Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Neither a Borrower Nor Lender Be

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, October 10, 2008.

With the elections happening next week, this post is still timely...

The Bible talks a LOT about money. Most people know that – but they are less sure of what the Bible says specifically about money. In one of my Sunday school classes recently, I handed out a sheet that contained many different sayings. The class was asked to identify which of them are biblical, and which come from somewhere else. Here are some of them:

  • God helps those who help themselves.
  • Do to others what you would have them do to you.
  • Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

So do you know which is biblical and which is not? Only the saying in the middle come from Scripture. Both the top and bottom are extra-biblical. So while they may express an IDEA that could be biblical, the sayings themselves are not.

The economic turmoil of the last several weeks, experts tell us, is because we have a broken credit system. Banks are hoarding cash and refusing to lend to one another. Millions of mortgages are in default. Millions more are unsustainable because the loans are substantially greater than the actual values of the houses themselves.

And now the credit collapse is affecting more than just mortgages. Car loans are harder to get approved – and when approved are for substantially higher interest rates. Even credit cards – the most proliferate form of credit – are not as easy to come by. Jobs are endangered by the lack of business credit. Companies with uneven cash flows can no longer get short-term loans to make payrolls, so people may start losing their jobs because the cash isn’t there to pay them. Guess what that does to the mortgage default rate and bankruptcy courts?

This could be a vicious cycle. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called it an “economic perfect storm” and he doesn’t know how much worse things could get. Neither do I, but William Shakespeare’s advice in “Hamlet” seems apt today. In Act I, Scene 3, Polonius gives his son Laertes words of wisdom before the son departs on a journey:

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.


Those words are not biblical, but they are wise. Credit – lending and borrowing – is much like oxygen. We need oxygen to breath, yet it is also one of the most dangerous and unstable substances found in nature. Mix oxygen and flame, and trouble can erupt. Mix credit and greed, and the same thing happens.

Ezekiel 18:7-8 offers a word picture of what righteousness looks like, and it has this to say about borrowing and lending: A righteous person “does not oppress anyone, but returns what he took in pledge for a loan. He does not commit robbery but gives his food to the hungry and provides clothing for the naked. He does not lend at usury or take excessive interest.”

Ezekiel sounds similar to Shakespeare. Lending and borrowing are acknowledged, but not encouraged – and especially separated from greed. We may not be able to affect what goes on between the big banks, or between the federal government and Wall Street, but we can affect what happens on Main Street. We can limit the ability of a certain group of people from taking advantage of those most vulnerable to the credit trap.

On November 4th, Ohioans will vote on Issue 5. It’s a confusing item on the ballot because a “yes” vote equals saying “no” to predatory lending. Payday lenders want Ohioans to vote “no” on the issue so that they can continue their business practices without the restrictions placed upon them by the Ohio legislature earlier this year. They want to charge the equivalent of a 391-percent annual interest rate for two-week loans ($15 per $100 every two weeks). If Ohioans vote “yes” to Issue 5, then the interest rate will be capped at 28 percent.

Twenty-eight percent compared to 391 percent? The latter sure seems like usery to me! Payday lenders have spent a lot of money confuse this issue and make it about jobs and a “scary” government database. A spokesperson for the payday lenders’ coalition Ohioans for Financial Freedom asks, “We’re taking away one of the few lending options Ohioans have left? That’s ridiculous.”

What’s ridiculous is targeting people who struggle to make $300 a week with loans that they will pay back only by taking out new loans – and forking over another $15-30 every time. I don’t consider that to be a lending option, I consider that to be oppression and usery. As a Christian, the only way I can be true to myself is to vote “yes” on Issue 5 and do all I can to do unto others as I would have them do unto me.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Fools Rush In

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, Oct. 3, 2008



My wife and I went to a major department store last week to look at new bath towels. This is an errand that I complete only every decade or so. When I buy bath towels, I like to buy the really good ones so that they will last a really long time.

As we came off the escalator, we were surrounded by CHRISTMAS! Christmas trees, Christmas angels, Santa Clauses, snowmen – if it was Christmas-related, it was on display (except for Nativity scenes, but that’s another column).

I looked at my wife and asked if we had somehow lost six weeks in a time-warp as we came up the escalator. (I watch a lot of Star Trek, and much stranger things have happened to Kirk, Picard, and Janeway.) My wife reassured me that I was still anchored in reality – well, that may be somewhat debatable – and that the store had simply rushed us into the Christmas buying frenzy.

We also went to a major home improvement warehouse store – and they had Christmas stuff out, too! It seems that retailers can’t get us into thinking about buying for Christmas soon enough. And so they rush into the season, even before the last days of September are behind us.

Frank Sinatra sang a song about fools rushing into things. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And so I come to you my love, my heart above my head.” Frank’s rushing had to do with romantic love – but we rush today into EVERYTHING.

Picking on retailers for rushing Christmas is easy. They are so visible in their rushing – too blatant for subtlety. But what about the rush to this presidential election season? How long has the 2008 campaign gone on? It seems we’ve heard from and about McCain and Obama (and Clinton and Romney, and all the other wanna-be’s) since the day after the last presidential election. And how about the financial bail-out bill? That $700-billion package was rushed to Congress so fast that most of us were still trying to figure out what it was, much less why it was needed.

Rushing also happens on a more personal level. We rush to school, rush to work, rush to judgment. Whoops! Maybe I rushed to that last category. Let me repeat it again: we rush to judgment.

Sometimes it’s over relatively harmless things. My wife tried a new recipe for dinner. My kids looked at it and curled up their noses even before tasting it. Their rush to judgment worked out well for me. I though the meal tasted delicious – and there was more for me!

But rushing to judgment can also be severely damaging. We see someone who looks different, and immediately decide that person is unlikable. We see a house that looks more inviting to raccoons than people and decide whoever lives there must be bad. Or we see someone’s palatial home and decide that person must be good.

Rushing is truly a foolish thing. We rush when we do not take the time to do things right, thoroughly, or completely. Rushing leads to mistakes. Rush the curing of concrete and it will crack. Rush the completion of homework and careless mistakes lower the grade.

The opposite of rushing is not procrastination or laziness. The true opposite of rushing is pacing. Making decisions with careful consideration; following processes in a timely fashion. Here’s how the Apostle Paul put it:

“Here's what I want you to do. While I'm locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.” (Ephesians 4:1-3 “The Message Bible”)

Only fools rush in. As Christians, we are called to wisdom – and we have the One most Wise to guide us. So even if you see jingle bells in July, remember that Jesus is more than a season of shopping, and the political and financial crises of the moment will not defeat Him – or us!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Is the Bail-Out Good News?

I got behind in posting to the blog. Now I'm catching up... ;-)


First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, Sept. 26, 2008.


The big headline this week is the $700 billion bail-out plan for the financial services industry proposed by President Bush’s administration. I am flabbergasted by the sheer size of the proposal. Do you have any clue how big 700 billion is?

Thomas Sowell, a syndicated columnist tried to explain the enormity of the number by comparing it to a trillion seconds. He claimed this week that “a trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write. Neither the Roman Empire or the Chinese dynasties had yet come into existence.”

Unfortunately, Sowell did his math wrong. There are 31,536,000 seconds in one year (60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days). That means it takes just under 32 years to equal a trillion seconds. Even I was able to read and write 32 years ago.

Still, $700 billion is a huge price to pay for this bail-out. Why do we need so much money for Wall Street? In all the news reports I’ve read or heard, I haven’t received a straight answer to that question. In truth, nobody knows if that number is too high or too low.

I am reminded of the old saying: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It seems in this situation we have to add a “to” to the saying: the bigger they are, the harder they are to fall. The bail-out is deemed necessary because these companies are too big to fail. Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and others must survive or our entire financial system will crash – sending the whole economy into a downward spiral that makes the Great Depression of the 1930s seem like boom times.

How did we get into this mess? Granted, I am not a Wall Street Wizard. I do not have an economics degree from Harvard, Yale or even Podunk Community College. But even I can understand how this mess was created: greed.

I am well acquainted with that sin. I had some pretty severe expressions of it in my own life. Before becoming a pastor, I rose through the ranks of marketing professionals to achieve worldly success. My household income in 2001 was nearly $200,000. But because of greed, I was flat broke. I spent more than I earned (even at that income!), borrowing heavily to enable the spending. And I didn’t pay back what I owed consistently or sufficiently enough to get out of debt and break the cycle.

I wasn’t a bad person, I just didn’t know how to handle my money. And I am not alone. All across the country, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and car financiers make billions of dollars off of people like me. The “subprime” credit industry offers credit to people who have already shown they don’t know how to successfully manage credit. So I could borrow money only by paying too much for the privilege. When I went to buy a new minivan, I got the financing for it – but with a 20% annual percentage rate when “prime” borrowers could finance the same vehicle at around 6.5 percent.

That kind of income opportunity attracted the so-called blue chip financial firms. They saw this as “easy money.” So much cash flowed into the coffers of creditors that one’s ability to repay no longer was a factor. Greed overruled logic.

My financial world collapsed when my six-figure income ended. The brutality of logical consequences forced me into a bail-out of my own. After exhausting all retirement savings and shredding the credit cards, selling my house at a loss just to get rid of the mortgage, I still owed more than I could pay. Bankruptcy court became my only option. In exchange for wiping out my past debts, I have to live with a terrible mark on my credit record for 10 long years.

Now, Wall Street wants the benefits of “bankruptcy” without the consequences – and the Bush Administration seems to want to give it to them. But how about all the folks who have also been caught in this illogical lending game outside of Wall Street? Is this a case of “the smaller they are, the easier to make them fall”?

The Bible is a resource that should be considered in dealing with all of this. It has a lot to say about money, sin, and bail-outs – er, forgiveness. 1 Timothy 6:9-11 declares that “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

I think that section of scripture sums up rather succinctly the situation we’re in today.
But what about forgiveness? Jesus told a story to Simon the Pharisee to explain God’s grace:
“Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Jesus asked. Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

If we take Jesus’ story at face value, then forgiveness should be offered – even to Wall Street executives. But even in forgiving, we do not have to reward their sin. Therefore, salary limits, taxpayer stockholding, and relief to the consumers at the bottom of this calamity are all good ideas.

Jesus said that he came to preach good news to the poor. I wonder if $700 billion is a big enough number to refinance all those troubled mortgages into terms that people could more easily pay off? Now THAT would be good news to the poor, today.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Assessing the Damage

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, Sept. 19, 2008


Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast last weekend, unleashing ferocious winds, an 11-foot storm surge onto the beach, and pounding rain. I spent my first year after college in that part of Texas. My wife and I lived in Brazoria County, right next to Galveston along the coast south of Houston.

Watching the news reports, I saw pictures of places and buildings that I recognized. Unlike most hurricane reports, these affected me personally. I KNEW what those places were supposed to look like – and instead they looked like a war zone.

I also have family in the greater Houston area. I called last Friday before the storm hit to find out what they planned to do. My aunt said they were going to ride out the storm rather than evacuate. They lived far enough inland from both the Gulf coast and Galveston Bay that they didn’t think the surge would do anything to them. They were more concerned with the wind and rain, but they’d done all they could to secure their property. The rest they had to leave in God’s hands.

My grandmother is also down there. Up until a couple of months ago, she was living with my aunt. But she’d fallen and broken her hip, so she had been moved to a rehabilitation center until she was able to move around again on her own. The rehab center was also not evacuating. They’d secured their facilities and done all they could to make the patients and residents comfortable in an obviously uncomfortable situation.

Those of us more than 1000 miles away from Houston did little to prepare for the storm. Why should we? We aren’t in the path of the hurricane – right? Well, Ike certainly had more in it than we expected!

As Ike continued up from Texas, through Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and even Ohio – we all got a close-up and personal experience of what a hurricane can do. My cousin in Louisville is without power. My brother-in-law in Dayton just got his power back yesterday. Columbus is still trying to recover. The Columbus Dispatch reported six confirmed deaths from the storm, millions without electricity, and many even without running water. They have a helpful section on their website: “Deal With the Aftermath.” But I wonder how those without power can access the internet to learn what to do?

We have become so completely dependent on basic services that we take them for granted – until suddenly they aren’t there. We make all kinds of plans for how to spend our time – until emergencies rip those plans to shreds. We have priorities for our money – until we have to spend it on survival rather than pleasure.

Jesus talks about misplaced priorities and false assumptions in the “parable of the rich fool.” Found in Luke 12:13-21, Jesus describes a landowner whose fields produced an abundant crop – so much abundance that it wouldn’t all fit into his barns. He had a problem, but he thought he had the right solution when he said to himself: “This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

Isn’t that what we do? We think we can take life easy – except when we can’t. And while we think we can take it easy, we become increasingly oblivious to those around us who are struggling to survive. Assessing the damage from Hurricane Ike shouldn’t be limited to what the storm did to our trees, our property, our basic infrastructure. We should also assess the damage we have done to our souls BEFORE the storm. Have we become like the rich fool, content to eat, drink, and be merry?

Here’s what God said to the landowner: “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

My aunt and her family came through the storm with little damage. They even had electricity restored before the weekend was over. My grandmother didn’t fare so well. Last Sunday evening, she was incoherent. The initial diagnosis was that she’d suffered a stroke. Because of Ike, the hospital had no neurologists who could examine her. For the past several days, no one could see her in the hospital because it was on emergency power only and therefore operating in “lock-down” mode.

I don’t know whether or not God is about to bring my grandmother home, but I do know that she is ready if this is her time. She has spent her life assessing the damage, asking God to forgive her participation in destructiveness and self-centeredness, then working to bring others into a state of readiness to meet God, too.

For me, assessing the damage from Ike is intensely personal. But no matter how much – or how little – Ike affected you, take time to assess the damage. Especially to your soul. Work to live differently post-Ike than you did pre-Ike. Don’t make the mistake of the rich landowner. Live for God and your neighbor rather than just for yourself.