Lehigh Valley Conservative

Edited
By
Dr. Steyko Aleythos

Holy Scripture emphatically warns us against incurring debt. Many Americans, however, have debts that they may not be able to pay off for decades. We have come to regard that as normal and acceptable. Unfortunately, however, since many have never studied the Bible, they do not know of the Lord’s warnings regarding borrowing. Now we have numerous foreclosures and bankruptcies wreaking havoc on individual American families. In addition, our government in Washington continues to add to our out of control national debt. See below.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
 

“The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender”(Proverbs 22:7).

“1. Those that have little will be in subjection to those that have much, because they have dependence upon them, they have received, and expect to receive, support from them:”—Matthew Henry’s commentary on Proverbs 22:7.

An example of another “subjection” or dependence can be seen in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once known as the food stamp program.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48898378/Record_46_Million_Americans_Are_on_Food_Stamps

Below we learn of the Lord’s command to His people that they were not to borrow or incur debt.

“For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee”(Deuteronomy 15:6).

Please take time to read President Jefferson’s letter written 197 years ago to Samuel Kerchival on the dangers of “perpetual debt” in which we find our beloved America.

“Monticello, July 12th, 1816.”

“To Samuel Kerchival:”

“I am not among those who fear the people. They,
and not the rich, are our dependence for continued
freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must
not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means to call the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers. Our land holders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the “war of all against all,” which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” (1)

Please read this letter again below to take note of several principles. Let us look at these sentence by sentence.

1. “I am not among those who fear the people.” Jefferson asserted he did not “fear the people”.
2. “They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.” Jefferson stated that “continued freedom” depended on the people and not on the rich.
3. “And to preserve their independence, we must
not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” Notice that our independence is in jeopardy when “our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” Jefferson affirms it to be our duty “not to let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
4. “We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” We have a choice to make “between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude”.
5. “If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means to call the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers.” This sounds just like our beloved America today.
6. “Our land holders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile and the glory of the nation.”
7. “This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.” “Public as well as private extravagance destroys “private fortunes”.
8. “And this is the tendency of all human governments.”
All governments by their very natures gravitate toward these “extravagances” of debt.
9. “A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.” What a timely observation we have before us! Our government and we ourselves have made and continue to make the very decisions against which Jefferson warned us.
10. “Then begins, indeed, the “war of all against all,” which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man.” Does it not appear that some of our national rhetoric is in effect promoting, if not “war of all against all”, then at least divisions resulting in an “abusive state of man”?
11. “And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”

Do you see how Jefferson presents this scenario?
First, he cites “public debt” as the “fore horse” or the cause of the conditions posed in number ten above. Then, such debt, of necessity, must be followed by “taxation”, after which, Jefferson declared, arises “wretchedness and oppression”.

For many of our fellow citizens, this “wretchedness and oppression” are the order of the day with the loss of their employment and homes resulting in further dependence on our federal government.

Footnotes

(1) RICHARD S. POPPEN, “All men are Created equal”, “Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence and Letters, Addresses, Excerpts and
Aphorisms Selected From His Writings With a SHORT BIOGRAPHY and An Outline of the Two Principal Parties”, (St. Louis, MO, 1898), pp. 123-124.