Forgiving Our Debtors

This year’s G8 summit doesn’t appear to be riding on a wave of achievements. The press call with Presidents Bush and Putin, despite offering a glimmer of hope, showed stiff and uncompromising body language.

The evolving crisis with North Korea and the potentially more dangerous events between Israel and Hezbollah have created edginess throughout the world. And despite whatever rhetoric we hear, Iraq appears to be rapidly slipping into anarchy.

Indeed, our world leaders have a full dance card this year. And our prayers for them are needed.

But there is still unfinished business to be addressed, like the debts owed by the world’s poorest countries. In addition to paying off their own eleven billion dollar debt, President Putin says Russia is now willing to forgive the debts of the world's sixteen poorest nations.

In Christian thinking, what really matters about a debt is not the amount, but the damage it does to the relationship between the lender and the borrower. Debt creates dependency. Worse than that, it can lead to the debtor becoming dehumanised in the eyes of the donor.

That's exactly what had happened in Israel in the eighth century BC. And that's why God, speaking through the prophet Amos, was so enraged by the maltreatment of the poor.

’For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name. In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines. They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge.’

The comment about ‘garments taken in pledge’ is a reference to the way that debts were secured. A debtor handed over his cloak to the lender as security.

But the law said that the coat had to be given back before nightfall, come what may, to keep the debtor safe and warm through the night. Keep the coat, and you have the power of life and death over another human being.

Soon you may think of yourself as better than them. Give the coat back, and in the release of the debt, the sacredness of your common humanity is affirmed and celebrated.

Indeed, it's time to give Africa its coat back.

I bind my heart this tide
To the Galilean’s side
To the wounds of Calvary
To the Christ who died for me

I bind my heart in thrall
To the God the Lord of all
To the God, the poor one's friend
And the Christ whom He did send

I bind my soul this day
To the neighbour far away
And the stranger near at hand
In this town and in this land
Amen ................ Amos 2:6-8

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