How C.S. Lewis Convinced Me To Write A "Fairy Tale"

(That You Can Pre-Order Now)

As of today, there are about 250 of you who subscribe to the Economics of Glory. As far as I can tell, those 250 people can be divided into two general categories:

Christians

This isn’t complicated.

I am a Christian. I was a missionary and pastor in Uruguay for 10 years (if you include the time we raised support to be able to minister there). I am a Bible nerd. God radically grabbed hold of my heart and mind in college, and I have an insatiable desire to know God and help people know and understand Him as he’s revealed Himself in His word. My life is oriented around trying to help people make sense of hard passages and to communicate timely truths of Scripture in a Berean and Issacharean way.

I love the Church.

For all its warts and weaknesses, She is the bride for which Christ died, and the longer I live, the more I have come to sympathize with her weakness and work to defend Her and the messengers that God has called and qualified to minister to her, for the glory of God.

Mentioning the second group is where I start to lose members of the first group.

Bitcoin enthusiasts (henceforth referred to as “Bitcoiners”)

I know. It sounds insane.

But it’s true.

And right now you’re going to be very tempted to stop reading, unsubscribe, and praise the Lord that you have one less thing to waste your time.

But I would challenge you to hear and heed the words the Lord spoke to an equally skeptical Samuel the prophet regarding a recently rejected King Saul:

For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” - 1 Samuel 16:7

You’re almost certainly having a visceral reaction right now:

“Crypto is a scam!” You’re right.

“What does that have to do with Christianity?” More than you’d think.

I could (and have here and here) go on.

Regardless of what you think about Bitcoin, what you may not know is that there are hundreds of thousands of people whose lives and worldviews have been radically altered by embracing Bitcoin and aligning their lives with the particular and surprisingly ancient principles that govern its protocol. There is a real sense in which Bitcoiners are a people group, and a radically principled and increasingly wealthy people group at that.

In the 6 years that I have been involved with and worked in the industry, I have met many Christians who are into Bitcoin for reasons that have nothing to do with getting rich quickly. I have also come to know a few dozen people who have become Christians after getting into Bitcoin, and one of the best parts of my job is getting to be a resource and sounding board for people with little to no spiritual background who want to know more about Jesus.

This doesn’t come without its challenges.

One of the most difficult things about being a Christian Bitcoin enthusiast right now is that you constantly walk between two worlds. On the one hand, you have friends and family members who think Bitcoin is at best a fad and at worst a scam. On the other hand, you have the Bitcoin community who can tend to be overly optimistic about the extent to which Bitcoin can and will transform the world. Christians who want to faithfully help their Christian friends appreciate and understand why Bitcoin matters get misunderstood as being raving psychos, while they can be seen as religious fanatics by their non-Christian Bitcoin friends.

We're not the first to find ourselves in this situation. C.S. Lewis was an atheist intellectual prior to his conversion, and upon finding himself a Christian he began spending a significant amount of time writing essays and books to account for and translate his newfound faith in Christ to those thought he had lost his mind. He wrote to help those who still found themselves unable to understand how serious, modern people could take seriously a religion founded upon the premise of God becoming a man, dying, and raising from the grave. He did this in a very similar way to that employed by Jesus: he took normal accepted elements from everyday life to explain eternal, spiritual realities.

It didn't take long for him to become known all over the world for wielding one of the most brilliant baptized minds in the world. However, despite his best efforts, Lewis came to believe that rational argumentation could only communicate so much, and the way he resolved to overcome those limitations was to write...children's books.

"I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood.” - C.S. Lewis

So he began writing what we know as The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis loved that "fairy tales" enabled him to communicate the wonder and joy of childhood that he experienced again upon becoming a Christian, and sought to steward them to communicate the reality and beauty of Christ to his readers, whether for the first time or for the thousandth. Those readers included his own goddaughter, and would come to include his stepson, Douglas Gresham.

While we are nowhere near as skilled or as brilliant as Lewis, all of these same motivations spurred us on and are represented in The Orange Umbrella, the kids book I wrote that is available for Kickstarter pre-order now.

From the beginning, TGFB has existed to minister to three groups of people: Christian Bitcoiners, Christian pre-Bitcoiners, and Bitcoiner "pre-Christians."

This book serves all three of those purposes.

You don’t need to know anything about Bitcoin to appreciate the story, which is a kids level treatment about the nature of money. If you are a Bitcoiner, there are tons of Easter eggs that you will pick up on that a random person won't. And if you are a Christian Bitcoiner, we think your heart is going to explode over thinking about Christians reading this Bitcoin book and for both your children and other Bitcoiners reading a book that very clearly points to spiritual realities that are way more important than Bitcoin.

We have raised 74% of our total goal in about 3 weeks, which is incredible! But we would love to blow this thing out of the water and finish getting it funded in the next 7 days. Kickstarter starts to amplify successful projects, and podcasters love to talk about fun, successful projects. We're already talking with a number of them about recording episodes around the book, and would greatly appreciate you continued help is funding and spreading the word about the project.

We thought it fitting for a book with Noah's ark-ish themes to be given a 40 day funding window. You can help bring the project to fruition by grabbing one of the book reward tiers today (which includes several options to purchase multiple copies of the book to give out as gifts) and spreading the world to family and friends. We can’t do it without your support.

Thankful for you all,
Jordan