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THE LAW OF JUBILEE/DEBT
God gave the following blunt, bold-faced command without explanation or apology: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts” (Deuteronomy 15:1). That’s it. No qualifications, no preconditions, no exceptions. Wasn’t it enough that the poor could borrow money interest free and buy food at cost? Apparently not, because here is how it was to be done: “Every creditor shall cancel the loan he has made to his fellow Israelite” (Deuteronomy 15:2). Just in case the Israelites balked at loaning when the seventh year was near, God warned: “Be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: ‘The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,’ so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing” (Deuteronomy 15:8-9).
What was a potential moneylender to do? One response was to ignore the word of the Lord and proceed with business as usual. Most chose this option, and the biblical text was explained away. Eventually the Lord’s condemnation fell on them. The other course of action, the one toward which the law of God is still nudging us, is to work to ensure that there are no poor among us.
To be sure, poverty is not itself a virtue, and it presents its own opportunities for sin. The Apostle Paul had to write to the church at Thessalonica, “We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy. … Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:11-12). But these examples of human laziness are never taken as the basic cause of poverty, nor are they used to mitigate the obligation to care for the poor.
The word of the Lord in the Jubilee law is clear: The indebtedness of the poor must not be allowed to breed yet greater debt. There must be provision for relief from the burden of indebtedness.
THE LAW OF JUBILEE/LAND
In the economy of ancient Israel, land was not just land; it was the basic wealth of society. When the people of Israel entered Canaan, the land was divided among the tribes, and then again among the clans and families. Each household began with its own permanent allotment. Under the law given Israel, a man could not sell his land. He could lease it, but only if he became impoverished. As God says, “What he is really selling you is the number of crops” (Leviticus 25:16).
After every seventh Sabbath year came the year of Jubilee, when all land returned to its original owners. Also, if a man became so impoverished he had to give up farming and become another’s servant; his service lasted only until the year of Jubilee. In that year they were to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Leviticus 25:10). Shocking though it may be to us, God prescribed for Israel a system designed to prevent the basic wealth of society from falling into the hands of a few.
Attempts to spiritualize the commandments about the land simply do not work. The commandment specifically countered poverty — not spiritual poverty but physical poverty. When we remember that land was the basic economic resource of the whole society, we are able to hear the word of the Lord as it speaks to us through the land law of the Jubilee: No matter what the basic economic activity of a society, no matter what the principal source and measure of wealth, no one should be permanently deprived of a share in the economic life of the society.
Now the question becomes, what do we do about it? An application of biblical economic principles today must begin, not with changes in public law, but with changes in the attitudes and behaviors of American Christians.
POWER OR INFLUENCE?
When confronting a social problem, it is tempting to immediately start a political movement. There are three good reasons why changing the law may not be the best initial response. First, despite the continuity between the testaments, we are not Old Testament Israel. The New Testament people of God are not identified with any territory or political structure. Second, Jesus specifically rejected methods of power for bringing in the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, many evangelical Christian leaders seem preoccupied with gaining political power to fix everything. Finally, as history shows, the church does not have a good track record exercising power, perhaps because of the temptation to believe we are acting on the Lord’s behalf, turning our causes into holy crusades.
If not by means of political power, how is Jubilee justice to prevail? Jesus spelled out very carefully the strategy for spreading God’s kingdom. It should grow like seed scattered by a farmer, He said, or like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a great tree, or like yeast permeating a lump of dough.
If there is to be movement toward an Old Testament concept of economic justice, change must begin, not in the political arena, but in the church. Before it can speak out for change in the larger society, the church must first earn that right by becoming a model of biblical economic justice.
THE CHURCH AND THE POOR
The early church’s response to poverty brought the first Christians to the attention of the surrounding world. The early Christians obviously practiced the economic law of God and heeded the admonition that “there should be no poor among you” (Deuteronomy 15:4). A key passage is found in the second chapter of Acts: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need” (Acts 2:44-45). It’s impossible to miss the echo of the Old Testament economic law: “There were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:34).
Caring for the poor was so important to the early church that it was the first activity to involve actual organization: not preaching, not evangelizing, not building houses of worship, but caring for the poor, as recorded in Acts 6. Generosity and caring for the poor was a structural part of the life of God’s people rather than an individualistic exercise, just as it had been when the people observed the law of harvest after settling the Promised Land.
The fundamental change necessary for the church to align itself with the economic laws of the Bible is to reject the Western interpretation of “private property.” Although property may legally belong to us, nothing is ours to do with as we please; we are always responsible to God. We are not true owners of anything. “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills,” we sang in Sunday school. The early Christians took this reminder at face value. They functioned within the mindset of the Jubilee land law: wealth fundamentally belongs to the community, not merely to those who gain control of large portions of it.
What might happen if the church began to pay attention to the economic laws of the Old Testament and the example of the early church? Imagine what would happen if the first priority in organizing the life of the church were caring for the poor. Imagine how different things would be if one-third of the Sunday morning offering in every church were devoted to the kind of caring commanded in Deuteronomy 24. Imagine the impact on homelessness if Christian business owners made sure a few jobs were available to the otherwise unemployable — one possible modern equivalent of the law of harvest, the gleaning law. Imagine if professing Christians in the business world followed the spirit of John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer, who famously said that the shoemaker does not make shoes to make a profit, but to clothe the naked feet of his neighbor.
Beyond setting a better example, Christians can also see that some economic problems are so egregious there is already substantial public support for change. In these areas, the leadership of the church could speak out and help tip the balance in the direction of legal change.
Credit card companies spend enormous sums getting Congress to make bankruptcy more difficult; then, when the poor have fewer avenues of escape, these companies increase efforts to push credit cards to the less credit-worthy. Payday loan companies thrive in poor neighborhoods, charging unconscionable rates by calling them “service charges” rather than interest. In many of our cities, supermarkets offering lower prices are found only in more affluent neighborhoods, while many poor are forced to buy from local convenience stores that charge high prices.
Our calling is to effect change by example in word and deed. Rather than salt and light in the world, have we become bargain-hunting, wealth-seeking, risk-avoiding consumers, indistinguishable from the surrounding society? The hope that the church will have real influence on today’s social and economic problems will only be fulfilled if we pay attention to the principles of the economic laws of the Bible.
*This article first appeared in Light & Life magazine online, a publication of the Free Methodist church. To read more from Lowell Hagan on this subject visit http://www.freemethodistchurch.org/Magazine/
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