Since the early 1980s, the credit industry has rewritten the rules of lending to families. Congress has turned the industry loose to charge whatever it can get and to bury tricks and traps throughout credit agreements. Credit-card contracts that were less than a page long in the early 1980s now number 30 or more pages of small-print legalese. In the details, credit-card companies lend money at one rate, but retain the right to change the interest rate after the money has been borrowed—a practice once considered too shady even for a back-alley loan shark. When they think they have been cheated, customers can be forced into arbitration in locations thousands of miles from home.

— Elizabeth Warren, The Middle Class on the Precipice, Harvard Magazine, February, 2006, pg 31

Elizabeth Warren’s cautionary article in Harvard Magazine is based in part on her paper for the Social Science Research Council: Rewriting the Rules: Families, Money and Risk, part of Working Group called The Privatization of Risk.

Dr. Warren’s article is worth reading on several levels related to the high risk exposure of an economic middle class of Americans that was rock solid just a generation ago. For now, the paragraph above is plenty to think about because it puts me in mind of the chapter in Nehemiah where, having brought a modicum of security to the ravaged city of Jerusalem, he is confronted with an unanticipated and to him unthinkable problem: usury.

By statute in the U.S., usury is charging interest exceeding the percentage allowed by law. Most states currently permit interest rates between 5% and 10%. Starting in 1980 the U.S. Congress passed special laws exempting national banks, federally chartered savings banks and other chartered lenders from state mandated usury limits. So, in practice, federal law may allow nearly anything a recognized lender does. Seeing a cash flow crisis in the making, the current Congress responded in 2005 by tightening down on borrowers and loosening even more on lenders.

All of which makes the statutory definition of usury an empty shell.

What we’re left with is a practical assessment of lending practices and a moral appraisal of what’s right, as distinct from what’s expedient and what’s legal.

Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their Jewish brothers. Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our countrymen and though our sons are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry. I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, “You are exacting usury from your own countrymen!” So I called together a large meeting to deal with them and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our Jewish brothers who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your brothers, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let the exacting of usury stop! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the usury you are charging them—the hundredth part of the money, grain, new wine and oil.”

“We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.”

Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, “In this way may God shake out of his house and possessions every man who does not keep this promise. So may such a man be shaken out and emptied!”

At this the whole assembly said, “Amen,” and praised the LORD. And the people did as they had promised.

— Nehemiah 5:1-13 [New International Version]

Usury is profit-taking that has nothing to do with economic expansion. It is a scorched earth policy based on the pretense of an uninterrupted stream of new borrowers. Dr. Warren’s paper exposes how untenable that assumption is. An economy built on credit collapses when there’s no one left to borrow. This might be fine for the untouchably wealthy, were it not for a biblical thread instructing us that no one will turn out to be untouchably wealthy.

At the bottom of all this Nehemiah’s question is whether or not we are in this together. This is the source of his outrage: powerful people bankrupting their brothers and sisters; forcing boys and girls into bonded labor and sexual slavery to pay the interest on debts that can never be retired. In the face of this, Nehemiah did not fall back on a business is business stance: “What you are doing is not right." he declared. "Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?"

Usury makes us look bad in front of God and everybody. Nehemiah and his company, who also lent grain and money, called on the bankers to stop the madness.

And the bankers listened—shamed into compliance with what anyone could see is only right when times are hard.

And times are hard. Not our-city-lies-in-ruins hard, but harder than many people acknowledge. According to Elizabeth Warren:

• Today a fully employed male earns nearly $800 less each year than his counterpart a generation ago.
• The modern single-earner family trying to keep up an average lifestyle faces a 72 percent drop in discretionary income compared with its one-income counterpart a generation ago."
• Today’s dual-income family makes 75% more than a one-income family a generation ago, but earmarks 75% of their income for recurrent monthly expenses (mortgage, car payments, insurance, child care) — 25% higher than the early 1970s.
• Unlike a single-income family at the beginning of the 1970s, today’s two-income family has no fallback position if one of them gets sick or loses a job. They’re both working already, and 75% of what they make goes to fixed expenses. Cut income 50 or 75% in a family crisis, and throw in a credit-card company that bumps it’s rate from 6% to 29% and things can get serious fast.

Please understand I’m not saying American’s should live on credit. Quite the opposite. Our Scriptural Roots of Commerce Module, More Than Money, outlines what we think is a sound, biblically informed approach to managing household resources.

This means taking personal responsibility when we borrow money. An ancient proverb warns: "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7). All of us are responsible to live within our means—the middle class can be just as greedy and pretentious as the wealthy. And for what it’s worth, a 30-page contract for an $8,000 line of credit shoud probably be a word to the wise.

That said, should those of us who sell products—especially necessities—be in cahoots with credit companies who practice usury? Do we or don’t we have a responsiblity to insist on honest scales (The LORD detests differing weights, and dishonest scales do not please him.—Proverbs 20.23)? Who better than business people to resist companies that take unfair advantage? Who better than business people to call the government to account for unfair lending laws? Because the fact remains that millions of our countrymen live in a tenuous balance that can turn into a very bad spot with the simplest precipitating event—too little rain in Texas, for example, or too much rain in Mississippi and Louisiana.

I think we who claim to know something about the kingdom of God are going to have to think about how to respond to that.