Usury, the Poor, the Rights of the Employers.
Acts
If we believe that God is the
creator of everything, that He is not just part of creation but is different
and distinct from creation, that He had a plan, a blueprint in His omniscience,
and that He created everything so that everything from within creation
intersects, interrelates and interacts with everything else…
Has
revealed to us in His Word certain truths, certain eternal realities about
Himself that mean that He is a certain way. He knows all of the knowable, and if we take the time
to reflect upon that and the fact that we have the order in the universe that
we have because there is a God who is the mater planner, master architect who
designed everything from even the smallest particle to the largest entity and
all of the interconnections in between, when we come to study anything within
that creation we can extrapolate from a known principle to unknown principles
because we know there is stability and order in the universe. And what was true
thousands of years ago in terms of mathematical principles, physics,
meteorological principles or any universal law related to creation, we know it
is just as true today. If evolution were true then that would change.
But God not only created laws
related to the physical universe. There are also social laws, social absolutes
that God built into creation. We have studied those in the divine institutions.
Individual responsibility means that the individual is responsible to God, for
his relationship to God and his relationship to other human beings. That
vertical relationship to God has to do with his spiritual life; the horizontal
relationship to other people in terms of society has to do with the social
life—how human beings organize and relate to one another within a social
structure. The Greeks had a word for this. When it involved a city they called
it the polus [poluj], the city, and that is the
origin of our English word “politics.” They also talked about the
administration of a city and used the word oikonomia
[o)ikonomia],
which had to do with stewardship or administration, and which is where we get
our English word “economy.” So concepts such as politics and economics
ultimately relate to social structure, how man organizes himself in terms of
society. This impacts things especially in terms of marriage and the family.
When God established certain absolutes regarding marriage and family, and
government later on, they were designed to perpetuate stability within the
human race. When they are violated and the creature comes along and says, for
example, we can do away with marriage there are incredible consequences.
We have looked at some other
principles and other passages which emphasize that we are not to take into
account a person’s economic condition in coming to judicial decisions. In the
courtroom when the issue is criminality or a civil suit one thing that should
never be taken into account is the wealth of one side or the poverty of the
other. Nobody should be given the benefit of the doubt because they are rich or
because they are poor. Leviticus 19:15.
Then the
issue of usury. This was a major
problem throughout the Middle Ages because usury was
not correctly understood or defined. In Roman Catholic theology usury was
defined as charging interest for a loan. Any payment of interest on a loan was
considered usury and this stifled business and development, and is basically
would not allow for the development of any kind of free market economy. But
there were groups here and there that began to work out different tricky ways
to get around this. Some did it by taking out a loan in one currency and then
through various means of currency trading would bring it back around and make a
little money on their money. But when we look at the way usury is handled in
the Scriptures it has the idea of charging interest to anyone who was poor,
destitute. So the loan was not one to develop in terms of business. Deuteronomy
24:14 was the general principle to be followed: don’t take advantage of someone
who is poor or without. Exodus 22:25. The word translated “interest” [KJV], also
sometimes translated “usury,” is the Hebrew word neshek
which is related to the Hebrew word for servant. Literally it means to bite. It
is the opinion of many biblical scholars today is the usury wasn’t charging
interest for business loans; it was charging interest from those who could not
pay it, those who were destitute, as a way of taking advantage of them and
basically destroying their ability to take care of themselves.
It was the responsibility of
the Jewish community in the ancient world to take care of the poor; not the
government but the individual. Proverb 28:8 NASB “He
who increases his wealth by interest and usury Gathers it for him who is
gracious to the poor.” In other words, the assumption is that ultimately God is
the one who will bring justice and though
one person takes advantage of the poor He in turn will be judged by God, and
the one who will ultimately benefit is the one who has a true compassion for
the poor because the Supreme Court of heaven will eventually right all wrongs.
This verse should be understood within the context of verse 3 where there is a
poor man who oppresses the poor: “A poor man who
oppresses the lowly Is {like} a driving rain which
leaves no food.” So the principle is that it is wrong to take advantage of
those who do not have. There are also many passages in the prophets,
one is a passage in Ezekiel dealing with the responsibility of the sins of the
father and the punishment of the father, and the responsibility of the sins of
the son and punishment for the son. The theme in this section is the son is not
punished for the sins of the father unless the son is repeating the sins of the
father. Ezekiel
What are the biblical causes
for poverty? We basically suffer for one or two reasons. We suffer from our own
bad decisions or we suffer from bad decisions of others. We can be poor because
of our own bad decisions or we can be poor because of decisions of others, including
the sovereignty of God. The first cause is due to a responsibility for making
bad decisions on the part of the poor. The second category is decisions made by
others.
Eight different categories or
causes listed from Scripture: The first two have to do with personal violation
of the first divine institution, irresponsibility in the use of money. The
first is personal laziness or failure to work; the second cause is that they
make foolish decisions with regard to their money—spending on the wrong thing,
over-spending, getting into debt, gambling it away. They are poor either
because they fail to work or because they have mismanaged their money. In both
cases their poverty is due to their irresponsible decisions.
The next six categories are
based on the decisions of others. The third category is the sovereignty of God.
God chooses to take us through tests of adversity—in this case poverty—in order
to teach us to trust Him. So we can be doing everything right: be diligent,
manage our money well, make the best decisions we can make in light of the
knowledge available to us, and yet for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to ever
get us ahead. God is taking us through a poverty test, teaching us to trust
Him.
The other categories are
basically negative in terms of others we are associated with. Category # 4, this
may mean government decisions. There have been people who have lived in
different countries where they had governments that have been abusive,
tyrannical, have taxed them beyond their capabilities and wiped out any
incentive for business, agricultural development or anything of that nature. So
we can be in a nation where there is a corrupt government, and because the
government is corrupt it destroys any possibility of economic blessing and the
citizens suffer. And they really don’t know why because they are not aware or
knowledgeable about all of the corruption that is going on inside of
government. Another can be corporate decisions. The powers that be are misusing
the money of the corporation and become involved in criminality, and eventually
things fall apart and we are left without a career, a job, and are the ones who
suffer.
A fifth category is market decisions.
We have no control over the market place. It is not necessarily because of a
bad or ill-informed decision, it is just that we invest our time or money in
things that seem to be really good decisions and then the market took it
somewhere else.
Sixth: personal decisions or
associations. Somebody in our family takes the gold and poorly invests it and
loses everything.
Seventh: criminality. We can
be the victim of theft, investment in something that was a fraud.
Eighth: natural disasters.
Some of the passages
that relate to this: Proverbs 10:4 NASB “Poor is he who works
with a negligent hand, But the hand of the diligent makes rich.” Wealth comes
from hard work. The idea of laziness is expanded in Proverbs 24:30-34 NASB
“I passed by the field of the sluggard And by the
vineyard of the man lacking sense,
Proverbs
Proverbs
What the attitude of the believer should
be towards the person who is poor. This is based again on grace orientation,
not having a judgmental attitude towards those who are poor. Proverbs
Proverbs
Proverbs 28:27 NASB “He who
gives to the poor will never want, But he who shuts his eyes will have many
curses [divine discipline].”
Isaiah
Other verses: Exodus 22:22; Deuteronomy