Hear now, the Word of the Lord…
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord ‘confused’ the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:1-9, ESV
Humanism Everpresent
The record of the Tower of Babel is significant in establishing one of the earliest examples of blatant humanism: the reverence of humanity and human accomplishment. God commanded early humanity to disperse throughout the world and populate it. The people had a different idea. By the guidance of the ancient world leader, Nimrod, whom the book of Genesis claimed "was the first on earth to be a mighty man", people aligned against the will of God and for their own prideful ambition.
The divine intervention of the Lord to create disparate language could be seen by the skeptics or mockers as a case for God being jealous of human progress, sabotaging early humans of the Genesis version of Maslow's self-actualization. However when we take the life stories of the four patriarchs in Genesis, the tribulation and journey of their Hebrew descendants in Exodus, and the contrasting nature of their culture with the pagans around them, it is clear that it was God's plan to raise up a multifaceted world where his chosen people would be a light in darkness, rather than a super city of Babel that would attempt to overrule their Creator.
The Lord's plan to bring about his glory through the population of the earth ran counter to the men that sought to "make for themselves a name" or seek near term glory. It is hard to escape the analogy that could be drawn to the low-time preference of fiat currency. Fiat essentially bypasses the obligatory work required to create a token of value. To quote Saifedean Ammous from The Fiat Standard, the fiat system "treats future promises of payment of money as if they were as good as present money". Saifedean also described fiat as "a compulsory implementation of debt-based centralized ledger technology monopolizing financial and monetary services worldwide." To the common man groomed to accept or prefer the status quo, this is an acceptable state. To the libertarian bitcoiner, this is an offense to their right to property and liberty. To the Christian, this can only be understood as a perpetual state of sin against the nature of God.
Human Reason, Divine Folly
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Corinthians 4:4
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Ephesians 2:1-3
The common man, whom the Bible classifies as "blinded by Satan'' (2 Cor 4:4) or "dead in their sin" (Eph 2:1-3) is either ignorantly or rebelliously in support of sinful institutions. The blind are often too far entranced with the ways of the world to ever deviate from the path of destruction. Their silence and support is easily bought by providing services in place of property. I once had a conversation with someone I thought was intelligent. He said, “I do not care if the government bails out American Airlines, as long as I can fly somewhere.” His liberty is a small ransom.
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Ephesians 4:28
The libertarian Bitcoiner understands the depravity of theft and gives no room for justification based on high office or worldly philosophy (Eph 4:28). A society where legal theft is minimized is a society worth pursuing. They see the manifestation of this better world in the decentralized Bitcoin Network. However, their justification for it falls flat if they plead their case based on their own logic over a Keynesian. But human philosophies, limited as much as their finite authors, pale in comparison to the God-breathed teachings of Scripture. Without the wisdom of the Lord, we mimic the faulty piety of Jedi Knights relying on subjective viewpoints rather than objectivity of eternity past.
Economic Blind Spots
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2:8
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
Exodus 20:2-3
But what exactly blinds the Christians who are aware of the gospel and absolutism? The Christian that denies the inherent theft in our monetary system has decided one of two things. Possibly, they have abdicated the responsibility of investigating the monetary system because it is too similar to the "sinful tax collector" archetype in the Bible. They rather look the other way than understand the details of a problem that could be rectified. Alternatively, the blind Christian has bestowed a sainthood or at least a legitimacy to governance structures (especially if they voted for the administration) and deny that it could be a mechanism against God's order (Col 2:8). This legitimacy is either a product of status quo bias or humanist authoritarianism. Is it far-fetched to think that a government institution could be inherently sinful considering our present and past challenges in society? Is it fantasy to think that a Christian makes allowances for other gods in their life against the first commandment (Exo 20:2,3)? Of course not! We do it all the time.
Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good.
Proverbs 20:23
A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Deuteronomy 25:15
Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.
Ephesians 5:8b-12
The fiat monetary system, designed to manipulate the weight to determine value, is exactly the type of evil the Bible warns against in Proverbs 20:23 and Deuteronomy 25:15. Just because everything in our reality is based on this system does not legitimize it any more than a democratic vote declaring all Christians enemies of a sovereign state. Christians must recognize this and turn away from their support of lawlessness (Eph 5:8b-12). This system has resulted in immeasurable amounts of theft, but also virtually uncontested and silent support by most of the world. For the agreeable benefit to transfer value across space, we have paid with the perpetual and uncontrollable diminishing negative real interest rates on the money we save. To defend, perpetuate, or enforce this system, wars have been fought throughout the 20th and 21st century ending more lives at a faster rate than any century of the past due to the ability to fund a war as long as you can print money. The sustainers and benefactors of this system; politicians with seemingly endless reach and power, and crooked corporations, who would rather see people burn than lose their grip on monetary power, have indeed created the ultimate abomination against the commandments against theft and murder. Remember, Nimrod and his comrades in Genesis who felt they should “make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth”? Thousands of years later, after the earth has essentially been dispersed, it is safe to say that people went ahead and created the Tower of Babel anyway: the Fiat Monetary System.
Grand Theft
Is this a wrong assessment? Was Nimrod not “a mighty one on the earth”? While he was a hunter, he did not seek the wildest game to establish his name. The Tower of Babel would be a monument in the middle of a city as a symbol of his reputation and pride. This is a political action that would need financial support. Nimrod is the exact image of every humanist politician and c-suite executive that desires personal glory at any cost. Fiat money is a testament to their shrewdness in convincing the common man to “trust” their policies that reallocate your honest labor earnings to a socialist government program that may even be an affront to your Biblical principles. The CEO and politician will stand in solidarity as they debase your savings to re-allocate its value to a failed business that is claimed to be a pillar of the economy. Fiat money is a testament to their power of thievery. Not even the combined skill of Arsène Lupin, Danny Ocean, and Robin Hood could match the global reallocation of wealth over decades of Central Banking.
Could we estimate the depths of the thievery? In 1960, there was about $300B in the US M2 Supply. Now there is $20.7T. That is 70 times more “money” than there was 60 years ago! Even if that expansion was proven to actually be necessary, what profession is making 70 times more 60 years later? Public school teachers earned about $5k in 1960. That would be $350K today, but current salaries average to be about $66K; 5.5 times smaller share or piece of the overall American economy than the fortunate teacher working in aforementioned era. What do teachers do differently from then? How did classrooms evolve? Nothing really. Are they less valuable than they were before? According to the state (who is the primary employer of teachers) it would seem as if they received a massive pay cut without actually calling it a pay cut! Teachers, along with many other professions, have been victims of wealth redistribution of the Cantillon Effect. The chart below shows the direct effects of what happens when an elite class is enabled to manifest money out of a decree and how it negatively affects others outside that class.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Romans 6:1-2
Evil must not be allowed to fester (Rom 6:1,2). Arbitrary, inflationary, and manipulative money has no place in the Christian worldview. Money entrusted to a 3rd party to verify transactions cannot survive in a world of sinners that will use that power for personal gain at the expense of others. This argument holds, as well, against the validity of gold. A goldsmith or custodian will be faced with the same temptation as the Central Bank to lie about how many pounds of metal are in that safe as they print gold certificates. A Christian must desire for a system that makes it harder to steal and lie, not just go back to old forms of sin. Does a Christian make drunkenness a habit because “they can hold their liquor”? Should we use the Lord’s name in vain because “it does not affect our disposition toward Christ in our hearts”? While we cannot fully escape the existence of sin, our societies improve when our secular institutions exhibit the characteristics of a Holy God.
Build Against Theft Nature
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Matthew 26:41, Mark 14:38
And give no opportunity to the devil.
Ephesians 4:27
To set imperfect humans up for success in this regard, we must take individual humans out of the loop of control of the monetary system. A system that is peer-to-peer where only sender and receiver participate in the exchange. What benefit is a 3rd party, other than an opportunity for that entity to grift or leech off the value exchange of others.
Only a decentralized monetary network will preserve the incentives of all participants rather than a few. Additionally, decentralization preserves the ability for all people to participate rather than a select few based on political conformity. After all, any Christian who promotes the idea of economic censorship should review their Bible.
Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Revelations 13:16-17
To be a believer is to be against any form of top down economic suppression. This type of tool by worldly governments could easily be turned against the Christian faith and suppress the spread of the Gospel. To not consider this is to prefer statism over God’s providence.
Only a system with a clear and auditable capacity can be a true weight of value. Does a yardstick change its length based on the president elect? Should we then create $27T dollars in 60 years, yet still lie to each other claiming $1 equals $1?
In light of these arguments, the Christian should denounce the fiat monetary system as a godless construction of human achievement. Fiat is the tower of Babel and an abomination to the nature and character of the Lord. The Christian should pray for wisdom in these matters as they investigate for themselves this sinful institution. From my perspective, the tool that is needed to rebuild the decades of decay and lies is Bitcoin. Like the printing press for expansion of scriptural knowledge, the built in wealth-preservation characteristics of Bitcoin will help protect Christians and the unbelieving world from the greatest perpetrators of the 6th and 8th commandments in history.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Phil 4:8-9
If you are further interested in separating money from the state, check out the Declaration of Monetary Independence. Share and discuss it with your loved ones.
Image Sources:
Money Tower of Babel - Self Owned and Created
Tower of Babel - Self Owned and Created
Obi–Wan Kenobi - Tenor
Middle Class Erosion - American Compass