Christians need less debt not more money
As I mentioned in the prior post, divorce makes both parties to the marriage poorer and increases the chances the children will be less successful financially as adults.
And that leads to the discussion of money.
Christians do not need money to transform America, but they do need to avoid owing it to others.
Debt costs freedom
Debt, as the Bible says, makes the borrower the lender’s slave.
When a person becomes indebted on credit cards, for a car or even a home, they are committing part of their future. They are promising to work. They are promising to pay. And they are promising to do all that in the future for something they wanted in the past. Debt doesn’t merely cost interest. It lays claim to tomorrow’s work.
I am not saying all debt is a sin. I am saying that every debt has a freedom cost beyond the interest rate, even so-called “good debt” like a mortgage.
A man buys a modest house he can easily afford, and the mortgage may restrict him very little. But suppose he buys the most expensive house the bank says he can afford. He has not merely purchased a house. He has purchased a career. He must now earn enough money to keep the house. Whatever he may decide in the future he would rather do is no longer an option because he has already decided what he must do.
Debt reverses the dominion mandate
God desires those who serve Him to be the head and not the tail, the lender and not the borrower, above and not below (Deuteronomy 28). Debt reverses that.
It makes us beholden, indebted, and subject to others. Shackles we fasten on ourselves are no less restrictive. Debt is a dominion-killer.
It was for freedom that the Lord set us free (Galatians 5:1). If you want to transform America, do not use your freedom to become slaves to men. (I Corinthians 7:23).
Debt destroys margin
Debt doesn’t just mortgage our future and reverse the dominion mandate, it destroys margin, and margin is where freedom lives. If I earn $10, but because of debt obligations I have to pay $9, I only have $1 to do with what I want—or better, what God wants.
Giving happens in the margin. Discretionary spending happens in the margin. Saving happens in the margin. Margin enables us to move from jobs, careers, and cities if the Lord tells us. Margin is freedom, and debt destroys margin.
Whether it is less margin, less savings, or less options in the future, it all translates into less freedom. And the less freedom we have to do what we want is less freedom to do what the Lord wants.
Christians don’t need to become rich to transform America. They just need to be available to the Lord, and debt erodes that freedom. GS
