1. It’s not often that the concepts of debt and forgiveness receive such a public auditing. The recent news from Washington D.C. regarding student loan debt forgiveness has catapulted the matter into the public conversation. Over at Christianity Today, Stephanie McDade offers some compelling data on the subject:
Over a two-day period last week, searches for debt-related topics surged to 20 times above average on BibleGateway. Four verses — for and against loan forgiveness — were the top-gaining passages on the site:
Exodus 22:25 — “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest.”
Deuteronomy 23:19 — “Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest.”
Psalm 37:21 — “The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously.”
Ecclesiastes 5:5 — “It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it.”
Searches for keywords “usury,” “paying debt,” “charging interest,” “debt,” “forgiveness of debt,” “debt paid in full,” and “paying your debts” were up.
The link roundup goes on to highlight a number of Christian thinkers offering their takes on the subject. Much of the conversation around student loan forgiveness (in my circles anyway) revolves around questions of efficacy. Does this forgiveness impact the most needy? Does this forgiveness only apply to one party’s political base? Does this forgiveness encourage fiscal irresponsibility, or does this forgiveness increase economic inflation? Has enough been forgiven?
The longer I sit with it, the more parallels I see between this modern political moment and the forgiving ministry of Jesus. Which is to say, forgiveness of any stripe sets off everybody’s unfairness radar. (Everyone, that is, except the person needing that forgiveness.) 
It’s sad to see that the search terms cataloged by one of the web’s go-to Bible search engines are mostly focused on fairness — whether it’s the mosaic laws on usury or Jubilee or the ethical guidelines baked into the Bible’s wisdom literature. Jesus was quite comfortable setting off everyone’s unfairness radar by forgiving people of the very offenses modern readers are googling. Grace isn’t fair, and so most news of forgiveness will ultimately irritate modern ears.
By my money, the most relevant passage of scripture for this student loan forgiveness moment is Jesus’s parable of a gracious payday in Matthew 20. A master pays a group of day laborers at the end of the day. Some workers put in a full day’s shift, but others were hired later in the day and only worked a half or quarter day shift. In his generosity, the master decides to pay everyone a full day’s paycheck, including the part timers. Of course, we understand why the workers who worked a full day would grumble a bit – they worked more, they should be paid more, right? How unfair! But the master has little time for such grumbling. “I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
The parable points to the spiritual darkness of resentment and scorekeeping, a lesson that many Jewish Christians would need to learn in the years to come when gentile believers joined their ranks as beloved children of God. Many of the arguments about student loan forgiveness focus on issues of inflationary pressure or economic efficiency, but the subtext isn’t subtle. Lots of people are mad because someone different from them caught a break in which they weren’t included.
2. If those thoughts are a little too church-and-state for you, maybe there’s something that bewilderment can assist with. That’s the assertion of Alan Levinovitz over at the Hedgehog Review arguing “In Praise of Bewilderment.” Bewilderment, argues Levinovitz, is the balm for our time, piercing through the insatiable demands of crisis to offer us a needed dose of epistemological humility and flexibility. His introductory thoughts on religion and science are worth the price of admission, but his explanation of how crisis is the enemy of bewilderment is the deeper gift:
Crisis resists bewilderment in two ways. First, by convincing us that anything less than complete certainty is dangerous. How can we be open to thinking differently about climate change? About racism? About autocrats and tyrants? Isn’t bewilderment just fancy talk for “both-sides-ism,” that enemy of truth disguised as false balance? No. What crisis calls for is action. By shrinking time to a single point, crisis tricks us into confusing bewilderment with complacency.
The second way is by increasing our cognitive load. When you are worried, there is no time or energy to think about anything else. Certainty is easy. What food should I buy? The organic food. Or the cheaper food. When it comes to reducing cognitive load, the rule doesn’t matter—what matters is having a rule to follow. So, too, for political issues or religious issues. How should I feel about abortion? What is the truth about cops? There’s no room for ambiguity in our exhausted brains. Easier to let simple certainties do the work for us.
I’ve struggled to come up with a metaphor for how bewilderment works in our culture and in ourselves, and unfortunately the best I’ve got is a bit ridiculous. Bewilderment is like the elastane (Lycra or Spandex) that clothing manufacturers have begun adding to fabrics like denim. Typically 100 percent cotton, denim can be inflexible and uncomfortable. By adding just 1-2 percent elastane, denim gets much more comfortable. More flexible. More resilient. Gain a bit of weight and you can still squat without ripping your pants. Without elastane, fabric is inflexible, more likely to tear.
Bewilderment, according to Levinovitz, is not so much an attack on truth or orthodoxy as it is a call for smallness. The Christian is properly bewildered by questions like “how does the Trinity work?” and “how does Jesus pre-exist but also become born of a virgin?” and “why does God love me?” That’s the kind of humbling mystery that would allow for the unity, liberty, and charity from that famous quote about essentials, non-essentials, and all things.
3. Here’s a college football deep cut for everyone getting ready to tailgate for week onw. Punter-turned-NFL-commentator Pat McAfee, for the first time ever, recalls a pair of infamous missed field goals during the 2007 Backyard Brawl that have haunted him for fifteen years. There’s wisdom here for anyone dealing with the darkest moments in their own life: going back to that dark place is oftentimes the only way to find healing and mercy. (Note: strong language and acknowledgment of suicide.)
4. Thoughts from a similar vein come from the latest Wendell Berry book, The Need to Be Whole, a portion of which was published by Plough magazine earlier this week. In this excerpt, Berry bemoans cultural partisanship, and takes to task the division of “lovers” and “haters.” Once the haters are hated, love has flown the coop.
With us, love has been reduced mostly to a popular word, easy to use to intensify a frivolous appreciation. “Oh, I love it!” we say when told of something really cute. Or it can be used as a handy weapon against the haters of whom we disapprove. Too bad. But love comes into our civilization – the Gospels being the source best known to me – as a way of being in the world. It is a force, extraordinarily demanding and humbling, dangerous too, for those who attempt to take it seriously…
As a force and a way of being, love is never satisfied with partiality. It is compelled, by its own nature and logic, to be always trying to make itself whole. This is why the Sermon on the Mount tells us to love our enemies. That is an unconditional statement. It does not tell us to fight our enemies in order to improve them or convert them by our love.”
In practice, this commandment seems to cancel or delete “enemy” as a category of thought.
5. In humor this week, The New Yorker’s “If Selfies Came with Automatic Transcripts of Our Thoughts” hits the nail on the head, as well as Welcome To My House From Which I’ve Removed All Trace of How I Live. And I Lived It: I Apologized But Wasn’t Immediately Forgiven. But yours truly is beyond excited for this meta-parody of biopics from a parody writer who wrote his own biopic parody.
6. Shia Laboeuf made waves recently with what may be a conversion to Roman Catholicism. The event gave Daniel Turner at Theos an opportunity to discuss celebrity conversions, and wonder if the masses have the right instinct for how to process a new famous follower:
Conversion is a beautiful thing, but for those of us who have experienced it as an ‘aha’ moment, or within a short intense period, we also know that it is a fragile time. From the mountain top of encounter, I am guaranteed to descend. Despite my fiery zeal and best efforts, I am still faced with the reality that I sin and will continue to for the rest of my life. To be cast into the public eye from this initial tender moment as a spokesperson for the faith is dangerous, as often it is the challenges one faces a little more down the road that really define and shape their faith the most.
I’ve heard that the late founder of the Companions of the Cross religious community jokingly said, “once people get baptised in the Holy Spirit they should be locked in a closet for six months and then allowed to come out”. I know looking back at my own experience how much I sympathise with this statement. As the Church, our response to public converts should not be to push them into the spotlight, but rather to gather round them, offer them genuine love and support, and equip them with the tools they need to walk a good Christ–like life.
7. Rounding out the week, Plough published a reflection from Mother Theresa on the power of confession. We’ll let St. Theresa of Calcutta have the last word this week:
Perhaps this is what we have lacked. Our examination of our conscience is the mirror we focus toward nature: a human test, no doubt, but one that needs a mirror in order to faithfully reflect its faults. If we undertake this task with greater faithfulness, perhaps we will realize that what we sometimes consider a stumbling block is rather a rock we can step on. The knowledge of our sin helps us to rise. […]
The reality of my sins must come first. For most of us there is the danger of forgetting that we are sinners and must go to confession as sinners. We must go to God to tell Him we are sorry for all we have done that may have hurt Him.
The confessional is not a place for useless conversation or gossip. The topic should be my sins, my sorrow, my forgiveness; how to overcome my temptations, how to practice virtue, how to increase in the love of God.
Strays:
- The Mockingcast is back from summer vacation! RJ, Sarah, and Dave talk Frederick Buechner, worker productivity scores, Effective Altruism, and Afrikaner sadness. Also, Sarah’s sabbatical diverts her somewhere … fabulous.
- Vox has a neat photo/illustration essay on men and friendships. The news ain’t good.
- ICYMI – Tour Dates for the #LowAnthropology book tour are out. Catch David Zahl on a coast-to-coast party this fall and winter as he tries to convince the world that weakness and fallibility are the keys to unlocking unity, compassion and grace.
- See also Sam Bush’s fantastic reflection on downward mobility from earlier this week. “Jesus is the exception to the rule that what goes up must come down.”
COMMENTS
One response to “August 27 – September 2”
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So glad to have the Mockingcast back!
On the student loan/debt forgiveness piece, I was hoping you might have reflected on David French’s piece about it. He’s not so convinced that Biden’s policy is straightforwardly “Christian” in nature or effect. The key line: “[Biden’s program] is radically generous, yes, but the generosity is backwards. It’s taking from those who have less and giving to those who have more.” The people that are receiving this radical generosity are, by and large, wealthier by a fair degree than the average American (cf. a Harvard Law prof tweeting gratefully that Biden’s program will help “thousands of [his] former students”). Like it or dislike it on a secular basis, but I’m reluctant to endorse it on Christian grounds – after all, Jesus had so much to say about the obligations of the rich. He told the rich young ruler to sell everything, after all.
I think we shouldn’t gloss over people’s sense of unfairness as mere sour grapes, and certainly not on the grounds that Christianity demands it in some way. “Lots of people are mad because someone different from them caught a break in which they weren’t included.” Couldn’t one say the exact same thing about Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the über-wealthy and corporations? Does grace demand that we understand those tax cuts to be Christian?