Getting Out of Debt

 I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!  That play on the words in the chorus made famous in the Walt Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became a funny bumper sticker from a few decades ago.

But it’s not funny anymore. The various statistics about debt in our nation are staggering:

• At the end of calendar year 2017 credit card debt averaged over 6 thousand dollars per American – an 18 ½ % increase from 2013.
• Total consumer debt in the United States of America as of March 2019 was over 4 trillion dollars.
• College loan debt for 2017 college graduates averaged $28,650 per student.
• As of late spring, 2019 total college loan debt in the United States of America was over 1.6 trillion dollars.
• Mortgage debt in our nation is now over 8.8 trillion dollars.
• And as go the people of a nation, so goes the nation itself: The debt of the United States federal government is currently over 22 trillion dollars – and that debt grows by the second.

While the biblical data regarding financial debt and related issues is rather complex – complicated by issues such as enslaving interest rates (which are clearly condemned in the Word of God) – the Bible’s basic position about debt is hardly favorable to it:

• God’s Old Testament people could lend to many nations, but they were not to borrow. You can read about that in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28.
• Probably the big reason for staying out of debt was that the borrower becomes a slave to the lender. That’s stated clearly in the Old Testament book of Proverbs, in chapter 22.
• And probably the big reason for saying that was because debt to a creditor could bring actual slavery to the one to whom you owed your money. In the second book of Kings in the Old Testament – in the beginning of chapter 4 – there’s the touching story of a widow who’s in deep debt.  The creditor is just about ready to come and take the woman’s two sons for slaves as the way of paying off what is due to him.  Then, in one of the many miracles recorded in the Bible, the prophet Elisha provides a large number of vessels of oil for the woman,  after which he commands her to “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts” using the rest of the proceeds to provide for herself and for her two sons.   (In the New Testament Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18, you can read a similar danger of slavery to a family in massive debt.  In that case, the creditor grants debt forgiveness – a beautiful picture of the debt-of-sin forgiveness that God grants to believers in Jesus Christ – who paid the full price for the sins of his people.)
• And in the classic New Testament passage about debt, the apostle Paul, in the letter to the Romans – in chapter 13 – writes: Owe no one anything, except to love one another.  The debt of love is something we can never fully pay (or re-pay), but financial debt is something we should avoid.  As one Bible commentator put it:  The passage doesn’t condemn borrowing in the case of need, but it does condemn the looseness with which we contract debts, and particularly the indifference often displayed in the discharge of them – that is, the indifference people too  often have to the importance of paying off their debts.

Let me pause for a moment and ask you:  Are you way over your head in debt?  Be honest!   And, if you are, given the fact that we are to “owe no one anything except to love one another” (and we often do that by giving – something that’s very hard to do when you owe so much money) if you’re that much in debt, how do you plan to get out of it?

If I’m speaking to you, today’s Visit to the Pastor’s Study will be of real help  – as visits to a pastor’s study are meant to be!

My guest again this week is our family financial planner, and also a close friend, a wise advisor, and a superb teacher:  Fran Caraco.  With his training and three decades of experience in the financial services world, he’s helped a lot of people face their debt crisis and take steps to get out of it.  He’ll be of help to you today – not only to help you get out of debt if you’re in that spot, but also help you to keep out of debt – the financial place you want to be!

Here’s a link to the full program:

Yours in the Lord who gives full debt-for-sin forgiveness in Jesus Christ,

Pastor Bill