If you walk into any Iranian Christian service you will find warm hearted people fervently worshipping God, attentively listening to the sermon, and keen to serve Christ’s cause in anyway they can. But at night, after they have said their final prayers, some lie awake worrying about one word: debt. Some might owe a few hundred on their visa card, others a few thousand, some way over twenty thousand. They do not enjoy the sweet sleep a hard worker should enjoy.
The statistics about personal debt are horrendous.
In the USA the average amount of personal debt is $84,454. This includes mortgages and car loans. Regarding credit cards, the total is about $800 billion which works out at about $8,000 per household. The typical rate of interest for these cards is 18%. In the UK it is just as bad – the average amount of personal debt is over £26,0 and credit card debt stands at £54.9 billion, which translates to about £4,500 for the average card holder, and again the interest rate is about $18. In Iran the credit card industry has not yet sank its teeth into people lives, and banks are very strict lenders, so there is no official record of vicious personal debt to be accessed on the internet as there is with Western countries. However, just because it’s not on the web, does not mean personal debt is not a problem in Iran. Among family, friends, and colleagues there is a lot of informal lending and borrowing which does not always work out. And when people want to make a loan more formal then they are given a cheque – and given the amount of legal cases about bounced cheques that come to the courts, it is clear many get caught up in a whirlpool of debt.
The true cost of debt is officially seen on the red ink of the bank statement. But that is just ink. It is harmless paper. The real cost is in the mind where day and night the dark cloud of debt is in the background, growing blacker, and always threatening – a court case, the repossession of your home, and in some countries, including Iran, prison. Freedom from debt can seem impossible. You are already working every hour God gives, but the wages can never deal with the debt. And the wages rarely go up, but the debt always does. Caught in this net are the spouses and children who just want an ordinary life with a few treats thrown in, but their seemingly innocent demands can detonate huge rows. Or while usually the husband can live for a while with the debt, ever optimistic that a good opportunity is round the corner, the wife often cannot take the worry. So she constantly asks for a solution, he has no immediate one, and the arguments blaze away. Debt is not a friendly member of any family. It poisons relationships or can cause total meltdown. And then the divorce lawyers pile up even more debt. What a vicious circle! Suffering in this trap it’s not surprising that debtors turn to desperate escape routes like gambling or pyramid selling or silly quick rich schemes or even activities that border on the criminal. These routes rarely provide escape, but instead turn out to be vultures that hover round the financially ruined, ready to suck out even more debt from their rotting corpses.
Faced with such a dark downward spiral towards ruin, many eventually prefer to just declare themselves bankrupt and let the courts do their worst – that is what over three hundred people do every day in the UK. Others just pack their bags and leave their country.
The pathos of the tragedy is not just all this suffering – but the fact that the debtors usually have nothing about them that is greedy, deviant or dodgy.
If they had been jetting around the world enjoying holidays, filling their homes up with massive cinema sized TV’s, or constantly involved in shady business ventures then they are probably getting what they deserve. But most of the people being tortured by debt are very ordinary. They just want their families to have a comfortable home, drive a reliable car, send their children to decent schools, and have one annual holiday. That’s it. They are not ruthlessly ambitious money grabbers. But yet in trying to get a reasonably comfortable life for their families, normal financial pressure can subtly turn them to the credit card, and before they know it they are one of the millions living under debt’s cruel rule. Or – and there are many who fall into this category - they are people who wanted to get into business. Again they are basically honest hard-working people, but they wanted to be their own boss. The venture fails, and the debt is horrendous.
Some of those millions are Christians, some of them are Iranian Christians, faithful Iranian Christians who go to church every week. And the crucial question for them – and for all of us who are in danger of getting into credit card debt is this: what does God say about the matter? Well, the Bible talks about debt at least 26 times and it’s not very difficult to work out what God is saying: He is not keen on debt. Nowhere in the Bible does debt get a good word. In fact the Bible could not be blunter, it says ‘Owe no man anything’ (Romans 13:8). It is not God’s will for us to be in debt.
Our rationale mind protests and says you can’t take this verse too literally because of today’s society. It’s better stewardship to live in a house with a mortgage than to rent, so that means a debt; you have to have a car-loan to have a car so you can get to work, so that means debt; it saves money to buy now and pay later as you get interest free credit, so that means debt; all business seems to involve a certain amount of debt. Paul was living in a pre banking age, so let’s kick this verse into touch and ignore it.
That is not wise, for there is a principle here that God wants us to live our lives by. And the principle is that we should not get into any debt whereby we end up ‘owing’ somebody something, whereby they can come at any time of day or night and demand their money. A carefully arranged house mortgage then would not mean that we end up in this situation. Here there is nobody out there thinking that you ‘owe’ them something. The same principle applies to a car loan or anything else, including business loans. If you are absolutely certain that you are going to be able to meet the payments, and if your income dried up then you would still be able to sell off your assets to pay off the debt – then in a sense you are not owing anybody anything. You are keeping to the principle of this verse.
However as soon as we start using loans or the credit card to buy things or going into business and we have not budgeted for the repayment, then we are disobeying this verse. We are deliberately putting ourselves into a situation whereby very soon we end up owing someone something. However attractive the product, however enticing the supposed business opportunity seems, however much an emergency need it seems, we have to simply say no, I can’t afford this. I am not going to get into debt. I am going to obey God. Some might say – but aren’t we called to live by faith? So maybe God has provided the credit card for me to use and He will supply the re-payments. He has called us to live by faith, but not to get into debt, so instead of using the credit card which we know leads to crippling debt, why not ask God for what you need – and He will provide without the credit card!
This is the bottom line principle – owe no man anything. And indeed there are some Christians who will even refuse to take out a house mortgage and have prayed for God to supply all the money through gifts which has happened on the basis of this verse. And there are many more who would refuse to take out any loan on the basis of the verse. They only buy what they have money for.
Along with this principle the Bible gives plenty of other reasons why we have to avoid debt. One is that it puts us into bondage, Proverbs tell us that the borrower is a servant to the lender – and that’s exactly what happens when you have to work day and night to meet the credit card payments. Christians are not meant to be in bondage to anyone or anything apart from Jesus Christ. Another is that borrowers are not good witnesses to Christ. The bible, as usual, is blunter. It says if you borrow and can’t pay back, you’re wicked, Psalm 37 verse 21 – ‘The wicked borrow and do not repay’. And this verse then goes on to say, ‘but the righteous give generously.’ But you can’t be a generous giver if you’ve got the credit card company breathing down your neck. Debt can also be presumptions. It presumes we’re going to live and make money. But the Bible tells us not to assume we can go to a town and trade and make money, why? Because we don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. (James 5: 13-14) This sort of attitude looks to self to be cunning to make money; but Jesus calls us to be obedient to let God meet our every need. And if the debt is caused by our just wanting some extra toy or pleasure, then we are flagrantly disobeying the Bible’s command that we should be content with whatever we have, see Philippians 4:11,12.
For those of us who are not in debt it’s good to burn these principles and warnings into our hearts. Let’s bow our heads right now and say ‘Lord, I don’t mind being poor, but keep me from debt, whatever it takes.’ God has promised to provide our needs more abundantly than we ask or think. We can trust Him. He is not a hard taskmaster who wants us to suffer. He is generous and kind to all, and especially so to his children. So let’s trust him. Let’s tear up all those high interest credit cards and store cards, and let’s just keep to our bank card and one visa card for foreign travel and promise that we will only borrow what we are absolutely sure we can pay back.
What though do we do if we have already fallen into the pit of debt? What if we are one of those Christians who worship and smile at the meeting, but worry at night about the visa card payments? Praise God we’re children of the God of Hope, the Lord of second chances, the Saviour who picks us up however messy the situation. That’s the starting point. Do we believe in that sort of God? Once that is settled, that He is kind, generous, willing to forgive and move on once we’ve said sorry, once we have peace in our hearts from God, then recovery can happen straight away. So start the your recovery from debt with prayer and probably fasting. Don’t do anything for a few days. Just fast and pray asking for wisdom from God, promising that you will listen to Him, and obey his Word not to get into debt. Your fasting is a powerful signal to the devil, who loves enticing people into debt, and your flesh that is easily allured to materialism, that the game is up. You are committed only to God and your are going to trust Him for your needs, not credit cards.
And after the prayer and fasting you will probably be shown you need to take some tough action. Here is what it might well look like. First of all get rid of all your high interest store and credit cards and throwing them away. Burn them if you want to make it a bit more dramatic. They will look like they’re being tortured which makes a nice change from them torturing you. Just keep one visa card for foreign travel and emergencies. Second, work out exactly how much you owe. Debt counsellors often say that most people who crack under the credit cards usually have no idea how much they owe everyone. List it all. Then work out a repayment schedule that will settle everything, from the latest electrical gadget you got on credit, to your house. If it is quite clear that your income isn’t going to settle things even with careful planning see if it possible to write to some of your creditors to reschedule the payment. If still the picture is very red, then you need to look around to see what you can sell. Remember you’ve asked the Lord to get you out of debt. So if the Holy Spirit nudges you about something, sell it. If that doesn’t help much, look for an evening job. If you see a menial job you can do and your pride protests – that’s probably the one to go for! Who knows, you might be used there to win hundreds of people to Christ. God always knows how to bring blessings out of bleakness, but we have to be humble. If your situation is mega dire, it is probably worth seeking out a Christian debt counsellor, but be ready to even sell your house.
And whatever you do start giving money away. Even if you are living off a miniscule amount, give at least a tenth of it away. The tithe is the absolute minimum. As soon as you start giving you are sowing, and the authority that controls the sowing is extremely generous. He gives back much more. It is the one bank whose interest rate is constantly high and is not touched for one moment however high the price of oil goes. Invest dear reader in the Kingdom of God. The devil will tell you are crazy. Good – always do the exact opposite of what he tells you and you’ll be in for a fun time.
So, let’s sum up. It is absolutely not God’s will for us to get into debt, a situation where there is the slightest uncertainty that we don’t know how we are going to pay someone back. The rule is ‘owe no many anything.’ If you are not today in debt, renew your commitment to obey God in this area. And if you have fallen into debt, put in your diary when you are going to pray and fast to bring God into this situation and determine to radically and ruthlessly do whatever He tells you to become free from debt.
All Rights Reserved
T.G.S. Hawksley
The statistics about personal debt are horrendous.
In the USA the average amount of personal debt is $84,454. This includes mortgages and car loans. Regarding credit cards, the total is about $800 billion which works out at about $8,000 per household. The typical rate of interest for these cards is 18%. In the UK it is just as bad – the average amount of personal debt is over £26,0 and credit card debt stands at £54.9 billion, which translates to about £4,500 for the average card holder, and again the interest rate is about $18. In Iran the credit card industry has not yet sank its teeth into people lives, and banks are very strict lenders, so there is no official record of vicious personal debt to be accessed on the internet as there is with Western countries. However, just because it’s not on the web, does not mean personal debt is not a problem in Iran. Among family, friends, and colleagues there is a lot of informal lending and borrowing which does not always work out. And when people want to make a loan more formal then they are given a cheque – and given the amount of legal cases about bounced cheques that come to the courts, it is clear many get caught up in a whirlpool of debt.
The true cost of debt is officially seen on the red ink of the bank statement. But that is just ink. It is harmless paper. The real cost is in the mind where day and night the dark cloud of debt is in the background, growing blacker, and always threatening – a court case, the repossession of your home, and in some countries, including Iran, prison. Freedom from debt can seem impossible. You are already working every hour God gives, but the wages can never deal with the debt. And the wages rarely go up, but the debt always does. Caught in this net are the spouses and children who just want an ordinary life with a few treats thrown in, but their seemingly innocent demands can detonate huge rows. Or while usually the husband can live for a while with the debt, ever optimistic that a good opportunity is round the corner, the wife often cannot take the worry. So she constantly asks for a solution, he has no immediate one, and the arguments blaze away. Debt is not a friendly member of any family. It poisons relationships or can cause total meltdown. And then the divorce lawyers pile up even more debt. What a vicious circle! Suffering in this trap it’s not surprising that debtors turn to desperate escape routes like gambling or pyramid selling or silly quick rich schemes or even activities that border on the criminal. These routes rarely provide escape, but instead turn out to be vultures that hover round the financially ruined, ready to suck out even more debt from their rotting corpses.
Faced with such a dark downward spiral towards ruin, many eventually prefer to just declare themselves bankrupt and let the courts do their worst – that is what over three hundred people do every day in the UK. Others just pack their bags and leave their country.
The pathos of the tragedy is not just all this suffering – but the fact that the debtors usually have nothing about them that is greedy, deviant or dodgy.
If they had been jetting around the world enjoying holidays, filling their homes up with massive cinema sized TV’s, or constantly involved in shady business ventures then they are probably getting what they deserve. But most of the people being tortured by debt are very ordinary. They just want their families to have a comfortable home, drive a reliable car, send their children to decent schools, and have one annual holiday. That’s it. They are not ruthlessly ambitious money grabbers. But yet in trying to get a reasonably comfortable life for their families, normal financial pressure can subtly turn them to the credit card, and before they know it they are one of the millions living under debt’s cruel rule. Or – and there are many who fall into this category - they are people who wanted to get into business. Again they are basically honest hard-working people, but they wanted to be their own boss. The venture fails, and the debt is horrendous.
Some of those millions are Christians, some of them are Iranian Christians, faithful Iranian Christians who go to church every week. And the crucial question for them – and for all of us who are in danger of getting into credit card debt is this: what does God say about the matter? Well, the Bible talks about debt at least 26 times and it’s not very difficult to work out what God is saying: He is not keen on debt. Nowhere in the Bible does debt get a good word. In fact the Bible could not be blunter, it says ‘Owe no man anything’ (Romans 13:8). It is not God’s will for us to be in debt.
Our rationale mind protests and says you can’t take this verse too literally because of today’s society. It’s better stewardship to live in a house with a mortgage than to rent, so that means a debt; you have to have a car-loan to have a car so you can get to work, so that means debt; it saves money to buy now and pay later as you get interest free credit, so that means debt; all business seems to involve a certain amount of debt. Paul was living in a pre banking age, so let’s kick this verse into touch and ignore it.
That is not wise, for there is a principle here that God wants us to live our lives by. And the principle is that we should not get into any debt whereby we end up ‘owing’ somebody something, whereby they can come at any time of day or night and demand their money. A carefully arranged house mortgage then would not mean that we end up in this situation. Here there is nobody out there thinking that you ‘owe’ them something. The same principle applies to a car loan or anything else, including business loans. If you are absolutely certain that you are going to be able to meet the payments, and if your income dried up then you would still be able to sell off your assets to pay off the debt – then in a sense you are not owing anybody anything. You are keeping to the principle of this verse.
However as soon as we start using loans or the credit card to buy things or going into business and we have not budgeted for the repayment, then we are disobeying this verse. We are deliberately putting ourselves into a situation whereby very soon we end up owing someone something. However attractive the product, however enticing the supposed business opportunity seems, however much an emergency need it seems, we have to simply say no, I can’t afford this. I am not going to get into debt. I am going to obey God. Some might say – but aren’t we called to live by faith? So maybe God has provided the credit card for me to use and He will supply the re-payments. He has called us to live by faith, but not to get into debt, so instead of using the credit card which we know leads to crippling debt, why not ask God for what you need – and He will provide without the credit card!
This is the bottom line principle – owe no man anything. And indeed there are some Christians who will even refuse to take out a house mortgage and have prayed for God to supply all the money through gifts which has happened on the basis of this verse. And there are many more who would refuse to take out any loan on the basis of the verse. They only buy what they have money for.
Along with this principle the Bible gives plenty of other reasons why we have to avoid debt. One is that it puts us into bondage, Proverbs tell us that the borrower is a servant to the lender – and that’s exactly what happens when you have to work day and night to meet the credit card payments. Christians are not meant to be in bondage to anyone or anything apart from Jesus Christ. Another is that borrowers are not good witnesses to Christ. The bible, as usual, is blunter. It says if you borrow and can’t pay back, you’re wicked, Psalm 37 verse 21 – ‘The wicked borrow and do not repay’. And this verse then goes on to say, ‘but the righteous give generously.’ But you can’t be a generous giver if you’ve got the credit card company breathing down your neck. Debt can also be presumptions. It presumes we’re going to live and make money. But the Bible tells us not to assume we can go to a town and trade and make money, why? Because we don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. (James 5: 13-14) This sort of attitude looks to self to be cunning to make money; but Jesus calls us to be obedient to let God meet our every need. And if the debt is caused by our just wanting some extra toy or pleasure, then we are flagrantly disobeying the Bible’s command that we should be content with whatever we have, see Philippians 4:11,12.
For those of us who are not in debt it’s good to burn these principles and warnings into our hearts. Let’s bow our heads right now and say ‘Lord, I don’t mind being poor, but keep me from debt, whatever it takes.’ God has promised to provide our needs more abundantly than we ask or think. We can trust Him. He is not a hard taskmaster who wants us to suffer. He is generous and kind to all, and especially so to his children. So let’s trust him. Let’s tear up all those high interest credit cards and store cards, and let’s just keep to our bank card and one visa card for foreign travel and promise that we will only borrow what we are absolutely sure we can pay back.
What though do we do if we have already fallen into the pit of debt? What if we are one of those Christians who worship and smile at the meeting, but worry at night about the visa card payments? Praise God we’re children of the God of Hope, the Lord of second chances, the Saviour who picks us up however messy the situation. That’s the starting point. Do we believe in that sort of God? Once that is settled, that He is kind, generous, willing to forgive and move on once we’ve said sorry, once we have peace in our hearts from God, then recovery can happen straight away. So start the your recovery from debt with prayer and probably fasting. Don’t do anything for a few days. Just fast and pray asking for wisdom from God, promising that you will listen to Him, and obey his Word not to get into debt. Your fasting is a powerful signal to the devil, who loves enticing people into debt, and your flesh that is easily allured to materialism, that the game is up. You are committed only to God and your are going to trust Him for your needs, not credit cards.
And after the prayer and fasting you will probably be shown you need to take some tough action. Here is what it might well look like. First of all get rid of all your high interest store and credit cards and throwing them away. Burn them if you want to make it a bit more dramatic. They will look like they’re being tortured which makes a nice change from them torturing you. Just keep one visa card for foreign travel and emergencies. Second, work out exactly how much you owe. Debt counsellors often say that most people who crack under the credit cards usually have no idea how much they owe everyone. List it all. Then work out a repayment schedule that will settle everything, from the latest electrical gadget you got on credit, to your house. If it is quite clear that your income isn’t going to settle things even with careful planning see if it possible to write to some of your creditors to reschedule the payment. If still the picture is very red, then you need to look around to see what you can sell. Remember you’ve asked the Lord to get you out of debt. So if the Holy Spirit nudges you about something, sell it. If that doesn’t help much, look for an evening job. If you see a menial job you can do and your pride protests – that’s probably the one to go for! Who knows, you might be used there to win hundreds of people to Christ. God always knows how to bring blessings out of bleakness, but we have to be humble. If your situation is mega dire, it is probably worth seeking out a Christian debt counsellor, but be ready to even sell your house.
And whatever you do start giving money away. Even if you are living off a miniscule amount, give at least a tenth of it away. The tithe is the absolute minimum. As soon as you start giving you are sowing, and the authority that controls the sowing is extremely generous. He gives back much more. It is the one bank whose interest rate is constantly high and is not touched for one moment however high the price of oil goes. Invest dear reader in the Kingdom of God. The devil will tell you are crazy. Good – always do the exact opposite of what he tells you and you’ll be in for a fun time.
So, let’s sum up. It is absolutely not God’s will for us to get into debt, a situation where there is the slightest uncertainty that we don’t know how we are going to pay someone back. The rule is ‘owe no many anything.’ If you are not today in debt, renew your commitment to obey God in this area. And if you have fallen into debt, put in your diary when you are going to pray and fast to bring God into this situation and determine to radically and ruthlessly do whatever He tells you to become free from debt.
All Rights Reserved
T.G.S. Hawksley
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