This article was sent to me accompanied by some follow-up
questions. It's actually by an Eastern Orthodox cleric and I must say I was
pleased to read it.
For the most part I agree with was said – with a few
qualifications.
When it comes to the advent of modern interest and its
embrace by the Christian community, one cannot lay all the blame on Calvin,
though he certainly was an early voice that endorsed it. The truth is the
practice started in earnest during the fifteenth century – a couple of
generations before the Magisterial Reformation. The Italian city states became
very wealthy through trade and were rather cosmopolitan in their outlook. In
other words as part of the larger Renaissance movement they were in the process
of turning their back on old and what was perceived to be outmoded ways of
thinking. Modern banking and insurance rose during this period and it's in
places like Florence that we first see an all but open break with the
historical teaching on usury – which simply meant interest. The modern usage is
just that – modern. Today it means an abusive interest rate. Traditionally all
interest was viewed as abusive and exploitative. All interest was usury.
Calvin sanctioned it but for about a century the jury was out
as many Protestants opposed charging interest in any form. Contrary to many
popular narratives the Puritans were anything but free market capitalists. The
Enlightenment and the rise of its economic theories won the debate and in
today's milieu to decry interest as usury is to all but be from another planet.
Older investment schemes are foreign to most people but these things are still
discussed in some circles – mostly Anabaptist, but even many of them are
turning away from this teaching and embracing interest, investment and the
like. They're becoming capitalists too even though for centuries their movement
anathematised such thinking and the ethics it produces. It's beyond the scope
of this discussion but a case can be made for interest/usury being a form of
violence, especially in the way it's used vis-à-vis poor countries or just the
poor in general. As such those committed to nonviolence and nonresistance must
reckon with its validity on these grounds as well – all the more as their money
has led to social interest and now more and more of them are getting into
politics.
Though it's quite unknown today, the older understanding of
investment was not based on a risk-reward paradigm in which others did the
work. Investment means risk but you were invested in the venture itself. You
loan the money, share in the work, and then earn a profit or not. You were
invested in the true sense and not just on a mercenary level.
At some point you can be bought out, take your money and the
profits you earned and go your way. But again, the idea that you just give over
your money and then essentially put your feet up while others make it work and
then harvest a profit for you was until the Renaissance-Enlightenment period
viewed as wicked and contrary to Scripture. That was viewed as morally dubious
and an illegitimate way to make money. In terms of fiscal policy, the whole
world of credit, investment, and interest also represents a type of alchemy,
generating money from nothing and even if backed by gold, the overall effects on
society are negative, generating a destructive and wasteful cycle of inflation
and deflation. Some do very well of course but others suffer and while the
advocates of the system decry any appeal to zero-sum equations, there are
nevertheless limits in markets and certainly in resources. And while they want
to present the system as something that makes everyone winners, the truth is it
depends on there being losers. And certainly in the process of competition the
truth is at first distorted and then eventually turned on its head.
Contrary to the Orthodox author of the piece, I do not agree
that paying interest is sinful on the basis that I'm encouraging or
facilitating the sin of someone else – the usurer. This is where I argue for
covenant ethics and suggest there are many imperatives that apply to the Church
and not to the world – in direct opposition to the sacralist heritage of
Orthodoxy. The world's problem is unbelief not that they're making money off of
me.
By way of example, though the Scriptures envision women being
homemakers (oikourous), compelling
lost men's wives to be domestic produces no righteous result. It's empty
obedience and does not please God. If I believe that all women (even lost
women) should be domestic then it follows (I suppose) that I would never hire a
women to work for me – even as receptionist, cashier, or whatever. It would be
encouraging them to sin.
And so while the New Testament speaks of a kind of domestic
ethic and ethos for Christian women, I do not see any call (or point) in trying
to impose this on society at large. What they need is not rules for the Spirit-wrought
family order, but the gospel. What do I have to do with judging those who are
outside? God will judge them. But as Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 5, Christians
are held to a different standard.
Caesar was going to use tax money for wicked purposes –
temples and wars, and yet Christ told his people to pay the tax. Caesar is
wicked and yet it is valid for me to pay the tax and my payment does not
facilitate his sin. That's on him.
Again, what are we to do with those who are outside? God will
judge them.
I pay taxes knowing that it will feed the American war
machine and all manner of evil. But I will not voluntarily buy bonds let alone
war bonds were they to be issued, and I will not work for companies connected
to the war machine – which in this society is a tall order. Generally speaking
my goal is to (as much as is possible) divest myself from the financial
interests of this society.
By the way this principle is also true with something like
the Sabbath. I'm not a Sabbatarian anymore but I always rejected the argument
that you can't patronise a store on that day because you're causing the clerk
to sin by selling on the Sabbath, helping them to be a Sabbath breaker. But the
Sabbath was never applicable to the Edomites, Egyptians, or Philistines. It's
for God's people, a sign of their covenant with God. The problem with the
Edomites is their unbelief. The Bible doesn't treat these ethics as always
applicable in a universal sense. This upsets Kuyperians and other
worldview-minded thinkers in our day as they seek to create a monistic social
order. But it's not Biblical. The Bible doesn't present these laws and commands
as universal – applicable in all places and at all times. The fact that many
Old Testament laws have been abrogated further testifies to this.
It's one thing to acknowledge a kind of duality when it comes
to taxes. What about a loan? It's voluntary right? Yes and no. It's always
better to avoid debt and yet in our techno-industrial capitalist setting with
its system of credit and fictitious capital we're in a market-inflation trap
and it has become almost impossible to function without borrowing. I know some
who try not to and others who are even absolute about it but it's not easy and
in other cases it's just not possible. Not everyone can live out in the
country, run a small farm, and pay cash for everything. Additionally in almost
every case these same people are hiding income from the IRS and deeply involved
in the underground economy – which throws their larger ethical stand into
doubt.
We should try to avoid loans and debt but not because we
would have to pay interest to a lender. I view it as Caesar's wicked system and
one might say they're kind of holding a gun to your head. I'll pay their
extortion but it's on them. For many of us it's not voluntary. Living in a
rural area I have to own a car to work and thus I have to take out a loan. I've
tried the Evangelical financial advice of driving a paid-for older car. It cost
me a lot more time and money in the end and consequently I gave up. Lost work
and repair bills added up to more money out of my pocket than simply making a
reasonable payment. Am I getting taken advantage of by the lender? Of course.
Do I think they're nice people? Of course not. And I know better. Both of my
parents worked in the car industry – in sales and finance, and both admitted
that it was sleazy, exploitative, dishonest, and neither would have gone back
to it for anything. Let's just say I wince when I meet someone at church who is
in car sales or finance – not to mention many other professions of similar
bent.
Can I reach a point in which we have to say 'no' and suffer
the consequences? Yes, and that point may be coming soon.
I would happily rent all my days but where I live it's
actually cheaper to buy a house then to rent one. To rent something for my
family would be at least $600 a month, more likely $800-1000. I have a mortgage
and my payment (which includes taxes, interest, and insurance) is well under
$400 a month. Now I will grant it's not a nice house and not one that middle
class Americans would be happy with but it's perfectly fine. It's a roof and it
keeps the weather out. That's all we need.
If I lived in a different area I would rent. I don't care
that it's 'throwing money' away. It's all throwing money away – Caesar's money
in the end. I reject the idea that a house should be 'an investment' as well as
the assumptions that undergird it. Such thinking has led to stress,
self-destruction, decadent waste, and financial devastation, in addition to a
pernicious form of covetousness and the vapid and immoral mentality known as
Keeping up with the Joneses.
This is why I live in a rural area. My neighbours can't
complain that my 'dated' house is affecting their values. In the city this
would be another reason to rent. Let the landlord worry about such things – his
'investment'.
All that said, more could be explored in terms of the traps
and perils of credit scores and the like. Such a conversation necessarily must
venture into questions regarding the Mark of the Beast and the tendency for all
Bestial powers to regulate and control all commerce and even access to their
system. Those with bad credit find it very difficult to make ends meet and yet
in some cases bad credit may be a sign of righteous obedience – not because of
late payments and defaults, but rather for refusal to participate and establish
your bona fides with the institutions
of power that run this system and to play according to their rules.
Aside from these points I agree with what the Orthodox man
says and I think he's only scratching the surface in terms of how this plays
out within the larger economy and world. Americans just want to see the
prosperity and yet they are blind to what cost is paid by the poor in this land
and others for them to get their cheap goods. When you start to take this in
you realize how really twisted and frankly evil the American system is. It
doesn't mean the alternatives are good. By no means, but this system is not a
godly one by any stretch of the imagination. We can live in the Western system
but we should never confuse it with something that is Christian.