Debt and the Religious Life

Debt and the Religious Life

Debt and the Religious Life

Debt and the Religious Life

Debt is not a well-understood term today. Most people use the worddebt to describe any borrowing, but although that is not entirely inaccurate, it is not precise enough.

But if the debt is delinquent, the lender is given an implied authority from God, according to the Bible. In the time of Christ that authority extended to imprisonment, slavery, and the confiscation of a borrower's total worldly possessions. Not once in Scripture is there even a hint that that was not the legitimate right of a lender. The only variable Scripture allows is that, if the lender and the borrower were both Jews, the borrower would be released from servitude at the end of seven years, unless he voluntarily elected to remain a slave. To say the least, borrowing was not a decision to be taken lightly.

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The same basic rules applied in America even in the twentieth century. Almost any major city still has in its library records from _a debtors' prison. I found several good examples from the turn of the century in Atlanta. One record read, "Abraham Johnston, white male, commended to debtors' prison for a period of six years, or until the debt is resolved, for failure to pay the agreed-upon sum of two hundred dollars for the purchase of a mule."

Another read, "Sara Wright is sentenced to debtors' prison for an indefinite period of time for habitual indebtedness." The sentence went on to describe her despicable crimes, such as charging food that she couldn't pay for at a merchant's store, charging dry goods at a department store, and signing for a loan with a local citizen without the ability to make restitution.

It is evident that our attitudes today about debt and those of our predecessors were somewhat different. The cause for the difference can be pinpointed as greed and indulgence. Not on the part of the borrowers--that came later. The initial greed was on the part of elected` officials who desired to expand-our economy by way of debt. To do so required drastic alteration of the rules regarding borrowing and the consequences of failure to repay.

Few people today are willing to risk forfeiting their freedom and separation from their families to borrow money. The-risk would simply be too great. So the laws were-amended to make borrowing less risky-and credit more available. And besides, who would tolerate the government's borrowing massive amounts

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