Prayer for May 3, 2022
Prayer for May 3, 2022: Please pray with me. Holy God, we have this silly idea that our economic systems are divinely inspired. Why else would we defend them so much? Our economic systems end up becoming more important than the people who participate in them. Occasionally we get honesty about this with leaders demanding that people sacrifice for the economy. But usually we keep that part quiet. Which serves which in a healthy society? Is it people serving the economy, or an economy serving people? Your economics and economic system look very different than any human made economic system. What you value is far different. And that’s scary for people. It’s scary to have people be set free from the bondage of debt. It’s scary to have people set free from consumerism. It’s scary to have people set free from what is owed and what is earned. It’s scary because then we lose the sense of control. And what we value so much more than anything else is control. Set us free from this addiction. Amen.
Call to action: How can you set someone free from a debt that they owe – even if it a verbal debt?
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One of the sticking points in life that stands out to me (but I was in “divorce care” at the time, and that has always clouded my response and my memory of it) was meeting with a group for lunch after worship one Sunday in a fine restaurant. It was 2009, and a lot of people were deep in financial do-do.
One of the ladies joining us that day was a loan officer at a local bank. Without giving names away, she told this group from church about a family they were foreclosing on who had borrowed for the family business and purchased heavy construction equipment. So, this was sorta a big deal.
According to her – for I never had any other source of info on it – they were a trustworthy, honorable family in business for many years. The tough times had sunk them, not their character or any of that. These people were poster children for hard times. But the bank was now going in to reclaim property the next day, and this was just eating her up inside. She felt terrible about it.
Wow!
A Christian woman discussing this with fellow Christians around lunch.
And everyone sympathized, mostly with the bank lady who had to move on them. She was in an impossible position. These people knew what they had signed up for when they did it. This is the cost of business. They comforted HER like this.
I sat there thinking she wants the comfort of Christ. This not only isn’t fair, but what she is asked to do is not of God, AND THAT is threatening redemption. Jesus plainly says to FORGIVE THE DEBT.
So, I spoke up to that effect.
I was blown away by how everyone at the table, including the woman who professed to be struggling over this issue, turned on me as if I spoke for Satan.
You can’t do that! That’s not right. Are you out of your mind? Even if she tried, she would lose her job!
Ah, yes, I said, but she would join Jesus and have her salvation.
I never got invited back.
This prayer that I posted came in response to a facebook post that I put on the day before. I posted about one version of the Lord’s Prayer saying “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” I posed the question if we Christians were really interested in following what Jesus says in the Lord’s Prayer.
Wow, the response was unbelievable. I had passive aggressive responses, harsh criticism, vehement defense of debt, people saying that it wasn’t about money and I knew better, that I was twisting the language, etc.
I guess I didn’t realize how attached to an economic system that people were and how it has become a part of their identity, even when they are abused by it without knowing it. I cited scripture and parables of Jesus. There were some others who did as well. And each time there wasn’t an adequate response to these passages, just rationalization. To one person who was very testy with me I responded by saying that I didn’t realize that our entire economic system was so fragile that it could not withstand a small critique about one aspect of it by a pastor on facebook.
So with things like this, I don’t back down. I go in further. In this case, offering the prayer. I’ll probably do another post on the topic. On Sunday I included talk about “beastly economics” from Revelation 13 and 18. I’m sure people don’t like it. But my job isn’t to say stuff people like, it’s to proclaim Good News that sets people free – even when they don’t want to be set free.