We live in a Bitcoin age. Things are true not by their inherent qualities or their tested outcomes, but because we want to believe they are true. Truth at the whim of fad and feeling. Value because we think it has value.
I have been trying to figure out Bitcoins. Well, just because I might be at a party where someone wants to talk about Bitcoins. Sort of the same reason I check in on the 76ers every so often. I am not a big NBA fan, but I suppose I ought to know. Ouch! That bad?
Among the helpful sites in my education were Wikipedia, of course, but also this from CNN, and I particularly liked this short video from the Wall Street Journal. “Gold for nerds” is one way to describe Bitcoins according to the Journal.
So Bitcoins are just the best known form of cryptocurrency, whatever that is. It’s virtual money. Open-source cash. It is “mined” like gold, but you mine it by solving really hard math problems. There goes my career as a crypto-miner.
You can buy things with Bitcoins. Apparently everything from a Domino’s Pizza to a new Tesla. Richard Branson will take Bitcoins when you pay your $250,000 for a ride on the Virgin Galactic (five minutes of weightlessness and you might be sitting next to Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber).
There’s money to be made and lost with Bitcoins. I think I’ll stick with pennies, nickels and dimes for a little longer.
No one really knows if Bitcoins are the thing of the future – in some ways it makes sense that they are – or if they are some very sophisticated sort of Pet Rock.
During my crash course in Bitcoins, I was taken by this line towards the end of the Wall Street Journal video, “the only thing that gives Bitcoins their value is people believing they have value.”
In Peter’s first letter the apostle urges his readers to persevere in times of trouble. He encourages them to test their faith and the joy and praise that come through perseverance. He likens faith to gold that is tested and purified by fire.
We live in a Bitcoin age. Things are true not by their inherent qualities or their tested outcomes, but because we want to believe they are true. Truth at the whim of fad and feeling. Value because we think it has value.
Christian faith, says Peter, is more precious than gold. Gold is tested by fire to be shown to be gold. But in the end, gold, like all things in this transient world, will perish. Not so faith. Tested by the fire of tribulation and distress, it is shown to be genuine. But unlike gold, faith, like hope and love, abides.
Christian faith isn’t true because we think it is true. Christian hope isn’t real because we want it to be real. Christian love isn’t proven because our warm feelings prove it so. Faith, hope and love abide because they have been tested and proven in a real world of real pain and real sorrow and real disappointment and real injustice and real oppression. Faith, hope and love went to a real cross on a real hill outside a real city in real time. Roman injustice and religious hypocrisy put faith, hope and love to the test and they were proven true when a real stone was rolled away from a real tomb and a real Savior was not among dead, but among the living.
Christian faith, hope and love will be proven true not by our feelings but by our actions – when we welcome the prodigal home and stop along the Jericho road to help a wounded stranger. Faith, hope and love are proven true every time the church – a collection of people who should not get along – not only gets along, but loves along the way.
The Christian faith is more precious than gold and far more precious than a Bitcoin. Let’s not settle for a Bitcoin faith.
See you Sunday