Jordan Hall & Ross Byrd: The Divine Economy and Sacred Commons
Date: August 28, 2025
Type: Conversation Summary
Participants: Jordan Hall (Tech entrepreneur turned philosopher-theologian), Ross Byrd
Topic: The relationship between civilization, the church, and the divine economy
Core Thesis
"The commons is more fundamental than the state or the market. The commons has been largely lost physically, psychologically and spiritually. As it turns out, the commons is the same as the sacred." - Jordan Hall
This conversation explores how the restoration of the sacred commons - through authentic Christian community - offers the only viable path through the metacrisis of civilization.
Key Concepts
The Sacred Commons
The Evolution of Understanding:
- Commons → Sacred → Divine Economy
- Physical commons (shared land) was just the "late stage stub" of something much deeper
- The sacred reaches out to us, unlike the wilderness which merely threatens
- Family is "vastly more fundamental" than state or market as it's where relationships are literally born
The Divine Economy vs Market/State Economy
Three Economic Models:
- Market Economy: How we get stuff done through money and choice
- State Economy: How we get stuff done through hierarchical direction
- Divine Economy: How we get stuff done through vocation and calling
"Instead of people's work being governed by the market (where they can make the most money) or the state (where bureaucrats tell them to go), their work is governed by what is in fact their actual calling, and everybody is collectively working to help them discern that and then helping them to cultivate their capacity to deliver on their vocation." - Jordan Hall
The Currency of Meaning
Beyond Money to Meaning:
"The currency of the Divine economy is in fact meaning... Bread is meaningful when it's meaningful. The currency of the Divine economy is purposes that are aligned with values and deliver that telos."
Meta-currency - Relationship:
"The thing that is the most valuable is relationship. The thing that is the most value is relationship with the Triune God... the metacurrency of the Divine economy is relationship."
The Path Through Metacrisis
Three-Step Process for Individuals:
1. Discernment Recovery:
"We live in a world where our taste buds have been radically messed up... Part of it is a remediation, a process of beginning to cultivate discernment or to recover the discernment you had as a newborn."
2. Vocation Discovery: Finding your actual calling through:
- Individual and corporate discernment of talents
- Experimenting with possibilities as discernment increases
- Grounding in community that gives meaning to individual calling
3. AI as Catalyst:
"AI is going to evaporate all your jobs anyway... We are not on ground deciding whether to get into the plane. We've been in the plane for a while, we've jumped out of the plane, we're plummeting through the air, that's the ground, it's coming fast."
Three Anchor Vocations for Community:
1. The Pastoral: Those called specifically to God, already outside market logic
2. The Mother:
"Every woman who feels that it's very difficult to choose to have kids in this world is correct, because our world society is not the right place to have kids."
3. The Warrior/Knight: Young men called to spiritual warfare and protection:
"We need you to have the level of discipline that is equivalent to and greater than the level of discipline that the boys who charged the machine guns in Normandy had, because what you're doing is that important, but it's spiritual."
The Church as Solution
From Form to Essence:
"When I say the church I mean the church... the Ecclesia... the ones that have been called out... We are almost always betrayed when we take the form for the essence."
The Actual Church:
"The actual church is alive, the actual church is improvisational in a profound sense... it is ultimately hanging together on the basis of relationship with the Triune God."
Practical Demonstration:
Hall's experience in Black Mountain during Hurricane Helene:
"The church is here and helpers from outside rushed in like it was 80/20, 90/10, and the 10 wasn't the government... It was like 'get in your truck, drive 400 miles on your own dime, start helping people.' Why? Because God told me to. It's very straightforward - that's the boss, I do what he says."
Scale vs Intimacy Problem
The Dunbar Limit Challenge:
"All of the things I was just describing, governed by relationality, have a characteristic of being relatively low in scale. You can only really actually love a small number of people... That doesn't give you the leverage of economies of scale."
The Moral Indifference Problem:
"We know in a very subtle way that all of our choices are impacting people all over the world, many ways quite harmfully, but we can't do anything about it so I'm just going to kind of ignore it. It requires the diminution of our discernment."
The Cobalt Dilemma:
"I want an iPhone, but to get that iPhone it's gonna have to be cobalt, and to get that cobalt there's going to be a 12-year-old kid in Africa who's actually going to be basically dying to get you that cobalt. Do you really want to murder a 12-year-old kid?"
Education and Formation
The Form IS the Curriculum:
"The primary lesson in education is the form because the form is always present, the content is sometimes present."
Proper Educational Form:
"The proper form of education is the field of relationality... A kid is born into that field of relationality and lives in that field of relationality, which as they grow up is constantly cultivating in them... who are you, how do you enter into proper relationship."
Intergenerational Wisdom:
"There are particular moments where a young boy, call him eight, will learn from a grandfather something that he cannot learn from his mother. The archetype of grandfather, the typological role of grandfather, is the one for whom the channels are open that the boy is looking to emulate and absorb from."
Society of Abundance vs Scarcity
The Transition:
"We've been living for a long time in what I've called a society of scarcity... We're entering into a point where the answer is we have to actually say okay, what does it look like for us to design a society of abundance."
Abundance vs Opulence:
"Abundance is not the same thing as opulence. Opulence is when you have massively more than you need version of scarcity. Abundance is when you have a super fluid amount of what you need which allows you to continue to expand your own nature into a higher degree of possibility."
Technology and Virtualization
The Satanic Virtual:
"The virtual is multiplying the problem of disembodiment... It's actually the devil's version of heaven. The devil says hey, how about if I drew a really sweet picture of Eden? You can imagine Eden right now and you can even pretend that you can feel the warmth of the sun of Eden on your face, but the problem is not only is it not Eden, but every moment that you're orienting towards that, you're orienting away from the actual Kingdom of Heaven."
Where Heaven Meets Earth:
"The actual Kingdom of Heaven is where Heaven meets Earth."
The Cathedral Mindset
Long-term Thinking:
"There are people that may in fact be our actual lineal ancestors who spent 500 years just taking pieces of stone and hitting them with hammers to build a cathedral, and they were able to do that. They knew that they would never see it, never, like grandkids wouldn't see it, and they did it."
The Mustard Seed Principle:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed that's becoming the largest tree in the garden. It's the smallest of seeds but it takes a long time for it to become what it's meant to be."
Practical Implications
Community vs Society:
Society: Walking into Starbucks in Chicago - anonymous transaction with strangers Community: Walking into local coffee shop in Black Mountain - relationships, care, quality, investment in wellbeing
The Sabbath as Fractal:
"The Sabbath is the set-apart day... it's not as though God said you're going to have this one day set apart as holy and that's the only one that I want to be holy. It's like it's the yeast that works through the whole batch... it becomes fractal both up and down the scale."
Warning and Hope
The Millstone Principle:
"You have to enter the kingdom like a child... but that creates a major danger which is that people are abusing the childlike nature of entering the kingdom. That's the worst thing ever."
The Path Forward:
"First, at least start walking in the right direction, consciously choose to begin walking in the right direction... Notice, like really acknowledge the wins... We cannot live by saying we didn't get to 100%, we're only at 2% today. Well yesterday we were at 1% and we just got double, we're at 2% now."
Summary
This conversation presents a comprehensive vision for civilizational renewal through the restoration of sacred commons via authentic Christian community. Hall argues that the metacrisis can only be resolved by moving beyond the false dichotomy of state vs market toward a divine economy based on vocation, relationship, and communion with God. The path requires recovering discernment, discovering true calling, and building communities that can support mothers, pastors, and spiritual warriors in their vocations. While acknowledging the immense challenges of scale and the centuries of damage to traditional forms, Hall maintains that the sacred is actively reaching out to restore relationship and that small faithful steps can grow into the transformation our civilization desperately needs.