Matt Bush, FISM News
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President Biden announced that borrowers could have between $10,000 and $20,000 of student loan debt forgiven, causing some Christians to incorrectly use Bible passages to justify the program.
People have compared this “Student Debt Relief Plan” to Biblical stories and principles such as the year of Jubilee, the Old Testament idea that Israelites should not charge other Israelites interest on loans, and even Jesus’ death on the Cross that forgave Christians of the debt of sin.
There has even been a recent social media trend where memes, tweets, and posts have questioned Christians’ beliefs about Jesus if they do not support student loan forgiveness. After all, according to these social media influencers, the Biden student debt relief plan mimics Jesus’ forgiveness of debt when He died on the Cross.
Conservative Christians are fully enraged at #studentloanforgiveness, missing the irony that their entire professed religion is based on the idea of a cancelled debt.
Way to lose the plot, kids.
— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) August 24, 2022
According to WNG, these comparisons “show a misunderstanding of both Scripture (even the gospel itself) and what student loan debt forgiveness is.”
The foundation of Christianity is love. That foundation is based on the fact that God loves people. That love is primarily manifested in Jesus Christ, and then specifically in His death on the cross that, when believed, forgives the believer of their sin and promises eternal life.
In the Bible, Colossians 2:13-14 says that God forgave us of our sins and canceled our debt. Our debt, as described in Romans 6:23, is our sin and the consequence of that sin is death. By the grace of God, when we put our faith in Him, our debt is canceled and our sins are forgiven.
The President’s student debt relief and the debt that Christians were forgiven at the Cross are completely different.
The main difference is that a Christian’s debt is forgiven by God. It was an active choice on His part to forgive people because of the love He has for them. Student debt forgiveness is not an active choice made by the millions of taxpayers who will pay the debt that is estimated to be, in total, between $500 billion and $1 trillion or more.
Instead, it is the U.S. government making the choice to both loan money for an uncollateralized product with no intrinsic value and then asking millions of people who do not benefit from it to pay for it.
The Gospel Coalition describes the situation like this: “A federal student loan is an agreement between a lender (the U.S. government) and a borrower (the person seeking the degree). The process of federal student loan forgiveness is the transfer of the debt to a third person who didn’t make the agreement. They are forced to accept the debt while not receiving any sort of benefit from the original loan. In Biblical terms, this is what we call an injustice.”
Debt forgiveness is Biblical, the Biden student debt relief plan is not. The best case scenario is that it is a misguided attempt to help Americans who need financial help. The worst case scenario is that it is a calculated attempt by Biden and the Democrats to pander for votes just weeks away from the midterm elections.
The Baptist News Global, describing Pavlovitz’s tweet above, reminded its readers to “do a lot of research before posting over-simplified stuff like this (on social media) that is misleading.” That is good advice for all.