Usury - charging interest on loans - The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

Usury is the practice of charging interest on a loan.

Historically, many religions including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism have regarded charging any interest for loans as sinful.

Some of the earliest known condemnations of usury come from the Vedic texts of India. Similar condemnations are found in religious texts from Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (the term is riba in Arabic and ribbit in Hebrew). At times, many nations from ancient China to ancient Greece to ancient Rome have outlawed loans with any interest. Though the Roman Empire eventually allowed loans with carefully restricted interest rates, the Christian church in medieval Europe banned the charging of interest at any rate.

For most of the first 1500 years of Christianity usury, the lending of money at interest, was unanimously condemned by the Fathers of the Early Church, and by popes, councils and saints, as a damnable sin equivalent to robbery and even murder. Any interest on loans of money, not just exorbitant interest, was defined de fide as a grave transgression against God and man.

Charging any interest rate, large or small, presented a gradual shift of wealth from the poor to the wealthy and the bankers. A simple, insidious process of concentrating the wealth of a nation into fewer and fewer hands. It's no wonder that so many people have spoken out against the crime of usury, defining it as any interest charged, as a means of oppression of the poor.



Usury references in the Bible:

Exodus 22:25 

“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.

Deuteronomy 23:19 

“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest.

Ezekiel 18:8 

Does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man,

Deuteronomy 23:19-20 

“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Ezekiel 18:13 

Lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live. He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself.

Ezekiel 22:12 

In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take interest and profit and make gain of your neighbors by extortion; but me you have forgotten, declares the Lord God.

Leviticus 25:37 

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

Ezekiel 18:17 

Withholds his hand from iniquity, takes no interest or profit, obeys my rules, and walks in my statutes; he shall not die for his father's iniquity; he shall surely live.

Leviticus 25:35-37 

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

Luke 6:35 

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Proverbs 22:7 

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.

Jeremiah 15:10 

Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.

Proverbs 28:8 

Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.

Psalm 15:5 

Who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

Matthew 25:27 

Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.

Leviticus 25:36 

Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.

Nehemiah 5:1-13 

Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”

Psalm 112:5-6 

It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 

“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lordagainst you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’

Isaiah 53:1-12 

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

Isaiah 10:1-34 

Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth? Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!

Isaiah 1:1-31

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

Psalm 15:1-5 

A Psalm of David. O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

Nehemiah 5:1-19 

Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”

Leviticus 25:1-55 

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.




Are interest charges oppressing people today? Just as an example lets say a family needs to borrow money to buy a family home then how much interest is being charged? Lets look at a common Sydney mortgage,Using a home loan calculator with one of Australia's largest banks: If someone borrows $600,000 over a 25 year period and lets assume a average interest rate of 7.9% over 25 year period then the total repayments would be $1,380,996...this is after all tax is paid, this is a huge amount of interest and is keeping many hardworking families poor. Is this fair?

https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/home-loans/loan-calculator.html





Now through huge interest charges Finance is the largest single sector in Australia by GDP according to ABS 2010 data:




Global credit and debt has had a huge increase in the past decades and for all these debts there is interest...



"The practice of reaping money from money is reprehensible, as being repugnant to nature." - Aristotle

For more on inequality see my previous blog post.