Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Don't be surprised by suffering

If God is good, why does He allow evil (pain and suffering)? This is the age-old question and the reason many give on why they don't trust God.

But could it be God allows it to humble us and help us see that life doesn't work - as God intends - without Him? Could the reason for pain and suffering be this simple and loving?

What most do not consider is pain and suffering are the eventual outcome and natural consequences of ¹arrogance.

But they can also become the ²means by which God humbles us if we let it. Evil itself is bad but humility and whatever is needed to humble us is good, not bad (though often unpleasant). A seeming contradiction?

Our inability to find true and lasting life and love apart from God can direct us back to Him - but only if we turn from our arrogant and stubborn belief that we can achieve these on our own and make life work without Him. If we persist in our unbelief, the painful consequences of our rebellious distrust of God - i.e. the evil and harm it brings - are not His fault, but our choice. 

We often don't grasp the far-reaching significance or impact of our rebellious distrust of God i.e. how harmful and destructive it truly is, not just to others but ourselves as well.

The fact that we are surprised or put off by pain and suffering (evil) is proof of how little we understand the far-reaching impact and severe consequences of our unbelief.

We should not be surprised by the suffering caused by evil. It is the natural outcome of believing we can make life work without God and trying to do so, when all the pain it causes says otherwise

Trying to make life work without God is a lie. Life only works as it was designed to i.e. when we are in perfect alignment and union with God our Creator and the source of life, love, and all things, in whose image we were created.

We all can see far more than we
now see (such as the pain and suffering our unbelief causes). The only thing blocking us is arrogance, i.e. lack of humility - refusing to acknowledge our need for and dependence on God. 

For a further discussion of how God uses evil for our good click here...and here.

The greater the evil the greater the opportunity for healing/
grace click here.

For a discussion on the key lesson from the book of Job, click here.

For a discussion on the value of paradox, click here.

For a discussion of how big is God click here

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¹Even suicide is an act of arrogance. Someone ends their life because they believe it is not worth living. Yet they don't consider the foundational reason they are in despair is the absence of God i.e. their lack of trust in God and His wisdom and love in allowing pain (the organic and rightful consequences of unbelief) to continue.

²God is so wise, powerful, and good, that he uses evil for good. Only He can. But we will never see or understand this if we do not trust Him

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 

“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." Rom.11.33-36


Wednesday, April 10, 2024

The necessity of dependence

The very acts of eating, drinking, and breathing are daily reminders that we ¹depend on things outside ourselves for life. They also remind us of how fragile life truly is when we can not access these resources.

When we stop to consider it, what is necessary for life comes to us from ²without, not within. If we do not partake of these physical resources we die. We usually don't give this much thought until the threat of not having these presents itself.

This is not only true physically but spiritually as well. Without God - and these physical resources created and sustained by Him - we cease to ³function as we were designed to.

So we are indirectly sustained by God through the things that we need for life.

No amount of rebellion or desire to be ²independent - "free" - of our physical or spiritual needs (or limits) will change our dependence. We may ignore, resist, or deny it, but to do so means death - physically and spiritually. 

To continue receiving and benefiting from what we must have for life requires our acknowledge of our ongoing dependence on them.

Even though we often despise ²dependence, in the above examples, dependence is good, not bad, because it helps sustains our lives.

Every day is a gift. It is not guaranteed or a right. Without God and all He provides, only death is certain, not life. Be grateful for your life and all it offers and seek to use it to honor the Giver.

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Footnotes:

¹Even though eating, drinking, and breathing are activities of dependence, we all love a good meal when hungry, a cold refreshing drink when thirsty, and fresh air when we are couped up in a place where the air is stale or unpleasant. We grow to love and appreciate these even more when we have gone through times when they were not readily available or gone temporarily. 

Eating, drinking, and breathing are so much a part of our lives we do not see or treat the use of them as "acts of dependence." But this doesn't make them any less so. It simply indicates how much we take for granted the good things we have. It is only when we do not have them that we fully appreciate their value and the reality of our absolute life-or-death dependence on them.

In fact, isn't this the value of suffering? It makes us aware of our true status of being dependent creatures, i.e. it brings our understanding of who we are more in line with reality - a reality check if you will. 

Reality is good however not bad. Living in the real world maximizes our flourishing and minimizes harm to us and others. 

It is not the gifts we despise, but our general dependence we dislike. We wish to be free of all "restraints." However, wouldn't we all be better off if we learned to embrace all the ways we are dependent in the same way we do these everyday gifts we usually take for granted, i.e. with gratitude?

It is worth noting that Christ characterized Himself as the bread and water of life. This assumes we need far more than just what this life offers. As believers these are comforting promises and we gladly embrace this truths about Christ.

²We are told in scripture that our very breath comes from God. And not only our breath but everything we are and have are gifts from our Creator, whether we acknowledge this or not and whether we use them as God intends - designs.

³When not aligned with our Creator, we not only cease to function well, but we ultimately go into eternity on this same course - i.e. without Him - but without access to the creation we presently enjoy. For more on this click here.


Thursday, April 4, 2024

Forsaken and abandoned?

When we experience pain - emotionally or physically - our biggest struggle is thinking we are forsaken and abandoned by God.

Yet God's greatest promise is nothing - especially suffering - will separate those who trust and love Christ, from his love.

God's greatest proof is sending His Son to suffer what should have been our pain so He could restore us to Himself. This will ultimately free us from all pain in eternity, if not now. 

Because of this, our pain is not only temporary but actually becomes the means of how we are drawn closer to God - but only if our pain is received well, i.e. by faith that God is using our pain for our good.

We may be certain that we are a child of God and believe He loves us simply because He proved it by sending Christ, even when we are constantly bombarded with experiences that seem to indicate otherwise.

If our faith - that God is good, loving, wise, and all-powerful in allowing our pain - is not strong, the difficulties and struggles of life will beat us down when in fact God is seeking to build us up by drawing us closer to Himself - i.e. to purify and strengthen our faith through these challenges.

God is not judging us nor has he abandoned us when we go through adversity. Struggles are a part of our ¹broken condition and ²the broken world we now live in (brought about by our general overall rebellion). 

Though we are perfectly loved in and by Christ, we are not yet fully in union with God (we are not face to face with Him and in the fullness of His presence and fully glorified or totally free of pain). All of creation (especially us) is presently in shackles, awaiting our complete deliverance. 

For a further discussion of how God uses evil for our good click here...and here.

The greater the evil the greater the opportunity for healing/grace click here.
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¹And what is the nature of our existence? We are finite in our understanding and ability to gain what we most need - not because we are disconnected from God but simply because we are finite, dependent creatures. 

But we are also spiritually dead and disconnected from the Source of all things and therefore impotent in our ability to live as we were designed to. We question God's love at the drop of a hat and the slightest breeze of adversity. We are damaged goods - "traumatized" - full of doubt and distrust when life gets hard. 

As a result, we often beat ourselves up and go through life wondering how and why God would love us. Surely, he has every right to abandon us because of our weaknesses, doubts, and failures. And He does have a perfect right, yet He chooses to meet us in our weakness, on our level - in and through Christ - to restore us back to a loving relationship with him. 

This state of current pain is due to our commitment to being our own God and our disregard for Christ's work for us. Our trust in our efforts to win God's (and other's) acceptance must shift to trust in Christ's efforts (work) on our behalf. We must stop putting confidence in our deeds and put it in Christ's which are complete and completely satisfies our need and requirement for perfect righteousness i.e. to live right toward God and others.

²The world is full of beauty and wonder, but it is also filled with death, disease, destruction, decay, and conflict. God warned us this would be the outcome if we rebelled. 

It is no wonder life is often so difficult. Instead of being surprised or put off by adversity, we should anticipate it. Christ said in this world you will have tribulation (adversity). But he also said "fear not, I have overcome the world." How? By coming back to life after embracing our pain, suffering, and eventual death so we too would participate in His resurrected life one day.

Adversity has nothing to do with God's love - in the sense that he no longer loves us when we struggle or go through hard times. But it also has everything to do with God's love because he uses all things (including and especially the hard things) for our good i.e. to draw us closer to him in greater dependence and trust through our struggles so we might become more like His Son to more fully experience His love and reflect it out to others i.e. let our light shine, which is His light shinning in and through us.


Friday, March 22, 2024

being righteous, living righteously

Is there a difference between being righteous (before God) and living righteously?

Even though God, in and through Christ, grants us righteousness (perfect standing) before Him legally, he still desires we ²live righteously. It is only through ²righteous living we are daily in tune with who God is and most aligned with putting Him on display i.e. honoring and glorifying Him.

He created us to be aligned with his will (design) in our conduct, so we might experience more of Him and His love  and best put Him on display (honor or glorify Him) before others. This is the desired outcome of the good standing God has fully secured for us in Christ. 

To say it another way, God grants us a right standing legally, so we might live right. Not to be more right with God legally (this has already been totally settled by and in Christ), but to partake of Him more in our everyday lives practicallyHe wants us to live righteously so we might more fully partake of his love, life, and joy and pass it on to others more effectively.

In fact, the whole intent of making us right with Him is so we will live righteously for His honor.
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The idea of being made right in order to live right is expressed in several places but most often and clearly in Paul's letter to the Romans.

‭‭Romans 6:4 ESV‬‬
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

‭‭Romans 7:4 ESV‬‬
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (i.e. we are perfectly right with God in Christ). For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us..." - Rom ‭8:1‭-‬5‬

Each of the above 3 passages shows that the desired outcome of God making us right with him is that we live righteously

In fact, in several of Paul's letters (Ephesians, Colossians, ³Hebrews and Romans) the first part of the letter lays out what God has done for us regarding our unrighteous state, and the remaining part deals with how we are to conduct ourselves in light of this.

This is clearest in the book of Romans, where the first 11 chapters elaborate on our alienation from God and what He has done for us in Christ, then from chapter 12 on it shifts to how we conduct ourselves in light of this

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, (i.e. in light of what I have said up to this point regarding what God has done for us) to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Did only Paul bring this out. No Peter and others did as well.

23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 1 Pet 2:23-24

This isn't a coincidence, it is because righteous living must always flow out of a righteous standing with God. This is clearly implied and stated explicitly in the above and other passages. If how we live has not changed, we need to be sure we truly know Him

For a further discussion on being right vs living right click here

What is the good news? click here
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Footnotes: 

²What exactly is righteous living or living righteously? When our conduct is perfectly aligned with God's design and will. 

And what is God's design and will for us and all creation? That in everything we do and say we honor and glorify him. In doing so we also experience our own significance - glory. 

And how do we best honor and glorify him. By loving him with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves. Love is the driving force in these commandments and righteous living is the result. 

God's love for us is first and our responding back to him in love is the result. We will not value or love God above all others until we experience his value or love for us. 

Which comes first our valuing and loving Him or Him valuing and loving us? We love him because he first loved us.

³There is good reason to believe Paul dictated the book of Hebrews to Luke, who wrote it. The way the letter flows and unfolds - the thorough knowledge of the OT - is characteristics of other letters by Paul, not someone who is Greek such as Luke. But the style and elegance of the Greek used in the book is indicative of Luke. So some suggest it was a collaboration between Paul and Luke. 

There are other reasons some believe Paul dictated it. Primarily because, as far as we know, all but one of Paul's letters (including Hebrews) was dictated. 

Also Luke was a highly educated Greek national and medical doctor, fluent in proper Greek. Hebrews was written with grammatical precision, using several words unique to the book of Hebrews. This was uncharacteristic of Paul's other letters but similar to the style used in the gospel of Luke. For these reasons, many think Paul didn't write it but dictated it to Luke. Explaing why it has characteristics of both Paul and Luke. The fact that he considered himself the apostle to the Gentile adds even more credibility to this view. 

It is also believed that Paul deliberately did not identify as the author since he was considered the apostle to the Gentiles and not looked upon favorably by the Judizers within Jewish circles. Some suggest he left his name off to avoid any resistance to the letters' reception and wide circulation within the Jewish community at large. After all, why would the apostle to the Gentiles be writing a letter to Hebrews.  

But Paul's love for his own people was clearly expressed in Romans chapter 9. Knowing this, it would make perfect sense that he still had an intense desire to reach his people even though God had called him to be an apostle to the Gentiles. 

Friday, March 15, 2024

When we are weak we are strong

God's power is perfected in our weakness. If we do not understand this we will interpret his guidance as ¹abandonment.

Do we have any examples to support this in scripture? Not only do we have several examples, but the ultimate example by the most significant person who ever walked the earth.

What did the Spirit do after the public announcement of Christ's ministry? He led him into the wilderness to be tested.

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." - Mat 4:1

It wasn't until after this that Christ went forth in power to share the good news of His coming kingdom.

If this was necessary for Christ how much more so for us?

Paul tells us that God's power is perfected in our struggles and weakness (2 Cor 12:8-9). God even sent a messenger of Satan to harass him, not unlike God allowing Satan to inflict suffering on Job. God was in charge in both cases. If we do not understand this we will interpret God's directing us into periods of testing as ¹abandonment.

We usually don't feel like God is with us when we are in the wilderness, do we? It is usually lonely and often confusing. We are tempted to ask God, "where are you?! Why have you ¹left me?!


Christ learned obedience through the things He suffered. If this was necessary for Christ, the perfect Son of God and man, why would - or should - it be different for us who are far from perfect? 

Our need to learn to trust the Father is greater than Christ's - though His trust in the Father was tested far more than ours will likely ever be. 

"Therefore...let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." Heb 12:1-2

If we do not understand that God is in the test - working by and through it for our spiritual advancement - we will not be able to "count it all joy" as James exhorts, when we go through hard times. We will be unstable and tossed about in and by our distrust.

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith (trust) produces steadfastness. 

And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man (who trusts God one moment and doubts Hin the next), unstable in all his ways." - James 1:2-8

For a discussion on why faith is a fight click here
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¹Matthew 27:46 ESV‬‬
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

legitimate vs illegitimate business

What distinguishes a legitimate enterprise or business from an illegitimate one? 

Being ¹service driven vs. solely profit-driven.

There is nothing wrong with profit in itself, but when profit becomes the ²sole motive, serving others becomes irrelevant or secondary at best and usually and eventually leads to ⁴harm to others. This is a disservice and the opposite of serving others.

When an enterprise is focused on ²serving others and helping them flourish, the result is the customers' ²benefit. If we persevere, it often results in our benefit as well, i.e. profit. We "win" by helping others "win." But serving others should always be our focus, regardless. 

As believers, this is carrying out the commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves i.e. treating others the way we would like to be treated. If we gain (profit) in this exercise, this is a good thing, not bad i.e. it is not exploiting our fellow man or the planet, as ⁵some assert, but the possible (not guaranteed) fruit of serving them.  

The most successful enterprises are those that find a ¹legitimate ³need of others and meet it better than anyone else. The greater the need, the greater the service we can provide. The greater the service, the greater the opportunity for profit if we are diligent. 

For a discussion on sowing and reaping click here

For a discussion about socialism vs capitalism click here

For a discussion on doing things with excellence click here
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¹The nature of the need is also vital in determining the legitimacy of the enterprise or service e.g. providing healthy food vs junk food is a legitimate endeavor. Providing a want such as junk food (or pornography, or abortions etc) simply because there is a demand for it is not. There may be large profits in these kinds of offers but if an offer is contrary to God's design it is ultimately destructive and a disservice to others and humanity at large regardless of demand or the amount of profit.

²Even when profit becomes the primary motive, serving others becomes secondary, which also ultimately leads to people's ⁴harm and the opposite of serving others.

For both the provider and the consumer. This is a "win-win" scenario. 

³We must distinguish between needs and wants. Needs are vital to our existence and flourishing. Wants, no matter how great, are merely what we desire but will not perish if we do not obtain them i.e. they are not essential to our existence but are designed to merely give us greater comfort versus greater fruitfulness i.e. productivity. 

We are called to be productive (fruitful) and anything that enables us to do so is legitimate.

This is our initial mandate in the Old Testament:

‭‭Genesis 1:28-30 

[28] And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” [29] And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. [30] And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 

And repeated in the New Testament: 

‭‭John 15:5 

[5] I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing... 

[8] By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples...
 
[16] You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, - regarding advancing God's rule (kingdom) of love - he may give it to you. 

⁴Such as using corn syrup in foods as a sweetener because it is cheaper and adds more to the bottom line even though it's harmful to us.

⁵Ayn Rand asserted capitalism and altruism are opposites and do not mix i.e. that in a true free market system we can not benefit (win) by helping others benefit (win). 

Click here for a 2-minute video of her explaining worldview. 

However, as an atheist, she didn't understand the dynamic of being empowered to love others when we know we are fully loved. 

She interpreted altruism as a giving away of - or others taking from us - our dignity and not an expression of the dignity we derive from God, the eternal overflowing fountain of love. She saw altruism only as others taking from us by force vs our freely, gladly, and willingly giving to others out of our fullness of receiving all things from our Creator. A subtle but vital distinction. 

This distinguishes God's Kingdom from communism. This also reveals how the progressive side of the church is unwittingly sympathetic to communism, which is vastly different from advancing God's kingdom. 

Givers vs takers

For a discussion on how we are designed to be givers and not takers click here.

When service is our primary focus - but profit is also desired
(though not primary) - this puts innovation front and center. It causes us to continually look for creative ways to meet the unmet needs of our fellow man and how to also generate the necessary funding to continue to do so. 

Often the copycats of successful innovation are driven purely by profit. 

Exchanging energy via currency?

Currency is a recognized media of value (i.e. everyone agrees on its value) that we exchange our energy for (just think electrical current i.e. Current-cy). 

We expend energy through labor to create things (or provide direct services to others) that people want or need.

We in turn are given currency (portable, transferable, stored labor/energy) in exchange for that labor, which we can then use to acquire goods and services others labor to produce, that we need or want but do not have the time, skills, or interest to directly labor for. 

Through a universally accepted ¹medium of exchange - of portable and transferable energy (i.e.currency) - we can more easily benefit mutually from the skills, talent, and labor of an unlimited number of others without having to barter.

For example, if I am a dentist and you do landscaping, I can provide dental work for you in exchange for landscaping. This works fine but only if I need landscaping and you need dental work i.e. barter is limited to the specific things we EACH offer or need at the time that we need it.

A currency however is a universally accepted media of transferring your and my labor/energy. This means everybody will accept it as payment for their labor/energy and also offer it to others for the goods or services their labor/energy produces at any time. So use of currency is not limited to any one particular service - such as dental work - or product at a time of need but is unlimited in how it can be transferred and used. 

When we give currency to another we are in effect giving transportable/transferable energy/labor to them through a media of exchange or currency which they in turn agree to accept from us. 

Our energy is expended and exchanged for transportable/ transferable currency which they in turn can exchange for goods and services that have been created by the labor/energy of others, which they can also convert to currency.

Currency is simply a universally accepted, portable, and easily transferable media of exchanging our energy/labor (and the fruits of it) with each other whenever and wherever we need to.

Who is in control?

Here's the part most don't understand. If a central authority, such as a bank, issues and therefore controls the currency (money) - such as our current fiat currency or the proposed ³CBDC - in effect, it controls the people who labor for it. 

If no Central authority is necessary to verify the value of a currency but its verification is distributed evenly through a decentralized network that no one controls (or you could say the laborers "control" together via a network) then a central authority is no longer needed. But most importantly, central control is no longer possible. The verification of the value is now in the hands of "we the people" and not any one central institution or person.

What about profit? Is it good or bad?

Profit is merely surplus energy created through efficiency and hard work. 

But also through innovation. This occurs when the laborer finds an area of demand/need/want through their ingenuity/ innovation/creativity and supplies that want or need more efficiently than others (or exclusively before anyone else does).  

The basic engine that drives commerce is supply and demand. The laborer/innovator supplies what others need want, or demand. 

Commerce is nothing more than the exchange of goods and services - by means of currency - that are needed and desired by others.

To provide goods and services that are needed or wanted is not taking advantage of people but actually serving them. It is treating them with value/care. In short, productivity does not necessarily require greed. It can be driven by a desire to serve others; to treat them as we wish to be treated i.e. to love our neighbors as ourselves. In so doing, we are carrying out the 2nd greatest commandment. 

When profit is generated through deception or abuse of resources, this is not a natural or inherent part of profit-making but the abuse of it. There is nothing inherently wrong with profit-making (i.e. efficiently, diligently, creativity meeting the wants/needs of consumers better than other competitors/ providers) but only the abuse of it. 

Often, profit-making and abuse of it are mixed together as if they are one and the same. They are not. To shut down profit-making because it is abused is not the solution to the actual abuse. It would be equivalent to docking a sailboat, which is more efficient than using a row boat because the sailboat captain is always drunk and constantly wrecking the ship, causing harm or damage to others. The sailboat is not the problem, the captain steering the boat is.

Any economic system or endeavor can be (and often is) corrupted and abused simply because humanity is broken i.e. the problem is not necessarily the means of doing commerce. We must separate and distinguish the system from the abuse of a system. 

All systems are subject to abuse, not necessarily because this is inherent within the system, but because of human nature's inclination to take advantage of others solely for their own benefit i.e. selfishness vs service.

Some systems are more conducive to abuse than others. Systems that have centralized power (such as ²socialism and communism) tend to be abused most due to the selfish inclination of humanity. As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you put the control of commerce in the hands of a centralized authority, abuse inevitably occurs due to our inherent inclination to be selfish. 

This is why our system of government was set up with a separation of powers and various checks and balances. You could say power within our system is decentralized. The founders understood the corruption of centralized power firsthand through tyrannical British rule.  

Large profit may simply be the fruit of greater energy expended and utilizing greater efficiency and innovation (creativity) than others, not necessarily or automatically the fruit of greater abuse. 

To say it simply, the greater and better the job you do the more you are rewarded. Great profit can simply be that you have made a larger number of people happier by providing what they want or need better than anyone else.

The danger of centralized control.

When you can devalue the currency by creating additional currency out of thin air you are in effect unknowingly (to them) taking (stealing) people's energy to pad your own pocket by diluting the value of the currency others labored for e.g. to double the money supply is the equivalent of doubling the number of hours of labor required to generate the same earnings. Without an honest currency/money system, you have legalized theft. 

And as long as there are those allowed to steal from you unknown and therefore unchecked, they will continue to do so by whatever means possible (through deception) to maintain power and control over others, i.e. over our labor/energy/time etc. This is why the Federal Reserve system must be eliminated. It is taking the fruits of one's labor/energy through deception and using it to advance their agenda of those who control the system - which is not necessarily or usually the people's agenda. This is not only taking advantage of the producer/worker but increasing their control over others i.e. You and I. 

The media of exchange that best provides honest money is cryptocurrency. For a discussion on why click here.
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¹One of the oldest and most common media's of exchange was gold and silver. Originally in America we used gold and silver coins (A dollar was an ounce of silver. A quarter was a quarter ounce and a dime was 1/10 an ounce). The paper dollar was backed by gold or silver and could be turned in for the amount of gold or silver the "bill" designated i.e.  5 "dollar bill" or 10 dollars or a 100 etc. Eventually, we went to paper certificates of deposit that were backed by silver. Now it is merely currency by fiat (law) and backed by nothing. We use it because it is required to be used i.e. it is legal tender. 

This doesn't mean we can not use other forms of currency. That is up to the buyer and seller of goods or services. It means you can only use it to pay the government i.e. taxes. And they will only pay you with it and not some other currency such as Euro's, Yen, or British pounds or a ³true decentralized cryptocurrency etc. 

A currency can be any universally recognized media. Because of the devaluation of the paper dollar through excess spending and printing more to cover the nation's increasing debt, more are turning to privately created digital currency known as cryptocurrency. ³True cryptocurrency has a limited number of coins created resulting in them increasing in value against fiat currency, as their use becomes more widely accepted.

²those who promote such systems pretend benevolence (and maybe even naively believe it's more fair) when in fact they seek power and control (whether consciously or not… they argue someone has to run the show to prevent fraud.  Ironic when you consider the whole current fiat money system is legalized theft).

The appeal to the consumer is I'm promised I'll be cared for regardless of whether I work for it or not, by those who promote (and control) distribution. This promise is the primary way they keep us in the system and under their control. 

³CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) is not decentralized or has a set number of "coins" issued. It is therefore not true cryptocurrency. I would avoid it at all costs. 

For a further discussion on the difference between controlled CBDC and true cryptocurrency click here.

For a further discussion on the difference between socialism and capitalism, click here.

For further discussion on the difference between a legitimate and illegitimate endeavor or business click here.

If interested in acquiring precious medals at 12 to 17% below standard dealers' cost click here.

To take advantage of the rapidly growing cryptocurrency market email us at bigdeal70@pm.me