Before I got into ministry, I worked as a pilot, and had racked up a mountain of debt. Flight school was expensive and I didn’t have the $$ pay up front, or a marginally good credit score, so I took out several loans at exhorbitant interest rates. At the peak of my borrowing, I owed over $30K, and was struggling to pay it back.

A dear friend stepped in and paid off my loans, then wrote up a deal where I would pay him back monthly over 3 years. His interest rate was exponentially lower.

About that time, I decided to get out of aviation and pursue a career in ministry, but couldn’t get accepted to Dallas Theological Seminary because of my debt load.

After a few months of me moping around at church, my friend and his wife took me out to dinner and announced that they would be forgiving my debt. I got up without saying anything and went to the bathroom to completely freak out.

I can’t tell you what it’s like to be free of such a burden, especially for someone who was having a difficult time paying his bills. You could say some things about my career decisions and how I had chosen my predicament, but when I hear about people being somewhat freed from their student loan burden, especially in a country where education expenses are higher than they are just about everywhere else, it makes me happy. I know what that feels like.

I’ll never forget the moment of my freedom and the positive impact it had on my life.

This week, as the Biden administration rolled out it’s debt forgiveness plan, I was surprised to see so many of my Christian friends up in arms. I’m not sure I fully understand their frustration at this point: one friend seemed to think that this will plunge America into some whirlpool of irresponsibility, calling Biden’s measure “immoral” and “unlawful.” The government has no right to take our money and pay someone else’s bills. Others are pissed because they worked hard to pay their debts. Why should someone else get such a break?

From this crowd, I haven’t heard anything about the fact that the most you can get is $20,000. In most cases, that’s less than half a semester. I’m not sure why my friends believe that people are getting all/most of their debt erased.

More surpisingly, few have managed to put themselves in the shoes of folks that benefit from this plan – the single moms and others having a hard time making ends meet, now a little farther down the debt-free road.

Shouldn’t Christians of all people get happy about that?

What frustrates me most – apart from my fellow Christians, once again, publicly displaying an insensitivity unbecoming the people of God – is that debt forgiveness is biblical. That’s a big deal because us Christian whackos are convinced that the Bible is the very word of God. If it deals with debt forgiveness on any level, that’s where we should start.

God’s debt free world

To the accusations of “immoral,” “unlawful,” and “unfair,” I’ll share some thoughts about debt from the Old Testament, specifically from the book of Deuteronomy. I’ll spare you any discussion about the forgiveness of sin, or any other spiritual spin on debt that the bible makes. This passage deals specifically with the forgiveness of financial debt, and reveals for us bible-believers heaven’s desire for freedom.

At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. ~ Deut. 15:1-2

The passage goes on to warn debtors about adjusting their lending practices based on how close they are to the end of the 7 year cycle.

I’m not up to speed on the history of this, or when the Isrealites nixed it, but I’ll bet that, after seeing the world’s most powerful army destroyed in the Red Sea, then being led through the desert by a column of smoke and fire, one might be open to the craziest ideas, even when it comes to money.

Alas, with very rare exception, us Christians do none of this, understandably, neither does anyone in modern-day Israel.

But if our government’s cancellation of debt – a mere fraction of what would be affected by the passage above – is unfair, unlawful, and immoral, was God’s? And was he leading his followers into some pit of irresponsibility by commanding such lunacy?

Regardless, this is what God wanted for his people. All throughout the Old Testament is the idea that God doesn’t want a world that’s ruled by money and all of the slavery that comes with it. It should surprise no Christian that God wants his people to handle money in a way that puts it in the background so that the much more valuable things of his world can be enjoyed.

But because so many of us have been suckered into money’s siren call, and because we live in a world that puts money before anything else, God’s attitude towards debt is too alien, so much that if someone comes close to expressing it, we feel cheated, threatened.

The experts, again

According to a widely cited survey of 43 leading economists, Biden’s plan is a progressive one, so long as it is weighted towards those who need it most. So, once again going with majority expert opinion, this administration announced that single people who earn less than $125,000 can get up to $10K in debt forgiveness, double that for married folk.

Some from this group raised issues of fairness (percieved) and the impact that such a level of forgiveness would have on incentives, supply, etc. (to the “irresponsibility” allegation cited above).

I’m not aware of any economists claiming that this measure is illegal, or immoral, or in any way completely out of phase with pro-America governance. It seems that most are calling this a good move.

But here we are once again, Christians from the conservative tribe who seem to be completely unintroduced to expert opinion, taking to social media not with mere critiques, but accusations of skullduggery. We went through this with Covid, then inflation and rising fuel prices. On one hand were a mountain of experts offering their publicly accessible analyses on cause, responsibility, remedy, etc., on the other hand a cross section of evangelical Christianity continuing to peddle their belief that liberal America’s response to these problems is further proof that liberal America just wants to destroy America.

I don’t expect my conservative Christian friends to agree hook, line, and sinker with non-conservative politics. And I get the argument that too much intervention/forgiveness/whatever can and will be gamed by opportunists. But to what degree? The destruction of our country?

Every time the Biden administration makes a move, I read a commentary about how it will drive America into ruin, fanning the flames of anti-liberal hatred that have been brewing in conservative Christian ranks for decades.

These friends of mine are angry, now segregated from the data, conversations, friendships, and perspectives required for a functional grasp of what America needs to move forward. This level of segregation doesn’t come from God, it hails from somewhere else, forcing his followers, once again, to be overthrown by the religion of self protection, where fear is God, and compassion is dangerous.

To a similar crowd, Jesus said (my paraphrase) “Stop it. The kingdom of heaven is sitting next to you. Do something better.”