
You got a micro thing.
And, you know, so you got all those kind of, we had 40 overtures this year.
Yeah.
But what happens at Overtures is, yeah, they all come together, and then we end up probably consolidating 10 down to 1 because they're the same subject.
Yeah.
Yeah, the thing I would point out, because I'm sure we have people who are from different denominational backgrounds, so there's people I'm sure who are listening to this who are thinking to themselves, oh my gosh, do you really need all that?
And I think the thing that I have come to just appreciate, again, different denominations emphasize different aspects of the character of God.
And one of the things that Presbyterians do really well is just the order of God. There's order and intentionality. And so a desire for there to be careful thought for everything that we do in representing God as the church and as his shepherds, if you're a pastor, there's a lot of care that goes into, and a lot of thought that goes into making sure that we're able to love our neighbor.
You know, we're able to take this broad thing that everyone would agree with, love God and love your neighbor, and then flesh that out in ways that are biblically informed and that are historically informed and a lot of things like that.
So there can obviously, you know, there's no system, whether it's a congregational system or a Presbyterian system or, you know, whatever kind of system, no system in and of itself is this, you know, can ensure that stuff can't go wrong or that there won't be abuses or that they're like that.
That doesn't happen. But this this is one system that has the tradeoffs that that come with it has been effective.
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it's one of the reasons why I'm Presbyterian is you're not in reaction mode. You're in prayerful, thoughtful response mode with the collective wisdom of other churches and presbyteries. There's a real connection there.
Yep. You know, and it's interesting. We get we get, you know, criticized because we kind of slow acting.
But like, you know, there's business literature that says if you want to if you want overnight change in the business, that's a 10 year process.
Yep. I mean, the research is true. And so I'm like, well, if it takes us 12 to 18 months to go from A to B.
Yep. But A, we we get there together.
and B, we get there thoughtfully and prayerfully with wisdom, I'll do that. That's what I want.
Yeah. One of the things that comes to mind on that front, again, for the biblicists,
because one of the concerns, I grew up in circles where a lot of the, there would be criticism of
extra biblical things being put on to, put in practice by churches. And so somebody there,
You could definitely have people who are like, oh, Book of Common Order, that wasn't inspired by Scripture.
You know, whatever.
They could see this as being something that's problematic.
But I think that, yeah, there's tons of Scriptures that talk about the need for order and the wisdom that's found in abundance of counselors.
The wisdom of, you know, not being hasty and not making decisions quickly.
And one of the things that the Scriptures talk about is that God is—
Being sober-minded.
So what that requires is getting some distance from events.
You don't want to be making big decisions right after something emotional has happened.
And I think one of the other things that God talks about and it's reflected in his character is that he's slow to anger.
and so one of the things that is easy and we're talking about this two days from two days removed
from Charlie Kirk being killed three or four days removed from the the Ukrainian refugee lady
being being killed one of the things that it's easy to do is to be swift to anger and then the
part of the problem when the weakness of being of being swift to anger fast to get angry is that it
can go as easy as it comes. And so in the, what's your response can, it's easy to forget about it
just as easy as it comes. And so if you're grounding your anger in eternal things, things
that God calls sin and things that God says that are going to cause problems, that we have this
recorded for generations, we have these things recorded and written down, then our anger has more
of a grounding to endure and to not just be forgotten. And so I think that this is something,
again, even though it can be frustrating and we can get to an example of some of the frustrating
consequences of when things don't go the way that we initially, the way that they're supposed to go
or the way that maybe we wanted them to go. Overall, this idea of being slow to anger,
But then once you get angry, once you figure out what's going on, then you have this, this, you know, burning heart that has this propulsive power to stay there and to, to be immovable, uh, in, in trying to do what's right.
And so, again, I would just encourage people who think that this is overkill and that kind of stuff.
I would encourage them to, uh, to be, to, to be slower, to, to, uh, to dismiss something that seems different.
Yeah, I mean, all I have to do is look at my own heart and 90% of the time I don't have a great reaction.
Yep.
But I'm called to a holy passion that is sober minded.
So, you know, will you call an anger?
I might call holy passion, you know, whatever.
I mean, if I've got a longstanding holy passion to see, you know, the curse reversed, that's a beautiful thing.
I'm entrenched in that and I'm gonna work that methodically you know evil's entrenched but so am
I you know so are we and so is God you know so yeah so you know I again I'm going to do my best
to work in the process are there moments are there moments where a quick response is is needed of
Of course.
I'm also a volunteer chaplain with College Station Police Department,
and I get a call at 2 a.m.
You know, we've got to make a death notification on a bad situation
or we've got a suicide.
And, like, there needs to be a quick kind of crisis response moment
in those kind of things.
Uh, but your, your day in and day out life is trying to weave in these, uh, weave in these
holy good passions.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah.
One of the things, again, we, we haven't hung out a ton, right?
We've been putting it a number of times and we've had a bunch more calls.
And I mean, I just have been so encouraged by you.
Yeah.
You like getting to hang out with you at the, the Bitcoin conference in Vegas was the highlight.
I've said this to multiple people.
It was the highlight for me because one of the things that comes across within the Bitcoin world, especially for most of the early adopters, a lot of them were very technical people.
They're very hyper-technical.
They are programmers.
They're philosophers and all this kind of stuff.
They were super – you had to be super nerdy in order to be able to understand and operate and deal with the really difficult-to-manage wallet systems and all kinds of stuff early on.
And then as time goes on, you get more and more people who come from different backgrounds, who aren't necessarily the technical people, but who basically approach things from, approach Bitcoin from a different, motivated by a different thing and drawn to a different aspect of Bitcoin.
And so when I, I mean, just your passion for people and your passion for the Lord and your desire to see, you know, basically God's resources be stewarded in ways that are going to allow, I mean, orders of magnitude more people to hear the gospel.
for orders of magnitude more ministers
to continue to be able to work
and not have to shut down their churches
or not have to seek out second or third jobs.
I just have seen that in you
and you're incredibly eloquent.
Plus you also have your secret weapon
of that awesome Mississippi accent.
I just find myself like,
man, it would be so much easier
to convince certain people
if I had that accent.
Daggone it.
But no, but at the same time,
I just want you to know,
I just really appreciate you.
And yeah, I just, I really think
that it's a timely thing, right? I think the two of us, I'm a similar heart and mindset. I don't
have the programming skills. I tried to use ChatGP to program a website and it was atrocious.
It was bad But I do have the pastor heart and I see and prioritize these that you do Uh and and I really think I just have been super encouraged to have have you another
another, you know, laborer in the, in the nuts, the bullpen. What's the, uh, in the, during a war
in the trenches, that's the word to have another, you know, similarly minded brother in the trenches.
Uh, it's just been a great encouragement to me. So, so kind of, why don't you talk through
Ben Forrest, I mean, you put forward this overture.
How did it go?
Well, you know, let me just say,
I was under no illusion that this overture was going to pass.
Just be very clear about that.
I was not like, I mean, I knew it had no chance.
But honestly, my goal was to get it passed at Presbytery
because once it did in January, it went national.
It didn't matter.
It was immediately posted to the stated clerk's website as an overture that would be considered general assembly.
That's a win.
That's it.
And then that gave us the opportunity for the foundation.
I'm also working with Jim and Tim with Magnalia to say, hey, let's get a booth.
Let's try to get a booth.
This thing's going to die.
It's okay.
But is it going to create conversation?
I think it might.
I'm not sure, but I think it might.
So we get to overture.
We get to general assembly.
this is mid-June, and I'm on overtures committee.
And the way they arrange the overtures is, I mean, most important to least important,
or most urgent to least urgent.
So most urgent are kind of your rules of assembly operation changes that need to happen at that assembly.
Then you have kind of your prioritized book of church order changes based on the number of Presbyterians
that are wanting to speak into that particular thing.
And then the study committees kind of come last.
So I knew that, and that was fine.
And so we were at the, you know, the ninth hour on Tuesday after two long days of going through 40 overtures.
And so I get my opportunity to speak.
And I had written my speech and I had a lot of really wise people help me craft that speech.
Some guys from traditional finance, actually, who have become big corners are like, hey, you want to talk in these ways.
And so I just did whatever they told me to do and had kind of my own flavor to it.
I gave my speech, got voted.
I think it was like 100, 106 to 15 in overtures.
And I was like, my first thought was, where are these 15 rascals at?
You know, that haven't, like, no, this is the other thing, Jordan.
Leading up to GA, I felt lonely.
I mean, I was like, I got no calls from anybody.
I might have got a text from somebody saying, you know, hey, I'm a Bitcoin or two in the PCA.
And I want to know, you know, I might've got a couple of those, but I was like, is anybody around here?
Am I back?
I mean, I know I'm a little crazy, but like, and so these guys come up to me like, yeah, I'm a big corner.
I bet.
I'm like, where have you been?
You know, I was just like, and no, I mean, because I will say, man, you know, I knew, I knew that I was throwing.
21 years of ordained ministry in the PCA and trust and friendships and networks that I'd built
on the line because this would be out of nowhere for tons of groups of my friends. Like,
what are you thinking, Haley? And I knew that and I was just like, I don't care. It's the thing,
I really do believe. I really do believe in this thing. I studied it for hundreds of hours and I've
surrounded myself with people who understand it better than me that I trust. And so, so that was
fun though. Those guys came up to me and they're like, and I'm like, are you coming to our meetups
or whatever? And they're like, oh yeah, we signed up. I'm like, you know, and so then we get, so GA,
we got a couple of days there at a table before it comes up on to the main floor. But anyway,
our table was nonstop. I mean, people coming by like crazy. And so anyway, you know, we,
we get to the floor and there was a technical snafu where Tim didn't get to
speak to it for the record.
I already have an overture to modify the rules of assembly operations to give
deferential,
deferential treatment,
preferential treatment to the man who pulls the overture out of omnibus.
We can talk about that later.
I'm just saying it's coming.
Everybody is coming.
I'm coming with another overture just on that technical piece.
Cause I'm like,
But anyway, it was—
Yeah, can you just describe—just describe.
We'll get into there.
Like, what exactly happened?
What happened was when the Overture's chairman brings his report to the General Assembly,
which is, let's say, 2,200 teaching elders and ruling elders in the big hall.
When he brings his report, one of the things he does first is he said,
these 20 overtures
were either overwhelmingly
recommended
that General Assembly
answered in the positive, or
these overtures were overwhelmingly
recommended to be answered
in the negative. And what
he does is he puts all those in what's called an
omnibus, which means you take one vote
on those 20 overtures.
Sure. But
any one delegate
can stand up and say, I would
like to pull out
Overture 11, which was the number of our Overture.
So Tim stood up.
Tim's a fellow teaching elder in the PCA.
He was a registered delegate.
He stood up and he said, I would like for Overture 11 to be pulled out.
And then somebody says Overture 18 or whatever.
And those have to be considered.
Like, in other words, if one brother wants the General Assembly to consider it,
we have to consider it.
So what happened was we come back, we deal with like the big dog Overtures
that were kind of, you know, spicy.
You know, we deal with some of those.
We're three hours, four hours, five hours into that process.
Everybody's exhausted.
It's four o'clock on Thursday.
And we come back to the overtures that had been pulled out of Omnibus, to be considered.
We come back to Overture 11.
And a brother stands up at a mic, and he says—
Tim is at another mic.
He's like—
Tim is at a mic.
How many mics do they have?
There's like five or six?
About six, yeah.
Yeah.
And six mics.
Six mics.
So brother's standing up there front at Mike two.
Tim's back here at like Mike four on the floor.
And the moderator recognizes Mike two first.
And that brother rises to call the question, which means immediately go to the to a vote.
No debate, no discussion.
And I'll be honest, I was shocked.
I had never seen that happen in General Assembly in my 20 years.
I'd never seen someone rise to call the question on an overture that had been previously in good faith pulled out by a brother.
Yeah.
Right.
To be considered.
And because I think two reasons.
Because the assembly doesn't understand Bitcoin and because they were dog tired.
Yeah.
They overwhelmingly voted to call the question and therefore Tim did not get to speak.
Yeah.
So I have an overture coming this year.
to modify the rules of assembly operations
so that if a brother pulls an item,
an overture out of omnibus,
he will get preferential treatment
to speak to that item.
Hope it passes.
I've talked to a lot of my big dog friends in PCA
and they're like, you got to ride it.
You got to do it.
I was like, it's coming.
So there you go.
So, okay.
So now again, we're the Lord is offering.
We're getting in the weeds.
I know we're getting in the weeds.
No, this is great.
Weeds are great.
This is a podcast.
Weeds are great.
Great.
But, okay, so now again, we're Christians, we give grace.
Yeah.
Whose fault was this?
Was this Kevin DeYoung?
Who technically in the moment, whose fault was it?
This is the issue.
There's no fault because technically the moderator,
it's whoever he recognizes is the mic first.
Yeah.
And I'm just saying we can fix that loophole,
and I want to fix that for future overtures
that have anything to do with anything.
Like, no, no, no, no, no.
We pulled it out with the assumption
that the brother was going to get to speak to it.
So we got to fix that.
Yeah.
So you're saying it just was,
there was a couple of mics,
a couple of mics that Kevin Young could have recognized.
That's right.
And so it just was, he just happened to pick this guy.
That's right.
You know, it wasn't like malicious on his part.
I don't read Motive into that at all.
Yeah.
But it did actually happen twice.
and then another brother stood up and said he said exactly what i just said which was like yeah
brothers the spirit hears that if if a brother pulls out an overture you should be able to speak
to it and i'm like well we're just going to close that technical loophole so there's no question on
it so yeah okay yeah so so now at this point so it it you know got voted down is this something
where again for those of us who aren't familiar with the overture uh policies is this something
where you can reintroduce it?
Or is it like once it's down, it's gone forever?
What is that?
Oh, of course, man.
We can.
Okay.
Let me put the word out.
We can have 10 overtures, Bitcoin overtures this year.
Go for it.
And I'm on overtures and I can tell you,
I will speak to it if you would like to.
Yeah.
So I will, you know, I'll be glad to.
So, so yeah, no, we can, you can bring stuff up.
So we're, you know, we're prayerfully considering now
what that looks like for the coming year.
Yeah.
Okay.
So now talk me through a little bit about,
so you obviously,
you had a bunch of the secret guys come up
and slide into the booth and be like,
yeah, I'm a big eater.
Right, right.
And you're reading them Revelation 21.8,
where it talks about cowards and all the kinds of stuff.
No, no.
I'm just kidding.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just kidding.
So you have those kinds of responses.
Those are positive, encouraging ones.
You also have, again, the broader 85-plus people who just, you know, leaders who just voted down.
So obviously there's a wide amount of responses.
This is nothing new.
We've, you know, all of us who are Bitcoiners, we've tried to talk to people in our lives while Bitcoin.
Are there specific underlying beliefs that you think are driving the responses of pastors in the PCA?
Yeah.
Or are they kind of, where do you say it's kind of just the same reasons as everybody else?
So I really want to be careful not to describe motive.
Sure.
At the same time, I'm happy to describe some of the responses.
So first of all, for the guys who came out of the woodworks, who were like Bitcoiners, first thing was like, well, let's get organized.
Let's get together.
Let's talk through.
And we've been doing that, and that's been wonderful.
You know, such a wide array of responses, you know, and, you know, many of the responses were like,
is that still a thing?
Like Bitcoin
is it still a thing?
And I'm like
it is
you know
and I would love
to tell you more
and that would have been
my response two years ago
I mean
so I totally understand
that response
I mean
we're all
doing what we
believe the Lord's
calling us to do
you know
proclaiming the gospel
I mean
and so
yeah do you want to
learn more about it?
And I've had
and some of them are like
well yeah
what can you send me?
You know
I'm like well
let's get that conversation
started
and then
there were some responses that were definitely informed by a broader narrative like that's just
for money laundering which for the record you can google grok chat whatever you want
cash is still keen on money laundering yeah i recently read a stat that a criminal is a hundred
times more likely to use cash than Bitcoin for illicit activity. So that's just a narrative
thing. So, you know, they're like this. And then I just kind of, with humility, kind of go,
that's not true. Here's some research on that. And then, you know, some of the responses are,
you know, there's a genuine curiosity. I actually wrote some of these down.
I think some are deflated, deflated responses.
And here's what I mean by that.
They actually might understand it, might know it.
And there's some shame there that they don't have any money to even look into it.
And some of that shame is illegitimate shame.
Meaning they have genuinely sought to be faithful with what they have and love their families.
And God has called them to different places.
And anytime you move, pastors move, there's a great cost to moving.
They just don't have any extra cash at all and or in eyeballs and debt.
And that's hard.
And that's really hard.
And I don't, this is why I don't like the phrase, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve.
I'm just like, we need to edit that out.
We get, all is gift.
Yeah.
All is gift.
All news is gift.
You know, hard news, good news, it's all gifts.
So let's, we need to parse that out.
Yeah.
And then there's some legitimate shame of like, I've not, I've not managed my money well.
I'm terrible at money.
And, you know, this gets into, like, the stories, their stories of growing up and their stories of what money is and what it represents.
This really gets into high time preference, low time preference mentality that Bitcoiners talk about, you know.
And, you know, theoretically, Christians should be the lowest time preference people ever because we know we have the fullness of the riches of Christ now.
And we have the, you might say, material riches of heaven to come, you know, the inheritance of life eternal with Jesus and, you know.
So we have access to go and like make our request known.
And like, he's got all of heaven's resources to, you know, help us.
Yeah.
So the, so the low time preference in terms of eschatology, I think does a couple of things.
You know, one, it, it lets you kind of settle down.
Like I don't have to gratify.
I don't.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm all for fun.
I love having fun, but I don't have to just spend all my money every day all the time.
I'm fine, you know.
So, but then I think there's another, there was some contempt responses.
And I know that sounds like I'm reading motives because I am.
Part of it is because there's actually facial signs that researchers said that that point to person has a contempt for you.
Like a cock in a light.
What are you talking about?
You know, that's like a, that's a research-based telltale.
So I got some of those responses.
And it's interesting.
And I'm going to kind of go off on a little tangent here and pull it back, I promise.
I love it.
So this past Sunday morning, my wife's getting ready to teach third and fourth grade Sunday school, and she's teaching Mark chapter one.
And she's like, hey, I've taught this before, but do you have any like just little, is there a way I can like illustrate this or kind of make this more of a tangible hands-on activity, talk about Mark one.
And I had an illustration that we all know, like, you know, the beginning of the gospel, the good news, you know, the beginning of the gospel is the son of God.
Okay, so we know gospel means good news, right?
We know that's literally what it means.
And so I just said, hey, you know, it's like headlines on a newspaper.
You know, like Mark's saying, these are the headlines.
This is the good news on the newspaper.
And one of the things I thought was, and she was like, oh, oh, so she starts sketching out a newspaper.
And then she starts putting that on there.
And I'm like, yeah, show them that like this is the headlines.
Well, the gospel is the most disruptive news to ever hit the planet.
Disruptive particularly to the idea of salvation by works of the law.
Or you might say a pseudo-salvation by works of the law.
And a pseudo-salvation through gratification of the flesh.
I mean, it confronts those two most prominent default human instincts as a result of the fall.
I need to make sure that I'm a good person and I want to live according to all of my fleshly desires.
And those are definitely in conflict.
But the gospel is the good news that disrupts those two paradigms greatly.
So I started thinking about this, and I thought, Bitcoin is the great disruption in the financial world.
It is the great disruption.
It is the disruption to a Kinzian economic fiat system.
Uh, it is, it is a disruption to, you know, uh, a lavish lifestyle.
It brings in really different ideas about what money is.
And so some of the reactions that I have received, you might say,
Like, if the gospel is the biggest news to hit the salvation by works establishment
and the, you know, pseudo-salvation by gratification of the flesh,
this is like you know you got Rome and Pharisees right You got the Hellenists and you got the Pharisees Those are your two parties right They coming from different places The gospel is a great disruption for that I think in our circles Bitcoin is a great disruption to the current financial establishment
And the reactions can point to an entrenchment in that financial establishment
again I will be very careful
because the men that I know
that are working hard
to ensure that we
as pastors have
you know good retirement
working hard
the deacons and the elders
in our churches
are working hard
to be faithful stewards
of what we are
I have encountered
boomer ruling elders
who are genuinely curious
about this and have actually
become
have actually gone in
on significant allocations of Bitcoin
and I thought
what is the difference between
this person and that person
one is engaging this
new idea, this new innovation
with humility
and one is just
holding contempt for it
and it makes me think
okay
I think Christians, I think we're actually, because of the gospel, hardwired to welcome disruptive, what we believe to be good news.
So, for example, somebody grew up in a community and then it's like, Johnny became a Christian.
And the response is either celebration or the response is speculation.
Exactly.
Yep.
And I'm like, wait a minute, hold up.
I understand you'll know a tree bites fruit and those sorts of things.
I got that.
But it's the same reaction my dad's friends had when I said I was going to be a pastor.
My dad's friends were like, Mike Haley's son is going to be a preacher?
Are you kidding me?
You know, and even like years later, I don't know what it is.
years later, one of my friends was like, where did you come from? And I'm like, I mean, the grace
of God. So it seems like I've just, to my fellow Christian brothers and sisters, a posture of
humility, and particularly in this area, if you study Bitcoin and you arrive at the conviction
that it's not a good system where you don't, that's fine.
Don't stifle the process of learning about it.
So that's kind of the end of my notes.
Yeah, that's great.
No, I really appreciate that.
And again, I feel like you've tried to be appropriately winsome,
appropriately careful.
I think one of the conclusions that I've come to about some of this stuff and some of the dynamics you're talking about is without it all comparing the relative importance of these two things that I'm getting ready to compare.
That's not how a comparison works.
I'm not drawing a comparison between the importance.
I'm drawing a comparison between the mechanics of these two things.
Yes, exactly.
So the hardest people to talk to about Christ are not the atheists who've never heard, or like, again, the people who are in the jungle tribe who've never heard about Jesus.
Like, they're just not.
They're not the hardest people to talk to.
The hardest people to talk to are the people who've already either, like, they've grown up Christian and walked away.
It's the people who have some knowledge or think they have an understanding of the gospel and what it is and what it means and the consequences of it, but who actually don't have a proper understanding of it.
or who are actually like, and so it's very similar with Bitcoin.
People, they think they know what it is.
They've heard about it, but they don't stop to question.
This would be another encouragement that I have is they don't stop to question
the source of where they heard about Bitcoin from.
Man, you just made me realize that.
So doing campus ministry at Texas A&M for nine years.
Yep.
Uh, you just made me realize the, how, how I've actually, I was actually shaped and formed into, uh, helping people detangle their Jesus stories so that I can slide across the table what I believe to be the true gospel story.
And I had to do that. I mean, I had a friend who went to Texas A&M who went into campus ministry and I told him one time, I was like, dude, it's hard actually talking to these kids who have these different experiences that are not in accord with the scriptures.
he's like oh he's like i could never do campus ministry at texas a&m because
there's so many stories that you have to help kind of yep sort in order to in order to get to
and now that you're saying what you're just saying i'm like that's the same thing with the
current financial system right you're shaped and formed in such a way and then you've got to wait a
minute. Can anybody listening right now say, can they define what is money? Because two years ago,
I could not have. 100%. And I'm like, wow, I need to think about that. Like I use it every day.
What is it? You know, so stuff like that. And that's exactly, that's kind of, again,
the conclusion I've come to in six years of being in Bitcoin is the hardest thing is coming to the
realization that you don't understand something. And you can have incredible proximity to something
and still not understand it at all.
And so there's a lot of people
who think they understand money
because they use it every day.
And it's the same,
very similar principle
of there's people who grew up in church
and so they think that
they just assume that they understand it
because they had proximity
to the institution or something.
I think the other thing that
should help people, right?
This is a talking board
that I've had with people
is, again, questioning the source
of where you learned about Bitcoin from.
Because for the vast majority of people,
their first touch or their first five touches
or 10 touches of thinking about Bitcoin
is they heard about it from CNBC
or Fox Business or whatever.
They're hearing about it from people
who are primarily framing Bitcoin
from the standpoint of a speculative investment.
And all of the stuff that's being discussed
is about Bitcoin's dollar-denominated price
and about which companies are owning it
and about, you know, it's all focused on one aspect of what Bitcoin is without at all getting
into, well, again, the questions of why was Bitcoin created? What is money? Like some of
these more foundational questions that we haven't had to think about, that the vast majority of us
haven't had to think about for generations. And so, and again, the people who do, God bless them,
the gold people, a lot of what they're saying is so true. It's totally right. But because of how
gold has been marginalized by this system and just kind of shoved to the side and mocked by people,
unfortunately, who have an economic interest in shoving it in the corner, a lot of these financial
advisors from Fiat World financial advisors, they have incentives to do so. People just aren't,
And they're not in a place where they can even think about some of these things from first principles. And so the other point that I would make with that is we are in a point of history, and I would argue more than ever in the history of the world, we are more disconnected from reality than the world has ever been.
And the reason I think I can say that is because there's never been a fiat world reserve currency.
That's never happened.
There's never been a time.
We've always had, like fiat currencies go back 100,000s of years.
They go back a long time.
But we've never had a reserve currency be a fiat currency.
Right.
And what fiat currencies do is they give whoever is at the helm, they give them the ability to subsidize and create their own reality.
And so we've seen effectively endless wars being fought for the last 50 years. We've effectively seen just all kinds of things that are going against the free market desires of the vast majority of market participants.
So the United States is sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Africa to fund family planning, which is really abortions.
Now, how are they able to fund that? Is that because abortion is such an important tenet to everyday Americans that they want to sacrifice their hard-fought wealth?
No, they're not at all. That's not at all why that's happening.
that's able to happen because they're literally printing money out of thin air and sending it all
over the world because they're, they're subsidizing other interests and other political interests and
all these kinds of things. And so like, we, we should be able to, and especially Christians
should be, should be looking at this and be willing to consider, man, we're living in a day
and age when people, when a meaningful percentage of people are approving of trans surgeries and
approving of all kinds of insane things that all of us were like that five minutes ago,
Everyone knew we're insane. And so is it really that much more of a stretch to consider that maybe we're not in the best position to figure out if, you know, to basically, we're not in the best position to say, hey, we authoritatively understand money and Bitcoin to be able to condemn it.
Like that would be the concern that I would have for a lot of people who, again, are very smart, who see the downstream consequences in reality of sin and how entrenched it gets and the consequences of it.
They just, they haven't been in a position to have that conversation, to think about money through that lens.
Yeah, I mean, there's just a couple notes on that.
But, you know, I mean, one of the things that when you think about fiat currency, dollar, government's involvement in the financial realm, et cetera, you start to really think about agency as a human being and how you were made.
And you kind of realize, like, wait a minute, I do get to ask questions, you know, and I do get to have thoughts.
And I do get to, and then all of a sudden there's this sense of adventure, this curiosity, this realization that safety is a myth.
Correct.
And you start, you feel, you do feel more free, first and foremost, in the gospel.
This is why I do think we see a ton of Christians in the Bitcoin space.
Yep.
Because we've already been given a new, we've been given a redeemed heart in order to continue the, you know, be fruitful, multiply, seek adventure, take risks, innovate.
Like, that's already sort of hardwired into our new hearts because it's a redeemed heart, because it's a thoroughly human in Christ way to do things.
I think also on the history thing, and I, you know, I have these thoughts, you know, this is kind of.
You know, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner for economics, you know, the quote he had about the Internet is going to be as relevant as the fax machine in 2005.
Yeah.
I just want everybody to sit on that for just one second, because have we have we.
Have we abdicated.
A sense of leadership, courageous leadership, have we abdicated that to the experts?
because expertise and leadership are two very different things.
And I'll prove it this way.
Fauci was asked, and whatever you want to say about Fauci, whatever.
But here's the point.
Fauci was asked, like, have you thought about the economic implications
of, like, lockdowns and all that?
And he's like, that's not my job.
Yeah.
Now, I appreciate him being honest.
He's just like, I don't think about that.
And so now the question is, okay, who's going to lead us in this space,
in this new space, right?
in this completely new territory.
So that's, so what that got me thinking,
the 1998 quote, you know, I got to thinking,
you know, Henry Ford, you know,
is a famous quote attributed to him.
I don't know.
It's just like, if you ask people what they need,
they're going to say faster horse.
Yeah.
So you have this thing called felt need versus real need.
Correct.
Right?
So the felt need is faster horse.
The real need is we just need a faster way
to get from A to B.
Yeah.
And sometimes I wonder, are we, and this is a bold thing, but it's kind of like, are we in the middle of a horse and buggy convention and the first automobile just hit the street?
Yeah.
Are we at Blockbuster getting our three for a dollar videos and Netflix just hit the street?
Are we holding BlackBerrys and Palm IQs and the Apple iPhone just got invented?
Yeah.
Are we maybe the chief, you know, quartermaster for the scriptoriums in the 15th century, and we're in charge of 100 monks and all the services, and did the printing press just hit the world?
So the question is, are we in the middle of this fiat financial establishment and Bitcoin just entered the world?
I personally have put all my bet on that.
Just for the record, not financial advice.
I'm just saying I have a high conviction.
And here's another thing I want to say.
Could we all be wrong about this?
Of course we could all be wrong about this.
I'm just simply saying we are asking really good questions regardless.
You see what I mean?
A hundred percent.
So the Bitcoiners, we just got into this place by a process of elimination, right?
I put value into the world.
I receive the representation of that value in wages.
Where can I stick those wages for my children, for my children's children?
Process of elimination takes me to, I got one spot, that's Bitcoin.
I got no other spot that I can, you know, real estate stocks, yeah, they're good mid thing.
That's fine.
But like, sure as heck ain't a savings account at a bank, right?
Everybody knows this.
So it's just we get to that process of elimination where I've arrived at the conviction like I got to stick my value in Bitcoin.
And this is another thing.
I just want to say this.
Like, I think, you know, a lot of people understand that the investment versus savings thing.
OK.
Is Bitcoin a good savings technology?
Yes.
Will it be a good savings technology in 50 years?
Yes.
Simply because of its inability to be inflated.
Right.
Now, some of us are early.
Might we happen to be capturing a significant arbitrage over what we think to be the next five to 10 years between the dollar and Bitcoin?
And could it be that we come out with a lot of wealth?
It could be.
Then the question goes, okay, how does God call us to steward that?
And so you've kind of got to play the whole thing out and you've got to pray through the whole thing.
and you ask the Lord to guard your heart
and ask the Lord to remind you of the inheritance
that you had to come and all of these things,
you have to run those in parallel.
I'm going to be curious and I'm going to say,
Lord, you've promised that you're going to hold on to me
and I've got the trust in that.
Yeah. And so again, yeah, there's,
we can definitely look at it from the standpoint
of Bitcoiners themselves.
How should they think, right?
And like there obviously are specific challenges
to us as people who have Bitcoin and who, again, Lord willing, will have Bitcoin into the future.
Again, the problem is the people who are not Bitcoiners want to focus on that question.
And so it's like, okay, now again, if it's your pastor or somebody-
They want to focus on which question?
They want to focus on the question of, they're acting like the only relevant question is,
well, what is this doing to you?
And like, what, you know, or like, what is this doing to the individual? And what we're saying is, yes, that is a fine question to ask. Like, yes, personal piety as it relates to how to steward resources is important.
Yes.
What we're saying, though, is, okay, we acknowledge that's important and we're recognizing that we're trying to guard our own hearts, all this kind of stuff. Unfortunately, that is by no means the only factor.
There's probably 10 other factors that you're not even thinking about.
And the thing that I would say to people is, so the danger, right, what is hypocrisy?
The nature of hypocrisy is having one standard for other people and then another standard for yourself.
And so the thing that drives me sanctifiedly nuts is when people will say, have you considered that you could be wrong?
Do you acknowledge that something could happen to Bitcoin and that you could be wrong?
or that's something along the lines,
even if everything is fine with Bitcoin or not,
that something could happen in the future
that could result in it going kaplooey.
And I would acknowledge, of course.
Now, then I would turn around-
That assumes safety in the current system.
That's where I go to that question.
That's one thing.
The other thing that I would turn around and ask them is,
have you reconciled with what it could mean if you're wrong?
Right.
And so that's where I just come back to over and over again.
And again, I would say,
say that these are not equal wrongs.
Like, so if we're wrong, it's a technical problem.
If they're wrong, it's a, you're denying history.
You're denying, like, you're denying, like, hey, all fiat currencies fail.
Like, this is just something that happens.
And so what are the consequences of fiat currencies doing exactly what they've done for as long
as they've existed?
The consequences are all of the money that you're sitting here holding in fiat currency
is that it goes to zero.
And so what does that do to your ability to church plant?
What does that do to your ability to, you know, we're not talking in 20 years.
We're talking in five years.
We're talking in three years.
That's right.
You're talking.
Because remember, at the end of the day, it's still a savings technology.
Yep.
If we're in a cycle thing, that's fine.
Four years, hold it.
I'm saying it's still just a good idea to save.
Yep.
I'll give you the four-year time period.
Like, okay, sit on for four.
Let's see what the cycles do, et cetera, et cetera.
I think another thing, Jordan, too, is, you know, we are thinking everything belongs to the Lord.
This is one of the responses that I got.
One of the overwhelming responses I got to the Overture was just like, why are we focusing on this?
Why are we not just focusing on the gospel?
And my simple reply there is, everything belongs to Jesus.
The scriptures speak about money a ton.
and we are called to be stewards
and we are in budget meetings all the time.
And there's a chronic anxiety in session meetings
because of fiat currency.
That's what it is.
So let's just name the chronic anxiety
that we can't trust what we might
or might not have in five to 10 years.
We can't trust it.
We don't know what the inflation rate is going to be.
And so I'm just saying, let's name the anxiety in the room and what stirs it first.
And then let's talk about possible avenues of allocating towards something that could hold value better.
I just want to start right there.
And so to me, there's no dichotomy between the proclamation of the good news of the gospel.
100%.
Yeah.
And every other facet of life.
That is one aspect of the Reformed world and life view where we take all of life, all of life in a sense is holy.
All of life is to be brought before the Lord and not only our gospel proclamation, but the avenues and the wisdom of how we structure that is to be thought through.
And so that's where nothing's going to take the place of me getting up on Sunday morning like I will this Sunday and say, hey, y'all, this is the good news of the gospel.
Yep.
But then I'm going to apply it to marriage.
I'm going to apply it to how they work their finances.
I'm going to apply it to, you know, the work relationships.
I'm going to apply it to all those things because the Bible does that, right?
Exactly.
So.
Yeah.
And you can't, the other thing, again, to this point is, again, it's one thing if somebody
is saying hey why don we just focus on the gospel And they also are saying hey we so committed to the immediate proclamation of the gospel that we not even going to think about having retirement accounts
Okay?
Right.
One thing to say that, that would be a level of consistency.
It's a level of inconsistency to say,
why aren't we just caring about the gospel?
At the same time as you already have a giant pot of money
that's designed to rightly allow your pastors
to have some sort of retirement.
So my point is,
what you're saying is not somehow inconsistent
with what you're already doing.
You're bringing up a specific investment
or a specific savings technology
that is already in line with a principle
that the Presbytery has already agreed on, right?
Right.
So we didn't even talk about the moral aspect
of Bitcoin as a principle.
Like, I mean, it's like,
sound money is good.
Yes.
And so I think one of the things that I just come down to is in as somebody who I never I've never formally studied logic, but I mean, all day long, I was a philosophy major and all day long, I'm constantly just putting my my own ideas, other people that I'm just constantly putting them through the ringer.
And then along with that is just a sense of risk management.
And so this idea of, again, this idea of what if you're wrong?
If you're wrong, if we're wrong, if Bitcoin people are wrong, and you've allocated 10% to Bitcoin, then you've lost 10%.
The reality is if you've held the S&P 500, it has 10% drops.
we can identify them in the last 15 years.
We can identify ones where it was significantly more than that.
And so the problem is, what if we're right
and you have no exposure to Bitcoin?
Then you're missing out and fiat collapses.
Then that's not good risk management.
If you crunch the numbers on that,
it's not going to, you've put yourself
in the worst possible situation.
And so-
Did it just come out, was it a couple of weeks ago
that gold has actually outperformed S&P
in the last 20 years?
I can't remember.
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
It is and it isn't.
This is what I've been saying.
Again, this is like Jim McAndrew.
This is what I'm saying.
This is for you, man.
Like the gold people, they sound dumb.
Like they sound dumb and they're wrong for years.
Quote unquote wrong for years.
If you're just talking about sheer performance,
which Christians shouldn't do.
But if you're even just looking at pure performance,
just like Christians,
we can look wrong
and look dumb for a long period
of time before we were revealed
to be right in the end
it's not about
being proved right over a short
period of time
a little mini
eschatological
moment there
you can be wrong
you can look wrong
yeah we're gonna look wrong to a lot of people
yeah
uh
And then Jesus promises no you right Yeah exactly Don worry about it And I think another thing there that really helpful to us is to go we don have to worry about being right Yeah We don have to worry about it
And I'm talking about the gospel, right?
I'm talking about the gospel.
We don't have to worry about being right.
Our job is to do our job.
Yep.
And that's a helpful lesson.
Again, this is where these metaphors comparing Bitcoin and Christianity can help us going both ways.
because there are people, and I mean, some of us on this call may have even been in this situation,
where you are so over the top talking about Bitcoin with certain people that it can do more harm than good
or it can prolong things because the sheer overwhelming nature of the response
and of the reality of what's going on can kind of distract, even though it's not justified,
It can still distract from the reality and the truthfulness of what you're saying.
And so, yeah.
Well, I'll say, too, I want to make it very clear that my heart is with the institutional level understanding and of Bitcoin.
My day in and day out, I'm an evangelist.
I love talking to people about Jesus.
Yeah.
I'm going to say this, and probably later they'll be like,
I still don't think half my church doesn't know I even do Bitcoin.
Now, it's going to come out because we're going to start our own
Bitcoin stewardship reserve policy soon.
But anyway, my point there is, like, my focus has been
and will continue to be, as best I can, that institutional level curiosity,
developing that curiosity with churches and presbyteries in our denomination.
And because I do think on a micro level, it could free us up to make a larger impact as we, again, I've said this before, God is going to bring about his kingdom.
it's not in the sense
I don't feel like
some people say
where they say
like
I have to bring
bring God's kingdom
I don't have to bring
God's kingdom
I'm just saying
the curiosity
the venture
the
eschatological promises
of
eternal relationship
with the Lord
and here
freeze us up
to jump into these
to jump into these things
with wisdom and humility.
So that's what I'm going to do.
That's what I'm saying.
So, yep.
Yeah.
And this is, I mean, the last thing I think we can say on this or should say, and I'll
give you the last word here in a second would just be in a, there's a very similar relationship
between the way that the apostle Paul describes the ability of a believing wife to win her
unbelieving husband to, to Jesus, like through her conduct, through her character, like your
character can speak truth in reality in ways that your words can't necessarily. And so I would just
encourage, if you're a Christian Bitcoiner out there, one of the most helpful things that you
can do to add credibility to your Bitcoin profession and your Bitcoin conviction is to be an encouragement to your pastor is to love and serve the people in your church is to love people around you well
your neighbors, your family, whatever it is. Because again, that can be something that can
be a tipping point, a decision maker, and whether or not people respect and are willing to give you
a hearing wrongly or rightly. That's a factor that will just necessarily come into play.
So that's just an encouragement to us to consider our manner of life, to quote the scriptures.
Yes, there's a Jesus way to do it. For some reason in God's counsel,
Jesus didn't come until he came. Wasn't nobody going to rush him, you know? And so there's a
pattern there for us to go,
you know,
absolutely hold your conviction
and bridle that with
your character and the way
in which you go about seeking
to quote orange-filled people, right?
Yep.
Ben, appreciate you, brother.
Grateful for you. Tell people where they can
find you insofar
as you want them to be able to find you.
Oh, I mean, you know,
I poke around on X a little bit.
Uh, B Haley five, five is my handle. Um, I'm just, I just do, I'm just a pastor day in and day out. And I just want to say, Jordan, I really appreciate your hard work takes a ton of courage, has taken a ton of courage for you to step into, uh, developing something like, thank God for Bitcoin and your conviction and your courage does not go unnoticed.
and I have deeply appreciated the camaraderie,
first of all, brotherhood in Christ for sure,
but also the shared interest in the love for the church
and all the hard work you do to try to help people understand it.
This podcast takes a ton of work.
So I just wanted to say that for sure.
Thank you so much for having me,
and I really hope it's been helpful.
so grateful grateful for that brother thank you so much and again this won't be the last time we'll
have you back uh well we need to do some more uh like roundtable stuff because those are some of the
some of the best conversations you can have on the podcast it's just like you know before or after
so anyhow we're grateful for all of you guys go follow ben on on twitter i refuse to call it x
uh go follow him there go find us like and subscribe on x on facebook on youtube that
helps other people find these resources. If you have questions, reach out to us. We're happy to
do anything in our power to help. And we'll be back on Tuesday for another episode of the
Thank God for Bitcoin podcast. Thank you.