Future Faith

Jared Brock’s Future Faith podcast is also available for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Hello brothers and sisters, 

Welcome to Future Faith, a podcast, newsletter, and publication about living faithfully in an age of democratic destruction, ecological collapse, and economic irrelevance. Future Faith is now available for free on Substack, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. I’m your host, Jared Brock, and today we’re going to discuss the wildly corrupt world of modern money. Grab a coffee and a pen and paper, because it’s vitally important that Christians understand how money works so we can make it serve our vision and values instead of becoming enslaved by it.

This episode is sponsored by Swanbitcoin. As you’ll discover in this episode, government fiat money is wildly corrupt… but “investing” in Bitcoin is highly risky and just turns it into a pyramid scheme. Instead, we need to SPEND and GIVE crypto to achieve rapid global adoption before centralized surveillance currencies monopolize money forever. So head over to swanbitcoin.com/jaredbrock to get $10 in free Bitcoin to spend. That’s $10 in free Bitcoin at swanbitcoin.com/jaredbrock

Today’s episode is entitled Christians and Money. Are you ready? Here we go.

Sixteen of Jesus’s 38 parables involved money and wealth.

Nearly 15% of everything Jesus spoke about related to money and possessions, and the only thing he talked about more was the Kingdom of God.

There are over 2,300 Bible verses about money. By comparison, faith and prayer are mentioned about 500 times.

Clearly, the writers of the Bible knew it was important that we have a right view and understanding of money. As one pastor put it, “Our attitude toward money is an indication of where our heart is with God.”

And on an everyday level, knowing what money is and where it comes from is incredibly important, as it plays a huge role in our future wealth or poverty, as well as our time and earthly freedom.

Understanding money is so important that it will never be taught in schools.

So let’s talk about it.

What is money?

It’s a simple question, but if you ask the average person, they’ll have a hard time actually explaining what modern money is, where it comes from, and how badly it’s destroying our society and advancing the plans of the enemy.

Just as fish are rarely conscious that they’re swimming in water, we humans are rarely conscious that we live in a powerful financial stream that’s taking us places we don’t want to go.

So let’s dive in. Or rather… dive out?

What is money?

Money is simply an agreement between two or more strangers to use something as a means of payment.

* If 325 million Americans agree to use a tiny green rectangle of paper backed by the full might of the US military as a means of payment, that’s money.

* If 100 million mostly young adults agree to use digital bits of cryptographic code as a means of payment, that’s money.

* If all my friend agree to accept IOU homebrews as a means of payment for cooking, carpentry, and car repairs, that’s money.

Money is an agreement between two or more strangers to use something as a means of payment, and it requires trust between the parties involved — ideally, by making sure the money represents some sort of enforceable underlying wealth.

The difference between wealth and money

Money and wealth aren’t the same thing.

True wealth is purely biological. You can eat it. Drink it. Wear it. Drive it. Live in it. Heat your house with it. Power your car or machine or business with it.

Money, when it’s working well, is an accurate representation of real wealth.

True wealth isn’t imaginary; it’s biological. Bankers, hedge fund managers, and NFT creators aren’t “wealth-creators” — they’re sophisticated video game players who successfully convince people to ascribe value to digital numbers, which in turn allows the creators to then acquire items of real wealth like mega-mansions, Ossetra caviar, doomsday bunkers, and hyperyachts.

So how can you figure out the difference between wealth and money?

Quite easily.

Remember, money is an agreement between two or more strangers.

So to determine if something is money or real wealth, just pretend that you’re the last person on earth or alone on a deserted island for the rest of your life.

Money in that context immediately becomes worthless. American dollars, Euros, pounds, gold, silver, Bitcoins, beaver pelts… it’s all money, and it’s all utterly useless without another person to accept it as a means of payment.

Real wealth proves itself real in isolation. If you’re the last person on earth, you’ll value water, food, and shelter far more than Mexican pesos and Chinese renminbi.

Jack Sparrow didn’t scream for $USD — he hollered for rum.

How is wealth created?

True wealth is created by applying time, effort, creativity, and sacrifice to the raw materials that God freely gives.

* When a carpenter sacrifices time/effort/creativity to turn a tree into a desk, table, or bed frame, she creates wealth.

* When a chef sacrifices time/effort/creativity to turn some eggs and lobster into a $1,000 omelet, he creates wealth.

* When engineers sacrifice time/effort/creativity to build Elon Musk’s Tesla-building robots, they create wealth.

On the flipside…

* When a landlord extracts rent from a tenant, he isn’t creating real wealth.

* When a Bitboy’s crypto holdings go up in price, he isn’t creating real wealth.

* When a Robinhood addict’s shorts pay off, he’s isn’t creating real wealth.

* When a billionaire’s stock goes up in price, he’s isn’t creating real wealth.

But when a minimum-wage worker at one of those portfolio companies applies her time and effort to assemble two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and a sesame seed bun into a Big Mac, she’s creating a tiny bit of real wealth.

People generally value real wealth. We instinctively understand that the more sacrifice is required, the more it should be worth. That’s why machine-assembled Casio watches are five bucks apiece, while hand-made Patek Philippes can run you up to $24 million.

Wealth versus value

Wealth and value aren’t the same thing.

To someone with a full bank account and access to a reliable grocery store, a lump of gold jewelry is often more valuable than a loaf of bread. But to a person on the brink of starvation, a lump of gold is often more only valuable if it can be readily exchanged for a loaf of bread.

Value is a measure of desire.

Value can fluctuate wildly, and it is easily manipulated. We can survive without bankers and insurance brokers, but we’re dead without doctors and farmers. Yet brokers and bankers earn far more money than the latter, which suggests the value hierarchy of the elites who control our economy needs a radical recalibration. Elites clearly desire private profits over public health, so they assign more value to extractive professions like financial services.

Let’s pretend for a moment that value was democratically determined.

Even in that fairy tale scenario, not all sacrifice is the same. Bitcoin’s proof-of-work is that a specific computational effort has been expended. A house builder’s proof-of-work is the 500-unit subdivision he just finished. Both of these sacrifice-created forms of value can be sold as money, though one is clearly more valuable (from a true wealth perspective) than the other.

Price versus value

Price and value aren’t the same thing.

A house’s wealth is comprised of all the material and sacrifice that went into it.

A house’s value is determined by how useful it is to a potential purchaser.

A houses’ price is the amount of money charged for it, which is determined by value + manipulation. House prices are often boosted far beyond true value by a purposeful constriction of supply (thanks developers and land-lorders) and a purposeful glut of interest-bearing credit (thanks bankers).

Prices can become even more unfair for products when corporations have a selling monopoly (or conversely, when a single buyer has a monopsony.)

Prices can spike when powerful elites constrict supply, be it housi…

Jared Brock’s Future Faith podcast is also available for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

I’ve been avoiding publishing any articles on vaccines because it’s an absurdly contentious subject that wins you no friends and makes you quite a few enemies.

It’s an issue plagued with political ideologies, conflicts of interests, bad faith arguments, issue conflation, terrible research, and appallingly stupid false dichotomies.

But alas, my inbox has been flooded with good folks asking me my perspective, so hopefully, I can lay it all out in one article and never have to discuss it again. My guess is that this will be one of the most contentious pieces I ever publish, so even if you disagree but can manage to stick with me through this one, I think we can continue our relationship for years to come!

In this piece, I’m going to try and lay out a biblical framework for approaching issues like this. I have no financial incentives in this fight, and I want to make it clear that my goal isn’t to make you get a vaccine or not get a vaccine, but to help tune up our reasoning and look at this highly-contentious subject through a Christ-centered lens.

Let’s start at the beginning

“A very good place to start.” — Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music

There are a lot of people out there who think vaccines are “inherently dangerous because there is no long-term safety data.”

These people have never read a history book.

Let’s go back in time…

The year is 1774. Smallpox is ravaging the world. Sore throats, headaches, and difficulty breathing are the nice symptoms. Instead, disfiguring rashes cover most infected people’s faces, feet, throat, and lungs with pus-filled pustules. A third of adults infected will die. Eight in ten infants will die. At least 400,000 people will die per year for decades, and survivors will be marred with blindness and lifelong scars, driving some to suicide.

Here’s what that looks like in real life:

People tried everything to halt smallpox outbreaks — hot rooms, cold rooms, avoiding melons, wearing the color red, drinking twelve beers per day. None of it worked, of course, but there was one genuine cure — an ancient practice from India and Africa called “variolation” an early form of inoculation. 

We even know the name of the African slave who brought the life-saving practice to North America. His name was Onesimus, likely named after the slave mentioned in Colossians and Philemon. The American Onesimus’s master convinced 287 Bostonians to get variolated — among the inoculated, their rates of death fell sevenfold.

Variolation is pretty freaky by today’s standards: People just took pus from someone suffering from smallpox and scratched it into the skin of healthy folks. During the American Civil War, people would take the dried scabs of smallpox survivors, grind them into powder, then sniff it up the nose or drink it in tea.

Variolation worked… ish. People would usually get a mild case of smallpox and survive, thanks to their well-prepped immune systems. Some people still got full-blown smallpox and died, but variolation increased your chances of survival.

Over in rural England, one class of person seemed completely immune to smallpox: milkmaids. The women occasionally suffered from a cattle disease called cowpox, but they usually survived with little scarring. In 1774, as a smallpox epidemic once again swept his nation, farmer Benjamin Jesty decided to scratch some cow pus into his family’s skin.

None of them got smallpox.

The science was and is simple: The cowpox pus — vaccinia — could create antibodies and genetic memory that would trigger the human body to create immunity against life-threatening pathogens.

Ben Jesty renovated his garden cottage into a “Temple of Vaccinia” and invited locals to visit after church for their life-saving doses. For his generosity, he was labeled inhuman, “hooted at, reviled, and pelted whenever he attended markets in the neighborhood,” with some neighbors even worrying he’d turn them into horned beasts.

Because of a lack of widespread and effective vaccination, 300 million people died in the 20th century from smallpox alone.

A resounding success

We now have nearly 250 years of data and it all says the same thing: Vaccination decreases your chances of dying from deadly pathogens.

* We no longer have regular rolling rounds of smallpox, whooping cough, scarlet fever, polio, hib, cholera, and other deadly diseases that have killed tens of millions of people across time.

* Since 1962 alone, 4.5 billion virus cases have been averted thanks to modern vaccinations.

* Tetanus mortality has been reduced by 96% since 1988.

* 17.1 million lives have been saved from measles since 2000.

* Smallpox has been completely eradicated.

To be anti-vaccination is the same as saying you’re anti-medicine.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the world understands that vaccination is medicine. 9 out of 10 people in the world think that vaccinating children is important.

But there’s a small but vociferously vocal minority — typically white, right-leaning, Westerners who have never lost a child to a life-threatening pathogen — who would rather risk their family’s life and safety than give them this particular form of medicine.

They have about five major reasons, but none of them are Socratically sound:

1. Therapeutics aren’t a good enough reason to reject vaccine therapy

Some of our more earthy brothers and hippie sisters think we should stop playing God and just let nature do its thing, building our immune systems naturally.

Which is exactly what vaccines do.

Innoculation comes from the Middle English word “inoculaten,” which means “grafting a plant part to another plant.” When we get a vaccine, we’re essentially grafting some of the enemy pathogens into our immune system, but in a way that teaches our body to do the miraculous work of defending itself when the real pathogen shows up.

Most football coaches don’t let their teams go onto the field until they’ve analyzed the competition for weaknesses. Most militaries don’t send their soldiers into battle until they know their enemy’s setup. I hate to use computer terms for something as gloriously biological as a homo sapiens, but human bodies are old hardware in need of constant software updates.

Some people think our updates should only come from therapeutics and not inoculations.

But don’t forget Brock’s Rule! Avoid false dichotomies.

When given two bad options, choose neither.When given two good options, choose both.

Don’t fall prey to the false dichotomy that it’s one or the other, therapeutics versus vaccinations.

Clearly, governments should have instituted a two-year ban on fast food, high fructose corn syrup, added sugars, processed foods, and everything non-organic, then sent everyone to the woods and beaches for exercise and sunlight while scientists worked on a vaccine.

And if you’re so inclined, go ahead and take therapeutics — sniff all the essential oils and eat all the vitamins to try to build a killer immune system, and also get the vaccine… which is just another natural immune booster.

If our rationale for therapeutics is truly to boost our natural immunity, then vaccines are the #1 weapon in our arsenal for doing so. The Cambridge dictionary defines a therapeutic as anything “tending to make a person healthier.” Vaccinations are therapeutic.

2. Big Pharma profits aren’t a good enough reason to reject vaccine therapy

Big Pharma is awful.

Life-saving medicine shouldn’t be a money-making industry.

There should be zero for-profit vaccines.

Pfizer and the other drug cartels are making billions off Covid, and it’s not right.

I wonder how many more anti-vaxxers would take vaccine therapy if it was owned and administered by democratic governments, not-for-profits, and charities. Imagine how many more people would get vaccinated if the Red Cross did the deed at their local church.

But alas, here we are.

We need to ask the same question as Cicero and the ancient Romans:Cui bono? Who pr…

Future Faith is also available for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In late 2018, NPR broke a story about how thousands of Swedes are inserting microchips under their skin to make payments without the need to carry a credit card.

British companies have already started micro-chipping employees. Bill Gates is funding a remote-controlled contraceptive microchip. Indonesia has debated forced implantation for sex offenders. Elon Musk is already implanting computer chips in pig’s brains.

Earlier last month, the Pentagon revealed it has developed a disease-detecting implant for under-the-skin monitoring of the human population. Their stated intention is to protect the populace from future outbreaks and pandemics.

In a twist not seen before in science-fiction dystopian fantasies, rather than appearing as a dreaded microchip, the Pentagon’s new technology is a “tissue-like gel engineered to continuously test your blood” with a transmitter to relay the data.

It’s a conspiracy theorist’s dream scenario, and for many apocalyptically-minded Christians, it can send them into paroxysms of fear.

But we’d like to take a more reasoned approach to the growing trend of under-the-skin surveillance. Like all technologies, this one has obvious and non-obvious costs, some clear benefits, and a laundry list of unforeseen risks.

Don’t believe the techno-evangelists who can forecast no harms.

Don’t believe the conspiracists who can see no good.

Like the Amish and other faith communities, we must weigh as a society whether or not we should adopt new technologies on a global scale. (I, for one, don’t believe the convenience of ditching my credit card outweighs the risks of embedding Visa or Mastercard in my wrist. Nor do I believe we need to fall prey to the false dichotomy that there aren’t other non-under-the-skin ways to prevent pandemics, store passwords, prove digital identity, or unlock our cars.)

Regardless, I’m just one vote among eight billion.

In order to judge the sum total merits of any new invention or innovation, we must understand three fundamentals about all forms of technology:

1. Technology isn’t neutral

Never believe the popular delusion that technology is neutral.

Guns are designed to kill mammals, not wash your dishes.Push notifications weren’t created to leave you alone with your thoughts.Nukes weren’t created to fold your laundry.

All technologies can be judged based on their long-term “tilt.”

Sure, a stainless steel water bottle can be used to bludgeon someone to death, but the more likely scenario in the case of widespread adoption is less sea plastic and a better-hydrated populace.

Over maximal human terms (think: 100+ years), technologies tilt in either a net-negative or net-positive direction.

The question Christians must ask is: Which way does under-the-skin surveillance tilt over long-term scenarios?

The answer is unclear.

2. Technologists have an agenda

The makers of new technologies always have an agenda.

Always.

Social media was designed to addict you and advertise to you.Monsanto seeds are engineered to maximize farmer reliance.Netflix wants you to binge.

Sometimes the technologist’s agenda is good. Sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes it’s misguided. Sometimes it’s downright malevolent.

The question Christians must ask is: What is the agenda of those who control under-the-skin surveillance technology?

The answer is unclear.

3. Technology is easily weaponizable

Even when the technology is a net benefit over the long term and the makers have a fairly benign agenda, we can never rule out the predator parties that hijack the original intention and attempt to weaponize each new technology.

Not all technologies are equally weaponizable. Gunpowder has the ability to kill more people than, say, paper origami. Ricin gas is more easily weaponizable than Dawn dish detergent.

The easier it is to weaponize something, the higher the likelihood that sociopaths will find a way to do so.

The question Christians must ask is: How easily weaponizable is under-the-skin surveillance technology?

We have an answer for this one.

Without a doubt, under-the-skin surveillance is one of the most easily weaponizable technologies ever invented. It has the potential to track and surveil every single person on earth for the rest of human existence.

It is therefore a near-mathematical certainty that under-the-skin surveillance will be weaponized by powerful elites and the governments they control.

Within ten years, totalitarian regimes like China and North Korea will likely microchip their subjects whether they like it or not. In corporatocracies like the U.K. and the U.S. — land of the autonomous and home of the distrusting — expect adoption to move slightly slower… and likely under the fear-fueled guise of safety.

Which is exactly how the Pentagon is framing the conversation.

So what is the Christian response to under-the-skin surveillance?

First things first: Paul says in 2 Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.

Under-the-skin surveillance is an opportunity to practice these things:

* To let perfect love cast out any fear

* To live in the power of His Spirit regardless of circumstance

* To love others by sharing the truth of reality

* To practice self-control against our instincts to lash out at authority

There are so many things outside of our control. Secularist corporate states will continue to enact their anti-human agenda, but that shouldn’t surprise us or scare us. 

Each of us must prayerfully discern how God is calling us to individually and communally respond to this growing threat. 

We also need to remember that we know how this story ends — with the presence of God flooding the earth. It’s an exceptional vision; an outcome so bright that it completely floods out this present and growing darkness.

This article is not investment advice. It is theological advice. Please take time to prayerfully meditate on the 37 Scripture passages included in the links.

A few years ago, I was touring my documentary on pornography across the continent and we did an event in British Columbia at an exciting up-and-coming church. The pastor and I connected after the screening and I heard his story. In addition to being a pastor, he was heavily involved in his community on an economic level, and because of an ethical giving fund that his grandfather set up, was finding himself more and more involved in conversations about ethical investments.

He confided that his organization had been secretly approached by multiple high-level church leaders, all of whom wanted his team’s help in quietly cleansing their denominational portfolios of anti-Christ assets.

A Day of Reckoning Is Coming

Randy Alcorn once predicted that a day could come when a Christian author would get exposed on national TV for having gotten someone else to ghost-write their books. Dozens of famous Christian authors have also cheated their way to the New York Times bestseller list — the scheme was pioneered by a Christian leadership guru you’ve all heard of — and it’s only a matter of time before these authors rightly get blacklisted for it.

Now just imagine what would happen if the portfolio investments of every Christian denomination, foundation, charity, church, pastor, and congregant were suddenly opened to public scrutiny.

What would they find?

What’s in Liberty University’s endowment?What’s in the Vatican Bank’s massive portfolio?What’s in the United Methodist Church’s pension plan?What’s in the Southern Baptist Convention’s missions fund?

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Christians who own pension plans, retirement funds, mutual funds, 401ks, RRSPs, education trusts, giving foundations, and other diversified investments are profiting from a huge range of anti-Christ activities.

The Fortune 500 alone — America’s largest 500 companies in which nearly every mutual fund, pension plan, and index fund is invested— contain some truly troubling companies:

* One of the companies is systematically dismantling democracy through the use of corporate donations to political candidates, controlling media assets, and lobbying on a scale never seen in history.

* One of the companies is currently withholding hundreds of billions in much-needed taxation offshore.

* One of the companies fights minimum wage increases and forbids its staff to unionize; its workers are so impoverished that many require food stamps.

* One of the companies has a century-long track record of polluting rivers, oceans, and the atmosphere.

* One of the companies sells more cigarettes, fatty foods, and sugary drinks than any other company on earth.

* One of the companies sells a leading abortion medication.

* Four of the companies have evicted millions of poor people from their homes while simultaneously adding trillions in debt to the world’s housing markets.

* Three of the companies facilitate the delivery of pornography.

* One of the companies profits from civil unrest, fake news, anti-science claims, and overseas electoral interference.

* One of the companies sold nearly $60 billion in weapons last year.

* Two of the companies are implicated in using Eighur slave laborers in China.

And these few just scratch the surface.

Can you fathom the implications of this?

* Pro-lifers are profiting from aborting babies.

* Health advocates are profiting from sickness and death.

* Purity campaigners are profiting from pornography.

* Creation-care activists are profiting from environmental destruction.

* Peacemakers are profiting from war.

* Denominations are profiting from sin.

Many Christian investors have done far more evil with their capital than good with their charity.

Many pastors have done more for Satan than Jesus because their everyday portfolios have far more power than their Sunday preaching.

Selah.

Of course, this reality will send every truly Christ-centered person immediately scrambling to right their myriad financial wrongdoings. (Sadly, an equal or larger number of church-goers will simply ignore or delay this reality until the guilt is blunted; such is money’s true power in modern man’s war between flesh and spirit.)

For those who do wish to honor God with their wealth, the question is: How?

There’s only “one” thing to do: grieve, confess, repent, and make amends.

I’ll admit it: these are a few of my least-favorite words in Scripture. They feel judgemental and old-school and Puritan. But they’re central concepts in the Christ-centered life.

1. Grieve and Confess

For Christians who desire to put their money where their mouth is — or rather, to put their treasure where they want their heart to be — the first step is to see what’s actually in your portfolio. Most people have no idea, and truly Christ-centered disciples will likely be terrified with what they discover.

In this regard, your current financial manager will almost certainly be a major hindrance, not a servant-hearted helper. Expect them to delay their response by several months, and if you keep up the pressure, they’ll likely suggest you let them do a superficial “portfolio re-allocation” before finally revealing what all you own. Decline the offer. The financial services industry thrives on keeping people in the dark. Demand to see how dark your accounts truly are.

When your list eventually arrives — and it may take you threatening to switch advisors for them to even produce it — take a weekend and do the research. See which conglomerates own which brands and which is invested in which other companies. Dig all the way down. Research their crimes, their scandals, their wicked corruptions and exploitations and human rights abuses. Email me if you need help.

Then: weep.

We have fallen far short of the glory of God and have sinned against Him, His world, and our fellow man. There’s no point in shying away from it or trying to justify ourselves or rationalize it away. Let it hit you, hard, like a Noahic flood. Be deeply disturbed. Overwhelming grief is a very good gift.

2. Repent

Repentance isn’t a word you’ll hear preached from most seeker-sensitive pulpits. It suggests that God might have some sort of right to make us change.

The hard reality is that we live in a world so mired with sin that we literally cannot even fathom all the ways we are currently sinning with our money. So should we play ignorant and continue to profit from the suffering of others?

No.

Obviously, the consumerist-individualist world can and will continue to bankroll and profit from these anti-kingdom companies, but why should Christians remain complicit in the crimes and sins of our secularist society?

No.

Repentance means “to turn around.” To go and sin no more. After discovering that which is not God-honoring in their portfolios, Christ-centered Christians take swift steps to work with God in cleansing themselves from all unrighteousness.

Yet again, your current financial manager will almost certainly be a major hindrance, not a servant-hearted helper. In fact, they will probably become antagonistic at this point. This will be an uphill battle and you likely have to fight it alone. (As the hymn says, “Though none go with me, still I will follow.” As Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”) Unless you have a fiduciary advisor, your wealth manager’s fat commissions are directly tied to your unethically profitable investments. They will again suggest a portfolio re-allocation to “ethical” investments.

(This is the point where you should probably fire them.)

Even if they do reluctantly offer to transition you to “ethical” investments, you have a duty before God to truly understand what it is they’re investing your money in.

The reality is that most so-called Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs) are just greenwashing. I’ve lifted the hood and investigated the underlying portfolios of many of these funds, and have dis…