"Snippets" from David
Experience As A Teacher
Experience serves numerous roles in our lives. None is more
powerful or has farther reaching significance than does its role as teacher. In
that role, experience even has spiritual significance.
Israel in Egypt lived as poor, oppressed slaves. From their slavery past, they
were to remember many things. Slavery experiences were to shape their future
behavior. For example, in Israel, Jewish people were to hold other Jewish people
in high regard.
The instructions concerning the way Jewish people treated Jewish people are (to
us gentiles) almost beyond the point of belief. In this early age, they were to
create social conditions that had the goal of eliminating poverty in their
society (Deuteronomy 15:4). Though poverty would be one of those "forever
problems" (Deuteronomy 15:11), Jewish people were to attack the poverty problem
as though it could be solved.
How?
Every seven years they were to give a Jewish debtor a fresh start by forgiving
his debt. This is one of the ways those who were not endebted would demonstrate
their dependence on God (Deuteronomy 15:4, 6). The Jewish people were to do two
things: (1) avoid debt, and (2) help Jewish people who were in debt. The first
declared they should not enter the problem. The second said they should be
compassionate toward their brothers who were trapped by the problem.
That may sound like a contradiction. Yet, consider this. Often the consequences
of poverty are so severe that one will do most anything [including borrow money]
to escape the clutches of poverty. One might think [and still often does] that
the key to a fresh start is using debt to finance the fresh start. However,
often a person lacks the judgment and skills to create the circumstances that
produce a fresh start. As important as hard work is, too often hard work is not
enough to create the fresh start. As a result, the poor who owed what they could
not repay found themselves only poorer when their fresh start turned to dust.
The key to a fresh start in early Israel was escaping impossible indebtedness.
In their society Jewish people created that possibility by forgiving the
indebtedness of Jewish brothers every seven years. What were they to do to make
this escape possible?
1. They would not harden their hearts to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7).
2. They would not close their hands to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7).
3. They would be generous in lending to meet the needs of the poor (Deuteronomy
15:8).
4. In their lending, they would not calculate how close the seventh year was
(Deuteronomy 15:9).
5. They would give joyfully as they helped the person in need, not in grief,
because they depended on the Lord's blessing (Deuteronomy 15:10).
6. Because the problem was a "forever problem" would not keep them from doing
what was right.
Some observations: (1) they would not evade responsibility by saying, "It is
your fault that you are in this situation!" (2) They would help the poor in
order to demonstrate their own dependence on God. (3) They would help their
brothers for the joy of helping their brothers. (4) They would not excuse
inactivity by saying, "This is a problem that cannot be fixed." The criteria for
failing to respond MUST NOT BE, "This response will not do any good!" They
responded to what was right in God's eyes!
One of the things that commonly keeps the church from becoming a universal
community often is found in our attitudes toward and our actions in that matter
of poverty. Admittedly, it is a complex problem, and its complexities vary from
society to society. Money often is not the answer, but money is sometimes the
answer. Effectiveness often involves the messiness of personal involvement. That
is why the response is primarily to God. It is by loving God that we learn how
to love people who constantly need the kindness of grace.
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