“Descriptive, not Prescriptive,” part 4: Options and Patterns

7 November 2010

Before I begin this entry, I need to make something clear to you, dear reader.  Some of the examples I use here are indeed topics of discussion and continuing growth in my church, and I am using them because they are very much on my heart of late.  But I am not picking on my church.  As my church has been prodded toward obedience on these things, it has responded very well.  So as I talk about evangelical resistance to growth in certain areas, that is not a passive-aggressive way of calling out recalcitrant people in my own circle.  There aren’t any.  I mean just what I say — I see this resistance in the broader evangelical church, and I am seeking to address it as best I can.

Options and Obedience

Many believers will simply fail to notice a biblical requirement — say, the one to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  They may have read those passages many times, but it simply doesn’t occur to them that they should do something in response.  The first time this dawns on them, it is because someone is pushing for a particular type of obedience — say, “We need to sing the Sons of Korah version of Psalm 148 in the service this Sunday.”   Upon being challenged as to why this is necessary, the speaker will respond with Ephesians 5:19.

The response at this point is pretty predictable.  “There’s nothing there that says we have to sing that particular song this particular morning.”

This is of course true.  The church could be in complete obedience to the biblical requirement and never sing any song by that particular band, ever. Unfortunately, too often what happens next is…nothing.

Because we need not sing that particular arrangement of that particular psalm this week, we don’t.  Also we don’t sing any other arrangement of that psalm.  Or any other psalm.  And in this way the fact that God gives us freedom in how we obey becomes the occasion for not obeying at all.

Patterns

This is where biblical patterns of obedience are so helpful to us.  The Bible not only gives us requirements to obey, it gives us patterns of obedience to emulate.  A particular example may not be the only way of obeying, but it is a way of obeying.  We don’t have to start from scratch.

The first problem evangelicals have with these patterns is failing to even notice them.  We notice that the early church successfully resolved an important theological disagreement in Acts 15, for example — but we pay no mind at all to how they did it.  We recognize the commands to be of one mind, to submit to one another, to contend earnestly for the faith, and so on.  And Acts 15 becomes a sermon illustration: “See, they stood up for the truth.  We should too.”

Yes, but how?  Are we acting in continuity with the way they did it?  We don’t know.  We never even checked to see how they did it.  We just take the goal that the requirement gives us, and improvise something that we think will get us there.

At some point, some observant soul may point out how they did it, back in the day.  “Look at what they did.  They appealed to another church with more theological ‘horsepower,’ they appointed a day to gather, they pursued the dispute until everyone had fallen silent, and then they responded, unanimously, to the issue.”

Most evangelicals respond to that observation in the same way that they do to the suggestion that we must sing this arrangement of this psalm this week.  That is, they say “Sure, that was a good way to do it.  But it’s descriptive, not prescriptive.  We don’t have to do it that way, just because they did.”

True, up to a point.  Every situation is somewhat different, and it is the province of God-given wisdom to appraise those differences and tweak our response accordingly.  This is to say that we will not respond in unison with our fathers at every point; sometimes we will be in harmony with them.

But what madness makes us suppose that we may simply invent an approach without regard for the examples that God gives us in inspired Scripture?  What makes us think that we may act out of harmony with the way in which our fathers obeyed?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Happy Reformation Day

31 October 2010

On this day 493 years ago, Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg chapel, and in so doing started a fire that has not yet gone out.

The medieval church was in many ways a praiseworthy institution, and it has many lessons to teach the church today.  However, corruption and doctrinal defection had also accumulated over time.  There had always been reformers who protested against the problems in the church, but in the early sixteenth century God used Luther and the other Reformers to bring these things to the attention of the church leadership in a way they could no longer afford to ignore.

This was Christ’s judgment on His church, and the leadership ought to have responded by repenting.  Indeed, repentance was exactly the response that Luther and the other Reformers sought.  They never conceived of themselves as starting a new church; they never intended to start a new church.  But the leadership hardened in their rebellion, and as a result the Protestant churches were born.

Today Christ’s church is fragmented into many pieces, most of whom do not think of themselves as part of one another.  But we have only one Head, and He has only one Body.  We believe — to put it in the old way — in  the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, and the communion of saints.  We also believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, and on that day when we all stand in the assembled throng before God’s throne in heaven, there will be no fragmentation.  Even today, when the spirits of just men made perfect gather on the heavenly Zion, there is no division.

In fifteen minutes, my church body and I will ascend to the heavenly Zion and join them, as will many other churches in this town and around the world, and there, on that holy mountain, nothing will divide us — even if we don’t yet know it.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“Descriptive, not Prescriptive” Part 3

24 October 2010

Every child in the world knows that you can learn how to live from stories.  And the biblical authors themselves teach us to read the biblical stories for instructions on how to live.  They get doctrine from narrative.  They treat the stories as prescriptive.
And so ought we to do.

Of course, we have to interpret them properly.  “Brothers, do not be children in understanding.  In malice be children, but in understanding be mature.”

So how does this work?  When we read Genesis, it teaches us.  The story of creation teaches us how the world is organized.  We have mostly disregarded those lessons since the Enlightenment, but let’s take one of the cases where we’ve gotten it right.  In the beginning, God made one man, and from his side, He brought forth one woman.  He brought her to the man and created the first marriage, an image of the Trinity: God unites man and woman.  It is, as the popular saying goes, Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.  Also not Eve and Charlotte, nor Adam, Eve, and Charlotte, nor any of the other permutations.

Jesus took the story of marriage’s very beginning and showed that it taught a lesson about divorce: “What God has joined together, let man not put asunder.”  Now, divorce is nowhere mentioned in the Genesis account of Adam and Eve.  There is no direct prohibition of divorce in the Genesis account of Adam and Eve; in fact, divorce is never mentioned anywhere in the whole story.  But a particular marriage can harmonize with the origins of marriage and fulfill what marriage is for, or it can be out of harmony.  Jesus’ prohibition of divorce is a call for individual marriages to harmonize with the paradigm case of marriage.  The exception He allows, in cases of adultery, is also in harmony.  The divorcer, in that case, is not putting asunder what God joined together, because the adulterous spouse has already done that.  In broad strokes, this is the way a true origin story can be applied.

So what origin stories do we have to work with?  Genesis 1 is the origin of the world, and man in it.  Genesis 2 is the origin of man in particular, and marriage.  The story of Noah is the formation of the geophysical world we now live in, and the origin of civilization as we know it.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the origin of Israel as a people, and Exodus is the origin of Israel as a nation-state.  Acts is the origin of the Church.

Wouldn’t it be something if our ecclesiology began to reflect that last one?  If our actual church practice began to harmonize with our origin story?  But that’s another post.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“Descriptive, not Prescriptive,” Part 2

17 October 2010

So where does this “descriptive, not prescriptive” thing even come from?

It’s about fear.  It’s about being afraid that someone will take some horrible event in a story and decide that it’s God’s will to act it out.  Next thing you know, somebody’s trying to have multiple wives, and justify it because after all, David and Solomon and Jacob did.  Or speak in tongues, and justify it because it shows up in Acts.  Or dance, because Miriam and David did.  Or drink wine, or…pick your personal horror story.

And let’s face it: “that’s descriptive, not prescriptive” is an undeniably attractive solution.  By denying your opponent in the debate any recourse to the narrative passages of the Bible, you’ve effectively cut his legs out from under him.  It’s all very, very convenient.

It’s also ignorant, foolish, and unbiblical.  The one thing it’s not is childish–as we’ve seen, every child knows that stories teach.

The biblical authors make their points from narrative, and they do it constantly.  Imagine Paul making the argument of Romans 4 in a synagogue — as he must have done many times.  “Abraham was justified by faith, before he was ever circumcised!” he says to the crowd.  “The same thing can happen today.”
Now imagine one of his opponents rising to rebut him: “Our esteemed guest, Rabbi Paul, fails to realize that the Genesis account is descriptive, not prescriptive.”

Or imagine Jesus, teaching on divorce: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts, but from the beginning, God made them male and female.  For this reason a man will leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
A scribe steps forward in the crowd: “That was true for Adam and Eve, but that’s descriptive, not prescriptive.”

This is just nonsense, and we all ought to know better.  Certainly the biblical authors regularly drew prescriptions from narrative.  If we are not to follow their hermeneutics, then what are we to do?  Just make something up?

That’s pretty much what we’re doing, and the effects are devastating.

The first and most obvious problem is that three quarters of the Bible is story.  God gave us the Bible so we would know how to live, and we’re trying to pretend that a person can’t learn how to live from three quarters of it.  That’s the kind of mistake that tends to issue in long-term disobedience out of sheer, willful ignorance.  Sorry to say, such disobedience is not in short supply.

Second, the most dedicated “description not prescription” guy gets the story about the kid playing in the street.  He will also immediately object, “But biblical stories are not nearly that simple.  They’re far more complicated.”

Of course this is true, but consider the ramifications.   When he pleads “descriptive, not prescriptive,” he is in effect pleading ignorance.  Jesus and Paul set the example, but this guy can’t follow them.  He is admitting that his hermeneutics have broken down, that he’s off the edge of the map.  “Descriptive, not prescriptive” is the hermeneutical equivalent of “Here be dragons.”  But this is just admitting that he doesn’t know how to read the story.

The solution, of course, is to learn.  But instead of learning, he treats his ignorance as an argument for not learning how to read the biblical stories. He wants to deny that it’s possible to learn how to read the biblical stories, and this is just silly.  It’s the equivalent of a frustrated six-year-old who claims that it’s impossible to tie his shoelaces on the grounds that he finds the process confusing.  In Solomonic idiom:  simple ones love simplicity, and fools hate knowledge.  The solution is to listen to Wisdom, turn at her rebuke, and seek for her like hidden treasure.  Blurting out “descriptive, not prescriptive” is a poor substitute.

The fact that conservative evangelicals have pursued ignorance for a few generations compounds the problem.  We have institutionalized the foolishness, and it now afflicts us as a blind spot for our whole community.  Now we have diligent, hardworking servants of God who have been trained to be happy with their ignorance.  Let me say that again: diligent, hardworking pastors are unable to read three quarters of the Bible well, and they’re completely okay with that, because we have taught them to be okay with that.

This is sin, and like all sin, the cure is as simple as it is painful and difficult: repent!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“Descriptive, Not Prescriptive,” Part 1

10 October 2010

So as I’m setting out to prove a point about the biblical pattern of doing things, I flip to the relevant passages in Genesis, or Acts, or 2 Chronicles.  If I’m talking to a conservative evangelical who has had some Bible college or seminary training, I will almost invariably hear the same objection:
“You know, that passage is really descriptive, not prescriptive.”

For those of you who are blessed enough not to know what this means, here’s a quick rundown:
Descriptive: What they did
Prescriptive: What we (or at least the original audience) ought to do

In other words, the narrative portions of the Bible are true in that they accurately report what those people did, but you can’t infer from them that we ought to do the same.  If you try — so goes the reasoning — then we’ll have people chopping up their concubines into little bits, or having multiple wives (you know, like David!), or speaking in tongues, or whatever other horrors we can dig up.  Anything to inspire fear, uncertainty, and doubt about learning how to live from the stories of the Bible.

Hence “it’s descriptive, not prescriptive” and its cousin “you can’t get doctrine from narrative.”

Now I don’t mean to be overly offensive, but guys: every child in the world knows that this isn’t true.

“Remember Billy and Susy, who lived across the street?  Remember how one day, their mommy told them to stay in the yard, but little Billy went and played in the street and got hit by a car?  Susy played in the yard, and she’s fine, but Billy’s going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

Every child who hears the story, and every parent who tells it, understands perfectly well.  Is there any exegete so obtuse that he can fail to understand that this story has a moral?  Of course not.  And you, dear reader, understood the story as well — even those of you who have had a seminary hermeneutics course at some point.

Furthermore, no parent tells the story and then later begins to think, “Oh my gosh!  What if my kid thinks I’m telling him to act like Billy?”

The question, friends, is not whether we can learn how to live from stories.  The question is whether we ever learn how to live from anything else.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

River Evangediscipleship II: An Example

19 September 2010

Note: this post continues the line of thought from People of the River and River Evangediscipleship

When life is what you’re offering, there’s lots of opportunity to give.  What, specifically, do you offer to Rick, the guy you’re talking with right this minute?  Depends.  What is the opportunity before you?  Is he terrified that he will go to hell?  Offer him assurance of eternal life in Christ, and calm his fears.

But suppose Rick hasn’t said a word about heaven and hell.  He came over to talk with you about his marriage, which is  falling apart right before his eyes.  How do you offer Rick life?  Well, you’ve unfortunately had evangelism training, so you tell him that he needs Jesus, and you set out to share the gospel in the conventional way: heaven, hell, Jesus on the cross, all that.

“Look, man,” Rick says to you, “I’m already in hell.  Heaven will be when Trina and I can spend a whole day together without getting into a screaming fight.”  What do you say to a guy like this?

Isn’t it obvious?  A starving man in agony from a scorpion sting doesn’t really care, right that minute, that the starvation will kill him in a week or so.  In the abstract, food is more important — he might survive the scorpion sting, but lack of food will get him, for sure.  But so what?  If you’re responsible for helping the man, you give him the antivenin now, and then later, the food.

So you ditch your canned-spam evangelism training and just talk to Rick about his marriage.  You ask what the problems are.  He says he walks in the door after work, and five minutes later they’re screaming at each other and he can’t even remember how the fight started.  So you show him Ephesians 5.  You tell him that Jesus is his model, and he should be willing to die for his wife (by inches, if necessary) as Jesus died for us.   You tell him that this means when he goes home today, he must not counterattack, no matter what she says or does.  You warn him that the first thing she’ll do when he doesn’t counterattack is move in for the kill.  “Rick, man, I’m not gonna lie to you,” you say.  “This will probably be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.  But you’ve got to sacrifice yourself for her, and you’ve got to keep sacrificing until she realizes you’re not fighting with her anymore.”

Tell him that if he does not do this, he will kill his marriage.  On the other hand, if he can pull this off, then he will see things happen in his marriage that he’s never dreamed possible.  But there is a catch, you say.  Tell him, with a wink, that God will probably let him have enough success that he can see what a benefit it would be, if only he could really do it — but there’s only one way to really do this, and he can’t do it on his own; he won’t be able to.

“Naw, I get it now.  I see how it’s supposed to work.”  Rick is smiling for the first time in the conversation.  “I can do this.”

“Okay,” you say.  “Give it a try.  But I’m telling you, man, the day is coming where you can see where it would work if you just did it, but you just can’t bring yourself to sacrifice one more time — and you won’t do it.  When that day comes, don’t you come back and tell me this doesn’t work — I told you, right up front, that you can’t do it alone.”

Rick just grins at you.  “You just watch me.”

When you talk with him next, Rick is dejected.  “I just couldn’t do it, man.  I love Trina, but you can’t believe how she gets.  I couldn’t take it.  I had to tell her to back off, and as soon as I did, we were back into the screaming fight, just like before.”

“Hey, Rick.  Remember how I told you you couldn’t do it alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, here’s the rest of the story.”  You tell him that there’s only one person who ever could live that kind of life — Jesus Himself.  Only Him.  “But Rick, if you let Him, He will give you the ability to do this.  In a way, it won’t be you, it’ll be Him living His life in you.  He wants to give you life — eternal life, in fact.  Rick, man, you’re dying here. If you take what Jesus offers, you don’t die while you’re still alive, and even when you die, you live forever with Him.  All the hell that you’ve been going through, Rick, and all the hell that you’ve got coming to you in the future — Jesus took it all into Himself, died for you, was buried, the whole thing, so you wouldn’t have to go through any of it. And He rose from the dead three days later to show that it’s over — He conquered it all, and He’s alive, and He offers you His life.  He’s been offering you life this whole time, and He’s still offering it now.  When you trust that offer, Rick, it’s yours, and it’s yours forever, absolutely free.  You couldn’t earn something like this, and there’s not enough money in the world to buy it, but it’s yours, just for the asking.”

“Man, I’m desperate here,” Rick says.  “I’ll do anything.  What do I gotta do?”

“Rick, man, haven’t you been listening?” you say.  “It’s a gift.  You trust Him for it, it’s yours.  That’s the beauty of it.”

His brow furrows in confusion.  “Just like that?”

“You got a better idea?”  You punch his shoulder.  “Of course, just like that.”  You pause to let that sink in.  “If it makes you feel better, you can say something to Him out loud, but you don’t have to — He sees your heart.  Does that make sense to you?”

Rick’s brows are still furrowed up.  “Yeah, I guess so…” He looks up at you.  “It’s really free?  Seriously?”

You laugh.  “Of course it is.  You think you could buy it?  What do you have that God could want?”  Your face grows serious.  “Just trust Him, Rick.  He’s got it taken care of.”

“Okay,” he says.  “Okay.”  He nods.  “I think I do want to say something.”

“Go ahead.”

“God, I, uh, I don’t know how to pray, but nothing I do is working out, and everything I touch in my life turns sour.  This thing you give, this life–I want it.  I want all of it.  Please give it to me.”

****

A year later, Rick is a growing young Christian.  Trina has seen changes in Rick that she never thought she’d see.  She’s not convinced Christianity is for her, but she’s certainly interested.  They still fight, and sometimes it’s still pretty bad — but it’s not as frequent as it was, and Rick is quick to forgive, and to confess when he’s been wrong.

Do you know for sure whether Rick was saved that day when he first asked God for help?  Maybe not.  Did he really understand enough about what he was asking for?  There’s no way to know for sure.  But who cares?  We’re making disciples here, and that’s what Jesus said to do.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

River Evangediscipleship

12 September 2010

River ecclesiology, which I sketched out in a previous post, also implies a particular take on Christian evangelism and discipleship.

First of all, they’re not all that separate.

You believe on Jesus, as the Scriptures have said, and therefore out of your belly flow rivers of living water.  First you drink, then the water multiplies, like loaves and fishes, and flows out from you.  Isn’t that the whole point of John 4?  You are a walking sanctuary, and your job is to be a conduit for the river that waters the world, everywhere you walk.  The river flows to the unbeliever and to the believer alike.  You offer abundant life to the dead, and the same abundant life to the living.  The living can’t live without it any more than the dead.

It’s all disciple-making; it’s all sanctification; and it’s all good.  Unbelievers simply have one step further to go.

Some of you Free Grace watchdogs out there are growling and muttering.  I can hear it now: “That sounds like Lordship Salvation.”

That’s exactly what it is.  In this life there is no salvation except in Christ, who is inescapably Lord.  In this life, there is no salvation apart from discipleship.  No deliverance from sin, no partaking in the divine nature, no experiential escape from the corruption that is in the world through lust, none of that, except through discipleship.  Apart from a life of discipleship, you have nothing to look forward to except hell on earth, walking around dead until your corpse rejoins the dust, the soul rotting long before the body.  You will submit to the Lordship of Christ, or you’re not living; you’re dying.  When your body gives out, of course, if you are God’s child, then you will incongruously enter His presence with shabby clothes, redolent with the stench of burning wood, hay, and stubble, saved (in that narrow sense) yet so as through fire, and called least in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus did not come and die to populate heaven with smoke-stinking paupers.  Some will be there, and glory to God for His mercy — but that is not the point.  Jesus came into the world to save sinners, really save.  You can experience hell on earth, dead while you live, a rotting tatterdemalion puppet jerking and twitching through the decades, the devil yanking the strings all the way — is that salvation?  Is that what Jesus came to offer you?  No.  Jesus is not selling insurance, fire or otherwise.  He came that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly.

As a disciple, you offer this abundant life to the world.  First thing, right off the bat?  As a practical matter, you can’t give what you don’t have. But what about the woman at the well?  What did she have?  A belly full of living water flowing out.

Nobody accepts a miracle cure for leprosy from a leper, and nobody accepts a promise of life from the devil’s rotting puppet.  Jesus will take you out of here-and-now slavery to sin and death, but you’ve got to let Him do it.  Once you do, people start listening.

Researchers Fight to Keep Implanted Medical Devices Safe from Hackers

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Notes on Forgiveness

5 September 2010

A little while ago, someone asked me for some thoughts on forgiveness.  The result seemed worth sharing.

There’s nothing wrong with revenge.  God has so made the world that revenge is a necessary and important part of the moral universe.  But GOD takes revenge, and we don’t.  Forgiveness is letting go of vengeance and giving it over to God. (Rom. 12)

A common explanation of forgiveness is “not bringing it up again.”  Having forgiven a person, I should not go back and club him with his sin against me — thus far, no problem.  But the ability to bring it up again without re-experiencing the hurt is an important test of healing.  In relationships, people talk about the past, and having a big “don’t touch this topic” area in the past is a sign that healing is not complete.

Sometimes healing is not complete because God simply hasn’t yet brought it about.  But sometimes healing is not complete because the sin is not forgiven, and the wound is still festering.

The Triune God is all about relationships.  Human relationships are meant to be a portrait of intra-trinitarian relationships.  A broken relationship is an offense to God because it breaks His law.  But deeper than that, it is an offense to God because it is a lie about Him; it paints a false picture of the intra-trinitarian relationships.

When people break relationships, God responds in grace and wrath.  Both.  God calls His people to be His image in this as well.

A broken relationship creates a cycle of alienation and bitterness.  Restoring relationships is about breaking the cycle of alienation and bitterness.

Forgiveness helps break the cycle by not feeding it.  This is an image of God’s grace. If you are not alienated and bitter, that’s a big step in the right direction.

Another part of breaking the cycle can be hedging against a repeated offense.  A young woman may forgive the guy who date-raped her, but that doesn’t mean she has to go on another date with him.  There is a difference between seeking revenge and refusing to put yourself in an exposed position again.   There are long-term consequences to sin; this is part of imaging God’s wrath.

The relationship cannot really be mended without genuine repentance on the offender’s part.  Sometimes there’s nothing to do but wait for it.

Another part of imaging God’s wrath is imprecatory prayer and involving the appropriate church, familial, or civil authorities.  While these things certainly can be motivated by revenge, they are all compatible with forgiveness.

God’s wrath and its this-worldly images and agents are means for inducing repentance.  Imprecatory prayer is prayer for rough grace, that the offender might repent and the relationship might be restored–or at least that God will graciously prevent him from repeating the offense.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Is Bankruptcy Biblical?

29 August 2010

In a word, yes.

But as is often the case, there are some qualifications.  The below is an edit of a letter I wrote to a friend a while back.  In the course of his pastoral ministry, he had been asked this very question, and responded that bankruptcy is theft, because you’re taking money, promising to pay it back, and then not doing it.  Simple, right?

Not so fast…

We have to look at the general equity of the Torah on this point.  There are conflicting  biblical demands.

On one hand, paying what you promised to pay is Bible 101.  Treat others as you want to be treated, love your neighbor, let your “yes” be “yes,” and so on.  This much is obvious, and really doesn’t require much more discussion.

On the other hand…

Bankruptcy was possible under Torah.  A man (and his family) could be sold into slavery to pay his debts.  However, they were only slaves 7 years, and then they were not only released, but sent out with provisions to make a fresh start.  There was no prohibition against predatory lending per se in the Torah, but if you lend the guy 20 years’ wages, and he defaults, you only get him for 7 years — so you’re going to lose a lot of money.  And don’t forget that all debts are canceled every sabbath year, so that also limits the term of the loan.

Hence the conflicting demands.  Under Torah, the debtor is responsible to love his neighbor and honor his word, i.e., to pay his debt.  On the other hand, the creditor is also responsible to love his neighbor, and that means not lending a man more than is good for him, thereby subjecting the man to decades of debt slavery (in one form or another).  If he tries, he will run up against one of two limitations: the length of term for a debt (sabbath year) or how much wealth he can extract from a man’s slave labor for seven years (either directly, by taking the man as a slave, or indirectly, by selling him as a slave).

So as far as the present-day debtor is concerned, I grant your basic point — a man ought to pay the debts that he agreed to pay.  However, God knew that this was not always going to happen, and made provision for it when He set up a civil government.  So should we — In Israel, some lenders would be wicked or stupid enough to lend to people they shouldn’t, and some borrowers would be greedy or stupid enough to fall for it.  Human nature hasn’t changed, and we need the same sort of protections that Israel had, in one form or another.  One could argue about whether our bankruptcy system is a good reflection of the one in the Torah, but one can’t just say that no such system should exist.  The protection is meant to be invoked; that’s why it’s there.

Secondly, speaking to the debtor is only telling half the story.  If you’re going to preach to debtors about their need to pay up, you should also preach to the creditors about ethical lending.  The credit industry in this country deliberately incites people to get themselves into trouble so that they will be subjected to decades of debt slavery.  Those debts payable are counted as assets to the creditor, and all he has to do to increase his assets is lend more money to people who can’t afford it (until, as we recently saw, the whole thing crashes).  It’s a wicked system.  I don’t mean to make the debtor look shiny here; he’s not.  Nobody’s putting a gun to his head and making him take out a loan.  But his sins and the predatory creditor’s sins make a nasty combination, and if you’re going to sort the thing out biblically, you have to speak to both sides.

Untangling this in a specific counseling situation is a mess.  You probably don’t have the option of speaking to the creditor much; you’ll be dealing with the question of whether the debtor should default (chapter 7), reorganize for long-term repayment (chapter 13), or just soldier on with whatever changes he can make on his own (e.g., take a Dave Ramsay or Financial Peace University course, credit counseling, etc.)  The thing you must remember here is that bankruptcy law is on the books as a reflection of God’s law; it is right that such a thing exist.  There will, therefore, be a time when such a protection should be invoked.  It is the role of the church leaders to determine if this is such a time.

If it is not, the debtor should be subject to church discipline if he defaults on his debts, and remain under discipline until he repents and takes steps to repay them.  On the other hand, if it is such a time, then not only should the debtor not be subject to discipline; he ought to invoke bankruptcy protection with the blessing of the elders.  Bankruptcy is a harsh mercy and it would be better not to need it, but sometimes that ship has already sailed.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Social Commentary from a Fictional Wizard

22 August 2010

Novels are often good for astute cultural commentary.  But it’s not often this quotable:

The end of the twentieth century and the dawn of the new millennium had seen something of a renaissance in the public awareness of the paranormal.  Psychics, haunts, vampires — you name it.  People still didn’t take them seriously, but all the things Science had promised us hadn’t come to pass.  Disease was still a problem.  Starvation was still a problem.  Violence and crime and war were still problems.  In spite of the advance of technology, things just hadn’t changed the way everyone had hoped and thought they would.

Science, the largest religion of the twentieth century, had become somewhat tarnished by images of exploding space shuttles, crack babies, and a generation of complacent Americans who had allowed the television to raise their children.  People were looking for something — I think they just didn’t know what…[T]hey were once again starting to open their eyes to the world of magic and the arcane that had been with them all the while…

This from Jim Butcher’s fictional wizard Harry Dresden, the hero of Storm Front, the first book in the series The Dresden Files (quote from page 3).  He’s right.  If you’re not prepared to deal with this, people, you need to bone up.  And don’t think you can just dismiss it all as a bunch of chicanery.  There’s chicanery present, certainly, but you can’t just respond like an Enlightenment science-worshipper here, for two reasons.

First, nobody will listen to you.

Second, you’ll be wrong.  There are gods many and lords many — always have been.  You can’t do battle with principalities and powers in the heavenly places by denying that they exist, or that they’re relevant to human life.

As Christians, we don’t fear the powers; for us there is one Lord, and only one, and He made the heavens and the earth.  But when someone else speaks about the powers, we don’t respond with a snort like they’re crazy, either.  The Bible teaches us better than that.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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