[This series is the product of a study of Deuteronomy I did for my church earlier this year. While journeying through Deuteronomy, I came as close as I ever will to cultivating a theology of government. Some of the results I share in this blog.]
God's laws are rooted in his love. God took the initiative.
God delivered his people because he loved them; therefore, God called upon Israel to respond in loving obedience.
God's laws grew out of his personal, intimate, and daily relationship with people. God gave these laws to guide people to live in a manner that was most in keeping with their personal relationship with God, which would help them be kind to individuals whom God created in his image.
With that in mind, remember that God told his people to tithe off what he blessed them in a given year, “Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year” (Deut. 15:22.)
Two main uses for this “money” were:
1) to help those in need (the poor, widows and orphans) and
2) to care for the religious leaders—the Levites.
We’ll talk more about those in need later in this series when we discuss the subject of justice, but I want to say a word about the religious leaders.
This is not original with me. In fact, you may have heard it before.
In Israel, the Levites, directed the spiritual life of the people. They did not work in manual or farming, nor did they serve in the military. Their job was to protect Israel from her greatest enemy—Israel. If the religious leaders failed, Israel would ultimately fail.
The nation gave a tenth of what they had to protect itself at the grass roots level.
This is the background for Paul’s famous charge to Christians to “not muzzle an ox….” He noted that even though he surrendered his right to be a fully supported minister, it was a right.
This principle is of the reasons why our country gives churches and ministers tax breaks. Our founding fathers understood that for our government to succeed, citizens must be virtuous. Religion was an essential component in providing for the virtue of its citizenry. To help the citizens live religiously, ministers were deemed essential.
Now, concerning debt.
God says much about debt in the Bible, including in Deuteronomy, and it is never positive. In ancient Israel, borrowing was typically practiced by individuals in a worse case scenario; it was not typically a practice of the nation’s government.
Regarding individuals, a loan might be offered when a natural disaster occurred and suspended normal income. Also, a loan might help a poor family carry on until they could repay it.
I think I can safely say that God never intended his government in Israel to go into debt itself in order to help individual Israelites find a better life. I’m not sure all of the reasons why, but I would guess the law of cause and effect would have something to do with it.
Surely God would have viewed ancient Israel as being immoral had she enslaved her future generations to debt for the same reasons we do today in America.
Moreover, as I wrote last week in another blog, it is immoral for a government’s accumulating debt to lower the value of the dollar. It is stealing. As our national debt grows, the value of the dollar will inevitably be reduced.
Cause and effect.
This is not a problem of politicians. They will do what we demand of them.
This is our problem.
We the People.
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