Greetings, Scholars. Let’s explore where we might use our Talents to the glory of God’s Kingdom.
Welcome back to the Reformer Newsletter: Scholar’s Edition, where holders of a ReformerNFT can take a deeper dive into various projects and activities from across the Web3 world. You have joined this community to contribute to our collective mission of building for Christ’s Kingdom, and we will use this newsletter as a platform to enable that.
Reformers Project Spotlight
One of the Pilgrims in the Reformer Community has introduced us to his new app Booklight, a read-to-earn Web3 application which seeks to build communities around books and rewards users with tokens as they read. This will be a space for authors, creators, and their fans to join and interact virtually to create new forms of engagement around the written word.
You can check out their whitepaper for more information.
Web3 Industry Highlights
Macro trends and the effects on the Web3 industry appear to be on everyone’s mind across the crypto space. Months of FUD amongst the crypto crowd has been joined by a chorus outside the Web3 industry with doom and gloom spreading through the larger economy. Our inflation levels appeared to be leveling, only to fall further off the cliff based on today’s numbers (how ‘bout that… they were transitory, just in a bad way).
Any parallel with past crypto bear markets begins to break down as we recognize those previous downturns occurred in times of a stable economy. What happens to markets when inflation is rising, tech stocks are collapsing, house sales are cooling off, and all signs point to recession? I guess we will wait and find out. Through this, be smart and remember that this too will end. In the meantime apply your energies where you feel called, invest only in projects and companies you believe in, and seek to create value in your community. Below we will highlight some interesting insights about the economy and possible future states. This is not financial advice, do your own research, blah blah blah. If any of this makes you excited, great! Lean in and find a way to get involved. If this does not interest you or causes stress, also great! Go outside for a run, call your parents, cook a nice meal, and enjoy your weekend.
Lyn Alden interviews: For those interested in the intersection of cryptocurrencies and international finance and want to understand how debt plays a role in the future of capital markets, Lyn Alden released a pair of interviews this week which breaks all of this down and more. The interviews come in two different flavors: high-level and led by ETH believers or nitty-gritty and geared towards BTC maxis. If you want to learn more about cycles in the market and how you can prepare yourself for this (apparently predictable) bear market, give these a listen, and prepare to take notes.
The Network State: My own crypto guru Balaji Srinivasan has released his book The Network State: How to Start a New Country. I have just started reading so I cannot endorse it yet, but I will say Balaji is the thinker that pushed me down the Web3 rabbit hole, so I am very excited to dive in. I have a personal interest (obsession?) with how the tools available in Web3 and the crypto space can allow us to rebuild and reform our institutions— our “systems of the world.” In this book Balaji explores what it might look like to align our concept of the nation-state with digital networks. From early chapters, I’m picking up some major parallels with the early Church, so keep an eye out for that.
This book is also designed as a proof-of-concept for the next generation of e-book. It is designed to be dynamic and not static, and Balaji will update it, add to it, and maintain it as a living document for free to all who purchase the Kindle version.
Coinbase NFT Drops: Bill Murray NFTs? They practically sell themselves.
How to Survive a Bear Market in Crypto: The Defiant has your playbook.
The Church is Not Resilient: A unique essay from Drew McIntyre that is not specifically covering web3, but has some fascinating things to say about division in the Church and why it may be not so bad after all.
The FaithTech Podcast: How Does God View Technology?: Last and far from least, you need to be listening to FaithTech’s pod. Hosted by a fixture in the Reformer community, get ready to think biblically about today’s technology.
The Reformers community is a network of Christ followers who believe there is an opportunity to spread the Gospel Truth by using the next generation of digital tools available, commonly referred to as “Web3” or “crypto” tools. To do this we want to connect Christians who are already in this space, as well as educate believers to bring more builders, movers, and shakers into our growing community. There is another front in which we can press the attack, and that is to evangelize the Web3 space. In order to do this, we can look to past heroes of the faith, both pre-Christian Biblical figures and those who lived in the Christian Era, and learn from how they operated and engaged in the time and conditions in which they were placed. We will begin this study starting with a well-known figure from the Old Testament- the prophet Daniel.
Daniel in the Den
In the sixth century before Christ, the twin Kingdoms of Israel and Judah had fallen to successive empires of the ancient Near East, and the best and brightest of the Hebrew nation were deported to Babylon to serve their new earthly masters as court advisors. These exiles arguably had it pretty well-off compared to other conquered peoples (depending how broadly you take the word ‘eunuch’ in Biblical translations). Their captivity was not one of whips and chains, but of secluded luxury and forced conversion to the gods of leisure and decadence, notwithstanding the occasional murderous palace rage of the monarch. Around this time, the Lord spoke through the prophet Jeremiah to tell the exiles to settle in for the long haul. Babylon was their city now, their nation, and their mission in life to tend and bless.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:4-7)
Among these well-bred and born exiles were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, renamed by the Babylonians as Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They lived in captivity in Babylon, and by faithfully serving in their new positions they were a blessing to their adopted exilic nation. Through them the earthly pretenders to the title “king of kings” would learn to glorify the actual King of Kings, and through their faithful example we can see how to live a life of obedience to the True Gospel while the world around us is caught in a whirlwind of lies, fear, and disillusionment. Daniel and his companions were selected because of their talents and obvious capabilities and connections. Exposure to the halls of power could either corrupt them, or they could spend a hard-fought life redeeming the halls of power.
But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank… As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. (Daniel 1:8, 17)
The message of Daniel is simple; remain faithful to the Lord’s commandments; bless others by demonstrating faith; exemplify and commend humility to others around you. If you do this you can increase your blessings. “Blessings” in the Book of Daniel means something different than we might think; it means being slandered but ultimately vindicated, fed to the lions but emerging unscathed, or tossed into the fiery furnace for a chance to encounter “One like the Son of God.”
At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:29-30)
All of Daniel’s successive captors/patrons- the Babylonians Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, as well as the Medio-Persian ruler Darius- each found themselves trapped by the false ideologies of ancient Near Eastern statism: the government was personified in the ruler, and that ruler (therefore the government) was deified as a cosmic authority. Except for Daniel and his companions, those who lived in the halls of power found this narrative convenient for self-aggrandizement, even as they knowingly manipulated it. The task of Daniel and his team was to speak and live out the ultimate Truth– that there is only one God worthy of praise, and that we are humble creatures of dust who are made to honor Him in all we do.
Both in the Book of Daniel and increasingly today we can see what happens when ideologues are so infatuated with their lies that any hint of the truth offends them to their core. The child who points out the Emperor is wearing no clothes is mobbed, beaten, and ridiculed. Eventually the structure built on the shifting sands of faithless principles faces a storm and proves the worth of its foundation. A noteworthy moment in Daniel’s life occurs after the hand writing on the wall and fall of Babylon. The city is sacked, the empire falls, a new administration takes over, but Daniel remains. His foundation carved in the “stone cut out by no human hand” would not be shaken by anything as ephemeral as the overthrow of the Babylonian Empire and shift in international power structures. And just as that golden head fell, so too would the chest of silver, stomach of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mixed iron and clay rise and fall over the following millennia, yet that ultimate stone which is the Word remains today as a mountain immovable and unshakeable. We can see overhauls in our systems of politics, economics, communities, and even churches. We know Who will not change, so if we want to survive we must seek our meaning and worth in Him.
Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.” (Daniel 6:5)
Expect attacks both in spite of and because of your faith. Expect to see God glorified for the same reason. We can know with certainty that the core message of Daniel is a timeless and fundamental truth. God reigns, and we should humble ourselves accordingly so that we may glorify Him as we bless others in whatever position we find ourselves. We are less certain about what the “halls of power” will look like in the future, but in our ReformersNFT community we are following a hunch that Web3 and crypto will be a key infrastructure in future power dynamics. Therefore as we engage this space as early adopters, we may be positioned to find ourselves like Daniel and his companions- representatives of faith in the living God, surrounded by idolatry and ideology, and always vigilant to resist the siren calls of worldly power. In this way we can be a blessing in our exilic home, and by leading in this way we can serve the Kingdom that is the stone which breaks all other earthly thrones and powers before it.
And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. (Daniel 2:44)