Yesterday, President Joe Biden made good on at least part of a campaign promise when he unilaterally shifted the burden of billions of dollars' worth of outstanding student loan debt from borrowers onto the American taxpayer. Though the administration has awkwardly attempted to dodge the total price tag question:
…it is becoming increasingly clear that an already inflation-laden economy is about to be hit with a staggering bill:
I'm not convinced that the president's move will withstand legal challenge – it doesn't help that even his fiercest defenders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are on record affirming just months ago that Biden would not have the constitutional authority to do what he has now done. All that remains to be seen.
But while most folks seemed preoccupied with bickering over the legality, wisdom, and cost of such a move, I found myself observing an even more disappointing phenomenon: progressive Christians attacking their supposed brothers and sisters in Christ who oppose Biden's plan for "defending usury," opposing forgiveness, and being of insincere faith.
I know my personal preference that Christians conduct their squabbles "in house" and out of the gawking eye of social media skeptics is a pipe dream. But wanting those professing the name of Jesus to show to one another charity, grace, and understanding shouldn't be. And yet there was this:
I don't know "Pastor Ben," but I do know what usury is. Taking advantage of poor people who desperately need a loan by blackmailing them into accepting one with outrageously high interest is conduct that was clearly forbidden in Old Testament law.
I saw no evangelicals defending such a practice. I saw them objecting to the government slapping a new debt with a high interest rate onto taxpayers, many of whom could be considered more economically disadvantaged than the very ones benefiting from Biden's stroke of a pen.
Would Marsh favor government "forgiving" credit card debt, or mortgage debt the same way it has student loan debt? If not, why the unbiblical favoritism? If so, does that mean he too is "defending usury?"
I hate the widespread belief that Christians are often poor thinkers. Pastor Ben's post sadly does little to help that conviction.
Then there was "preacher and moral activist" Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove who chimed in:
When believers begin thinking it's better to co-opt the words of Christ for a political cause than understand and be personally transformed by them, something has gone wrong. To strip this reference of its spiritual meaning and cheapen it to some first century lesson on market morality might be excusable if it was done by a casual observer of the faith. But for a preacher of the word to so badly misrepresent the "Lord's Prayer" is depressing.
What's more, the forgiveness Jesus speaks of doesn't involve transferring the outstanding debt of one person onto the back of another person. Jesus means to assume the cost and absorb it yourself, just as He did for sinful man. Praise God that the forgiveness Christ embodied didn't merely transfer the debt of sin from one group of fallen humans onto another. He shouldered it, absorbed it, and nailed it all to a cross so that no one would have to bear it.
You would think recipients of such unmerited grace would fiercely guard its meaning and significance. Instead, some meme it:
Are we to understand that progressive Christians perceive the government of the United States to be an agent of God's justice, fairness, and forgiveness? That its institutions should exist to implement Old Testament policy and New Testament principle even over the objections of those with different faith traditions? That's peculiar coming from the very movement that just yesterday was panicked about the looming specter of "Christian nationalism," no?
It's important for Christians of all people to speak frankly and freely about what President Biden did yesterday. He placed the gun of government aside the head of one group of Americans and told them that he was taking their money to pay the financial debt of a preferred group. The word that is used in Scripture to describe such an act isn't "forgiveness." It's "theft."
And that isn't something any Christian, progressive or otherwise, should be celebrating.
