The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. – Deuteronomy 28:12

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 14, 2015): Deuteronomy 28

I do not understand what seems to have become the financial message of our times – the idea that debt is good. In 2008, personal unsecured debt caused damage to our society that, at least in some areas, we are still trying to overcome. I know that we want to blame the evil corporations for the financial crash, but the reality is that the evil was in us. We were the ones who moved ourselves into a debt situation from which we could not recover. We were the ones who found ourselves owing more money than our properties were worth, because we were the ones who had purchased with too little down payment. We were the ones who allowed our credit card debt to go far beyond what it was that we could afford. The evil was in us.

Even today, I have close friends who have no intention of ever getting out of Credit Card debt. They don’t even pretend that there is a possibility of a zero balance on their credit cards ever within their lifetimes, even though in some cases death is still a good three decades away. And not only is there no possibility of a zero balance, there is no possibility of their assets being able to pay off their debt when their time on this planet is done. And yet, the overwhelming message that I hear from people – and even from some of our politicians - is that debt is good. I admit, I think our idea of what is good and bad is upside down.

Could imagine, just for a moment, your nation with no debt? Could you imagine not having to make that interest payment? Can you see the incredible good that we could afford to do if it were not for our debt; increased services to the people, better education and health care, and all of it without having to increase at all the tax load of the people?

This is the biblical idea of the health of a nation. That God will pour out his blessings on us and we will be able to have so much that our storehouses will be full. And that we will be the lenders, and not the borrowers, for the world. National financial health is never having to worry about the shutting down of a government because we can’t find the authority to borrow more money. This is the hallmark of a blessed nation, and of a nation that has learned to live within its limits.

Ah, and there is the rub. We want more than we can afford. Credit is easy, whether we are talking about your personal finances or the finances of a nation. It is past time for us to be responsible and insist that the debt ceiling be lowered instead of raised. It is time to find our way back to the idea of biblical financial health, where debt is something that somebody else has to suffer through – not us. We just can’t go on the way we have in the past. Something simply has to change – or we will end up running up a bill that we cannot afford to pay.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 29