Psalm 15
O LORD, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart; who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors; in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honor those who fear the LORD; who stand by their oath even to their hurt; who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be moved.
……………………………………………………………………………
Once upon a time there was a German thinker, called Max Weber, hailed for the foundation of modern society as the father of sociology. He published his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1905.
He was a native from the city of Erfurt of Saxonia, where coincidentally, Martin Luther had attended the medieval University between 1501 and 1505, before he entered the St. Augustine Monastery in Erfurt. When Max Weber attempted to connect the dots between Protestantism and Capitalism, he was not able to point a finger at Martin Luther, because whatever was break-through, achieved by Martin Luther, it was practically the breaking up with the Popery and the rejecting the authority of the Pope over the Christian Church.
Otherwise he remained a giant of the old world, who although breached the closed gate of the medieval Christianity shattering and swinging it into the future, but like Moses in the Bible story, he did not cross the border but stayed behind in the past.
Allegedly, it was John Calvin who opened the Pandora’s Box of the theological justification of money lending, and with that he conceptualized the attempted Biblical justification of Capitalism by that simple statement that he found nothing in the Bible against lending of money with interest, except the case of excessive usury. He was very wrong of following the views of a French jurist called Charles Dumoulin, who declared credit productive and called for the lifting of prohibitions of lending money on interest.
The Roman Catholic Church condemned money lending with interest, mostly based on Aristotle who wrote that money does not beget money, and on the Old Testament which is very clear about the ban of interest. It is not only about the excessive usury, but any rate of interest, as Pope Benedict XIV states in his encyclical, entitled “Vix pervenit” in 1745, that “One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small; neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich; nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but is spent usefully…”.
Although modern Catholicism made its own compromises with some money lending practices of modern capitalism, this encyclical adamantly condemns any practice of charging interest on loans, as usury.
There are many verses in the Bible that say that charging interest is morally wrong.
However, Palms 15 suggests that charging interest is not a slight side issue, it is a major sin, which must be avoided by any cost, because only the people, who, among other godly virtues, do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent, … only… Those … shall never be moved.
It is astonishing how the Prophet Ezekiel, in chapter 18, put the money lending at interest, on the very list of the deadly sins by saying that if a father has a son who sheds blood or “has eaten at the mountain shrines, and defiled his neighbor’s wife, has wronged the poor and needy, has taken by robbery, has not restored the pledge, and has lifted up his eyes to the idols, has committed abomination, has lent with interest, and has taken increase from the poor; shall he then live? He shall not live. ... He shall surely die. His blood will be on him.”
The ban on charging interest is as early as the commandment level regulation in the Book of Exodus, chapter 22, which demands that “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.”
The book of the Leviticus repeats the commandment by saying that “If your brother has become poor, and his hand can’t support himself among you, then you shall uphold him. … Take no interest from him or profit; but fear your God, that your brother may live among you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.”
When modern-society-Christianity may ask, OK, but why? The answer is simple, as it was simple at the time it was given. Because: “ I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” the land of slavery.
Jesus, except from a parable, says technically nothing particular about taking interest on loans, but he brutally chased away the money changers from the court of the Temple, and in John the Baptist style he ruled that “Give to him who asks you, and don’t turn away him who desires to borrow from you.”
It is clear in the context of the chapter 25 in the Gospel of Matthew, that Jesus meant by "giving" a free will gift to the poor, as it is written that on the Judgment Day, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.’
Amazingly, the Old Testament adds in the book of the Proverbs that “ if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. For you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord God will reward you.” There must be free lunch provided for the poor.
When as Christian Church, we practically accept the wicked, anti-biblical practices of the wicked anti-Bible, usury-hearted high society which surrounds us, when we accept and benefit from the system of usury and money lending on interest, what are we thinking? What will happen to us and to our souls on judgment day, or before that, by ignoring God’s regulations?
When it is clearly against the Bible, how could have we been so content enjoying middle class Christianity during the late prosperity in the West, where the economical rules were and still are the old wicked ones we know very well from the slave-holding Egypt and Babylon and Rome?
Sooner or later we have to make a stand against the Golden Bull, otherwise we will go to judgment together with the idolaters who worship money and gold. May we repent and amend our ways, fully submitting ourselves to the Lord, to whom may eternal praise be given,
AMEN .
