Rapp Report episode 210
Welcome to Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application. The show is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. On today’s episode, host Andrew Rappaport is joined by friend and Pastor Jim Osman of Kootenai Community Church in Idaho. Unlike our usual episodes, we will be in discussion with another podcast from the Christian Podcast Community, Bitcoin and the Bible, to discuss the issues of money, Bitcoin and the church. Join us for part one of this two-part episode!
To begin, the hosts of Bitcoin and the Bible introduce themselves and their show, the heart of which encourages Christians all around the world with the message that God has provided for us. With the great reset underway and the worldly transitions taking place, it is incumbent upon the church to put ourselves in a position to thrive going forward. Dave, Simon and Will are members of Kootenai Community Church.
Most people have no concept or Biblical understanding of currency, why we have it and how we should view it. At the very beginning, God created Adam and Eve and gave them the job of tending to His garden. Thus, work is built into the human condition as a good and noble thing given by God. The fruit of our labor can be traded amongst one another. It didn’t take long for the human population to realize a medium for exchange was needed. Thus, money is a way to facilitate trade and increase the prosperity of a society. Today, Dave explains, money is borrowed into creation and is really just a claim on a debt obligation. We have now found ourselves in a situation in which the debt has spiraled out of control and we are in need of a new monetary system to reset.
In a free market system, mediums of exchange must be divisible and recognizable. The value of currency differs greatly from place to place, depending on the needs of the population. Therefore, money does not have intrinsic value but is dependent on time, society, and circumstance. Money is desired due to its flexibility and allowance of other goods and services from the economy. Some Christians believe that money is inherently evil and vain. However, money is a morally neutral mechanism of storing labor. It is the greed of money that makes it evil. God refers to Abraham, who was rich in cattle, as a righteous man. Thus we are led to believe that He has given us permission to use the money he has allowed us to choose freely in a way that honors and glorifies Him.
The fiat system refers to the present operating system in which the money used is a decree by the government to be used in paying taxes and as the official currency. This money, however, is based solely on debt and is moved in the ether. Already, we are living in a world in which money has been dematerialized and is issued under the promise of its future performance. Bitcoin is likened unto gold in that all of the capital and energy has been invested into it for it to be created.
The concept of cryptocurrency is often a difficult one for people to understand, and Andrew breaks it down in the simplest way possible. Gold is great at storing value over time, while fiat currency is a great medium of exchange over space. Separately, they each have their own fatal flaws. The technological improvement of the fiat standard is the ability to combine the two currencies based on trust. Anyone can look at the situation and determine it is horribly dangerous. There is no interface between the digital and physical worlds. What needed to be done was to design money that exists digitally and also has digital scarcity, which nobody can control. A predefined system with rules but not rulers, which specified its monetary policy in the very beginning, makes it impossible to develop more of the currency and lets everyone monitor, would be a digital system that respects the store value of money. Rather than relying on an auditor,