It’s said that if you really want to know what someone considers important in their life, take a look at their checking account. Follow the money. Where does it go? This is truer than most of us would like to admit. Look at your own spending habits and see what it reveals about your priorities. Is it consistent with your idea of moral living? Are your morals reflected in your financial management?
Is it a moral issue to purchase a larger house rather than to pay for your children’s college education? Is it a moral issue to spend your money on a fancy late model car rather than purchasing a solid health insurance plan for your growing family? Is it a moral issue to purchase a state-of-the-art home security system for your dream-house rather than pay for your children’s music lessons or sports program? Is it a moral issue to max out your credit card, accumulating thousands of dollars of unsecured debt, rather than fully paying it off each month? Certainly, how we use money, spend, save, and/or invest money is a moral issue, isn’t it?
This is what many are saying about our national deficit. It’s a moral issue. Okay, so it is. But then, so is the way we go about paying it down and paying it off. This too is a moral issue. Since we are talking about moral issues here, whose morals and which morals are we embracing?
Jesus had much to say about money and wealth and it wasn’t in favor of the wealthy. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” said Jesus in Matthew 19:24. He also said, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). And we all know his Beatitude comment about the poor: “Blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).
What about money spent on our defense? My guess is that many of the same people who say that bringing down our deficit is a moral issue most likely support a very strong and very expensive military budget. But does not God Himself say, “Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit”: “He keeps the feet of His godly ones… For not by might shall a man prevail” (1 Samuel 2:9)? And are we not warned against putting our trust in “princes”—i.e. the military strength of rulers (Psalms 146:3)?
Actually, economic justice is a core Biblical moral issue: “Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! …They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance” (Micah 2:1-2). Consider Isaiah’s words (5:8), “Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!” I could go on quoting Biblical passages that warn against the wealthy oppressing the poor, not to mention Biblical injunctions against citizens mistreating the homeless and the wandering aliens in our midst. It’s all there in the Bible, prophetic words that speak against the wealthy who take advantage of the powerless poor and needy.
How many Americans have lost house and home, not because of our social economic policies that support the health needs and low income needs of our citizens but have lost them to Wall Street and Big Banks, as a direct result of the Advantages that Big Business is given over-against the little guy? So, if we are ready to accept on principle that cutting and slashing the national deficit is a moral issue, are we also ready to accept on principle our social/moral responsibility to see to the needs of the economically oppressed, the poor and needy in our midst, not to mention the outcast and disenfranchised? God holds the wealthy responsible for how they treat the poor and needy not the other way around. One cannot possibly read the Bible without concluding that this is a core moral issue for a society from God’s vantage point.
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