From the Pastor’s Study
Beggar Thy Neighbour Nov 17, 2021
In the Roman Empire in the centuries following the time of the New Testament, the Roman government began to steadily increase its taxes. As the taxes increased, the ability of people to pay decreased. People began to take loans out to pay their taxes, and these loans were given to them by those who had money, the rich. Eventually, as the taxes and expenses increased even more, people could not pay back their loans, and they had to give up their land and their homes to their lenders. Many people who had owned their own farms and businesses became serfs, and serfdom was born. A serf is a person who is bound by law to work on his lord’s estate, and he cannot leave under penalty of that same law. Serfs are not slaves, but they are nearly slaves.
It was in situations like this that the phrase “beggar-thy-neighbour” was born. The system of taxes and government, although not intended to do so, gave those who had money and power the opportunity to make those who were struggling into beggars. Instead of people loving their neighbours and enabling them to thrive, neighbours were turned into beggars.
It was partially in response to this that the church began an active campaign against practices that could create beggars of people, and one of the ways the church did this was to speak against the charging of interest. At certain times in Europe in the last 1500 years or so, it was illegal to charge interest of any amount, and at other times those who did were considered sinners by the church and expelled from the church and thus also from any chance of salvation from God. In the years following the Reformation, Reformed churches considered charging of interest to be a sin, and the Westminster Confession, in its exposition of the 8th Commandment, “Do not steal,” lists the charging of interest as one of the ways of breaking this commandment.
Much has changed in the Western world with its Christian roots, for now the charging of interest is seen to be an appropriate and even necessary part of life. (It should be noted that in many Muslim-dominated areas, charging interest for a loan is prohibited.) Although, for a time, many nations in the West maintained strict controls on interest rates, these controls have been significantly loosened, and some businesses have taken advantage of the laxness and have rates of interest so high that they are almost unbelievable. One Canadian payday loan company (a company which loans money to people who use their paycheque as collateral) lists its interest rate for a 14-day loan at 546%. (In case you don’t know what interest rates should be, a mortgage today is rarely over 3%.) Studies show that payday loans are used by people to cover recurring expenses such as electricity bills and groceries rather than for emergencies. In other words, those who are taking out payday loans are using the money to buy their daily necessities.
Regardless of what the advertisements for loans try to tell us, namely that loans benefit the borrower, the reality is that our system benefits the borrower. Without a doubt those who need the money the most are charged the highest rate of interest. We should be concerned that these exorbitant interest rates (let’s include credit cards in this, for only those who don’t have enough money to pay their bill each month pay interest on credit card balances) are creating a “beggar-thy-neighbour” culture. Interest rates for mortgages and cars are relatively low right now, but many remember days when they paid as much as 20% for a house mortgage. We are told that our banking systems are trying to control interest rates, but should we trust that they will be able to do so? Our system is set up in such a way that it could make us into beggars as well.
Our system of borrowing benefits the lender. In the past couple of weeks, I have been writing a paper in which I have been looking at the Scriptural teaching on lending and borrowing. In Exodus 22:25ff. we discover that God tells his people that if they lend money to a poor person (presumably to buy the necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter), we should not charge interest. Other passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy say that no interest should be charged at all in any situation, nor should we refuse to lend money to someone who needs it to provide themselves with the necessities of life.
In other words, the Bible sees loans as benefiting the borrower, not the lender. Even more, every seven years any outstanding loans were to be forgiven without charge, and thus, every seven years there was a reset of the economic system. This was to ensure that people who had worked themselves into an unsustainable debt level would not have to remain there. The reset also kept rich people from beggaring their neighbours forever. The system was designed to keep things equal, or at least more equal than they were in surrounding cultures.
There was a reason given for lending money without interest to poor people and forgiving loans every seven years: God had taken the enslaved, impoverished, indebted people of Israel out of Egypt and had given them a new start at life in the Promised Land. If God could do that for his people, certainly the people could do that for each other. The lending system, thus, was meant to benefit the borrower and not the lender, just as God’s grace benefits the receiver not the giver.
I know the biblical teachings on lending and borrowing, but I have to confess that I do not know what to do about it. We live in a system which clearly contradicts Scriptural values and principles, but if we want to do business here, we might feel compelled to adopt those practices as well. The big question is this: do we have to? Or can we do things differently? One colleague, not deceased, worried about this. He worried that perhaps his investments, whose earnings he used to pay his expenses, were actually invested in such a way that his neighbours were being beggared. He was right to be concerned, and perhaps that is the first step. Are our investments meant to benefit us first, or are they meant to bless those who have needs? It’s a good question. Are we willing to ask it?
Pastor Gary
