Returning to Australia for my son’s wedding, it did not take long to be reminded of many of the issues that dropped out of sight while living in America.

At the top of the list is the Australian concept of socialism. Socialism is the idea that the government takes control of all resources within the nation and allocates them in some fashion. Frederick Hayek drew the distinction between communism and socialism when he observed that in communism, the government owns everything and allocates according to government plan. Under socialism, ownership remains in the hands of individuals, but the government determines the allocation of the privately-held resources. The Australian government pretends it is neither socialistic nor communistic. But as Ludwig von Mises argued so clearly, the middle-of-the-road policy is the road to full socialism. You cannot control part of the economy without controlling all of it.

The key issue here is one of ownership and the meaning of the idea of ownership. “Thou shalt not steal” establishes the right of private ownership, ownership being the right of dispossession. This is the key. If you cannot dispose the things you own in the manner in which you would like, you don’t own the thing. Whoever controls the dispossession is the real owner, even though there may be official papers giving title to the individual.

In the modern world, it is taxation, perhaps more than anything else, that determines the biblical framework of ownership. The government not only takes for itself the right to tax, but it also allocates to itself the right to determine how much tax it might be entitled to. This is important because it raises the question of property ownership in money. It doesn’t exist any more. But it did exist at one time, when the Bible provided the prevailing philosophy.

If the command “Thou shalt not steal” is to have any significance, ownership of all property needs to be reestablished. So too is a related problem: being the recipient of stolen goods. In a narrow sense, both these activities are held to be wrong for certain goods. But not for money. That needs to change.

Herein is the key component of a society committed to private ownership. It is the idea that stealing is taking whatever God says you are not entitled to.

You are not entitled to your neighbor’s house.

You are not entitled to your neighbor’s automobile.

You are not entitled to your neighbor’s wife.

And if you are elected to public office, you are still not entitled to these things.

Neither, therefore, are you entitled to your neighbor’s money. It is his. If you have the power to tax, it is only as far as God says you may do it, and after that it is theft.

We are still waiting for Christians to determine, from the Bible, what taxes the county, state, or national governments might be entitled to. Once you go past that amount, it is stealing. And expecting a handout from that money makes you a receiver of stolen goods.

What caught my attention in Australia was not only that the nation is facing an election called to help the ruling Labor Power remain in office, but it is the pressure of the church to get access to other people’s money via the government taxing mechanism. A brochure encouraging Australians to vote for the party that will keep the taxpayers’ money flowing to Christian activities was put in my hands at church on a Sunday morning.

The Federal government in Australia has been funding Chaplaincy work in public schools. There’s little evidence that this chaplaincy work is expanding the number of Christians or making any change in the way people in Australia view property rights. But it is an activity “for Christ”. . . .

Until you ask the question: Is this Chaplaincy work funded by stolen money? If the answer is yes, then there is not a strong expectation that God will in any way bless the work for His kingdom. If He did, everyone would soon realize that breaking God’s law in some form is the way to expand His kingdom.

This is nuts!

Someone reminded me that they pay taxes, and getting “their” money back from the government was legitimate. I agree. But the problem is “their” money was spent a long time ago, and now they are asking the government to not give them “their” money, in the sense that the government is returning the money they took from this individual.

What this person is demanding is “equivalent value.” In other words, if the government has already spent “their” money, then the government can just take some money from someone else and give that money to this individual. The person did not get “his” money back; he got another person’s money.

Thus, in order to get “equivalent value” Christian schools in Australia take government funding. Even one Christian home school organization has given in to government funding. “It’s for a good cause.”

If the government, however, has taken money it is not entitled to – that is, it is stealing – just so you can get back the equivalent value of the money you had taken from you, doesn’t that make you the recipient of stolen money?

That’s a little complex. It requires the ability to think through a number of steps and determine in each case what the Scriptures would have you do.

But this kind of thinking in Australia has virtually disappeared among Christians in Australia. That’s why the country has a short term future under the rules of “socialism”, and no long term plan for living under the Torah of the Triune God of Scripture.

More recently laws such as copyright, patents and trademarks are used to create monopolies not of political power but of economic power. Music writers sell their compositions to music publishers who invest the time and money in print and marketing to create sales. The publishers and shareholders want a return on their investment. They are clearly not happy if someone gets access to the same product without paying for it. Book writers do the same.

So do hamburger suppliers. If you want to buy a McDonald’s hamburger, you have no choice but to go to the licensed McDonalds monopoly somewhere and buy. As much as this might be an inconvenience, you cannot go to the Burger King outlet and buy a McDonald’s hamburger, just as you cannot buy Taco Bell at McDonald’s. They each protect their property by insisting only approved sales outlets can sell their food, for which the parent company receives a percentage of the sale. This is just as much a monopoly as is the publishing of songs, so the attack on the publishing industry for protecting its monopoly could be construed at the same time as an attack on all forms of endeavor to protect the fruit of one’s labor and capitalize on it by creating a monopoly selling outlet.

People want to get paid for their work. This is a natural desire, for to get rewarded is the means to buy other goods and services. Without such reward, composers, authors, inventors will need to create other sources of income, and when they do this they are not free to compose, write, or invent. There are a myriad of examples of how people protect their intellectual property. Publishers of electronic books may reserve the right to exclusive publication of paper editions. They want to keep this monopoly to themselves for whatever reason. Some music artists want to be able to sell their recordings exclusively through a monopoly selling channel. We can choose to participate or not participate under the artist’s terms. The current practice of taking the artist’s music, no matter what terms he dictates, does not appear a good way of creating neighborly relations, or living out the idea that we should somehow love our neighbor as ourselves.

Thus, the debate over copyright has a much broader implication than just copying music. And the issue in music is not just over new technology. Deep down, the debate is driven by the desire of many people who expect others in the world provide them free goods and services. They just don’t want music via the internet. They want free music, no matter how it is delivered. If they could pick up a free CD in the store, this would suit just as well as downloading a file for free. They don’t care about the costs of creating the records, the hours of studio time to get the tracks completed and the editing to patch together several takes to create the “perfect” performance. All they want is free music, which is music at someone else’s expense.

It is this desire for goods at another’s expense that is at the heart of the music copyright debate. Well might we complain about the price, but as economists love to tell us, the buying market, not the sellers, sets the price. So it seems that those who buy are willing to pay current prices, but the free loaders object to this. They would, as e-mails to me have confirmed, object to any price because at the end of the day they don’t want to pay anything for their music. It is fortunate that there are enough willing buyers to keep the sellers in business, for without them our recording, publishing and inventive industries would be starved for new ideas and an unwillingness to invest in something that could be taken away from them so easily.

And our lives would be poorer for it.

God bless you.

Later in his Institutes, Calvin made these comments about the Old Testament law and its place in the life of any nation in the New Testament period. “For there are some who deny that any commonwealth is rightly framed which neglects the law of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. How perilous and seditious these views are, let others see: for me it is enough to demonstrate that they are stupid and false”(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, 20:14).

Calvin wrote at a time when it was common to speak clearly, unlike today where misleading and obfuscation are the order of the day. The idea that any commonwealth is to be ruled by the law of Moses is a “stupid and false” idea. Now Calvin is not completely denying the law of Moses, or is he?

“But if it is true that each nation has been left at liberty to enact the laws which it judges to be beneficial, still these are always to be tested by the rule of charity, so that while they vary in form, they must proceed on the same principle. Those barbarous and savage laws, for instance, which conferred honor on thieves, allowed the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, and other things even fouler and more absurd, I do not think entitled to be considered as laws, since they are not only altogether abhorrent to justice, but to humanity and civilized life” (Ibid., IV;20:15).

In the very next section Calvin attempts to get morality back into the laws of nations. He does this with these words: “I do not think [they are] entitled to be considered as laws” because they are “abhorrent to justice” and “humanity and civilized life.” Having turned his back on the law of Moses, the Torah, Calvin offers in its place the standards of justice, humanity and civilized life.

But this only begs the question: How are we to know what the standards of justice, humanity and civilized life are unless they are defined by the law of God as given to Moses?

The answer to this question contains the myth of Calvinism. Now a myth is “a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, esp. one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.”

Here’s the myth: the “well-known division which distributes the whole law of God, as promulgated by Moses, into the moral, the ceremonial, and the judicial law”.

Now Calvin provides no arguments as to how this division is arrived at, other than this one. “the ancients who adopted this division”.

In other words, somewhere in the past, presumably one or more of the church fathers, the tri-fold division of the law was created. Who precisely created this idea we are not told. Nor are we told why they created the division.

And there has yet to be a biblical argument which clearly indicates how the laws are to be divided. The Ten Commandments are the moral laws, applicable to all, while all the other laws, civil and ceremonial are no longer to be applied, other than some kind of “general equity.”

But that argument — a myth — handed down through Calvin and then the Westminster Confession of Faith, has done nothing more than effectively undercut the possibility of Christian culture. There is no determinable basis or fact to support the division of the law, then the putting aside of most of it. It is a myth. Christian culture, which imperfectly based itself on the Torah, came into existence, because some people did not believe the myth. Alfred the Great, for example.

There is no Christian or biblical culture without the Torah. And those who perpetuate the tri-fold division perpetuate a myth and undercut the possibility of restoring Christian — or if you prefer, Biblical — culture.

If you’re not convinced, start reading the Psalms and the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:17ff. If those words in Scripture don’t convince you, nothing will.

Have a blessed week, serving God in your calling.

The Romantic movement, following on the heels of the Enlightenment, brought a revitalized message about love. There’s not enough of it.

And Romantic art of all kinds – poetry, music, painting, etc. – indicates that the lack of love is the significant problem in the world. If only this girl or that man would love me, all my problems would go away. Romanticism in this vein, however, is even more likely to have the three-way love affair, with adultery mixed in the midst of it. There was a reason composer Richard Wagner used Tristan and Isolde as a key part of his operatic works with music designed to undermine Christian culture, for the story is a key representative of Romanticism. Hollywood, in our generation, perpetuates this belief about love.

Enter our churches and you hear the gospel of love. “Honk if you love Jesus” was an old bumper sticker. Music, now the controlling influence in the contemporary church, is the music of the Romantic era. The use of melody and harmony are governed by the rules of the post-Baroque period, and when played on guitar and drums, the rhythm is highlighted and it becomes the dominant aspect of the contemporary worship service.

Now listen to the sermon that follows this kind of music.

Its slick presentation will be filled with words such as “love”, “justification”, “Jesus”, “The Bible”, and much more. Children are taught to sing “Jesus loves Me” and they are instructed to love Jesus. Have an emotional affair with Him, and as adults they sing, “I stand in the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. . . And He walks with me, and He talks with me.” And so the hymn goes on.

But they are not told what the Biblical definition of love really is. And then you wonder why divorce rates in the church are just as high as outside of it. It’s to be expected, given the same ideas are taught inside and outside the church.

Something is missing, or at the very least given a misplaced emphasis. And that’s the word “sin.” And even when it is used, it is unlikely to be given its Biblical definition: Sin is anomia – lawlessness. In fact, it’s anti-law. Anti- God’s law, that is. (I John 3:4)

Against the modern notion of love and the lack of love, the Word of God on the other hand, emphasizes love as the keeping of the law of God. “For this is the love of God that we keep His Commandments” (1 John 5:3).

This is not the idea of love of the modern world, including the contemporary church. If it were, it would get rid of the humanistic romanticism contained in the music of hymns, past and present, and get back to God’s song book, the Psalms.

The psychology of relationships has replaced the theology of sin, guilt, the need for atonement, the history of creation and redemption, emphasizing God’s Incarnation as the ultimate solution. Man does not need love; he needs forgiveness.

In a sermon recently, it was said that the opposite to love is not hatred, but apathy. There is in this statement, like all heresies, a partial truth.

But the Biblical opposite to love is neither hatred nor apathy. It is sin. Sin is not apathy. It’s outright disobedience to the law of God.

Only when you and I get that message implanted in our heart by God Himself is there likely to be a reversal of the decaying culture in which we find ourselves. Because when this happens, we will begin to deal with the sin in our own lives. And maybe as a result of that, we might be capable of loving God and our neighbor, the necessary condition to changing the culture. But not before.

May God richly bless you as you serve Him in your calling.

The words of Jesus create problems for many people. The reason? They don’t like them.

Consider this from Matt.12: 36-37: “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Everyone hopes that these words are somehow and somewhere modified elsewhere in Scripture. Justified by our words? No way. We’ll never make it, that’s for sure. Yet the words of Jesus are there to deal with.

Now consider this passage earlier in the book of Matthew: “For I say unto you that unless your righteousness exceeds he righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

For many, that sounds like a great dose of legalism.

There are, however, two possible explanations of this verse. The general one is that our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees because we have the imputed righteousness of Christ. This exceeds everyone, and gives everyone a perfect score. That may be true, but it it is not what the text is telling us.

The other explanation is this one: that the words, spoken by our Lord, actually mean what they say. The requirement here is that we get our lives in order. That we stop living the lives we have been living and get our act together. If you beat your wife, stop it. If you’re a thief, stop it. If you’re an adulterer, stop it.

In order to choose the right answer, it will be necessary to look at the context of Jesus’ words and come to a conclusion. And the challenge is this: Jesus no where let’s anyone off the hook for righteous living by saying “It’s OK folks; you have my righteousness to count on your behalf.”

Rather, what He does say throughout the whole of the sermon on the Mount is that righteous living according to the law of God is the right way to do things. And if we do that, then we will exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees who perverted the law, misinterpreted the law, and made rules and regulations that allowed them to get around what God intended. As Jesus said (Matt. 23:23), “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”

Notice the way Jesus addresses the issue. The scribes and Pharisees were actually keeping the law — but only the part that suited them. They were selective law-keepers.

Imagine reversing the situation and ask this question: Would it be OK to practice justice, mercy and faith but neglect tithing? This choice, however, is cut off at the pass by the words of Jesus. Justice, mercy and faith. Do these things along with your tithing.

Keeping the whole law, then, is the way to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees that so troubled Jesus.

Have a great week. God bless you.

I follow this procedure here. There are two verses in the Bible that, when seen together, provide a basic definition and understanding of the word “debt” when used in the context of a financial obligation.

The first of these verses is Proverbs 22:7, “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” The word here for servant can also be translated slave, and has the meaning of someone who has become a bonded servant to another. In Hebrew it means to become enslaved to, or to be kept in bondage. Taken by itself, the verse says that a borrower becomes a servant, or a bondslave, of the lender.

In a New Testament passage we are told, “you were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Cor. 7:23). Since we are purchased by the precious blood of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are His bondservants. We do not have the liberty, therefore, to enslave ourselves voluntarily to any other master, since we are the servants (or bondslaves, if you prefer) of Jesus Christ. The Greek word translated as “slave” is doulos. It denotes the idea of compulsory service. (See Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume by Geoffrey W. Bromily, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1985), p. 182f.) So we are not to voluntarily put ourselves into the compulsory service of others. Rather, we should keep ourselves as free people ready to serve our true Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

If we take these passages together, we find that in the Proverbs passage we are given a definition of how we can become bondservants. We are informed that the borrower is a bondservant to the lender. In the First Corinthians passage we are instructed that we may not voluntarily enslave ourselves to any man. We have another Master whom we must obey at all times. We cannot be the servant of two masters, as Jesus tells us in a well-known passage from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:24). It appears we are not capable of split allegiance; we must have one Master, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Scripture, financial debt is a form of slavery. It is too easy in the current climate of opinion to think of slavery as only a political manifestation. The Bible clearly links slavery to economic matters and debt in particular. We become slaves by borrowing things then promising to repay that which we borrow. Clearly this is not the only kind of slavery spoken of in the Bible, but it is one form of slavery. If this is the case, on what grounds can we exclude financial debt from the meaning of slavery when we come to the New Testament? It is illogical for us to reduce the meaning of the word slavery in the New Testament so that it does not support the concept of financial debt spoken about so clearly in Proverbs. Not only is it wrong, but it is all too easy to do.

Based on the evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that Christians may not enslave themselves to any person. This means we must avoid placing ourselves in debt in any form with one exception: we have a debt to love one another.

There are reasons for this discouragement against being a guarantor for loans. In Psalm 119:122 the psalmist asks God to be His surety. “Be surety for Your servant for good.” It is too easy to seek security from sources other than God. This is what both the borrower and the lender seek to do by having someone as guarantor for the loan. The guarantor is someone who can ultimately get the borrower out of his predicament of meeting his loan obligations, while the same guarantor protects the lender when the borrower defaults. The Bible encourages us to seek our surety in God because we are His bondslaves or servants. Asking others to be surety for us is a rejection of God as our Surety. Acting as a surety for another is an attempt to take the place of God in the life of that person.

Bankers feel fairly safe in doing this, since they can estimate from previous experience what the cash flow from their vaults will be in terms of people demanding the return of their deposits. If they know that on average only 10% of money is needed to satisfy demands for a return of deposits, the bank can make use of the remaining 90% for itself in the interim. (See Mark Skousen, Economics of a Pure Gold Standard (2nd ed., Auburn, AL: Praxeology Press, 1988).)

This is known as fractional reserve banking. But the problem does not stop at this point. It is compounded because the bank further mistreats the loaned-out portion of a deposit when it returns to the bank by again keeping 10% and loaning out the rest. This is how the financial system inflates the money supply, thereby increasing the amount of purchasing power (here in the form of credits). When the ratio is altered between money and goods (money includes credit, since it combines with currency to form purchasing power) by increasing the amount of money, prices tend to rise. Or, to look at it from the other side, the purchasing power of money declines. This is inflation, and you can refer again to chapter six for a fuller explanation of inflation and what effect it has.

If it is accepted, however, that diluting the value of money is morally wrong, then we need to think carefully about the use of bank debt, since it is the primary means whereby the money supply is expanded.

Put this another way: without borrowers, fractional reserve banking methods would fail. If there were no borrowers, there would be no possibility of the bank creating money ex nihilo, out of nothing.

Since lowering the purchasing power of money is defrauding our neighbor of his wealth, we must recognize that each one of us has the means in his power to help prevent this from occurring. Single-handedly we may not be able to stop the practice totally, but we can add our small part to hinder its progress. We can decline to participate in the fractional reserve procedure by refusing to become borrowers. (We could also refuse to participate by insisting that the banks hold our funds in reserve so that their obligations are matched by their reserves. In other words, we need a 100% reserve banking system.)

This argument is an argument against borrowing from banks. Borrowing from friends or relatives does not cause the money supply to rise, so this argument against debt is limited in its scope to only that debt which is used to increase the money supply. Earlier arguments against debt, however, cover non-bank debt, so the limited aspect of this particular argument against debt does not provide any loopholes where a pro-debt position can be taken.

More importantly, however, it was seen that the process of putting aside for future use (savings) was the necessary step for economic advancement. Without savings there can be no process of ongoing economic development.

Debt is the opposite to the idea of saving. Instead of saving, people become borrowers. Instead of storing up wealth for the future, they consume other people’s accumulations of wealth paying for the privilege with the wealth of tomorrow. The God-ordained process of wealth creation, however, is the foregoing of current consumption in order to put aside wealth for use in the future. That is, we must save for the future. We need to take assets we have now and turn them into more assets, better assets, in the future.

The scripture in Proverbs 13:22 says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. This thought is repeated in the New Testament where parents are instructed to “lay up” wealth for their children (2 Cor. 12:14). This leaves each of us with an obligation to leave our children some kind of inheritance. Our children’s advancement will be directly linked to the inheritance we leave them; and it does not require a degree in economics to understand that the greater the inheritance we leave them, the better off they’ll be (assuming they don’t squander that legacy).

Debt, however, is the very antithesis of this biblical idea. Rather than putting aside wealth to consume in the future, debt is an attempt to use future productivity in the present. People do not like to wait in order to get things. When borrowed funds are so readily available, as they are under the present financial system, it is easy to forget that the biblical pattern is to work and save for the future. To buy now, with borrowed funds, is to say that our future earnings are to be spent in the present.

This contrasts with the New Testament passage mentioned above, where we are instructed to “lay up” wealth for future generations. While there are some people who will argue that debt is a means of laying up wealth for the future, they do not take into consideration the interest that is paid when they borrow. Unfortunately, our calculating ability on this matter is seriously hampered by inflation. We see, for example, house prices going up. We also see our pay packets going up each year. So we borrow to buy something, hoping that the item we buy also increases in price to cover the cost of interest that we must pay. If prices were relatively stable, then we would see the real effect of borrowing: an item that might cost us two or three times its price by the time we paid the interest bill, and if we were to sell it, we’d never recover the amount paid in interest.

Only in an age of inflation can any attempt be made to defend the use of debt. But this is precisely why debt must be avoided. Debt fuels inflation and we can soon get caught on a never ending merry-go-round of price increases that distort our ability to make sound economic judgments.

It is true to say that there can be no borrowing unless there is a saver who has made the funds available. But just because other people save, this is not a reason we might use to excuse ourselves from the same obligation. When everyone saves, the future productive capacity of society is enhanced. This is how we create an inheritance for our children and grandchildren.

Not surprisingly, we are seeing what the low saving’s rate is doing to countries such as America and Australia in the current economic climate. Many of our Asian neighbors have much higher saving’s rates, and their productive capacity is outstripping that of Australia. The opinion of business analysts is divided as to whether productivity in countries in the Pacific Basin is surpassing that in the United States. Increased wealth, though, is flowing to these nations, showing the truthfulness of God’s plan for wealth creation. The United States, once the leading industrial nation in the world, is now staggering under a massive debt load of four trillion dollars. Some suggest that it is no longer the leading economic player in the world. But it is debt and the failure of Americans to follow the Bible’s teaching on this matter, that has brought about its economic decline. In other words, ethics is the cause of declining productivity, and only a return to biblical ethical standards will improve the economic situation.

How many can truly say that their borrowing does not have, at its deepest level, the motivations of greed and avarice? Maybe it is not recognizable as greed, but a serious dose of self-analysis in the light of the glorious revelation God has given to us in the Scriptures might surprise many.

Second, there is another aspect of debt and its relationship to greed that has nothing necessarily to do with borrowers. People who borrow are those who want to buy goods and services. But there is always another person involved when someone makes a purchase. He, too, has an interest in debt. He is the seller of goods and services. If he can get a potential buyer to go into debt, it may become possible for him to get a higher price for his goods than he could if the buyer refused to borrow.

Imagine a person selling his home. He asks $100,000 for it. A potential buyer offers him $92,500 cash. Another buyer, however, says he’ll pay $115,000 by going into debt for five years so he can get the funds to pay the price. A third buyer arrives and is willing to take on a 20-year mortgage and pay the seller $150,000 for the house. What is the seller going to do? Better still, what would you do if you were the seller? Many people would be tempted to accept the higher offer. But is this the morally correct response in this instance?

Martin Luther saw this side of the debt issue clearer than many, and he had some firm words to say about it. He was concerned that business dealings be governed by ethics, not economics. “Because selling is an act performed toward your neighbor, it should rather be so governed by law and conscience that you do it without harm and injury to him, your concern being directed more toward doing him no injury than toward gaining profit for yourself.” (Martin Luther, “Trade and Usury” in Walther I. Brandt, ed., Luther’s Works: The Christian in Society, Vol. 45 (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1962) , p. 248.) For Luther, the idea that a seller could, or should, sell for as high a price as possible, was an occasion “given for avarice, and every window and door to hell is opened.” (Ibid., p. 247.) While this does not totally discount the idea of getting the highest possible price, it does mean that sellers must consider their motivation in attempting to get high prices for the sale of their goods. It does mean that money alone should not be the criterion by which we make the judgment. It is better to get a lower price and not see the buyer “injured” than to get a higher price and “hurt” the buyer.

Greed is the issue here. Greed is an attitude that puts the individual and his desires at the forefront of any transaction (Isa. 56:11). The greedy person is only concerned for himself and what he can get. He gives little recognition to the needs of others. Naturally, the Bible warns us against greed. It was one of the charges the Lord Jesus Christ brought against the Pharisees: “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness” (Luke 11:39). According to Psalm 10:3, the wicked person is one who “blesses the greedy and renounces the Lord.” A greedy person is prohibited from being an elder or bishop (I Tim. 3:3), for ultimately greed gets such a hold on a person that it leads to death (Prov. 1:19). Like a cancerous growth it leads to a slow and lingering annihilation.

Temperance in our business and our demeanor concerning wealth is just as important as it is with alcohol or food. While recognizing that there is a place for a just and fair price that must compensate a seller of goods, it becomes a matter of moral concern, and charity towards others, whether those selling prices are determined by the amount of debt that a potential buyer might be willing to take on.

While there are some who argue that we should always get as high a price as possible, it is a fine line between getting a high price and being greedy. It is better to stay on the side of conservatism than to become greedy for an extra dollar or two in a sale. (There is always someone reading an argument like this who will want to know how to tell where to draw the line on prices. Greed, however, is not a dollar amount, it is an attitude. It is caused by letting money rather than the moral concerns of love and compassion towards our fellow man dictate our actions. It is up to each one of us to know ourselves well enough so that we do not cross the line.)