Today's Devotional

 

 March 2, 2009

                                                                                                                     

Subject:  Good For Faith, Bad For Business 

Luke 6:35 "But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil."

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The housing crisis, the banking crisis and any other crisis that we have, always seem to violate very elementary and fundamental principles.  Both the housing and banking problems were a result of bad loans.  Many people, with no ability to repay, were given loans.  That's bad business.  The intersection of this bad business principle and faith comes with the people, banking execs, government and housing/mortgage companies, who may have been well-intentioned, deciding that they wanted to serve under-represented communities and populations in our country.  Perhaps the motive was correct, but in the end, you need money to repay loans.

When the scripture says, "lend, hoping for nothing again," it is referring to one's personal faith and what you do with your resources.  It is not referring to the business practices of any particular institution.  

Wisdom is needed in this country in order to differentiate between what God wants us to do to help others and how we best do that.  The bible was written for God's people to use in their personal quest to know Him.  It was not written to show business execs how to make a million dollars, although it's principles can clearly make you "rich."

Today, make it your personal task to give to others without regard for the ability of others to pay you back.  The government should allow you to do that and they should not necessarily be the ones allowing banks to give out money that they won't get back.  That's bad for business and for our country.           

Carlen