Debt and Taxes

Two things in life are sure – Debt and Taxes.

We just paid filed our tax return, which required writing a HUGE check over to Uncle Sam (we’re self-employed).  And we did this after spending the evening late last night watching Maxed Out, a movie about the nation’s debt and credit crisis.  This movie came out in 2006, before all the mumbo jumbo hit the fan with the real estate market (in fact, the opening scene is showing mansions in Las Vegas.)  The main focus was on “predatory lenders,” who sell easy credit to the poor and vulnerable.

It just cooks me that there are whole industries out there that design systems to keep people in slavery for their whole lives.  Truly.  Many spend their whole lives living paycheck to paycheck, and the blood is being squeezed out of their onion by the pond scum over at the debt collections offices.  The only thing that frees them is death.

My friend recently said that he’s financially a conservative but socially a liberal.  I know how he feels.  I hate paying the taxes, but I love helping out the needy.  And believe me, I hate seeing the rich get richer and the poor getting poorer.  God hates it too.

Some who are poor pretend to be rich;  others who are rich pretend to be poor.  – Proverbs 13:7 (Both by living on credit cards!)

The smooth tricks of scoundrels are evil.  They plot crooked schemes.They lie to convict the poor,  even when the cause of the poor is just.  – Isaiah 32:7

For they oppressed the poor and left them destitute.  They foreclosed on their homes.  – Job 20:19

I guess I’m just looking for someone who can be an advocate for the poor in our world today.  A friend of mine here in Chicago slept on the train last night.  He had been kicked out of his house because of gentrification.  He and I have been working on getting him long term shelter, and our house church has been helping him out in the meantime.  But like Martin Luther King, we begin to say:

One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho
road must be transformed so that men and women
will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make
their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is
more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard
and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which
produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution
of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring
contrast of poverty and wealth.

Where is the poor’s stimulus package?  I believe it is the Church.  Not money, not government services.  For the poor they receive a family. Instead of a bureaucrat they get a Savior.  Talk about a bailout!

Each house church can take on one homeless.  Each can take on one child that would have been lost to prostitution or abortion.  If there is a community waiting to invest in the lives of the marginalized and voiceless, then we have the power to beat back debt and taxes…just as Christ beat back Death itself.

Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.  – Romans 13:8

I’M READY to be debt free.  Kat and I are fighting for that every day.  We’re not wasting one penny we receive from God.  We’re putting our money where our faith is.  We’re passing on the gifts we’ve been given to the needy, because we know it is out of an abundance of love that we truly live free – free from the debts of credit cards and school loans yes, but more importantly – giving in love breaks us free from the debt of greed and pride that works like plaque in our hearts.

Are you with me!?!

I’M DEBT FREEEEEEE!!!!! (Braveheart’s theme proudly plays)

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