This Is Our City

Paul, you have to look beyond a superficial reading of the Torah. The whole point of selling oneself into slavery or selling one's land was to pay a debt. The payment was based on the number of years to freedom or Jubilee. No one would loan more money to someone than the debtor would repay in the period left until freedom or Jubilee. Any loan larger than that payment would be simply charity. More than anything, Jubilee and the slave laws placed severe limits on the size of loans that poor people could borrow. All of that is clear from the verses telling how to value land until Jubilee. And you can't read the Torah as if it was written today. You have to study the culture and Jewish writings about it. Yes, God mandated the poor laws, but the courts did not enforce them. Judges left the enforcement to God. Jews never considered all the laws equal or applicable by the courts. The courts enforced only the civil laws.

Roger: With respect to 'mindful purchasing' affecting poverty; your analogy to 'foreign aid' does not apply. 'Foreign aid' is done by governments and is not an exchange for goods and services. How effective 'mindful purchasing' is, depends on how many people are mindful. If enough people refused to buy items made with slave labor, or was made by destroying the environment, or produced in unsafe conditions (Bangladesh)- those businesses would fail. (No demand- right?) That is one concrete way to 'love your neighbor'; purchase on the basis of God centered, love your neighbor values- and not just on the basis of materialistic price. It should be your moral obligation as a Christian to know how the products you buy are made and whether 'low price' is the result of failing to pay adequate wages or are made in other ways destructive of God's creation.

Roger: You overlook some things. Land was not distributed according to a 'free market' system in Israel. "52 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 53 “To these the land shall be divided as an inheritance, according to the number of names." (Numbers 26 NKJV) It was inherited, a right of family and not subject to the 'free market'. “Basically, these verses indicate that the Jubilee requires all debts between Jews to be annulled. Also, any Jew that sold his or herself into slavery is released, whether they worked the amount of time they promised, or not.” Rabbi Shragi Simmons.[http://judaism.about.com/od/prayersworshiprituals/f/jubilee.htm] That isn't simply completing a payment. You ignore that caring for the poor- distributing wealth to them- was not just a moral obligation, but mandated in the Torah (Deuteronomy 14:28-29 previously cited; tithes were required).

Roger, I know your comments are long and their length may upset some, but the City section is the dusty back corner of the shop that never gets much commentary. I appreciate your reasoning and insights. You must either teach or work in Economics. The Psalms say God sits in the heavens and laughs. He is laughing at the foibles of people. In the name of compassion Mao created the greatest famine in human history. In the name of social justice Marxism/Leninism became the base for the worst tyranny in history. We are so easily manipulated by our feelings and it really pains me to see the church open our doors to mush headed liberal thinking when we have the antidote to the infection of sin, the cure for the disease that ends in hell. The Q conference, Catalyst, the Social Justice conferences, Wild Goose, Sojourners have all taken the young Evangelical church by storm. I know Soros funded Sojourners and Wild Goose. Makes you wonder. “Christian” books like this are a Trojan Horse.

I find the economic ignorance of Christians just astounding. One thing and only one thing has lifted people out of poverty over the past 50 years and that is freer markets with the rule of law and less corruption. India and China have proven it. Even the World Bank has recognized it. Foreign aid has been a colossal failure. One of the greatest failures in the history of mankind. Yet what do we hear from Christians? Nothing but an unending stream recommendations of failed strategies. Charity is important, but it is a spiritual discipline that does more for the giver than the receiver. It never has and never will make a dent in poverty. Why do "Christians" who claim to want to help the poor oppose the only method that has proven to end poverty and promote demonstrated failures?