Good Debt

Increase the good debt of love to God and neighbor

09/17/2017

Matthew 18:21-35 Peter approached Jesus and asked him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus answered, "The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. A debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold…in payment of the debt.  At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.' Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.  When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, 'Pay back what you owe.' Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?' Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.

          Is being in debt a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it depends on whom you ask but generally speaking people believe being out of debt is better than being in debt. Who wants to pay a monthly mortgage or have car payments, or owe money on a pledge you made in a church campaign to Fr. John? We all dream of winning the lottery and paying off all our debts. We wish we were rich and lived without debt.

          I’m not sure this story is true, but it is rather funny. When he was 18 years old Rockefeller had no money. He found an apple in the street. The fruit was dirty he cleaned it and resold it for 50 cents to a man walking in the street. With his 50 cents he bought two apples at 25 cents and resold them for $1 to another man walking the street. With his $1 he bought four apples, and resold them and earned $2. At 19 years old, he inherited from his grandmother. Who wants to work if you can inherit your wealth?

            No one is more down on debt than Dave Ramsey. Have you heard of this guy? He’s a very popular financial adviser, who learned from the bankruptcy of his own real estate business to “save first and spend later” to avoid debt. He says on his website: “Debt it dumb – but it still has a choke hold on so many of our friends and family members. They are in debt up to their eyeballs. It takes a lot of will-power, discipline, courage and help to slay the debt monster. But it can be done.”

           But if you keep reading Dave, you’ll discover there is a kind of debt that he approves of, a kind of “good debt” that we owe to God and neighbor. Dave writes: “Three big principles of any solid financial plan are to save, spend and give. Most people forget about the giving part, though, because they think mostly about the saving and spending.” Then Dave says a word about tithing, explaining: “But giving – specifically tithing – is just as important. It softens the heart of the giver and frees their souls from dependence on money.” In other words, even though we may be out of financial debt to creditors, we are never out of debt to God and neighbor – we will always be in “good debt” to them.

In the gospel today, Jesus answers Peter’s question about how often to forgive someone who wrongs us. We are familiar with the parable Jesus uses to make his point: a king forgives the debt of a servant who fails to forgive the debt of a fellow servant. But I think the failure of the first servant consists not only in not forgiving, but also in missing the fact that he’s still in debt. Even though he’s been forgiven his debt to the Master – the money he owes him – he hasn’t been released from the “good debt” he still owes to his Master and to his neighbor. What do I mean? Well, just like Dave Ramsey said: even though the servant was free of financial debt, he still owed a debt of love to his fellow servant in terms of compassion, mercy, sympathy and charity. And when he failed to pay that good debt of love, the Master’s wrath fell hard on his head. The gospel reads: “Then in anger the master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.” What debt? The good debt of love. That servant should have studied his Dave Ramsey. He got out of the bad debt, but he forgot about his good debt, his debt of love to others.

            Let me ask you the same question I asked at the beginning: is being in debt a good thing or a bad thing? I hope you can see now there are two kinds of debt: bad debt (when you owe money to creditors) and good debt (when you owe love to God and neighbor). 

Here are a few suggestions on paying our good debt of love to God and neighbor. Come to Mass every Sunday and stay till the end of Mass. Don’t leave before the priest leaves the sanctuary. In loving God, don’t do the minimum, but the maximum, no shortcuts. Beverly Sills was right when she said: “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” It’s funny isn’t it, how our debt of love to God only grows when we try to pay it off; we want to love him more and more, and the debt of love increases.

           Secondly, don’t forget you owe a good debt of love to your family, especially your parents. That’s why it’s so hard to put your elderly parents in a nursing home. We feel we owe them more and better than that. After all, they changed our diapers and we feel indebted to change theirs one day! Even if that’s not possible, we can still call them, visit them and mostly listen to them with love tell the stories of their glory days. Notice what happens to this debt of love to family: it grows the more you pay it off.

              And thirdly, we owe a debt of love to the poor. And this, by the way, goes deeper than dropping money in the second collection. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is adamant on this point, where we read: “St. John Chrysostom vigorously recalls this: ‘Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs’” (Catechism, 2446). In other words, loving the poor is not a matter of kindness, but a matter of justice. Why? We owe them a good debt of love, and the more we pay it, the greater the debt grows.

Rockefeller killed the debt monster by inheriting a fortune from his family. That was bad debt. Jesus was killed by the debt monster on the Cross because he loved us that much. The debt of love grew until it cost our Lord his life. That was good debt. May we, too, spend our lives paying our good debt of love to God and neighbor!

Praised be Jesus Christ!