Last night while guest hosting the "Albert Mohler Program" on the radio, I had an interesting and convicting question from a woman in, I believe, New York, who wondered about the morality of Christian businessmen owning pawnshops, check-cashing and title-loan businesses and the like. Apparently, someone in her congregation owns one of these businesses, and this woman wondered whether the issue was one of church discipline or even of moral inquiry at all.
Her question is complicated, precisely because I know there are pawnshop owners who run fair businesses that glorify Christ and help the communities in which they live. My first inclination was to encourage this woman not to judge this businessman at all. After all, we all know Christians in businesses everyone assumes are shady, simply on the basis of caricature and personal anecdote. I remember how frustrated I was as a child to see the stereotypical "car salesman" on television, knowing that my father, an honest man, managed a car dealership. I'm sure there are Christian pawnshop owners in the same situation.
On the other hand, the woman seemed to be less anxious to judge a brother, than to sort out her own sense of moral ambiguity. Is her church standing by while the poor are oppressed, and allowing a brother to corrupt his own soul? Or, is this a morally neutral issue?
Last night while guest hosting the "Albert Mohler Program" on the radio, I had an interesting and convicting question from a woman in, I believe, New York, who wondered about the morality of Christian businessmen owning pawnshops, check-cashing and title-loan businesses and the like. Apparently, someone in her congregation owns one of these businesses, and this woman wondered whether the issue was one of church discipline or even of moral inquiry at all.
Her question is complicated, precisely because I know there are pawnshop owners who run fair businesses that glorify Christ and help the communities in which they live. My first inclination was to encourage this woman not to judge this businessman at all. After all, we all know Christians in businesses everyone assumes are shady, simply on the basis of caricature and personal anecdote. I remember how frustrated I was as a child to see the stereotypical "car salesman" on television, knowing that my father, an honest man, managed a car dealership. I'm sure there are Christian pawnshop owners in the same situation.
On the other hand, the woman seemed to be less anxious to judge a brother, than to sort out her own since of moral ambiguity. Is her church standing by while the poor are oppressed, and allowing a brother to corrupt his own soul? Or, is this a morally neutral issue? It is difficult not to see a real moral dilemma in "title loan" shops, for instance, that spring up in impoverished neighborhoods charging skyrocketing interest rates to the poor, with the title to their automobiles as collateral. It is difficult not to see a moral quandary with a business that, by design, seeks to manipulate the poor into a debt from which they cannot ever extricate themselves.
As one who has ministered in a casino town, I was immediately struck by the pawnshops and title-loan businesses that sprung up just after "gaming" was approved in our county. And I remember visiting families who had nothing because the father had pawned everything away to play the slots on the beach.
I didn't have a simple answer for this woman on the radio. But I do commend her for thinking about a Christian corporate witness to the poor in a way that is so easy to forget. Too many Christians articulate "responsibility to the poor" only in terms of, at best, a revived Great Society and, at worst, a global version of Sandinista-led Nicaragua. It seems to me the biblical focus on the poor is often much more local, and thus much more complicated. The prophets, for instance, hammer away at the covenant community of Israel for turning a blind eye to those who "grind the faces" of the poor (Isa 3:15), as though there is no Judge. The Mosaic Law speaks of poverty in big cosmic terms, but more often in smaller, more practical acts of kindness, such as the provision for gleaning that sustained Ruth and, thus, the line of our Lord Jesus. James calls employers to task for unjust wages (James 5:1-6), and he rebukes local congregations for something as seemingly inconsequential as seating poorer people in the back during gathered worship (James 2:1-6).
In the latest issue of Touchstone, Frederica Mathews-Green pens a moving article on our tendency to see "The Poor" as an almost inhuman category, a cause rather than real people who sin and need Christ. I think, in the same way, we often see "Poverty" as an issue rather as a real problem of individual and corporate sanctification. This doesn't mean we'll always have easy answers. And I still don't have a 3-second answer to the question of a Christian title-loan shop owner. But the question itself is a good place to start.
Up until the last few hundred years, bankers (let alone moneylenders and pawnbrokers) were shunned by the Catholic church and not allowed to take communion. Charging interest on loans was considered sinful, and it took some fancy monetary maneuvering by the Italian bankers of the 1300's to get around that by use of contracts and converting different types of money.
That's part of the reason Jews got their "shylock" reputation, as they filled the need for moneylenders since they were not part of the Catholic church. Muslims to this day are very strict about not charging interest, so they turn to Western banks to handle their oil-gotten gains.
First National Bank of Arabia? You'll never see it as long as Muslims are in control.
Posted by: MarcV | April 28, 2006 at 06:52 AM
Interesting,
On one side, you have the enabling and participation in someone’s sin by the loaning of money for immediate gratification, and profit taking on the loan. On the other side the liquidity and efficiency of the modern economy is built upon the loan (and thus all the good things that flow from a modern economy). Also, I wonder if pawn/title loan shops are ways to get around maximum interest laws. Gambling of course is different in that it does not add to overall wealth the way the banking system does. Gambling is now simply a source of tax revenue that the state depends upon. I did IT work a one of the five casinos in New Orleans, and just after Katrina it was the state that was pushing us to open as soon as possible - because they needed the money. About 30 cents of every dollar that walked into that casino went directly to the state.
On a personal note, I struggled with my own participation in the "gaming" tax. I don't call it an "industry" because the state made much more money than the private firm did. The state was intimately involved in every aspect of that business, so much so you can not really call it private. I never did resolve my own questions. Gambling addiction is similar to other addictions, and I was part of the machinery that supplied the drug. Katrina "solved" this moral dilemma for me - for which I am thankful! Having recently moved to the state of North Carolina I noted with sadness they have just started their state lottery. The slide down begins...
Posted by: Christohper | April 28, 2006 at 11:38 AM
There are difficulties here, especially when "the debtor is the slave of the lender." Crippling interest rates are downright theft, and predatory lending victimizes the poor or the prodigal.
Posted by: Kevin Jones | April 28, 2006 at 12:16 PM
The question that I have, I know of a christian that is buying stuff from alcoholics and addicts to further their destruction, who do I go to him and tell him that he is doing this and it is wrong?
Posted by: ernie brown | July 06, 2006 at 06:23 PM