And we are live. Welcome to the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast. My name is Jordan Bush.
I'm the executive director of TGFB Media, which exists to help Christians understand and use
Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere. I am joined today by most
of the regular casting crew of the Mountain Presby's. I'll let them introduce themselves.
my name is tim fox executive director of the magnolia foundation i am a ordained minister
and also working with the magnolia foundation to teach the church how to use how and why to use
bitcoin my name is jim mcandrew i work with tim at magnolia as tech support i'm an entrepreneur
software developer and an ordained deacon in the pca church in america my name is ben haley i'm a
pastor of Redeemer, Presbyterian Church College Station, Texas, and I also work with Magnalia as
well. Love it. Grateful for you guys. Glad you can be here. Basically, what we do every week is we
spend time on Twitter, and so we want to redeem the Twitter time. And so basically what we do is
we get together and we talk about things that we found helpful. All of them will have, well,
most of them will have tangential relation to Bitcoin. Again, we find ourselves as Bitcoiners,
we consume a lot of Bitcoin content, whether it's people predicting price or talking about
different ways and places where Bitcoin is being used. And yet at the same time, there's other
things that we just realized that we need. And so some of these things that we'll talk about
are directly related. Some of them are not directly related. So this episode, episode 33,
entitled We Reap What We Sow, subtitle, which I didn't want to include for brevity, was basically,
and that should either scare or encourage you.
This can be, God has designed the world to work
according to this principle of sowing and reaping.
It can be a helpful, great thing,
or it can be a thing that is terrifying and bad.
And so what we want to do is we want to start up
with a tweet that Tim shared.
Let's see here.
Well, Tim, this is the one with our favorite OpenAI guys.
Do we want to listen to this full video?
Great, yeah.
So Sam Altman, obviously founder of OpenAI, is sitting here talking about how great AI is and how important it is and, you know, giving himself.
I think he's full of himself.
So we have Lee Heppner who observes, these guys have clearly convinced themselves that what they're doing is important beyond human comprehension, but are utterly incapable of communicating what it is.
In another era, we'd call it a pyramid scheme or just idolatry.
Tim.
Well, yeah.
I mean, it's like a pyramid scheme and idolatry.
theologous speaking are the same thing. I mean, there's no greater rug pull than worshiping a
false god in an eternal sense. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, I don't know, you know, this is
going to be evergreen probably for many decades to come, but this kind of utopian view of AI as
the be all and end all, it's going to solve everything and fix everything amidst many
concerns, to put it mildly, about what this means for us and our vocations and our relationships.
But yeah, I don't know, just again, kind of Tower of Babel, part 275,000 in the human story.
Humans tend to be very confident about their ability to control the future and their ability to keep the genies in the bottle.
And we should be praying for God's mercy in the midst of all this as it comes forward and for people to wield these very powerful tools wisely.
Yeah, this is one of these things where, again, it's easy to point at them and go, yeah, it's easy to critique the AI guys because we're not AI guys.
But I do think if we're going to use just weights and measures, which to Tim is a very important thing to talk about.
If we're going to talk about that, we're going to use equal weights and measures to critique these things.
I mean, I think we still ought to think about Bitcoin in this regard too.
Right. Because there I mean, there we can still think about a pretty dystopian way for, you know, oppressive rulers to to leverage what Bitcoin is against the people who use it.
Right. So I'm just imagining there could be some warlord who in a feature where everybody has Bitcoin on their phone, he sets up a checkpoint, makes everybody pass through.
And knowing that everybody's got their wealth on their phone, you know, like he could potentially do things like this.
Well, Jim and I just did a couple of talks on this idea of slavery.
What does it mean to be a slave?
What is the ultimate form of slavery?
Biblically speaking, is being a slave to sin.
And the ultimate redemption is being freed from sin.
And he and I were riffing on this quote from Augustine from, I think it's in The City of God,
where he talks about how it's vastly worse to be the slave of a lust than the slave of a man.
and how, you know, as bad as it is to have the AI overlords
tyrannizing everyone and destroying their lives,
it's actually much, much worse to be a slave to your own desires.
Augustine, interestingly, you know, he's using lust broadly.
He doesn't just mean sexual lust,
although that's often prominent in his thinking.
He means kind of all forms of desire.
But what he specifies there in the next sentence is the lust to rule,
the lust to be charged, the lust to have power.
And, you know, in that way, okay, let's imagine Sam Altman becomes the great tyrant who's destroying the world for his great ends.
Who's in the worst situation?
Well, Augustine would say it's Sam Altman is actually the worst slave that he knew.
Yep.
Yeah, this is, it's also why, again, it's one of the reasons why when you see there's parts in the scripture we've talked about at different points about a biblical or Christian case for disobedience of rulers.
you know like there's you can use the case of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Old Testament
like I think there's a pretty easy case to be made that they like their disobedience was the
most loving thing that could possibly have happened to Nebuchadnezzar at that point because they
loved him enough to not obey him and indulge his delusions that that he was the god that he was a
god and deserving to be worshiped and so all right I do think it's the thing this argument about what
do you do if a crazed family member comes to you and asks for their gun back yeah you say no
The loving thing is to say, no, absolutely not.
You've lost the ability to use this.
Jim?
Yeah, I would chime in here and say that the perspective that they can't explain it
isn't exactly accurate in my opinion.
I think that they can explain it.
I just don't think they want to say the quiet part out loud right now.
I think what they do is they beat around the bush and they say things like,
oh, it's going to be so great because it's going to cure all these diseases
and end poverty and all this stuff.
but their real motivation is they want to bring about the end of humanity not necessarily in like
a nefarious way where we're all getting nuclear bombs dropped on us and we all die uh but it's
effectively the same thing because the machine intelligence replaces human intelligence and it
goes on to spread consciousness throughout the stars and blah blah blah whatever their
woo-woo, mystical vibes,
gods of vibration,
spiritualism tells them, right?
And so that's how they justify it in their minds.
But they can't say that
because if they say that,
then all the humans will get scared,
which is exactly what actually happened
when Elon was at this dinner,
essentially with like Sergey Brin.
I was just watching Preston Pysh and Seb
just came out with an episode.
They're kind of reviewing this book.
on Sam Altman, how OpenAI started.
And they're talking about this little vignette
where Elon is invited to this dinner party
with Sam and Sergey and Larry.
And they're all sort of talking about
essentially the end of humanity.
And Elon's kind of like,
what are you guys talking about?
That's crazy.
And they all turn around and look at him
and call him a speciesist or a speciesist.
I'm not sure how to pronounce it.
He's like, okay, yeah, I'm a speciesist.
I want humans to live.
Great.
so yeah it's it's just so unhinged like this is one of these things where it's just so unhinged
but again and so but yet why are why are these why are people still going on with this right
they're going a lot why are they pumping money into all these ai companies well because the love
of money is a root of all kinds of evil like there's there's trillions of dollars to be made
and so that's why people are willing to look past all the dangers willing to look past all these
things because there's a prospect of short-term gain. Yeah. In the short term for sure. But the
long-term they are attempting to transcend their humanity and get around having to believe in
Christ in order to do that. Exactly. Yeah. So that's why this gets, this gets dark very quickly.
And also, I mean, it exposes a whole host of heretical and, and like anti-reality views of,
people, why they exist, the nature of work, you know, to try to just get rid of these things.
Like this is, I mean, this is a different religion. Like this is, I would quibble a little
bit with what Jim just said. I don't think it's that you can only transcend humanity outside of
Christ. It's that you can't transcend humanity and that not even Christ wants you to transcend
your humanity and to try to do so is actually to become unhuman, like in Paralandria, the unman,
become demonic. And so, yeah, to the extent that you are trying to get beyond your species or your
nature, you are dissolving it and destroying it into something hideous while actually never getting
beyond it. And this is a political act. That's why, again, we have a couple of tweets about
Christians and politics coming up, but this is where, again, this is not to say, there's a
difference between saying that Christians should be, especially pastors, should be super involved
in politics. It's another thing to just acknowledge the reality that all of these kind of like that
spiritual things are inherently political. Like there are inherently political beliefs and actions.
Everything you're doing is political because it's all about power. Like everything that we're,
you know, if we, if Caesar is Lord, then, then Elon is not, or Sam Altman is not. And,
you know, there, there's a hundred ways in which this is true. And so, um, yeah, I think that we're,
we've really, the church has not done a good job of, of thinking through a lot of these issues.
And, uh, and so that's why we're part of the reason why we're in the situation that we're in.
I want to unpack what I said just a little bit there, because I wasn't trying to imply that
we're going to transcend our humanity ever. Uh, but there, I do have a question. The question is
when Jesus is going on about being one with the father and at some point he wants us to be one
with him like he's one with the father um i think it's john 10 right this whole monologue that he
goes on uh do you see any parallels there with the transhumanist ai people and sort of wanting to
upload their brains become one with the super intelligence like is that like an antichrist
version of that vision of what jesus is talking about what does it mean to become one with the
father like he's one with the father? Well, I think we're not ever going to be one with the
father the way that Jesus is one with the father, no matter what. It's more like the oneness of
marriage where a husband and wife become one. That doesn't mean they become the same person
or they dissolve into a third nature or something like that, or the wife becomes the husband.
And it's more of a moral unity, I think, a unity of purpose and direction, an alliance of goals.
Obviously, Jesus in the context is talking about his disciples loving each other.
He's not saying, I want to dissolve all of you into one blob so that you're all kind of the same thing now.
No, it's only in kind of triune ultimate reality.
God is Father, Son, and Spirit, but also always one.
And it's only in the Trinity that you can ultimately resolve this big question of how can things be united but also distinct from each other.
And otherwise, I think we're always kind of falling off one side of the horse or the other in terms of dividing against each other or blending everything together like pagans do.
And so, yeah, I think probably the transhumanists are leaning more towards the pagan side of things of let's blend it all together into one great consciousness, which is very scary from a Christian point of view.
Well, we have an example in fiction, the Borg and Star Trek, right?
Picard gets subsumed into the Borg and he loses all sense of personal identity What that then Yeah you will be assimilated Exactly Resistance is futile So yeah even in redemption in the new creation redeemed
humans are as united
as they will ever be.
And there is no more
fighting and arguments and screaming and yelling
at your kids or your wife and
no more false attribution of motives.
But people all remain distinct from each
other and they celebrate that and they enjoy that
about each other. And we'll be endlessly enjoying
all these different people with all their unique perspectives.
And yeah, I don't know.
It's just, it's great.
But all of that is, of course, in God and through God in his own, analogously, you know,
his own unity and diversity.
Yeah, I think Jesus talked about a relational attunement there on a human level as he's
talking about as the Father and I are one in context of his disciples.
We've been doing a series on relationships this fall.
And our entire kind of starting point every single week is we start with the Trinity and then how that unity and diversity in the Trinity fleshes out.
And how do we image that as human beings in our different types of relationships, whether it be marriage, your neighbor, friendship, whatever it might be.
Jim I have a question based on
so I'm trying to
how does Common Grace factor into
the way
you're thinking about the
the AI
the emergence of AI
and the potential for
you know
ending humanity
well I don't
my eschatology doesn't really
allow for humanity to be ended
by AI. I don't, I just want to make sure your eschatology is, is checking your, okay. I just
wanted you to say it. Yeah. I don't, I don't think we're all going to die from AI. I don't think the
Lord is going to let that happen. I do think that the Lord could, I mean, through common grace,
there could be lots of blessings and benefits that even the heathens get to enjoy.
And restraint. That's the particular thing I'm thinking about is the restraint.
I don't yeah I feel like there could be a pretty big judgment kind of Tower Babel style version 275
like Tim was talking about and so it's more just do we really have to go through that again I feel
like we've the Lord has already taught us that lesson but of course nobody reads the Bible or
reads anything anymore so yeah all right let's let's keep going here on this we'll stay on some
of these notes. We mentioned politics. We mentioned the relationship between Christians and politics
and how to think about this. We have a number of things. So let's see. Every time we have Tim on,
it seems like we get a tweet from James Wood. We need to get him on the episode or on the podcast
here at some point. I just don't want to follow that many people and I'm lazy.
We totally should have him. I've been reading just about everything he's posting because he's on our
committee. Cool. Yeah. The Christian, yeah. The Christian nationalism committee for, uh, the PCA.
All right. So James friend of the program, uh, says it's good for civil authorities slash public
figures to point the people to realities beyond politics, i.e. God, this helps people avoid the
temptation of placing their ultimate hopes in politics. And so then actually here, let's,
let's, uh, down here, we've got Charlie Collier with a respectful pushback. Uh, surely that
depends on the nature of the pointing using God to enjoy the world, to speak in an Augustin,
Augustinian idiom involves pointing to God.
It just happens to be in an idolatrous fashion,
to which James has another piece that he's written.
Tim, what do you think?
Yeah, I don't know.
I just thought it was just a nice little quip.
I think this was in the wake of the Charlie Kirk Memorial,
which had a lot of people either completely gaga,
this is the greatest thing ever,
or this is the worst thing ever.
And I mean, overall, I was very pleasantly surprised
at how much Jesus appeared in it.
And then to whatever extent, it was a Philippians 1 situation where people were disingenuously speaking of Christ for political aims.
He was clearly being preached in many ways, and you should be glad about that, regardless of who was saying it or why they were saying it or how they were doing it.
And as much cringe as there was theologically and ecclesiologically and politically, there's a lot of things that I would not feel comfortable in bringing that much kind of political grandstanding into a funeral.
But it was like, wow.
You know, I think, so I think James was trying to say,
it's good even from a political standpoint
to point beyond politics.
And I think I've heard a couple other people
say something similar of when you don't explicitly talk
about Christ's supremacy over these things,
what you are actually encouraging and implying
is that politics is the ultimate
and you kind of just leave people
to figure it out on their own.
And I think it's, even though it might be disorienting or disjointing to hear politicians or political leaders speak explicitly about Christ or about God and say, hey, this is what's ultimately important.
We should be glad that they're saying it to whatever extent they actually mean it.
Because, yeah, ultimately, politics is secondary to the ultimate redemption to come, even though there's a lot to do.
between what is happening in this world and the world to come, of course.
Weren't you saying that the Charlie Kirk Memorial
may have been the largest gospel presentation in the history of the world?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how they count these things in terms of,
oh, we got, you know, 100 million viewers.
And it's like, well, okay, I don't know what that means.
Does that mean counting everyone who watched it for 10 seconds?
I mean, I just watched random clips of different parts of it.
I didn't watch the whole thing.
But if you kind of count that as people watching the memorial,
then yeah, it's probably the largest evangelistic event in church history
in terms of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people
who heard about Jesus or heard the gospel.
Yeah, I agree with James.
I think it is good for authorities and civil authorities, public figures,
to point people to realities beyond politics,
really, which means realities beyond themselves,
which is always a good thing that we,
especially in the modern context where basically governments
are treated like they are gods.
You know, we think about them as not having any,
not being accountable to anyone.
At the same time, I think it's also good
without needing to be a third way.
I feel like, I think this is true.
And especially in the context of the funeral,
which you're correct, that is when this was posted,
that is helpful.
I think that's true.
I think the bigger need at the moment though,
is for, I think it's for Christians to know
it's for Christians to think rightly about political involvement. Specifically, I would
emphasize local political involvement. Like it's easy to just get stuck on the national stuff and
then just become that, that become your whole diet. But like, I mean, uh, Josh Howerton, I should
find this tweet, but Josh Howerton, uh, he's a pastor in the Southern Baptist convention. I think,
Like he basically, he's more of a megachurch pastor, but he's been kind of going on his own little journey and been really good the last few weeks or like the last few months.
He's just been willing to talk about these things in ways that are helpful.
I got to find this tweet.
He was basically talking about reading a political book, reading a book by Christians from, I believe it was like the 17th or 1800s.
And he was basically saying like, man, every single one of these guys would have been slandered as a Christian nationalist, would have been considered as too political.
These guys were doing election day sermons.
These guys were super politically involved.
The people he was reading, these were early Americans.
And so I honestly think the bigger, like obviously there's things that transcend politics.
I don't think that's the big need that the vast majority of Christians have.
I think that's the overwhelming position, at least in the circles that we run.
I think the bigger need is to think about, for Christians to think about and meditate on actually involvement in politics as a way, political involvement as a way of faithfulness.
as a way to be faithful to the Lord.
That's not to say that I'm not talking about pastors necessarily.
I'm just talking about your average Christian.
I think there's the average Christian,
their political involvement is I vote.
And then I might argue with somebody on Facebook about these things.
When in reality,
like there's so much political stuff that could actually be useful that you
can do on a local level that could be loving and serving your community in
very real and tangible ways that would give you opportunities to share the gospel. But I just,
I don't think the great need, I don't think that what James articulated is the great problem of our
era, even though I agree that it is a potential problem and there are people for whom it is a
problem right now. Glad we all agree. Yeah, I kind of speak to this in a couple of different
ways. I mean, I definitely make a distinction between the church as an institution and
Christian's involvement in these things.
I do make that distinction.
And, you know, I had quite a bit of conversation post-Charlie Kirk events where that was kind of what I was emphasizing was like, you know, hey, look, my job is to do my job and I represent the institution of the church.
my political message, if you will, big C political message, you know, is that Jesus is Lord.
And now what does that, what does it look like for you to steward, you know, that call to love
your neighbor in this particular arena of, you know, College Station or Texas or the United States
It could be entering politics as a Christian.
So I think that the just nagging thing I have there as far as like the Kirk funeral, but really just that kind of just representative movement was, yes, Jesus was proclaimed.
I really loved, honestly, Marco Rubio's.
That was probably my favorite.
But it still comes with this right-handed kind of power that I just don't see Jesus affirming in his kingdom-building way.
You know, even the disciples in Acts 1, they still think after everything that had happened, they still think Jesus, establishing of Jesus' kingdom really meant Israel taking over Rome.
They still thought that in Acts 1.
And he just basically was like, yeah, we ain't doing it that way.
That's not how we're going to take over the world.
Now, I think that was speaking to an institutional point there.
Again, do I want Christians in politics seeking to implement beautiful laws, which we believe are God's good laws, for the flourishing of humanity?
Absolutely.
Please go do that.
Right?
So those are just kind of some of my thoughts.
I think the power, the nature of the power, you know, I'm a big Capon fan, left-handed versus right-handed power from his parables book.
and Jesus is going about it a different way
as far as church, kingdom, institution stuff.
Yeah, and this is where I just think
we don't want pastors to go necessarily,
pastors getting involved in being politicians, right?
We don't want that.
Pastors need to be pastors, sure.
Unless they feel a different one.
But what I'm saying is the vast majority,
like it seemed like the the disciples were saying hey you're going to restore to israel
restore the kingdom to israel so like they're basically like are we are we getting ready to
reign are we getting ready to rule politically and jesus goes he doesn't even answer him actually
and he basically you know goes on and he's like effectively no like you guys are going to go
disciple the nations and so that that's what you're that's what you're called to do and so
but again at some point this teaching them to observe all things that i've commanded you which
is part of you know Matthew 28 19 to 20 is going to involve teaching like governing officials to obey Jesus because they are like they they been in steward stewarded with they been entrusted with political authority and they ought to steward it you know they ought to be taught what it looks like to steward it
uh faithfully uh i mean i do go ahead tim sorry i was gonna change subjects a tiny bit or
add something well i just wanted to say real quick one of the fun things when i was in my first
call as a campus minister at Heinz Community College was, you know, I had like 10 students,
you know, and we just got started. And then the vice president of that particular campus,
which is the largest campus, there were like five campuses, but she was the big dog.
She just started coming to my Bible study. She's like, is this okay? I'm like, what are you talking
about? She's like, this is my first calling to be, you know, a disciple of Jesus. And I just felt
honored, but I knew she was taking, I knew she was taking her heart into her job, her Jesus formed
heart in her job. I mean, I get stoked about that. Yep. Yeah. I think, I think the danger is,
first of all, not knowing our own history because like when you, I mean, this is, it's not like
Christian political involvement and even like, you know, like explicitly talking about the
scriptures at a political level. It's not like this is something new that we're just positing
for the first time
and like throwing out there
is something like
this is something
Christians should do.
This has been going on
for like a couple thousand years.
Like you really know,
just shy of that.
Yeah, I mean,
that is true.
But I think it's a question
kind of like James's tweet originally.
I think it's a question
of priority
or of what is foundational.
And I, you know,
one of the things
I sent for us to discuss
was this quote
from Alan Jacobs.
And I'll be sure
because this is related.
The social media.
Can you share it on the screen?
Tim. There we go. Social media user's prayer. God grant me cacophonous wrath about the things I
cannot change, habitual neglect of the things I can change, and absolute ignorance of the difference.
One of my concerns in a social media, everything is on a super fast news cycle society is,
and I add on top of that, a society that since its foundation has been centrally concerned with
political questions and political processes and political parties is that people obsess over
politics and they think that the political process is really where the real action happens,
whether you're talking from the right or from the left. And a lot of these things, to your point,
Jordan, about people obsessing over federal politics, which we really can't do much of
anything about, to the neglect of local politics in the local community. I totally agree. People get
obsessed with federal political issues and federal political questions. And then you add
cocaine into the mix with social media and people are getting just wound up nonstop and really angry
and they're banging down the doors of their churches, demanding that their pastors speak
to these things every, you know, sermon. You got to speak to issues I want to hear about.
But to get back to my earlier point of what is the ultimate priority? Yeah, Christianity is
necessarily speaking to political questions. We don't just sit here and especially from the
Reformed tradition, we don't just sit here and think about the Sermon on the Mount and say,
this is the be all and end all of we're just going to hide from the world and we're going to turn our
cheeks and never let anything happen. No, there's a lot more going on in the New Testament and there's
a lot more going on in the Old Testament that still matters and still applies. But there is a
order of operations. There's a priority here. I was just reading the other night, Augustine,
City of God. Okay, we're living in Christendom. Okay, we are 100, 200 years past Constantine.
Christianity is the religion of the state. Augustine is not constantly talking in the
city of God about, oh, isn't this great? Let's just go peddle the metal, more politics. This
is going to be great. He has a lot to say to political rule, but he keeps talking over and
over and over again about how we're exiles, we're sojerders. And that can be overdone,
of course, that can become an excuse for escapism and retreating into pietistic
you know, uh, harmlessness, but I don't think we should completely ditch it. I think there,
there is a point there that even when Christianity is on top of society, so to speak, like it was in
Augustine's day, uh, we are still sojourners and Augustine is constantly pointing people to heaven,
to the world to come and, uh, suffering and evil and sin, never let you forget about that.
And sometimes I just, in a social media world, I just, I get uncomfortable and I get concerned
about people expecting too much too soon from politics,
especially when someone like a Donald Trump
who is far more favorable towards kind of our brand of Christianity
than other options would have been, Kamala Harris.
I think it's a little too easy and tempting to think,
oh, this is it, we've made it, everything's going to be great,
it's just going to be all uphill from here.
And I don't know, I want politics, like Ben was saying,
I want politics to reflect Christ and honor Christ,
but we have to keep what's ultimate ultimate.
And you can argue that the New Testament was written in a context where they were on the bottom of society and they didn't have time to think about political questions.
But I don't think you can deny that the apostles and Jesus did not seem to care that much about political questions in their day.
And we're not super uptight about speaking to all kinds of injustices that were going on.
They had much bigger fish to fry.
And I think we still do have much bigger fish to fry without saying politics is unimportant or Christians shouldn't be involved.
Yeah.
So just to piggyback on that, I've been talking the last several weeks about felt needs versus real needs.
So in a particular interaction I had with a congregant who needed me to speak to the Charlie Kirk situation from the pulpit, I said, what felt need would I be satisfying for you at that moment?
I said, my job is the real need. And so I point to Ephesians 6, which is the evil behind the evil and all idolatry behind all of the evil in the world is what I'm going to continually pound on, whether we live in a more Christianized state or less Christianized state.
Calvin, the heart is the factory of idols. That's where I'm going to camp out. Right. That speaks to that greater allegiance of the Lord Jesus as Lord of our hearts.
I don't know if that's
That language of felt need, real need
I think is big
You know, Henry Ford's supposedly quote
Of like, if you ask people what they need
They're going to say a faster horse
Right, that's a felt need
But that wasn't the real need
It was a
And so I'm continually looking for
In all situations
What's the real need here?
There's all of this
Especially on social media
It's amplified, right?
There's this need to speak to these things
In such a way that if you're
son about these things, first of all, just read motives. And I've just kind of had to say, oh,
I'm, I think I'm doing my job. I'm camping out on Ephesians six. Oh, I'm fighting a war. I think
I'm engaging in the, the, the, the, the spiritual battle that my calling as a pastor called to
engage in. Does that have impact? Absolutely. I think it has impact in all areas of life,
in your marriage, in politics and all these things. Am I missing you somewhere there, Tim?
No, I think you're right. I mean, I think you would agree with this. I think there are
times when you should and you'd need to speak specifically to serious specific issues. You know,
everybody, I think this is part of the dilemma is that everybody feels like their own time and
their own age is uniquely troubled and things always used to be better and the world's about
to end. I mean, Americans love to do this. Christians love to do this. The world's right
about the end, unless we get the right people to fix things. I think I know the tweet you're
talking about, Jordan, the guy talking about revolutionary era pastors speaking a lot about
political issues. And it's like, maybe we're living in a time that is just as apocalyptic
as that was, and therefore we should be speaking to these issues, but probably we're not.
It's probably not as uniquely necessary for pastors to be totally dialed in into politics.
if you just average out kind of, I mean, most Christians are going to live in relatively boring
times where your main focus in church probably needs to be repentance, obedience, discipleship,
which of course has all kinds of things to do with politics. But I don't know. I just think we
need to be careful to think that, oh, well, my age is definitely the age where we're just as
important as the revolutionary age was. And therefore I want to always be talking about
politics. Yeah, I guess my thing is I don't see people like it again, maybe we're just,
these are different circles because this is possible. But like, my thing is, I don't think
people, I don't think the problem is that Christians are too focused on politics. Like,
I just don't think that's the issue. I think, again, you guys have all lived in Texas. Like,
these people are 10 times more involved in sports than they are anything else. Like, I just think,
like, I think Christians are, and I think more of the people, especially Americans more broadly,
I think I don't think that the overwhelming thing is that people are too involved in politics
I think there's a small subset of people for whom that is their that is their sports like
politics is their sports but like I I just and the people in my life I don't have tons of people I
look around and I'm like oh man this guy's too focused on politics like I I think it's that
involved like they're actually involved themselves or obsessing with the news on Twitter yeah it well
the latter, I guess. Like, I, like, I, I think that for a lot of people, it's, it's been presented
to them as more like, they don't want to be, they, at least they're not doing that, or at least
they're trying, they're aware of that danger. And so the, they're trying to be more pietous
by not being involved in politics. And that has its own negative downstream. So it's like the
Lewis quote about bailing out the boat on one side. And then when really you should be bailing
out the other side. I can't remember what the exact quote is, but like, that's, I guess that's
the greater danger that I've seen that has resulted in us getting to the situation that we're in
is because people have been largely, it's like, that's politics is too hard. Thinking about these
issues, this stuff is too hard or too complex, or I just don't want to take the time to deal with it.
Jordan, you're probably right that your average Christian in the pew, their primary sin in terms
of damage and the amount of time and energy they spend on it are probably things like pornography,
you know, sports, watching Netflix, being lazy, drinking too much, not eating well.
Yeah, you're probably right. And I think that's generally what most evangelical pastors focus on
in their serenance are those kinds of things. And I hear them being criticized all the time
on Twitter by people who are like, why don't we talk more about politics? You guys are just
focused on this pietistic holiness stuff. And I think maybe where I'm coming from, and maybe Ben
too, is that I do think there is a significant idolatry issue with politics among American
evangelicals. Maybe not everybody, but a lot of them. And part of what makes it different than
your average sins of gluttony or lust or whatever, is that people who get wound up on politics
and kind of fixate on it tend to be uniquely focused on other people in the church,
what they think they should be doing and what they think they should be saying
and what the pastor should be thinking and doing.
And it kind of, I don't know, in a way it seems to multiply itself in some ways
in ways that other sins don't.
Would you maybe say it's, maybe it is a smaller percentage of people,
but they're just more vocal?
Would you maybe say that is the issue?
That might be it, or it has more widespread pernicious effects in terms of I'm looking down on other people, I'm condescending towards other people, I'm on a pain in the neck to my pastor and to my elder eyes because they're not talking about it all the time like I out them to.
You know, it's like, okay, if somebody's too obsessed with the 49ers and, you know, they just idolize the 49ers, okay, that's a problem.
But, you know, they're probably not, you know, constantly demanding that the pastor denounce the Raiders fans from the pulpit or that, you know, they're constantly, you know, hating them in their hearts and think these are just the worst people ever.
But you do see that kind of thing, I think, in a way with politics and political idolatry.
I have a thesis just on a couple of notes one I think it's I think there's generational it's
generational in in in here's where I sense myself turning as I'm now an empty nester
thinking more about the world that my children are going to live in I know that like some some
of y'all think about that when they're younger but I don't know why but it has become more
prominent for me in the last couple of years. And it kind of hinges around, you know, nostalgia
is a dangerous friend as you look back, right? And for example, you know, everybody's historically
reconstructing the 80s. You know, for my generation, we're constantly historically reconstructing the
80s for example of like it was great We didn have any of these cell phones or any of this business you know and those sorts of things But I just saying I think that Having been served in a primarily older congregation and then now pastoring a congregation where I am one of the oldest
I might be one of the most
you know conscious ones
in my congregation now of like
of what the world is
going to be like and I think it has
a lot to do with my age because when I was
in the older congregation I was one of the
least but it's all
the older generation talked about
and they're not
chiefly on social media
and so I think
the ones that are saying this on social
media
it feels like a different brand.
Yeah.
And I'm trying to figure it out.
Yeah.
I mean,
I,
yeah,
I look at,
I think here's,
here's what I think.
I think that there's,
there are people whose motivation,
like let's say,
let's say pastors.
There are pastors whose motivations for avoiding talking about politics is
because they,
they are laser focused on the Lord.
They,
they want to help their people focus on,
on the Lord.
I think there's another large segment of church leaders for whom avoiding talking about politics is avoiding making their own lives harder.
Or potentially avoiding issues that could result in a divided church that could affect their bottom line of their church operating.
And so I think the issue is how you feel about this issue is somewhat determined by your own experience with maybe the church leaders in your life.
And so, yeah, it is one of these things where, I don't know, I tend to just given the breadth of things that are going on, like the breadth of the insanity, like there's part of me thinks like, again, it's not called for us to want to talk about politics.
or to do whatever.
It's called for us to be faithful
with the situations that we're given.
And so if some of the great trials of our era
are basically we've got laws that instantiate abortion,
we've got laws that instantiate,
what does it mean to be a man or a woman?
Can we do trans stuff?
It's going to come across as more political
to speak biblically to these things.
It's going to look more political
compared to maybe what it's looked like
you know in the past however you know however long past few couple decades or whatever um
but yeah i okay i got a question george because i i like couldn't be less interested in politics
but i i feel like i mean i'm millennial right yeah i feel like the system has betrayed me
and there's nothing there and it's totally corrupt and then as a bitcoiner yeah and you look at it
through that lens, I guess like all the energy that I would have to care about and breathe into
politics is getting sort of siphoned over into Bitcoin because I'm like, well, the system's not
going to be able to be fixed from within the system. So we need this other thing to come and
sort of topple the system to correct it. Right. So are you saying like I should care more directly
about politics as a Bitcoiner or as a Christian? Yeah. So, I mean, this is part of how I think
about this is the easier thing is just to check out and do nothing. Like that is just the easier
thing. And I think there's tons of people who are in your situation where they like in, in like,
and I would even like, in terms of practically, like I haven't gotten super, I'm actually going
to a political thing as soon as we're done recording this, but like, I'm not some super
active person. And yet at the same time, like I look at it and I'm like, man, like the reason why
there's garbage in a lot of these leadership positions in our city. And then at another level
is just because the good people, let's call them, like the righteous people are more involved
and more interested in, and again, things that they really ought to be. Like they're involved
and they want to give their time and their energy to good stuff. And so it just leaves these,
these positions open to people who aren't good people.
See, but the narrative I tell myself is I'm not doing nothing. I'm, instead of voting at the ballot
box. I'm voting with my dollars to defund their system. I think Bitcoin is very, very political.
Yes. A hundred. And so, okay, let me, what I'm not saying is that Bitcoin is not political and
that you're not, you're not doing something about it by owning Bitcoin. I own Bitcoin. I own almost
all Bitcoin. So I definitely think that is very political. I think that that's very helpful.
And I love it. The fact that yes, I'm having this deleterious effect on the nation state by
just something as simple and as noncommittal as just buying Bitcoin.
But what my point is, is like this, there's a part of this noncommittal attitude that
a lot of Christians have that is just laziness.
And it is just, it's like, it's desiring to not have to do inconvenient things.
It's because we all have plenty of money.
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, it's entering into a mass, you know,
a wholesale Great Depression, everyone becomes political.
Okay, yeah.
So that's part of it.
Even in our broken fiat money system,
we are still the richest country in the world by magnitudes.
And so everybody's pretty comfortable, even you say,
well, being, you know, this part of the population.
I'm just saying when you go to foreign countries,
even just a small one-bedroom, two-bedroom house,
you know, in a tough neighborhood,
that a lot of people feel like,
hey, we're doing fine.
But if you wipe out the money.
Okay, but this is an honest question.
Do you think that voting,
like for real voting at the ballot box,
isn't anything more than a rounding error
versus voting with your dollars by selling dollars?
But what I'm saying is I'm not saying either or.
I'm saying both and.
Well, it's okay, fine.
But it's like if I'm getting 99.9%
of all the impact and benefit out of voting with the dollars,
why go waste half of my time on this political process
if I'm spending the same amount of time on both of them,
but one of them is giving me two orders of magnitude less impact?
Why bother?
But you would vote for a Christian big corner in a heartbeat.
It's fine.
And I actually did go vote for the first time in a decade
in this last nationwide election or whatever.
But this is our point.
This is what we're saying.
We're not talking about necessarily at the national level.
Like what I'm saying is like, again, like there, there are, there are tons of ways in which you can get involved like politically.
Like, yeah.
It's happening locally too, Jordan, with the exposure of what a lot of school boards and city council.
Correct.
Like that, that's a great example where it's like, Hey, these are, this is just a real practical way that these, a lot of the, the reality is a lot of these people in positions of power are cowards and they will fold like a cheap chair.
If you just, if you literally went to a school board meeting and said something like you're putting pressure on them.
And so in this, it doesn't cost you.
I vote to defund those systems by homeschooling, right?
Both and, Jim.
Both and.
Okay, but obviously there's like, you only have a certain amount of time, right?
So it's like, if you're going to be leading a small group, or you're going to go to a session meeting as an elder, or you're going to go do like a shepherding call, or you're going to show up at the hospital or pray for somebody versus go to a school board meeting.
I mean, you can't do both.
But this is why I'm saying I'm not advocating necessarily for pastors or for other church officers.
Jim, if you're bound and determined to get off the hook, the deacons don't have to go either, even though they're supposed to serve.
But we won't. We'll let you on.
Voting took like 30 minutes one day.
I'm talking about just this idea that you're constantly showing up to rallies and Charlie Kirk, you know, Turning Point USA rallies.
This is, I guess, what I'm saying is I'm not saying everybody has to be Charlie Kirk.
okay but there needs to like but having a lot more maybe a lot like what would it be it'd be
twice as many people if we had twice as many charlie kirks like it would be it'd be a better
a better place because a lot of this is and you heard jd vance talk about this at charlie kirks
memorial thing he's like i have talked more about my faith in the last week than in the rest of my
political career and like a lot of these guys in politics they are like they are christians
but they're terrified because like they're terrified to talk about it because they're
the presumption is oh like there's so many people out there people are you know quiet about their
christianity and so like i don't know i i just think like there's an opportunity here to do a
lot of good and and basically i mean i think about like bunyan john bunyan he he basically his church
pleaded with him to be their pastor and he's like i don't want to be your pastor and they're like no
please be our pastor. And so we end up being their pastor. I think there's a lot of Christians
who like, again, it's not the easiest thing. It's not going to be the most fun thing,
but like whether it's local, whatever it is, just, and again, it doesn't have to be direct
if it's just putting pressure in different places. I think that we have, again, authority that has
been entrusted to us, that we have the opportunity to do good with, that goes beyond what I think
Tim's point is, I'm not just talking about tweeting about it. I'm talking about, listen,
there's many more ways that you can actually affect real change than just yelling at somebody
on Twitter. I think my only point was just, if we could convince everybody to vote for
such and such candidate or go to such and such school board meeting, we could convince everybody
to do one thing. If the thing that we could convince them to do is sell dollars for Bitcoin,
that would have the most impact.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
Everyone who's listening to this,
probably all 350 people
who will watch this,
go buy Bitcoin
if you're not already doing that.
Okay.
So yes, we agree.
We should be buying Bitcoin.
We agree.
Okay.
All right.
How much time we got?
We got,
okay,
we got like one minute here.
Oh my God.
We had Tim once in.
I was going to say
for our ending
at this great little prayer
that I posted in the chat
from a Presbyterian family devotional
from a hundred years ago,
praying for the family.
I just thought it was a cool little prayer.
Oh, wait, where'd it go?
I don't see it.
Which shad did you put it in?
The Twitter one.
Oh, the Twitter one.
I think it's the first one I did.
Here, read it for us.
Okay, is this it?
Are we ending with this prayer?
Yeah, we're ending with this prayer.
Do it.
Okay, we're going to pray this.
This is a prayer, I think, originally written for families,
but we're going to pray it for Bitcoiners
and all of their endeavors in this world.
God of our fathers, we seek thy holy help
in our effort to create a home on earth
which shall fit us for our home in heaven,
enabled us to make it the abode of peace and love,
of truth and justice, of righteousness and honor.
Whether assembled about the family altar, the fireside,
or the table spread with our daily bread,
whether asleep beneath the sheltering roof by night or abroad
and at work by day,
may we feel that thou art round about us
as the mountains are round about Jerusalem.
May there here be pure joys
which shall find expression in music and in laughter,
and if tears must sometimes fill our eyes,
may we learn to find the comfort of thy love.
in sickness and in health,
in joy and in sorrow,
in life and in death.
We crave and invoke thy blessing
in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
That's a good word.
Appreciate you guys.
Jim, Tim, Ben,
grateful for you.
Grateful for you guys
who are listening to this.
If you have liked what you've heard
or if you haven't liked,
tell us about it.
Leave a review.
Leave a comment on YouTube.
Leave a comment on Twitter.
Cuss us out.
Give us, you know,
just destroy us.
It'll be great.
Any attention is good attention.
We will be back on Tuesday with another episode.
We are going to be recording some really cool episodes in the near future here.
It looks like we're going to hopefully get an interview with Rusty Reno, who's the editor of First Things magazine.
We're going to talk to him about his book.
What is it called?
The Return of the Strong Gods.
We've got hopefully an interview with Megan Basham coming up as well.
Some other ones that are going to be real fun.
So we'll keep you posted.
And again, Bitcoin, where do we at right now?
121,000. We didn't even talk about it being all-time high the other day.
This is some wild days. All-time high gold. I'm scaring people
because our Blocktron's don't agree. People are going to
zoom in on mine and be like, what universe do you live in? Jim is in the future
where Bitcoin is at 918,000. It's great.
But anyhow, we appreciate you guys and we will see you on the next episode of the
Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
Thank you.