Romans 13/Duet 15 – Living Beyond Debt
In July 2007 Aron and I moved our family to Japan for one year, with only 80 kilos of luggage (Zach didn’t get a seat on the plane), requiring some hard decisions about what was going. Rather romantically, I took only three books; my Bible, my journal and my father’s mother’s copy of Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Pilgrimage. My thought was that our journeys, off to the Far East, had some similarities…
It is an amazing book…and one of the things that stayed with me was Hudson Taylor’s attitude to personal debt. He writes:
To me it seemed that the teaching of God’s word was unmistakably clear: "Owe no man any thing." To borrow money implied, to my mind, a contradiction of Scripture – a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and a determination to get for ourselves what He had not given….If the Word taught me anything, it taught me to have no connection with debt.
No connection with debt! A high ideal! One that the Overseas Missions Fellowship, the child of Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission, still clings to with a policy of ‘making no appeals for funds, but practicing a reliance on God moving people through prayer alone.’
Our journeys have little similarity in the area of debt. Ten years ago we bought a house in Sydney and borrowed 90% of the purchase price from the bank. I also have a credit card and have been known to use it!
All this makes me very Australian.
Over recent years Australian household debt has risen faster than household income. According to 2007 figures from the Commonwealth Bank the debt to income ratio in Australia is one of the highest in the world - higher even than America and the UK. For every $100 we earn, we owe $130. The reason for this is the large numbers of people who borrowed large amounts to buy property.
Credit card debt is also significant. In 05-06, 58% of lower income households had one or more credit cards. Of these 43% reported credit card debt. Most owed under $2,000, but 180,000 people reported debt of $5,000 or more, including 60,800 households who owed $10,000 or more. However, the more money you earn the more likely you are to be in debt. The proportion of high income households with non-property debt is double that of low income households.
Odd feeling – look back at articles published early year last year claiming that there is no danger in high levels of debt – particularly debt tied to assets - except in the unlikely event of an economic downturn. As it turned out…not entirely unlikely!
And what are the other costs of changing attitudes to debt?
My parents, and certainly my grandparents, grew up in a time where borrowing was reserved for purchasing a (modest) house, where you saved for what you wanted to buy, where patience was a virtue, where consumer goods where not so important that they outweighed debt, and where there was a pride in earning something – not just possessing it.
Now debt is called credit, no one wants to wait and almost everything has no apparent cost.
Story about the boy from Grace’s kindergarten class and the footy cards… $6 for footy cards… But the sense – as the credit card ad. says - of relief? Priceless!
What does the Bible say about debt?
Firstly, liberal lending, in our reading from Deuteronomy and Leviticus 25, is encouraged. At the same time, as we see in Deuteronomy 15, the Bible is explicit about the power relationship that debt creates. (Duet 15 and Prov 22:7)
The question of whether interest could be charged is less certain.
Neshekh, is the Hebrew word for interest, literally meaning "a bite". In Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:36,37 the prohibition on charging interest applies only to the poor. In Deuteronomy 23:19,20 it is extended to all moneylending, except business dealings with foreigners.
What is certain is the Law’s provision for protecting the poor. This protection has three elements: justice for all in the light of their shared relationship with God; mercy – you were not to enter a man’s house to take anything he had offered as collateral and if a cloak had been given it had to be returned by nightfall (Ex 22:26,27; Duet 24:10-13); and hope – at the end of every seven years debts had to be forgiven.
In the Christian tradition debate over charging interest or usury lasted well over a thousand years. In the fourth century clergy were forbidden from taking interest; in the fifth century this extended to the laity, and in the eighth century usury was declared to be a general criminal offence.
Loopholes in the law were found, however, and growing commercialisation encouraged the pro-usury counter-movement. The rise of Protestantism is associated with this movement, though Luther and Calvin both expressed reservations about charging interest. What has emerged is a view that usury is not an offence to be suppressed by a Christian government, but a private moral issue. Perhaps one recent exception to this has been the Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History campaigns, as well as support amongst many Christians for the millennium development goals.
So how should we respond to personal debt – privately and as a community with responsibility to each other? Four suggestions for living beyond debt…
Those few brief figures on Australia’s household income are an indication of profound restlessness within our society. A desire, as Kath and Kim would say,
‘to be effluent.’ The irony of this is that we are not materialistic people, overly attached to things. William Cavanaugh writes:Our relationships to products tend to be short-lived: rather than hoarding treasured objects, consumers are characterised by a constant dissatisfaction with material goods…. Consumerism is not so much about having more as it is about having something else; that’s why it is not simply buying but shopping that….sets the spiritual tone for consumerism (Being Consumed, William T. Cavanaugh p. 35)
I have a Christian friend who says we should be more materialistic! We do need to count our blessings….in an article I read many years ago a woman talked about her ’morning mantra’ of thanks. Our attitude to material things is established in the opening chapter of Genesis; ‘God saw that it was good’.
But because God created everything, we are – as the Old Testament and Aboriginal peoples would say – ‘care-takers’; here to see that what we seem to own is used for the good of all.
According to Augustine ‘created things are to be used, but only God is to be enjoyed.’
In other words – budget. One of the best ways to deal with debt – to make sure our money is used where we want – is budgeting. Money has a way of leaking… The prophet Haggai describes putting money "in a purse with holes in it" (Haggai 1:6)
We also find – even in the Australian statistics - that as incomes rise, so do spending levels. This often isn’t conscious, and reinforces the need to budget. To revert to Haggai’s analogy, the more we have, the bigger the holes in our purse seem to be.
To ideas for parents still handing out allowances…
It’s a bit retro, but how about ‘saving up’ for your next big purchase? Or going on a purchase fast? It is a way of reducing debt – and strengthening spiritual resolve and muscle. Remember the Seattle Compact, where people joined as group to commit themselves not to buy anything apart from food and drink, socks and underwear for a year?
This is a congregation well aware of the issues involved in third world labour and campaigns such as Fair Trade that seek to give a fair price to producers in other countries. We need to keep educating ourselves about these issues…
Another way we can count to cost is to become a producer – of anything! – in order to get an understanding of what it is to produce something – an understanding that might slow our haste to have the next best thing.
Finally, counting the cost involves living differently to those around us. At a Baptists Today Conference a few years ago, Simon Holt told a story about a conversation he had with a man on tram who was buying his first home:
First, he said, they would purchase an ‘entry level’ home in an outer suburb. After five years, having established some equity in the home, they would upgrade to a larger house in a better neighbourhood. From there they planned to continue relocating every three to four years…by the time they reached retirement they would finally have their dream house in the suburb they most aspired to. I listened, intrigued. "What if you get attached to one of these houses and don’t want to move?" I asked. "Oh no," he responded, looking very serious. "You’ve got to see each place purely as an investment. You can’t afford to get emotionally involved."
In a world where houses and communities and even relationships have become commodities, we are called to attach ourselves and to speak out, what Holt calls, ‘a defiant expression of contentment: I have enough; I don’t need anything more.’
Hudson Taylor based his view of debt on Romans 13:8, a passage that many interpret (as the NIV translates it), ‘let no debt remain outstanding’.
The Romans to whom Paul was writing expected the imminent return of Christ – and were perhaps borrowing money on the strength of that!
Hudson Taylor, however, was on the money (pardon the pun) when he concluded that our spiritual values surrounding finance come back to our relationship with God and each other.
We are called to do all that we can to repay debt and avoid debt – but to be deeply indebted in love to God and to each other.
Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, William T. Cavanaugh, 2008
Debt, Roy McCloughry and Andrew Hartrop
www.dollarsandsense.com.au Commonwealth Bank of Australia website, 2007 www.themoneyrevolution.net Church of England, 2007