Tag Archives: Forgiveness

Debt and Gospel: Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB, 3.

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Part 3: Elizabeth Warren and St. Luke

(Part 1, Part 2)

When I was a young college student, I was probably not the only one bailed out by my parents from credit card debt. Because you don’t see your accumulating debt as you spend, and the minimum payments they require you to pay are often less than or equal to the interest they charged for that month. I won’t sit here and blame the credit card companies only for my previous predicament, for I really should have known better. I had a job, I could have budgeted. But not everyone has those means. And while it may not be the most rational thing to apply for a credit card in such a situation, one must understand that people are not rational actors in the market place, and people who can ill afford it are often the most desperate.

The moral thing to do is to help the poor, share resources, donate money, etc. The Free Market thing to do should be to leave them alone, and perhaps make sure you do not give too much credit to them. But what we have is some credit card companies targeting the poor, so that the poor cannot escape debt. Now the companies may keep poorer people’s credit limits low, but what few who remain in debt know, is that the credit card companies are paid decent fees from sellers each time a consumer uses their card. So, even though a consumer may not make any payments on the card, the credit card company is still making some money off of consumer usage. This acts as a disincentive for credit card companies to collect on their debt, so long as they are collecting the interest. It also acts as an incentive to the credit card companies to have their cards used as many times as possible. And if anyone is going to be making frequent small payments with the credit card, it will be those who can least afford small things in life: the poor. The perfect target.

There are plenty of Christian blogs touting the importance of the government’s involvement in helping the poor, and there are other Christian blogs telling us of the danger of government involvement in anything. Most Christians are already decided on the issue, and their hermeneutic is often determined by their view on this issue. Let’s be honest, the Bible was not written in a democratic market society. Making the jump from the agrarian, oppressive Empire of Rome to today’s society is no easy task. And as a Bible scholar, I have no easy answers for how to end debt abuses at home and abroad. I would like to say that I am open various methods. But as I’ve argued in this series, to ask God to forgive one’s own sins, when one has not sided with the poor or participated in debt-relieving activities (Lord’s Prayer), is to misinterpret the Gospel. You can be a Socialist, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Communitarian, or Independent; but if you are not biased towards, or if you are not seeking the welfare of the poor and the marginalized, then in my opinion you’ve missed a major aspect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Enter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency to regulate lending companies, somewhat the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren. I’ll be honest, I really like Elizabeth Warren. When she speaks, she convinces me that she understands that just because someone enters into a contract, that does not make it a fair, free market, rational process. The complaints against the Bureau have been that it itself is not regulated, and it has too much power over the banks. This may be true, and while I would have love to have seen the Bureau run under Elizabeth Warren (o, well), it could easily have been abused by another. But, in my mind, that criticism is not good enough, particularly from anyone who considers themselves Christian. Because at the end of the day, the Gospel is heavily biased towards the poor and marginalized. And any critique of the Government’s attempt to help the poor of society, should be accompanied with an equal or better suggestion of how to do it. If you don’t like the CFPB, give us something better.

I’m well aware that America is not a Christian country, and it is unlikely that my ‘gospel’ should be the guiding principle for non-Christians. However, in my experience, all the resistance I’ve had against arguments for public help for the poor has come from Christians. It is for this reason that I make this biblical argument that a Christian must always be looking for ways to help the poor. You don’t have to be a Democrat or Socialist. Libertarians too have the ability to live in such a fashion (check out Jeff Miron of Harvard).

In conclusion, another Lukan passage I’ve referred to already:

Luke 6:32-35 32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

In 32-34, the words benefit and credit are marked because they are all the same word in Greek: XARIS. This is the word we translate as ‘grace,’ one of the founding ideas of the Protestant faith. To cancel an unpayable debt is grace. To act always in a market fashion, love for love, good for good, money for money, this is evidently graceless. The challenge of the gospel is to lose, to love inefficiently, against the trends of the dominating powers, to forgive debts in order to forgive sins, to live biased towards the poor and the marginalized.

Debt and Gospel: Elizabeth Warren and the CFPB

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PART 1:

For the first in a several part series, it’s been suggested that I comment on debt forgiveness, especially in Matt. 18.21-35, and Elizabeth Warren/the CFPB. While I hope I’m an ‘expert’ on the biblical side, I am quite skeptical of the information I get regarding modern politics, making me much less of an ‘expert’ on the CFPB (need more original sources). Therefore, I will make an attempt at connecting biblical ideologies to a modern political one. A difficult jump indeed, but I make no apologies.

If you are interested in Debt, I recommend this book to you. I have not read it yet, but Graeber is fantastic, and I plan to read it when I get back stateside.

I can think of two places to start: the text or Greek semantics. I’ve pushed pretty hard on this blog, arguing that meaning is determined by context, so I should probably start with the text. But rather than starting with Matt. 18, I think the best place to start is a synoptic analysis of the Lord’s Prayer.

Matthew 6:12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Luke 11:4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

For those who know Luke’s focus on economic issues, it is interesting that Matthew references debts twice, while Luke parallels sin with debt. But a closer look at the language and Matt 18 shows that it is actually the opposite. In Matt 18, Jesus is exhorting the members of the faith communities to address conflicts in the community and forgive mistakes. This too is in Luke 17, but Matthew adds a parable about a master who forgives the debt of a servant. However, when that servant fails to forgive the debt of a fellow servant, the master becomes angry and puts him in jail until he pays all his debt.

Two things are clear from the Parable that appears only in Matthew. First, Matthew is clearly paralleling the forgiveness of debt with the forgiveness of sins, Jesus’ purpose according to Matthew (1.22). Second, debt forgiveness was a live issue in the ancient world. For us, it is hard to imagine getting a credit card statement that says, “all your debts have been paid and the balance is $0.00.” But in the ancient world, and particularly in ancient Judeanism, this was a possible, if not common, scenario. The fact that Matthew1 parallels sin and debt does not mean that Matthew thinks that debt forgiveness is bad, but on the contrary, it is a good Jewish practice, hence the year of Jubilee.

But the year of Jubilee is most prominent in Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel begins with 5 songs:

1.47-55 (Mary’s Song)

1.68-79 (Zechariah’s Song)

2.25-35 (Simeon’s Prophecy)

3.4-6 (John’s OT Announcement)

4.18-19 (Jesus’ programmatic statement)

Each of these has an economic element to it, but the final programmatic statement really is the thesis statement to Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus says:

Luke 4:18-19 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The year of the Lord’s favor is the year of Jubilee. Think of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager as well (Luke 16.1-9), where the manager cuts the debt of the debtors and wins their favor. Likewise, in the Sermon on the Mount/Plain, Matthew’s Jesus leaves out the exhortation “And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you?… lend, expecting nothing in return.” (Luke 6.34-35). This is at least a reference to interest collection, which was discouraged by the Torah (Ex. 22.25, Lev. 25.37, Dt.15.6-8). The practice is also condemned by Ezekiel (18.8-17), while it is permitted in Proverbs 28.8, but only for using the profits to help the poor. The point of all these examples is to show again, that Luke has economic concerns about debt, especially for the poor and marginalized.

Back to the Lord’ Prayer. Matthew can talk about debt forgiveness, because Matthew relates debt forgiveness to the forgiveness of sins. Matthew uses the form “forgive us as we have forgiven,” asking God’s forgiveness to be parallel to our forgiveness. Since God is typically not in the business of forgiving financial debt, this is most likely a direct reference to the forgiveness of sins. Hence, some modern versions of the prayer use “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It is a realization that Matthew’s concern is for the forgiveness of sins.

On the other hand, Luke uses the form “Forgive us for we forgive,” a request predicated on previous behavior. The juxtaposition of “sins” and “debtors” suggest that neither one is a representation of the other, but each one is what is says. In other words, petition to God for the forgiveness of your own sins, based upon your previous and present debt-forgiving behavior. The practices of debt-forgiveness that make the parable in Matthew 18 so viable, are requirements in Luke for those who wish to follow Christ. Living in the Divine Dominion2 is nothing less than living with the economic concerns for the poor according to Luke.

The radical Judeanism of Jesus has been muted particularly because of its “spiritualized” use in Matthew. Moderns typically separate religion, economics, and politics in their mind because this is the Western way of analyzing different aspects of life. But this does not give us a full picture of reality, now or then, for the realms of religion, politics, and economics are intertwined in complex ways. Another problem is that there was no semantic separation with the Greek word for forgive. When one hears the word “forgive” today, one typically thinks of letting go of a wrong done to one’s self. But in Greek, the word is actually “release.” One is released from sins, debts, and contracts in all the same way. It is legal contract release language, used certainly in the economic sphere. Redemption too is an economic term used in the Christian dictionary. But using economic terms to describe ‘spiritual’ things does not necessarily mean their economic meanings do not apply. On the contrary, the so-called ‘spiritual’ meanings are predicated on necessity of understanding moral economic behavior.

I’ve probably been too hard on Matthew, as many biblical scholars note Matthew’s concern for the marginalized (as any story with Jesus ought to).  But I’ve really tried to hit home Luke’s attack at the debt system.  Next time more on the Roman debt system and the CFPB.

1No one knows the names of the authors of the Gospels, but we will use their given names out of convenience.

2“Kingdom of God”