Proto-Protestantism: The Usury Dilemma Revisited (III)

22 July 2025

The Usury Dilemma Revisited (III)

Should I dispense with bank accounts? I wouldn't mind doing so but it's increasingly becoming impossible. I tried at one point years ago - operating on a cash basis, paying all my bills with money orders and the like. It's very difficult and frankly pretty miserable. It's not really possible anymore in a lot of urban locations. I live in the boondocks, where there are miles of endless forest, no traffic lights, and more deer than cars.

And I haven't even touched on credit cards and their place in terms of renting a car, reserving a hotel room - these things would all be 'out' for us without banks and credit. I will admit I use a credit card to purchase things for my business and I pay it off as soon as the payments from customers come through - but I still use it and am part of the system. It's easier to deal with one credit card company than a dozen retail outlets and try and keep track of charge accounts - which very few still offer. The only other alternative is to have the cash and front it for purchases. To be honest, I don't have it. I can't afford to front thousands of dollars and as such many (opposed to credit and debt) would say I cannot afford to be in business. True enough, but I have to make a living somehow and I'm afraid a lot of these men don't have any moral standing with me.

I find that so-called Christian Financial Advisors (a travesty to be sure) are able to give this advice because they're wealthy. They have made their money often by inconsistent and thus ill-gotten means (that might be legal but not ethical) and then they try and impose this 'no debt' paradigm on others struggling to reach their position. I've written before about the many podcasts and articles I've read about Christians seeking to 'live simple' by farming or what not and yet in every case they have other streams of income that are invariably connected to financial schemes. They are (almost without exception) misrepresenting what they really are and the nature of their lifestyle. They're not poor farmers - people they would actually despise. Poor farmers don't live like them and neither do I. In fact, the farmers I know are doing a lot better than I am. I don't say this to garner pity or to brag. I say it to communicate that I'm serious.

Or I can also think of the many Christians I have encountered who reject debt but work for cash and don't pay taxes - or in other cases work long hours to the detriment of their families. They live well in material terms but you can see the rot in the marriages and families. They're chasing the almighty dollar - all for their families of course. Or in other cases I take note of their business practices and they are exploitative - not loving neighbour, not putting the interests of others first - even if these clients are people you don't think very highly of. It's something I deal with and wrestle with every single day.

The arguments used by financial advisors remind me of the rotten reasoning of someone like Andrew Carnegie who sought to 'give back' and 'benefit' his fellow man through philanthropy. His generosity was obscene, another travesty, as he was simply using the money he made through theft and exploitation and then when he had more than he could possibly spend, he took the moral high ground and pretended to be generous. I often think of his humble grave (at Sleepy Hollow, NY) and what a farce it is.

The same tortured and misguided logic is at work in the likes of John Wesley who advocated the make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can ethic - blind advice for a shepherd to give. The end result is men make all they can and hoard all they can, assuming it's the right and moral thing to do. Give all they can? Well, the key word is 'can' and I've seen many a man living in a mini-mansion, with cars, boats, investment portfolios, and the like complaining that he can't afford this or that, can't afford to have another kid, couldn't possibly give to this or that cause. And capitalist ethics discourage such enablement and reward for lack of ambition. Wesley's low view of sin did not properly take into account the power of self-deception - a reality that plays out in other aspects of Methodist theology.

Jeremiah 15 speaks of usury and he declares that he has not lent on usury - again this is simply interest, not excessive interest. He also proclaims that men have not lent to him on usury and yet they curse him anyway. It's interesting because his complaint seems to be suggest that being extended a loan leads to animosity - the lender pursuing the lendee to get his money back - a theme also touched on in the Proverbs. While I think (generally speaking) it is wrong or at least ill-advised to borrow money on interest, that isn't exactly what he's condemning here. And yet it must be admitted, he certainly condemns the notion of extending a loan on interest.

On that note, the Proverbs should not be read as standalone maxims. They were composed in the context of the Old Covenant, its typology, and its place in redemptive-history. The New Testament provides the correct understanding and contextualisation and Old Testament wisdom literature must be read through that Christocentric lens - if it is to be understood rightly and interacted with faithfully. There are times when New Testament ethics and imperatives exceed what is in a book like Proverbs. I find the selective and self-serving use by some financial teachers to be highly problematic.

One also thinks of 2 Kings 4 and the widow of one of the Sons of the Prophets who is being pursued by a debt collector. It's a sad and sobering situation that no man would ever want to leave his family in. Thankfully today (and no thanks to Capitalism) the debt collectors can't take our children and force them into slavery - or put us in a work house. No comment is made about the debt - Elisha simply helps her and by means of a miracle her situation is resolved. While the text certainly does not laud the prophet's debt situation, it's an interesting commentary on the difficulties God's people face. Even then, the struggle was real.

Again, we are in a virtually impossible situation (as has so often been the case throughout history). The usurious Western system is inherently corrupt and as we ponder this and the Bride-turned-Whore in alliance with the Beast - we should also reflect on the nature of its alchemy and sorcery, once again in Revelation 18. The modern financial system certainly fits the bill and I'm sorry but a return to the gold standard in a capitalist context is no solution. It has been demonstrated that such a model fosters cycles of inflation (when credit is extended) and deflation (when the market corrects) which is devastating to finance capital, the value of collateral, and the insurance industries - not to mention the way the modern global economy works with purchases being made well in advance. It leads to collapse as we've seen over and over again. The fiat system is certainly sorcerous but it is relatively stable and has the tools of manipulation (or wizardry) to stabilize the situation and arrest destructive momentum.

So where does that leave us? At the very least we should try as much as possible to divorce ourselves from this evil. Again, we either have to find an honest modus vivendi - honest with ourselves, but still corrupt - or we must live well beyond the margins or abandon the system altogether. Given that this Mammonism with its materialist eschatological promises of the good life in this age is now global, it's almost impossible to escape.

We are to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. It's his coin and his corrupt system and in a Mammonist paradigm, finance capital and the state are essentially one. Work to live - don't live to work. Keep a roof over your head and food on the table. Dispense with all else. Live simply and by this I do not mean merely an austere version of middle class life. I mean live like this world is passing away and all its lusts. Live like the time is short. Buy like you possess not - remembering that this world is fading away. The notions of having a proper house with a perfectly manicured lawn - the American Dream is not Biblical. In fact it's a snare and a trap. So many of the notions about standard of living, everything being in top condition and the like is more often than not rooted in Middle Class values and notions of respectability than anything found in Scripture. And in the capitalist context this morphs into not just the ethics of having a freshly-painted sparkling house but keeping everything 'updated' - as your house is transformed into a financial instrument. No longer a dwelling place (that is now incidental), it's an investment and then there's the additional 'Keeping up with the Jones' trap that isn't just about coveting material goods and toys (as it once was) but an ethical paradigm in which if you don't keep your house up to snuff, you're a bad person because you're depreciating the value of other houses in the neighbourhood. This is a trap.

While I cannot live in a backwoods shack (but maybe we will someday) - I live in the closest thing I can to it. And I'm not going to live in a development or neighbourhood where such snares are to be found. Even out in a rural area one has to deal with plenty of headaches and yet there is more of a tendency to live and let live. It's harder to make a living and it costs more in terms of operating a vehicle - but real estate is relatively cheap and no one bothers me if my house isn't 'proper' - and it certainly is not.

I've heard sermons on Jeremiah 22 and James 5 that deal with the question of unpaid wages. The assumption is that these were just occasions of breached contract but I don't think that's it at all. I've also heard some condemn the bi-weekly pay system so common in the West. Their complaint is that the employer by holding back your wages for days or weeks, he gets to harvest interest that actually belongs to you if you were paid on a daily basis. Obviously this is possible in a cash arrangement but logistically problematic in a corporate setting with issued checks and payroll deductions.

But I am quite confident that is not what these prophets were referring to. Though this will generate pain for Capitalist exegetes, I would suggest both the Old and New Testaments advocated for a theory of labour quite different from that of capitalism. Wages must be fair - and for Christians this would be a wage that a man can earn to support his family as the New Testament unabashedly relegates Christian women to the domestic sphere - regardless of whether or not she draws some supplemental income through a cottage industry or as commonly (if indecorously) put today, a side-hustle. It's not about what the market dictates or will sustain, but what is right. And this arrangement is not one we impose on the world. Let them chase their dreams and watch them turn into nightmares. Let the dead bury their dead. We'll show them how to do it - how to live and raise families. And we should show them what to value in this life. Sadly, that is not the testimony of today's Church.

Obviously, capitalist apologists will run to the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard to defend their notions of labour - completely missing the point. As Christ said the parables are mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. They're not literalist maxims teaching about the mundane. They're actually meant to confuse - which is exactly what these exegetes do by taking them as financial advice or principle. The same is true with the Parable of the Talents and those who think it teaches investment and justifies interest. The opposite is true. These parables are about grace, spiritual quantification, and the gospel, and the fact that it is unfair - that is what mercy is.

If the parables are to be taken literally then we should never weed our garden - so much for efficiency. The Parable of the Lost Sheep actually teaches inefficiency - seeking the lost one at the expense of the ninety-nine. That's bad business practice and you never hear of anyone citing it as an ethical example - but that's not the point. These are spiritual truths lost on the unregenerate. How sad that Christian leaders have so misunderstood them and utilized them to promote twisted ethics and sometimes outright evil.

A narrow reading of the usury issue leads us to conclude that 99.9% of the modern Church is apostate and has embraced the Mark of the Beast. While I do think the majority of the Church is in a state of functional apostasy, I am unwilling to go that far or push this issue to that extent. And I don't think usury is the Mark. That's way too simple. It's but part of a larger equation of what is the world and the life of those given over to it. And yet it is a cause for great concern and an imperative to reconsider how we live.

We need to revisit the poverty ideals of the Middle Age Dissenters. It's not about absolute poverty. The groups that tried to embrace this (like the Spiritual Franciscans) completely lost their way. The Poor of Lyon and the Poor Lombards (both groups are referred to as Waldenses) usually practiced more of a non-worldly austerity than absolute poverty. And yet they struggled too and at times became well-to-do leading to corruption, compromise, and calls for reform.

But we need to understand the relationship between money and power and how the New Testament exhorts us to reject both. Usury is one of the tools the money-power class uses. The faces, titles, and forms change across the centuries but the patterns are the same. The Magisterial Reformation robbed us of a precious testimony that once existed with groups like the Waldenses and the Poor Preachers or Lollards, as well as groups like the Unitas Fratrum. Something of the antithesis reappeared among some Pietist groups and later Restorationists - and even some early Fundamentalists who did not embrace poverty but in rejecting worldliness were on the margins, and content to be so. I'm not speaking of outright charlatans like Billy Sunday who (though reckoned a Fundamentalist) sought money, fame, influence, and promoted war and the interests of the ruling class.

Historically the embrace of Christian poverty tends to operate in conjunction with nonviolence and nonresistance. It's no surprise that in the capitalist context the latter are unable to gain any traction or those who profess it, quickly compromise their claims and convictions by turning to wealth or in other cases the state and its power in an attempt to try and make things right. In that case, they're not opposing power and the wealth that goes with, they simply are trying to steer it or appropriate it.*

If these doctrines, ethics, and hermeneutics aren't recovered, there's little hope of change when it comes to the Church.

The Dominionists who depend on money and connections to power have successfully crushed this teaching and relegated it to obscurity. At this point in time there's more of a testimony within Roman Catholicism than Protestantism and even groups on the fringe of the latter, such as the Anabaptists are rapidly abandoning it and embracing soft and often personal forms of Dominionism.

I'm painting with a broad brush. I'm not going to pretend there aren't exceptions. There are people who are able to work with integrity and do well. Providence sometimes places people in situations where they suddenly are in possession of wealth - others are diligent in saving their money or successful in producing something that people want. Again, I admit there are exceptions to the scenarios I have laid out and I know that many are simply trying to live and maybe aren't even capable of seeing the larger picture. Their seeking of wealth is not malicious. I'm not saying they're necessarily guiltless but I'm not saying they are like Bernie Madoff either.

Does this negate everything I have said? I don't think so. I'm trying to put a human face on this and let the reader understand that in no way am I absent compassion. Some will take a caveat like this and use it to justify any and all things. Earlier I spoke of self-deception and that's something we should always be aware of. Everyone's situation is unique but at the same time I endlessly encounter people who justify what they do by blaming someone else or by willfully refusing to see what's going around them, they press on as if they bear no blame or have no obligations. In their case, they don't want to see and deliberately shut their eyes.

Have I been provocative in what I have said? Good. It was my intention. I am well aware that few readers (if any) will fully agree with what I've said. That's always the case especially when touching on a broad topic such as this. My hope is that some will be challenged and provoked in a good way and driven to reflect on these things, dig deeper and ask the tough questions, and to seek the Lord's Face and guidance on these points. Have I overplayed my hand? Have I made a mountain out of a molehill? I don't think so but ultimately that's something readers must reckon with on their own. They don't answer to me. They answer to God and I hope that I have pointed them in the direction of His Kingdom.

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* I recently heard a podcast in which Moravian theologian and professor Craig Atwood discussed non-violence and the teachings of Petr Chelčický. And as is often the case, he then made the connection between Chelčický and Tolstoy who read him and quoted him. And in turn, Gandhi read and was inspired by Tolstoy and this chain of inspiration fed into the activism of Martin Luther King Jr. who venerated Gandhi.

Chelčický thus indirectly inspired some of the great peace activists but they did not understand him or follow his principles of nonresistance - something teachers like the Mennonite John Yoder point out and even Atwood acknowledges. However, Atwood praises this fact, celebrating the nonviolent activism in connection with politics. He supports the shift from nonresistance to nonviolence or nonviolent pacifism.

But in this case it's no longer a true or absolute principle but rather a tactic, a means to a revolutionary end. In the end, these activists seek the reins of power and because governing requires law enforcement and wealth management, the principles of nonresistance are completely abandoned. Yoder spends a great deal of time on this issue when discussing Quaker Pennsylvania and how its model was not sustainable, and by the time of the French and Indian War had come to an end.