Handling debts as a Christian

Our Bible acknowledges the need to borrow. Borrowing money is not bad in its self what matters is the purpose of the borrowing and the actions we put forth after borrowing. The questions we need to ask ourselves are “For what purpose am I borrowing? Will it be of great use borrowing, or I can wait and work for it? Is the timeline for this need so short that I cannot make up before it dies down? How will I reimburse this and when? Our Bible gives us some hints on how to live with this real human problem. When we talk of borrowing many people move straight to money because this is what is mostly down in our daily life and mainly people have taken it to be a necessity. I remember one of my brothers told me the General Manager of his bank called him last year asking if he knows he can borrow money from the bank and if he knows the condition to have a loan. The fact is that since subscribed to this bank he has never taken a loan and for 8 years he has been receiving his salary from the same bank. It was abnormal for the manager to see that this client has not taken a loan especially that he is a civil servant who does not earn a salary that is relatively high compared to the private sector. So many people have taken borrowing to be a necessity, and some even go for financial loans without calculating what they are to do with it. Some loan money with no project apart from going to drink and dance in night clubs with friends. There are certain loans that a painful and stressful to pay and others are not. It depends on what you have done with the loan. You can borrow a good or an animal, in fact any thing material which you have to pay back in the time limit defined. We shall look at some few aspects we need to respect when taking loans and see how scriptures recommend them to us. Here we will learn that we have to:

• Respect our loan engagements
• Learn to lend to others when we are blessed with wealth
• Be sure that we are in real need before going in for a loan
• Abstain from being sureties for debts

A loan is like a contract which one has to respect based on the conditions of the loan. Our scripture say if you borrow anything from someone and it happens that what you have borrowed is injured or dies in case of a living thing, then you have to make full restitution. So if I borrowed a car and fall into accident with it I have to fully give the car to the owner whether by replacing the car or repairing to its full state. If I borrowed a horse for a journey and it dies, then I have to replace with another horse of the same quality. That is respecting our engagements. This is what our scripture teaches in Exodus 22:14 “And if a man borrow aught of his neighbour, and it be hurt, or die, the owner thereof not being with it, he shall surely make restitution.” When you are blessed, do not forget your old debts. Many people forget this and when they have they make new plans and continue accumulating debts. This is not God’s wish for our lives. We learn this from the wife of Elisha’s son, when the husband died with debts. The son feared the Lord and God blessed the wife through Elisha the prophet and she had more than enough oil to sell and pay the debts of her late husband. The prophet did not tell her to go and live a good and luxurious life with her children but he asked her to go and pay the debts and then use the rest of the oil for her children 2 King 4:7 “Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy sons of the rest.” We have to respect our engagements or the engagements of our families; after all we are part of the family. The one who borrows and does not pay back is a wicked person Psalm 37:21 “The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again; But the righteous dealeth graciously, and giveth.” But the righteous is polite, kind, decent even with debts and he gives. Are you polite as a debtor? Do you give even when you have debts? Then tell yourself what you are from this scripture passage.

God’s wish for us is not for us to borrow but for us to lend to others. God wants us to overflow with spiritual things as with material things so that we can help those who are needy around us. It is not God’s will that we need because he promises to meet us at the point of our needs; the psalmist says he shall not want because the Lord is his shepherd. God is ready to bless us but we have just one little step of faith to do. Trust in the lord with all our mind and all our soul; then He will bless us and we shall be the ones to lend and we shall not borrow; Deuteronomy 15:6 “For Jehovah thy God will bless thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over thee.” There is one thing we need to learn from this passage and others; that when we are blessed, it is not for us to be greedy with it, only thinking of what to do for ourselves, but it is for us to show goodness to others. We need to use God’s blessing to bless other people’s lives; that way they will see God’s glory through our act and come closer to God, trusting Him as well. In Deuteronomy chapter 28 it says the Lord will bless all the work of your hands and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. Yes! It is to many nations not to one because you are fully blessed. There is no need to borrow because you have it and you are satisfied with what you have now. Deuteronomy 28:12 “Jehovah will open unto thee his good treasure the heavens, to give the rain of thy land in its season, and to bless all the work of thy hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.” When I read this verse I think of the nations of the world today. Many of the nations today are surviving on debts. It is a great sign for us to mend our ways and go back to God, he will provide all our needs and even more for us to lend to other nations. We read that the US is the greatest debtor in the world, and to our own eyes we say it is the greatest nation in the world. Since last year we have been hearing about the financial crisis in Europe; it is high time we mend our ways. The same is true with Africa because we keep on borrowing but we forget that our problem is corruption and embezzlement of public funds. Yes it is true that we are making progress in our financial issues these years but we need to make more and stop borrowing but start lending to the Europeans and the west when we shall be blessed. It sounds funny to you right? But that is it, what the human eye sees impossible is possible in the eyes of God. We just need to humbly come close to God by changing our ways and respecting God’s rules as prescribed in the Bible.

We do not just have to borrow because we need to have money. We need to borrow when we have a real need and a defined project for that particular need. We should learn to borrow only when we have a real need. It should not be a want; that is you want to have people see you like… I have seen people who go for heavy financial loans in order to run a marriage feast or ceremony. Many have had the loans which have taken them more than three years to reimburse. Imagine how you will live with your new wife without money or with a heavy debt? They consciously start their marital life with problems; stupid problems because they have done nothing concrete with the money. When they look around they see nothing which they can say we used the money for it. You should therefore be sure that you are in real need before we go for a loan. Our Bible says when you borrow you are indebted to the lender and you also become the lender’s slave. You may not be physically a slave but mentally you are because you will be worried and legally you are bound to pay the debts you owe. Proverbs 22:7 “The rich ruleth over the poor; And the borrower is servant to the lender.” Our Bible teaches us to owe no one. So we have to pay all our debts in due time. The only thing we should owe any body is love and apart from that we should pay our debts in time. Romans13:8 “Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law.”

If you have the means to borrow without putting up security for the debts fine; but if you do not have the possibility then put the security but be sure of your engagement else you may lose more than the value. Many people have lost their houses or cars or companies or farms because of loans. They did not analyse well how they will pay back and hence the period cut them and they lost the thing they kept for security. Proverbs 22:26,27 teaches us to be wise in such dealings but what remains is that we should be careful when taking loans and should respect the appointment else we shall be in trouble. We learn here that we should not be sureties for debts because when the debtor will fail to pay, we have to bear the cross as surety “Be thou not one of them that strike hands, [Or] of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast not wherewith to pay, Why should he take away thy bed from under thee?” When you stand surety, you are like a guarantee or collateral and so by law you have to bear the debt if it is not paid in due time. That is a vow you have taken as concerns the debt and Biblically you have to fulfil your vows; and our scripture teach us to better stay off vows than to take them without respecting them Ecclesiastes 5:5 “Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.”