Let No Debt

                 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8)

                Debt: something owed: obligation

                Financial advisors tell us to get out of debt. Even if they don’t, at least some of us have the sense that debt is a bad thing. It may be something we believe we’ll never escape, but when one is in debt, one is not free. Some people think that certain people owe endless debts to others that we can only repay by handing over everything we own and spending the rest of our lives as their slaves. In a sense, they’re right, but I do not hate those to whom I am indebted in this way to require that they take on the role that they described as evil when the roles were reversed.  

                The sense in which we owe them a debt was not born in the past. It is born every day as we encounter people. The debt we owe them is to love them. They equally owe us the same debt. If they approach us (or we, them) like a mafia debt collector, demanding what’s owed, they might get it, at the cost of reducing the debtor’s capacity to continue payment. After all, if you don’t have the money to buy food, how are you going to maintain the strength to work to pay off the debt? If you receive nothing but abuse from someone who demands your payment of love, with what are you going to be able to pay that debt, especially over the long run? Fortunately, God can and does provide where we lack, but those who demand love when they hate are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

                Another idea about this came to mind. If love is demanded, or effectively wrung from a person, how long before the demanding person decides that what they’re receiving is a forgery or a cheat in some other way. Somehow, what they looked to for nourishment, enrichment or whatever isn’t doing what they wanted. It’s almost if they become love-intolerant just as some people are gluten-intolerant or lactose-intolerant. When they consume it, they get the heart or soul’s equivalent of an upset stomach or diarrhea. I don’t know that this is true, but it doesn’t seem to me that those who demand love are satisfied for long.

                What this means is that, while we may all have times when we need and even demand love, doing so on a consistent basis does more harm than good to us and to those from whom we demand it. And we should never lose touch with the fact that we are just as much in debt to those around us as they are to us.