To me the main issue with debt is that it allows one to maintain the illusion of prosperity apart from God and obedience to His will. The scriptures seem to suggest that if we walk in close fellowship with God that He’ll bless us (in His timing and in His way) and we won’t have to rely on the assistance of anyone else to prosper.
Proverbs 10:22 (Amplified Bible)
The blessing of the Lord--it makes [truly] rich, and He adds no sorrow with it [neither does toiling increase it].
It’s a lot easier (on the flesh) to go out and get something on credit than it is to pray and find out what the will of the Father is in this matter and then to wait for Him to meet that need via whatever channel your level of faith would permit Him to.
djm
By Charles Finney
Rom 13:7-8 ESV Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. (8) Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
I am to state the duty of those who are in debt.
They are bound to make any sacrifice of property or time, and indeed any sacrifice that it is possible for them to make, to pay their debts.
Here it may be asked again, does the law of love permit my creditor to demand a sacrifice of me? If he loves me as he does himself, why should he require, or even allow me to make a sacrifice of property to pay what I owe him? I reply:
If any one is to make a sacrifice or suffer loss, it is the debtor and not the creditor. It will almost certainly be some damage to him to be disappointed in not receiving his due. It may so disarrange his affairs, and break in upon his calculations as to occasion him great damage. Of this he is to be the judge.
Your sacrifice may be necessary not only to prevent his loss, but to enable him, to meet his contracts, and thus prevent his sin. His confidence in your veracity may have led him to contract prospective debts, and by not paying him, you not only sin yourself, but cause him to sin.
The refusal of one to make a sacrifice to pay his debts, may involve many others, in both loss and sin. A. owes B., B. owes C., and C. owes D., and so on in a long chain of mutual dependencies. Now if there be a failure in the first or any other link of this chain, all below it are involved in loss and sin. Now where shall this evil be arrested?
Suppose you hold the place of C. A. refuses to make a sacrifice to pay B., and B to pay you.--Shall you sin because they do, and involve your creditor in loss and sin? No. Whatever others may do, you are bound to pay your debts. And unless your creditor voluntarily consents to defer the time of payment, you are bound to pay him at any sacrifice.
Persons that are in debt should not contract new debts to pay old ones. It is the practice of some when they get involved, to keep up their credit, by borrowing of one to pay another. Their meeting and canceling the last debt, depends altogether upon the presumption, that they shall be able to borrow the money of some body else.--When they have borrowed of one they will keep him out of his pay as long as possible without losing their credit. And then, instead of making a sacrifice of property sufficient to discharge the obligation, they borrow from B to pay A, and from C to pay B, and thus, perhaps, disappoint and disoblige a dozen men by not paying them exactly at the time agreed, instead of at once stopping short, and parting with what they have, at any sacrifice, to pay the debt.
I do not say that a man should not in any case borrow of one man to pay another. But this I say, that as a general thing, such practices are highly reprehensible. Still, if a debt becomes due, and you have not the money at hand, but are certain that at a given time you shall have it, I do not suppose it wrong for you to borrow and pay this debt, with the understanding that you pay this borrowed money at the time specified. But to borrow money with no other prospect of an ultimate payment than that you can borrow again, and thus keep up your credit from time to time, is wicked.
Those who are in debt have no right to give away the money which they owe. If you are in debt, the money in your hands belongs to your creditor, and not to you. You have no right, therefore, "to be generous till you are just." You have strictly no more right to give that money away than you have to steal money to give away.
But here it should be particularly understood what is and what is not to be accounted as giving money away; e.g. it is not giving away your money to pay the current expenses of the congregation to which you are attached. Your proportion of the current expenses of the congregation or church to which you belong is impliedly, if not expressly contracted by you. You cannot withhold it any more than the payment of any other debt.
The same may be said of the support of ministers and foreign missionaries, and all for whose support the faith of the Church is pledged. It seems to be a common, but erroneous understanding of professors of religion, that what are more generally called their secular debts or obligations are binding, and are to be discharged of course. But that their obligations, expressed or implied, to religious institutions are not so absolutely binding; and of course they can give nothing, as they express it, to these objects until their debts are paid. Now, beloved, you ought to know that to the support of the institutions of religion, you are pledged, both virtually and actually, by your profession, and that these are your most sacred debts, and are thus to be considered and discharged by you. I beseech of you not to consider the meeting and canceling of such demands as these in the light of a gift,--as if you were making God a present instead of discharging a solemn debt. I have been astonished to find that the pecuniary embarrassments of the few past years have so far crippled the movements of the great benevolent societies for want of funds; and that Missionaries, for whose support the faith and honor of the Church were pledged, should be so far cut short of their necessary supplies, under the pretense that the Church must pay her secular debts before she could discharge her high and sacred obligations to them, and the work in which they are engaged.
A person who is in debt has no right to purchase for himself or family things not absolutely essential for their subsistence. Things that might lawfully be purchased and used under other circumstances become unlawful when you are in debt.
A creditor has no right to deprive you of necessary food and indispensable raiment, or of your liberty. To do so would put it out of your power ever to pay. But you have no right to indulge in any thing more than the necessaries of life, while your debts are unpaid. To do so is as unlawful as it would be to steal to purchase unnecessary articles.
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