NOTE: This article is a transcript of my first video that can be found on Youtube by clicking the image below:
There’s a story found in the old testament – both 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, where King David, ruler of Israel finds himself in hot water
He had done something bad and God was not happy.
So God gives him an ultimatum. Because of his sin, he can choose one of 3 punishments for him and his people.
By the way, one of the themes in the old testament is this idea of “as goes the king, so go the people.” Hence why these punishments are for all of Israel, not just David.
He’s given the choice of 3 years of famine, 3 months of being attacked by his enemies, or 3 days of pestilence from God himself.
David replies, “I am in great distress, Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”
So an angel moves through the country and kills 70,000 men.
God relents and there is this image of the angel standing with its sword outstretched toward Jerusalem, pausing and waiting for further instructions.
“David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand, a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.” – 1 Chronicles 21:16
David is given further instructions: to build an altar at the place where the angel had stopped. A plot of land belonging to a guy named Ornan the Jebusite.
When this was happening, Ornan was in the middle of doing stuff around his house, and he and his sons look up, see the angel, and totally freak out and hide.
David runs over to Ornan and asks him for help making an offering to abate God’s wrath.
Ornan is quick to offer David everything he needs to build the altar and make a sacrifice to God. All the building supplies, the wheat, the animals… everything.
But David says something significant here, and for our purposes, this is where this whole event is leading.
David says, “No, but I will buy them for the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” – 1 Chronicles 21:24
David refuses to give God something that costs him nothing.
He knows that if he took Ornan’s offer, it would be Ornan’s sacrifice, not his.
I commend David here,
Because as humans we are frugal by nature. We are always trying to get something for nothing.
But David, in his integrity, does the right thing.
He chooses to sacrifice
Now…
What do you know about modern monetary theory?
Modern Monetary Theory (or MMT) states that governments can create their own money and essentially buy something for nothing
Many of you watching this video will have received perhaps thousands of dollars in stimulus money, directly from your government. This is certainly the case in the United States.
When you received that money did you ever ask the question, how did the government pay for this?
Did Joe Biden and Congress go mow lawns on weekends to work up the capital with which to deliver you your $1200?
No.
The money was created out of nothing – ex-nihilo.
You need money?
*poof*
Here’s $1200. Go buy yourself some groceries.
Now, what are the implications of this?
Quick story:
When I was younger, I accompanied my dad on a business trip to Belarus.
Belarus is a poor country in Eastern Europe, still recovering from the devastating impact of the Chernobyl disaster.
While there we hired a translator.
After 3 days of working hard to translate for us in various meetings, we paid her 3 crisp $20 bills.
I remember pulling my dad aside and asking him why we paid this woman so little for all her hard work. Only $60 for 3 days of work? That wasn’t even minimum wage where I came from! Why did we underpay her?
He looked at me and said, “No, son we overpaid her. She’s going to take those US dollars and put them into long-term savings.”
You see, American Dollars are the holy grail of currency in our world.
The American Dollar is the most global currency and is the reserve currency of the world.
People all over the world save in US dollars because their local currency is less stable. In many countries, their currency suffers from high inflation or even hyper-inflation.
So what happens when Joe Biden or Donald Trump (it doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum they’re on) create money ex-nihilo and doll it out to American businesses and citizens?
Or let me ask it this way: is the government being generous? Are they being virtuous?
No.
And here’s why:
They are giving at someone else’s expense.
When the US government creates money “ex-nihilo”, everyone who uses the dollar gets devalued.
Poor people, like this translator in Belarus, suffer. Their money gets devalued.
No actual value has been created by printing this money.
Rather, the percentage ownership of the total number of dollars being held by Americans who get the stimulus has gone up, and the percentage of dollars in circulation owned by the global poor saving in American dollars has gone down.
These poor poor people!
It’s the same idea as if you had a rare Beanie Baby that you thought was worth a lot of money, only to discover that someone down the street owns a Beanie Baby making machine that can sew and stuff the identical Beanie Baby en masse.
What you own becomes less valuable, because it has lost its scarcity.
And as more US dollars enter circulation, the purchasing power of each dollar globally decreases.
In other words, when the US prints more money and gives it out to companies, or US citizens, it’s the global poor who save in US dollars that take the hit.
No actual value is being created,
King David said, “I will not offer something that costs me nothing.”
Now… consider God.
Imagine for a second that you are God
And when I say this I’m speaking of the Christian God
You are all-powerful. You created everything out of nothing.
You can do anything.
You can give anything to anyone, with no cost to yourself.
Let’s imagine that you wanted to communicate one of your attributes – LOVE.
Love requires a measure of sacrifice for an object or person external to yourself.
Therefore, it would not be a sacrifice, in fact, it would be convenient for you to create an entire galaxy for someone, filled with all the riches they could ever want.
This does not demonstrate love – it just demonstrates that you simply prefer that person’s pleasure over nothing.
So I ask, how can you show love?
How could you demonstrate that you have skin in the game, that you’re willing to sacrifice for the other person’s benefit?
What would you do?
What could you possibly give that shows that person you actually love them?
The answer is there is only one thing you can give because there is only one thing that is ultimately costly to you.
It’s you.
If you were God, you would be the single most scarce “thing” in the universe simply because you are the source from which all other things exist.
Therefore, to communicate love, you need to give yourself.
And this is what we see the God of the Bible doing.
God is the ultimate singularity, yet diverse in his essence.
The Christian God is Three-in-One, the Trinity.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The message of Christmas is that God became flesh, became human, and lived among us
God Gives Himself.
This is the term Emmanuel – God with us.
And if you’ve read the gospel accounts, you know that Jesus came in order to die
In some ways, in which I hope to explore more in the future, this is the ultimate demonstration of proof of work
Romans 8:32 tells us:
“He (God the Father) who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
How do we know that God loves us?
How do we know that there is no limit to God’s love for us, that he will never go too far for us?
As the Apostle Paul says, “Because he didn’t spare his own Son.”
That is the proof.
HODLing Jesus 