Six Convictions About Money, Stewardship, Freedom, America, Technology, and What We Leave Behind
After one year of writing Kingdom Bitcoin, I have become less interested in predicting what Bitcoin’s price might do next and more interested in asking what money, technology, freedom, wealth, and stewardship are actually for. This six-part anniversary series looks back at the convictions that survived the writing, sharpened through Scripture, history, markets, technology, and ordinary household life. Some ideas became stronger, others became more disciplined, and a few changed entirely. What remains is a clearer hierarchy: God first, truth before narrative, stewardship before speculation, and technology beneath all of it.
Israel walked out of Egypt free, but freedom was not the end of the story. Pharaoh no longer owned their labor, controlled their movement, or dictated their future, yet God did not lead them into the wilderness and announce, “Congratulations, now everyone do whatever seems right.” Sinai followed Exodus. Covenant followed liberation. God freed His people from bondage and then began teaching them how free people were supposed to live.
That sequence has become one of the most important lessons in my first year of writing Kingdom Bitcoin. I have written often about sovereignty, ownership, self-custody, permission, censorship, and the ability to move value without asking a financial intermediary for approval. Those things matter deeply. But I have become increasingly convinced that freedom is not autonomy. Biblical freedom is not the removal of every authority; it is liberation from bondage so that our lives can be rightly ordered beneath God.
Bitcoin makes that distinction unavoidable. The network can give an individual meaningful control over property, allow a person to verify rules independently, and make it possible to transfer value without a bank deciding whether the transaction fits its policies. Those are extraordinary capabilities. Yet Bitcoin cannot tell the owner whether a transaction is wise, generous, selfish, lawful, loving, or destructive. It can return the keys, but it cannot manufacture the character required to use them well.
That is why I have also become more careful with the phrase “self-sovereignty.” For the Christian, there is no ultimate self-sovereignty. God is sovereign. We are stewards. Bitcoin may reduce dependence on institutions, but the person holding the private key remains accountable for what he does with the freedom that key provides. A man can self-custody his bitcoin brilliantly and still make a complete mess of everything that matters.
America’s Founders understood another side of the same problem: human freedom requires architecture because human beings are not angels. Federalist No. 51 argued that government needed internal checks capable of keeping power from concentrating in one place, famously observing that government must first control the governed and then be obliged to control itself. The constitutional design divided authority because liberty could not safely depend upon every future officeholder being virtuous. That was not cynicism about freedom. It was an attempt to make freedom more durable in a world populated by imperfect people. Avalon Project
George Washington added the moral dimension. In his first inaugural address, he connected the young republic’s future with what he called the “pure and immutable principles of private morality” and described the preservation of liberty as part of the experiment entrusted to the American people. The American system relied on institutional restraints, but Washington also understood that structure alone could not supply virtue. Rules can limit the damage people do. They cannot make people righteous. National Archives
That tension runs straight into the household. Financial freedom means little if the family carrying it has no discipline. Self-custody without competence can become unmanaged risk. Access to credit without restraint can become bondage wearing nicer clothes. A child given wealth without formation may inherit options without wisdom. Freedom becomes generational only when responsibility is taught alongside it.
Paul makes the point unmistakable in Galatians. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” but only a few verses later he warns believers not to use freedom simply for themselves and instead to serve one another in love. Christian liberty has direction. It moves outward toward service, covenant, family, neighbor, and obedience to God. Freedom that terminates on the self eventually becomes another form of captivity.
That is where my thinking has landed after a year. Bitcoin can expand human agency. America’s constitutional architecture can protect room for liberty. Technology can reduce dependence and widen what individuals are capable of doing. But none of those things answer the most important question: what will we do with the freedom we have been given? The answer begins beneath all of them. God is sovereign, and freedom is entrusted to stewards whose character determines what happens next.
Kingdom Principle 👑
Freedom flourishes when agency is ordered beneath truth, responsibility, and God.
Bitcoin can give us greater control over money, but greater control is not the same thing as greater wisdom. America’s constitutional architecture can restrain concentrated power, but no constitutional provision can manufacture character inside the citizen. Technology can expand our choices, but it cannot tell us which choices are righteous.
Christian freedom therefore carries an assignment. We are freed not merely to possess more choices, but to love more faithfully, serve more willingly, steward more responsibly, and live more completely beneath the authority of Jesus Christ. Bitcoin can expand agency. Only character determines what we do with agency.
Prayer 🙏
Heavenly Father, thank You for the freedom You have given us and for the generations who sacrificed so that we could live, worship, build, own, create, and raise our families with extraordinary liberty. Give us the wisdom never to confuse freedom with autonomy or independence with righteousness. Teach us to receive freedom as something entrusted to us rather than something owed to us.
Holy Spirit, form the character required to carry greater responsibility. Help us use money, technology, ownership, and opportunity in ways that serve our families and neighbors rather than merely ourselves. Keep Jesus Christ above every claim of sovereignty in our lives, and teach us to use the freedom we have been given in service of truth, love, and generations still to come. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 🙏📖🗝️🇺🇸₿🏠⚖️🕊️👑
Amen brother. That pretty much wraps it up.