As attempts at governmental control appear to be ramping up, it is critical that we understand what it means to be truly free. I am not talking about the freedom offered by a historic experiment of democracy or the ability to live as we please unhindered by government dictates. It is the freedom we have in Jesus Christ that has allowed people who were experiencing the cruelest forms of government control to live freely when they were unjustly imprisoned behind prison bars or within the strands of barbed war necklacing a prison camp, or found themselves living as inmates within an ideology whose enclosures of control created emotional, financial, or social control bondage. The danger of this currency is its programmability and its allowed expenditure based on decisions someone other than the user determines.

As a real-world example, something is being implemented called CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). Our president signed an Executive Order last year to begin the process of adopting digital currency nationally. The alphabet title – CBDC – sounds boring and innocuous, but if implemented it would radically change how we are allowed to live our lives. It will challenge our understanding of freedom. CBDC is a programmable currency that is held digitally not in the form of paper money. Its initial appeal will be the ease of use, a hedge against loss, and the prevention of things like counterfeiting and money laundering.

To program the parameters of how CBDC is used will require a philosophy of use. That philosophy of use is already in place by many of our largest corporations. It is called ESG. The initials stand for the three elements of its philosophy – Environment, Social, and Governance. The digital currency would be programmed within the definitions of what is accepted by ESG.

This programming could determine the distance the driver of a car is permitted to travel to remain within the range of an approved carbon footprint. It could limit our ability to give a tithe or donation to a church or ministry that holds to biblical standards the governing authorities deem socially unacceptable. The ultimate use of CBDC would be determined by what the current government in power deems appropriate.

To initiate such a currency and have it accepted by the masses requires the kind of fear that comes with a natural disaster, war, or when social unrest creates the kind fear and emotional velocity required to gain compliance.

As the CBDC and other issues begin to appear on the horizon of our future, we must reaffirm in our hearts that true freedom can only be experienced in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. No law, government reform, or revolution can create that kind of freedom.

After casting a demon out of a young girl, Paul and Silas were severely beaten and thrown into the inner dungeon of a prison. They had their feet placed in stocks. “Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening” (Acts 16:25). While inside the prison under an extreme expression of governmental control, they remained free in Christ. This is the kind of freedom that allows us to live as free people no matter what a government or a loveless form of religion clamps down upon our lives in an attempt to isolate us and silence the sound of true freedom.