Neither a Leader Nor a Borrower Be...

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis points out that ancient Greeks, Jews in the Old Testament, and Christians in the Middle Ages all forbid leading money at interest, and that in the modern world, our entire economic system is based on charging and paying interest. If charging interest were outlawed today in America, our economy would collapse.

But is it healthy for us to rely so heavily on something that three quite different past societies found wise to forbid? Would the current chaos our economy is in have been avoided if we also followed this rule? Or would we personally be better off if we tried to follow it in our daily lives? It would mean no credit cards, no mortgages, no investing in the stock market. Certainly some of us would be better off than we are now, but not all of us.

I don't have any answers here, just questions and thoughts. Let me know what you think of this, and what your life would look like if you decided to follow this rule.

C.S. Lewis Upsets Me Again!

As a family, we are reading that great C.S. Lewis classic, The Screwtape Letters. I don't think any Christian could read that book without being convicted about some aspect of their life. And I had my "C.S. Lewis moment" just this Sunday.

For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it is a series of letters from a senior demon to a junior one, giving the junior demon advice on how to win the soul of his "patient". In one letter, the junior demon has been unable to keep his patient from going to church. The senior demon advises him that this is not a problem, as long as he can make his patient into a "church shopper". In other words, make him look down on his fellow parishioners, keep him looking for the "right" church, etc.

We read this chapter on Saturday. On Sunday, I was sitting in the sanctuary, waiting for the service to begin, when a family came in. This family had a teenage girl, and this girl was wearing extremely short shorts. I immediately thought, "My! I would never allow my daughter to dress like that! And esp. for church!" Then I said to myself, what am I thinking? Here I am, behaving just the way C.S. Lewis warned against, judging others who dare to attend "my" church! Here was a teenage girl, attending church with her family! Would I really rather she not be there at all? While I disagree with her clothing choices, she has as much right to God's grace as I have.