It’s now common knowledge that the U.S. dollar is in danger of losing its status as the world reserve currency. This is primarily due to two factors, the first being the Federal Reserve’s inflation of the money supply, which drives price inflation. Money inflation destroys the purchasing power of the dollar, acting as a crippling tax on the poor, middle class, and retirees on fixed incomes. But the money inflation also distorts prices, supply and demand structures, and markets. This drives the boom-bust economic bubbles which blow up into recessions. In addition, the money inflation also funds America’s destructive welfare state (which only incentivizes additional welfare) and America’s bankrupting wars of choice, as well as the ever-expanding federal Big Government. All of the above are as destructive as they are unsustainable. What they amount to is fraud and violence against the American people.

The other major factor threatening the dollar is the Biden administration’s economic warfare in the form of sanctions on Russia. Whatever one thinks about the role the U.S. should play in the conflict (if any), the sanctions have driven Russia, China, and a handful of other countries to ditch the dollar in favor of the yuan, gold, and even bitcoin. One important takeaway every American should understand is that the dollar losing reserve status would mean a dramatic drop in the standard of living for all Americans.

The greater point I want to make here is that the U.S. monetary system is completely contra to the Western, Judeo-Christian values upon which the U.S. was founded. The ideal Judeo-Christian form of government is decentralized, small government founded on individual liberty. It’s a government that protects the individual from fraud and violence – the same fraud and violence fostered by the Fed’s monetary inflation. The Bible itself is very clear regarding the necessity of non-inflatable, “honest” money, to foster peace, prosperity, and individual liberty, or in other words, to protect people from fraud and violence. More on this, shortly.

First, it’s important to remember the warning about money inflation from John Maynard Keynes, the architect of the modern American economy himself. In 1919, during the height of WW1, he wrote:

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens….

As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Keynes might as well have been speaking directly to America today, in 2022.

This brings us back to the Bible. The following passages speak to God’s command for, and Israel’s attempt to commit to non-inflatable, or “honest” money. The money spoken of below are coins composed of metals (silver and gold, for example), pegged to a specified weight and purity:

“Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin (Leviticus 19:35-36).”

“Unequal weights are an abomination to the LORD, and false scales are not good (Proverbs 20:23).”

“Your silver has become dross, your choice wine is diluted with water (Isaiah 1:22).”

Dross refers to cheap base metals, surreptitiously mixed into silver and gold coins by kings, so kings could deceptively skim small amounts of silver and gold from the coins. This was fraud amounting to theft, designed to enrich kings over time.

The greater point here is that inflating the dollar supply is akin to adding dross to coins. By Biblical standards, inflation, like dross, is fraudulent and represents theft. It causes the poor and middle class to get poorer, while the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful. We also would not have the destructive, unsustainable welfare state, unnecessary wars of choice, and liberty-crushing Big Government without the Fed’s monetary inflation to fund it.

Suffice to say, the Bible is replete with wholly sound, tried-and-true, basic economic wisdom, and the majority of Americans still identify as Christian. Yet, the U.S. national debt tops $30 trillion, we have annual trillion-dollar deficits, and the dollar is in danger of losing reserve status. But it’s still not too late for Americans to begin heeding the Bible’s wisdom regarding honest money.

Jason Peirce is a former stage, film, and TV actor who holds a BA in literature from Florida State, and a Master's in economic and community development from Penn State. He also attended Santa Barbara College of Law. He now resides in the free state of Florida with his beautiful family.