God's Non-Monetary Currencies
The manifold monies upon which civilizations are built.
In his presentation at the 2023 Thank God For Bitcoin conference, pastor and author C.R. Wiley spoke about the logic of money and what is actually going on under the hood.
The word currency has its own history—it’s derived from the Latin, “currere” for, to flow, or to run—like a current of water or electricity. But what’s flowing in a market economy when we use currency? You know, value…How currencies come to carry value is somewhat mysterious. But people use currency every day without a theory that would help them understand how a piece of paper that costs less than a cent to produce comes to be worth many times that—sometimes hundreds of thousands of times. And then, in some instances, they suddenly lose faith and a currency, and it is worthless…Ultimately trust is the real currency.
Money is (among other things) tokenized trust. This is a staggering and underappreciated point. Staggering, because the cost associated in trying to satiate the societal requirement for trust continues to rise with every day that goes by, and underappreciated because so little is said about its role as a bedrock of trust upon which every great, lasting society has been built.
But trust isn’t the only such currency flowing through human interaction. In a world that prioritizes the visible, countable, and definable more than ever, it’s easy to fall prey to conceding it as the chief and defining currency within a society. Wiley’s words provide a needed chink in the armor. Are there other examples that bolster the case?
In the same way that the national and political world features hundreds of national monetary denominators, the Bible makes the case that the spiritual and intangible world has its own array of currencies.
Let’s examine a few of them.
Honor/Respect
Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. - Romans 13:7
In this passage the Apostle Paul moves seamlessly from talking about taxes and revenues to honor and respect. Paul argues that honor is like money, specifically taxes; Christians should pay them to those to whom they are due.
Some of you might respond, “Wait, is he advocating Christians have to obey without qualification whatever the government tells them to do? And if so, does that mean by extension that Jesus was defending effectively limitless taxation?”
No.
Paul was given the death penalty for refusing to worship Caesar as God. Then what is Paul saying? Simply that governing authorities rule with an authority that has ben stewarded to them by God, but they don’t get to create their own job description. Further, you can both respect and honor someone without obeying everything what they ask you to do if a higher authority has ruled otherwise. If a circuit court makes a ruling against you, and the case later goes to the Supreme Court who rules in your favor, are you being dishonorable or disrespectful to that circuit court by going along with the Supreme Court ruling? No.
Honor is like a currency, and some individuals, families, and societies have far more of it than others. Some are rich in honor and respect, while others are completely bankrupt.
Justice
A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight. - Proverbs
There is a real sense in which justice is a type of money or wealth. The false balance referenced here was used to weigh both food and other goods sold by weight as well as the money used to purchase it. Crooked businessmen could rig the balance in their favor in order to give the appearance of selling a pound of tomatoes while actually only selling 95% of a pound. If you live in a place where justice abounds, everyone in this city, state, or country benefits. Existence in a place where justice is perverted and the wicked prey on the weak without consequence is to live in poverty and will require expending other real world assets to attempt to overcome it. For example, it’s well established in countries like Mexico that one can get out of being stopped by the police for a minor infraction by paying them. In countries such as El Salvador featured neighborhoods so overrun by gang activity that cars entering those areas were forced to pay a sort of informal toll. Such corruption grinds down economic margin within a society and sets it on a myopic, destructive trajectory.
El Salvador also provides the contrast. Their willingness to crack down on crime and embrace forward thinking monetary technology like Bitcoin (which increases in value over time) has resulted in many Salvadoreans moving back to the country along with millions of dollars in outside investment.
Love
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. - Romans 13:8
Love is frequently talked about in monetary language throughout the Bible. Debt is dangerous, especially in situations where money is scarce, and the Bible frequently warns people to do everything possible to avoid indebting themselves if they can, with one exception: love. The debt referred to here is a consequence of Christ’s death on the cross to pay for the sins of those who trust in him. Christ paid a debt that we could never hope to have paid on our own, and the passage above seeks to remind Christians of their duty to remember and imitate Christ’s sacrificial love by loving one another.
Mercy
'“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,”
- Ephesians 2:4
God is described by Paul as being rich in mercy. The image that leaps to mind is God as Scrooge McDuck diving into and swimming around a room full of mercy. God abounds in mercy. He has plenty and is not stingy with it. When confronted with an entire race who willfully and repeatedly choose to seek out and live shortsighted and destructive lives that ignore the way he has designed the world to work, His response was not to simply say, “Trapdoor open, you fall through.” Instead, he sent His Son to live the life that they couldn’t and wouldn’t live, laying down his rights in order to provide for the needs of people who could never hope to repay him. This culminated in his betrayal by his closest friends, a wrongful conviction by hypocritical politicians, and his death on a Roman cross. Christ suffered all these things willfully motivated by an all encompassing mercy that gives where our own resources would have long since been exhausted.
Good works
“As for the rich in this age…they are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future,”
- 1 Timothy 6:17-19
One of the perpetual dangers of monetary wealth is that it abstracts value. It is, by definition, a third thing that mediates value between two parties. But the reason for the mediation is that what people produce through their work doesn’t always coincide with the needs of another person. This issue is exacerbated in high density population centers such as cities. Rather than denominating wealth in monetary terms, the Apostle Paul encourages a young pastor Timothy to encourage the wealthy members of his congregation to view their wealth as a means to aid in the accumulation of wealth denominator whose effects will last into eternity: good works. What are good works? Someone once asked Jesus which of the ten commandments was the greatest. Jesus responded by saying that the greatest was to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second greatest was actually just as important: to love your neighbor as yourself. They are things what accomplish two ends: glorify God by acknowledging and submitting to the way they He has designed the world to function, which also coincides with what is in the best interests of other people around us. Giving to the needy is an obvious example, but good works don’t have to be charitable acts. Founding a business that materially serves the needs of those around you is another example of good works. Whether in service of body or soul, true good works help to sustain and prolong the life of an eternal image bearer of God.
Time
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. - Psalm 90:12
“Time is money.”
“The most valuable thing in the world is time.”
All of us have heard such statements. Unlike some of the others we’re examine, time’s value and similarity to money doesn’t require much work to explain. The key characteristic of time is its scarcity. None of us know how much time we have left. This have initially be challenging to manage: how do you steward something when you don’t know how much of it you have?
The Scriptures speak to this challenge. They advocate both planning while also emphasizing the need to hold such plans lightly given that we are not ultimately the captains of our own destinies.
Matthew 6 roots a Christian understanding of time stewardship in the idea that we ought not worry about the future. That doesn’t mean we ought not think and act circumspectly; we should, all the while recognizing that our lives our ultimately outside of our control. The Biblical course of action in facing this reality is to pray. Why? “…for He cares for you.” This confidence is drawn from the fact that God cares for people, and loves to step in to meet their needs.
Faith
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire,” - 1 Peter 1:6-7
The recognized value of faith is, in a very real sense, at an all time low. There are likely more avowed atheists today than at any other point in human history. But like Bitcoin bear markets, they only last so long. Faith in a Biblical sense is inexplicably tied to the concept of trust. Faith in the Bible is always tied to faith in God. If you go to home goods stores like Target today you will find kitchy signs that say things like “Faith,” or “Just Have Faith.” These signs are part of the worst of capitalism: companies making vague, blanket, mass-market appeals to their customers that bank on them not thinking very hard about what is being say and done. Much of the postmodern understanding of faith is actually fideism. Fideism is faith in faith; its a belief that faith is valuable as an end in and of itself rather than as a means to an end.
Then what is faith?
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. - Hebrews 11:1
The Christian conception of faith maintains the same type of relationship that a straw has with a glass of water: it’s valuable insofar as it gives you access to that life-giving water. Straws are teleological; they are created with a specific goal in mind. Faith works the same way; it is created and designed to be used in pursit of specific ends. What are those ends?
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” - Hebrews 11:6
Faith is a temporary currency that enables mankind to please and access God.
How? As some sort of performance?
Not at all.
It’s a way to demonstrate that one believes God to be good, kind, and trustworthy. Rather that being something that must be arbitrarily mustered up, Christian faith is rooted in what God has revealed about himself. It’s actually based in a conviction that the real world actually operates the way that God says it does. Rather than wish fulfillment, faith is like the scene in Indiana Jones where he has to step out into the void. He has good reason to believe there’s actually a bridge there, but he can’t see it. The only way to bridge that gap is to actually take a step. By trusting, he saw.
Where does faith come from? How does one access this currency?
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. - Romans 10:17
Faith has one centralized Issuer, but that Issuer benevolently governs the entire cosmos and has revealed himself in both the Bible and the embodied manifestation of Jesus. Hearing and trusting his word gives life.
As stated above, faith is temporary means by which to access eternal things. The ticket counter of eternal sight only accepts faith as payment. Faith will eventually be cashed in for sight.
These are just a few examples. The Scriptures are replete with examples of other con-monetary currencies that are every bit as real and valuable (if not more) than their anti-typological equivalents. See, Jesus is not just the way, the truth, the life. He’s also true Wealth, and the source of all God’s non-monetary currencies.