Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.-Romans 12:9-10 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.-1 John 3:18 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.-1 Corinthians 10:24 The above verses are but a few of the ways in which the apostles sought to articulate to early churches what it meant to think and live as Christ did. John and Paul sought to articulate in plain language the radical worldview through which Christ and his people see the world. Such a vision stood in stark relief to the Roman world into which Christ and his Gospel were born. Celebrity sophists and their vapid speeches filled the public square. Small business owners faced increasing pressure to either openly or secretly decrease the quality of the goods and services they offered in order to try to keep pace with an increasingly devalued Roman currency. Cesar and his government placed ever-increasing pressure through fear, taxes, and forced worship upon penalty of violence in order to try to maintain peace throughout its multicultural empire.
Amidst so many complicated issues and increasing justification to think and act to the contrary, the apostles advocated the same path that their crucified and resurrected Lord had walked: counter-cultural self-sacrificial love of God and neighbor. A burning desire to know Christ through knowing his pain, his lack, his fullness, and his eternal life. They were called to look down the most dominant empire in the world to that point and declare with their mouths and lives, "No God but Christ." From the perspective of the Roman and Jewish powers that were, it was a fools errand, yet God has been using the foolish things of the world to bring to nothing the things that seem strong, important, and real since the beginning of time. In the span of two centuries the Church turned the world upside down by refusing to budge an inch on their God-defined and love-borne action, regardless of the risk and inconvenience involved. The cultural climate in which Church finds itself in 2021 is not nearly as different from the early church as one might imagine. Celebrity worship and social media lend undue credibility and importance to the most extreme and novel voices, enabling them capture the attention of tens of millions, especially the young. Microprocessors and the internet have created an increasingly interconnected and multicultural world. One hundred years of central banking has seen the US dollar lose 99% of its purchasing power and enabled endless wars to be waged the world over. Governments the world over have become hopelessly encumbered by debt while confidently asserting that they have everything under control. Their behavior has also normalized unsustainable levels of debt among their citizenry, leaving an increasingly large percentage dependent upon government safety net programs for their daily bread, a responsibility that does not belong to them.
How should the church respond to all of these challenges? The answer is the same today as it was 2000 years ago: a radical self-responsibility and commitment to the word and work of God. A dogged refusal to be swept along by the "inevitable" tide of man-centered, sowing and reaping denying, future forsaking Christ-less secularism. What could any of that possibly have to do with Bitcoin? That question is what this book aims to answer, to the glory of God and for the good of His people.
