Is Usury a Sin?

S

Shaquilleoatmeal

Protestant
Assuming the lending of the money isn’t forced, but a mutual agreement with terms discussed, why is that wrong? The only reason I see is that GROWN “MATURE” ADULTS aren’t able to make their own decisions and still need to be coddled against shooting themselves in the foot.

Furthermore:
Deuteronomy 23:20
Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

So apparently usury is sometimes fine with strangers but not brothers. Why the distinction?

What’s wrong with the idea “don’t take a loan you can’t pay back?”
 
My priest described usury as taking advantage of and hurting other people. I asked him if business loans, or loans you need to complete an important project are okay and he said that's not usury. Interest rates are a reality in the modern economy unfortunately.

If, however, you're giving someone a loan with a high interest rate that you know they can't afford and will hurt themselves and fall into debt, then that's a sin. On their end, it's a sin because of a lack of prudence and perhaps greed. And on your end it's a sin because to tempt someone else to sin is a sin in itself. The Christian understanding of freedom is freedom from sin, not everyone doing whatever they want. So we have a responsibility to look out for other people.

Now as for that verse, I may be wrong, but I believe it was only relevant for the ancient Israelites. Brothers in this sense were other Israelites, and the strangers were the gentiles. After Christ came, there are no strangers since we are all brothers and the difference between Jew and gentile has been nullified as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:13-14
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation
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I'm not versed in theology, but have a good understanding of economics.

First, it's very clear that most people don't have responsibility, which probably relates to most people being sheep/normies in need of a good shepherd. Now we have bad ones.

People's lives used to be directed, heavily - but increasingly less - by top-down social custom, which was largely steeped in Christianity. That's now gone. Some of the former social institutional have been completely institutionalised and some that remain are perverse. Some people only follow a normal life now out of inertia of the past.

Instead today we have people who can't control their gluttony as they can afford gallons of MSG fortified slop; people are spending tens of thousands on door dash a year; gaming addiction; porn-slop addiction; attention addiction; black pill addiction; debt addiction and so on.

Unless the highest body on earth is fallen, but diversely inspired, and has the power and will to tell it's people "no" to pleasure/sin, then society will unravel back to paganism; as has happened in the past, and is happening again.

Usury distorts the economy. Consider how much home prices would fall if usury, alone, was banned. Borrowers are tempted in with the sweet fruit of home ownership; and loan sharks are tempted in by generating profits off of other people's money they can't account for. This adds a growing premium people have to pay for a normal life, to engorge the usury class. If you are young, you now live in a time when there isn't even a sweet fruit of temptation, in many cases. That is the case with all the sins of pleasure. At first there is allure, temptation, fantasy, material gain. But they give way to the sins of resentment. Socially we are at that stage with all sins of pleasure. Where those in pleasure has crested, and those in resentment are in ascent. We are living in the age of material decline.

The monetary system is built on usury, with a few usurious layers on top of it. Central banks print money - thus redistributing purchasing power (theft). This is loaned to banks, who sit on it in various ways to earn interest without providing material benefit. Businesses borrow money and do actual work, but they have to pay a premium on that work to the usurors. If no one could borrow, there would be no corporate arms race, where all are forced to borrow to be competitive. Banks spike corporate with mandates to their activities. The corporates pay their workers and a lot of the wages are paid into "investments", which work by distributing the fruits of labour from workers to idle asset holders. Each level is usury.

Once you start this all in motion it is hard to stop it. Probably impossible. It's not just two adults engaging in lending/borrowing. It's ultimately hollowing out your society.
 
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Cynllo said:
I'm not versed in theology, but have a good understanding of economics.

First, it's very clear that most people don't have responsibility, which probably relates to most people being sheep/normies in need of a good shepherd. Now we have bad ones.

People's lives used to be directed, heavily - but increasingly less - by top-down social custom, which was largely steeped in Christianity. That's now gone. Some of the former social institutional have been completely institutionalised and some that remain are perverse. Some people only follow a normal life now out of inertia of the past.

Instead today we have people who can't control their gluttony as they can afford gallons of MSG fortified slop; people are spending tens of thousands on door dash a year; gaming addiction; porn-slop addiction; attention addiction; black pill addiction; debt addiction and so on.

Unless the highest body on earth is fallen, but diversely inspired, and has the power and will to tell it's people "no" to pleasure/sin, then society will unravel back to paganism; as has happened in the past, and is happening again.

Usury distorts the economy. Consider how much home prices would fall if usury, alone, was banned. Borrowers are tempted in with the sweet fruit of home ownership; and loan sharks are tempted in by generating profits off of other people's money they can't account for. This adds a growing premium people have to pay for a normal life, to engorge the usury class. If you are young, you now live in a time when there isn't even a sweet fruit of temptation, in many cases. That is the case with all the sins of pleasure. At first there is allure, temptation, fantasy, material gain. But they give way to the sins of resentment. Socially we are at that stage with all sins of pleasure. Where those in pleasure has crested, and those in resentment are in decline. We are living in the age of material decline.

The monetary system is built on usury, with a few usurious layers on top of it. Central banks print money - thus redistributing purchasing power (theft). This is loaned to banks, who sit on it in various ways to earn interest without providing material benefit. Businesses borrow money and do actual work, but they have to pay a premium on that work to the usurors. If no one could borrow, there would be no corporate arms race, where all are forced to borrow to be competitive. Banks spike corporate with mandates to their activities. The corporates pay their workers and a lot of the wages are paid into "investments", which work by distributing the fruits of labour from workers to idle asset holders. Each level is usury.

Once you start this all in motion it is hard to stop it. Probably impossible. It's not just two adults engaging in lending/borrowing. It's ultimately hollowing out your society.
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I absolutely agree with your socioeconomic take on the matter. The whole system is deeply corrupted, especially after we got rid of the gold standard.

When it comes to the question of sin, however, we have to take into account the state of the world and trends of our times. This is why Paul wrote that slaves should serve their masters well. Not because he was condoning slavery, but because he was accepting the reality of the times and the immediate abolishment of slavery was unrealistic. So he asked slaves to work within that system and be virtuous, but the Bible also says they should escape if they have the chance. And the reality now is that it's virtually impossible to live without engaging in this usurious economy.

Good luck starting a business without a loan, or buying a house without a mortgage, or retiring without investments. And it's clear to me that if the choice is between accepting interest bearing loans or having your children be homeless and hungry, we are called to accept the former. If Christians don't look out for themselves financially, our churches wouldn't exist because no one would be able to tithe.
 
Good discussion on this question below, but in brief, there has never been any debate that usury is a sin, though there has been some allowance for charging interest to wealthy borrowers for risk-taking enterprises (IE starting a new business, opening an office, etc).
(In that case the"loan" in question is really functioning as an investment).

As they explain, one cannot "borrow" something if he is expected to return more than that thing. I can borrow a pencil from you, and give it back later, but claiming I owe you 3 pencils is absurd. If you "borrow" a stick of butter from your neighbor, you are not expected to return him multiple sticks of butter in the future (assuming for the sake of argument it is not just a friendly gift). Therefore the concept of "borrowing" has been perverted when it comes to money.


But charging the citizenry $700,000 for a $200,000 house? Plain and simple evil, always has been, and no major religion allows it, not even Jews (unless they are lending to non-Jews).

The guest makes a good point that in today's system of fiat currency, the charging of interest may not necessarily be usurious because unlike with gold, the moment you make a loan with fiat, the principle that the borrower will return to you is now less. In that sense, the interest charged can be considered making the lender whole.

I haven't listened to Stone Choir's take on it yet, but they are excellent theologically, and employ the Socratic method in their logical analysis.


TLDR; usury is generally immoral but under a fiat money system it depends
 
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You hear about the time value of money so there is something inherent in it, but the business of lending does somehow seem too pervasive. Then those gigantic national debts with the corresponding interest payments. Something has gone out of control.

The German word for it always made me curious Wucherzins, Zinswucher, Wucher. From Wikipedia :
Wucher bezeichnet das Angebot einer Leistung zu einer deutlich überhöhten Gegenleistung unter Ausnutzung einer Schwächesituation eines Vertragspartners.

In Martin Luthers Bibelübersetzung (Lutherbibel) vom September 1522 sind Zins und Wucher gleichgestellt.
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Both that English usury and German Wucher are words you just don't see every day.. Can't see immediately the etymology of either. Maybe the words themselves are somewhat censored or suppressed as if they were commonplace it may encourage people to talk about it more and maybe call into question the whole system.

Something else, I'm finding it hard to escape 4% commission for currency conversion through banks, although with patience and the right Forex broker can get it down to 2% or 1% for larger amounts. Anything which is excessively making money from money itself seems unholy. Not just trading goods, services or even previous metals, but trading money.
 
@Shaquilleoatmeal

Yes it is a sin. Charging excessive interest is an affront to the moral and natural order, as it exploited the needs of others for personal gain. The Church in medieval times was unanimously against this. From a social point of view, usury represents a slew of economic practices that prioritize personal gain over communal well-being. In the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, charging interest on loans was discouraged, especially when dealing with fellow believers, with the notion that lending money at interest exploits the needs of others and goes against the principles of charity and compassion. Usury is driven by greed and an insatiable desire for wealth. Avarice is considered one of the seven deadly sins for a good reason.

It is also a distortion of the natural order, and the proper order of economic transactions. Money should serve as a medium of exchange rather than as a means of accumulating wealth through exploitative lending practices. This behavior continued eventually contributes to social disharmony by creating economic disparities and fostering an environment where personal gain takes precedence over the common good. Under a society run by the Church, this is not a thing.

Lest we forget a primary virtue of Our Lord, that of charity, which is the complete opposite of usury. Charity, or love for one's neighbor, should be central to all Christians moral framework. Usury, by taking advantage of the borrower's need and extracting excessive interest, goes against this principle. It reflects a lack of compassion and care for others in their economic struggles, even if it is allowed to take place by a banking "entity".

In a theocratic context, the natural order of things is often associated with divine design. Usury, as a human activity driven by greed and avarice, deviates from God's intended order for economic interactions. It represents a human departure from the moral and ethical guidelines set by divine law. It is a breach of fairness and compassion. I am making this point from a worldview where the natural and divine orders are intimately connected.

Of course if any western formerly-Christian nation attempts to salvage themselves from this evil practice the international hyenas will start kvetching to no end. Therein lies the answer to most of our problems.
 
MusicForThePiano said:
Lending it or not, creating money from previously existing money, as well as creating money from nothing, are both crimes against nature, and therefore a crime against God. Creating money from a valued commodity to be fairly traded between peoples is a crime against jewry.
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Investing is a crime against nature then?
 
Shaquilleoatmeal said:
Investing is a crime against nature then?
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No, very easy to create non-usurous investment schemes. Instead of collecting 5% on your loan per year, you instead collect 5% flat on your loan. No interest. You invest with an expectation of return, which is 100% legal and holy, as you take the risk, but the idea that your loan will be worth more over time if they fail to pay it back is pure evil. Risk must be shared equally between lender and lendee.

Should a business fail it is not merely the man who worked hard trying to make it work be the one to bear all costs of the loan. The lender assumes no effort, he should not be entitled to a forever increasing return merely because he started as the richer of the two parties.

Lending at interest is usury and it is pure evil. It is the ONLY sin Jesus got violent over (combined with it being in the most holy of places), and it couldn't be more clear by Jesus's commandment: God or Mammon.

There is nothing more disgusting in the eyes of our Lord than money. God looks at money the same way you look at poop. We all have to poop (or make money). That's not something to be proud of, be flashy about, or spending all of your time thinking of how much poop you can do. That is the closest analogy to how God views people's pursuit of money, which logically means usury is making others suffer and work hard just so you can acquire more poop (i.e. something worthless to God).

We live in such a debauched and disgusting age people have come to accept their bonds of usurious enslavement with almost no questions asked. The usury in our culture is 10000000x more disgusting than any of the homosexuality or other perversions we have, and yet it's completely accepted as normal.

Every single sin prevalent in our society today is rooted in usury, in one way or another, because of how pervasive the power of money is. Truly, I promise anyone who digs deep into the cause of all sins today find it goes back to easy money combined with interest rates. There is never enough money in the system for everyone to repay their debts in a fractional reserve system, so the only choice is for more easy money. Because very few can aquire wealth in such a system, as the constant shortage of money means the majority will be poor, people binge on whatever money they can get ahold of since it makes no sense to work hard for money that doesn't exist (hence why there are very few good jobs). Instead, people wait until they can loan again with more cheap money, which further enslaves them to sin and debt.

It's a downward spiral that is reflected in our abortion rates, jaw-dropping birth rates, marriage rates, family formation, Church attendance (people are so stressed and overworked no one wants to make the effort to worship), business formation, sexual perversions manifesting as a outlet to escape a hell world, etc. Pretty much every sin we see today is just a symptom of a much worse rot at the heart of our government and society.

Someday the yoke will be thrown off. But it could take centuries, and the damage will be more and more severe the longer this is allowed to continue. By the end of the century, for example, worldwide White populations will be halved from what they are now, and if usury isn't solved by then the White race will decline another 50%, and each leg down it becomes harder and harder for the usurers to run a scam on the disappearing slave class, which eventually prompts a revolt of some kind.
 
Samseau said:
No, very easy to create non-usurous investment schemes. Instead of collecting 5% on your loan per year, you instead collect 5% flat on your loan. No interest. You invest with an expectation of return, which is 100% legal and holy, as you take the risk, but the idea that your loan will be worth more over time if they fail to pay it back is pure evil.
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The only complication nowadays is inflation. If we had a sound monetary system, inflation wouldn't even exist. But it's a reality and your average Joe has the right to protect himself from inflation. In fact, you should pay your creditors what their money is really worth.

Regarding your example, the US annual inflation rate was about 5% a few months ago. So if my friend had given me a $100 loan a year ago and I wanted to make full payment now, the right thing to do is to pay him $105. If I only give him $100, he's actually losing in terms of purchasing power and I would be the sinful one by taking advantage of him. Of course this doesn't apply to the credit card companies charging 20-30%.
 
The economy has gotten so bad that in some cases, Americans borrow money at an interest rate that would have made the mafia from the 1950's blush.

Usury is indeed a sin and it says a lot that the powers that be always force a central banking system for every country to run on it.

Charging interest, to one who is not a brother, is not sinful but do not take advantage of the poor with predatory loans.
 
analyst_green said:
The only complication nowadays is inflation. If we had a sound monetary system, inflation wouldn't even exist. But it's a reality and your average Joe has the right to protect himself from inflation. In fact, you should pay your creditors what their money is really worth.

Regarding your example, the US annual inflation rate was about 5% a few months ago. So if my friend had given me a $100 loan a year ago and I wanted to make full payment now, the right thing to do is to pay him $105. If I only give him $100, he's actually losing in terms of purchasing power and I would be the sinful one by taking advantage of him. Of course this doesn't apply to the credit card companies charging 20-30%.
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That's true. You have to distinguish between nominal interest rates and real interest rates, the latter accounting for inflation. For example, if inflation is 5%, and nominal interest rate is 7%, then the real interest rate would be 2%. A loan granted with a real interest rate close to zero is not usurious.

In the past several decades, you could get a fixed mortgage at rates around 3%. In almost all markets, people who have purchased homes at these rates have come out way ahead. In fact when you account for asset appreciation, their net housing cost ends up being positive, while those who rent are completely exposed to inflation and have no equity. That's how the financial system is built, renters are almost always losers in the long term.
 
analyst_green said:
The only complication nowadays is inflation. If we had a sound monetary system, inflation wouldn't even exist. But it's a reality and your average Joe has the right to protect himself from inflation. In fact, you should pay your creditors what their money is really worth.
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Inflation makes no difference to the inherit flaws of fractional reserve banking. For without inflation, you will quickly get deflation, as there the money owed will always be greater than the existing supply of currency.

It's mathematically impossible for everyone to pay back 2-5% on their loans unless you keep adding money to the system. Think about it, if every human takes out a loan as small as 2%, that means there still will be some who cannot repay their loans on time. The effects in human society would be unnoticeable, but there would still be those who will go bankrupt or fall into debt bondage because whoever is unable to repay a loan on time is quickly trapped by the exponential nature of compound interest.

But of course interest rates never stay at merely 2%, which is the other HUGE problem with usury. Once you unhinge the doors to sin, soon everyone races to outcompete each other in order to become strongest, and now interest rates are almost always above 6%, which is crushing for most people. Credit cards routinely go over 20%; the evil has no limit.

Because the money owed is always greater than total existing money supply, inflation is the preferred solution. But of course inflation is just theft, and deflation is also murder. Both are horrible and both will always result in any fractional reserve banking system.

That's why you can't just have a "low" interest rate fractional reserve system. You either kill usury or usury will kill you and the rest of your society, just like it did in Rome.

analyst_green said:
Regarding your example, the US annual inflation rate was about 5% a few months ago. So if my friend had given me a $100 loan a year ago and I wanted to make full payment now, the right thing to do is to pay him $105. If I only give him $100, he's actually losing in terms of purchasing power and I would be the sinful one by taking advantage of him. Of course this doesn't apply to the credit card companies charging 20-30%.
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That is easy to avoid, just ask for more return on your loan if inflation is a problem. Ask for $130-150 instead. But the limit is established and your friend can agree or deny. Not the usury scam of "only" 5% per year which quickly turns into 10 years for some poor dupe...
 
Shaquilleoatmeal said:
Assuming the lending of the money isn’t forced, but a mutual agreement with terms discussed, why is that wrong? The only reason I see is that GROWN “MATURE” ADULTS aren’t able to make their own decisions and still need to be coddled against shooting themselves in the foot.

Furthermore:
Deuteronomy 23:20
Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

So apparently usury is sometimes fine with strangers but not brothers. Why the distinction?

What’s wrong with the idea “don’t take a loan you can’t pay back?”
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My friend told me he believes that fractional reserve banking is usury. That made more sense than extreme loans. Extreme loans are obviously rough but as you pointed out they are voluntary.

Expanding the money supply to discourage saving and erode purchasing power is far more nefarious because even if you do the right things with your money, you will get lapped by people availing themselves of cheap credit AND your savings will be worth less as the cost of goods inflate to accommodate the new money.
 
Explain all of this to me like I'm five years old... Exactly... you can't. The medium-high IQ jews invented all these complicated schemes so that "a fool and his money shall soon part." From financing, to insurance actuaries, to lawfare, to tax codes, to gambling, to porn, you can always pin the tail on the jew when it comes to evil and amoral schemes of financial usury, sin, and legal/moral deception. Hitler was onto something, and jews still can't tell us why Hitler was so furious with them. "I don't know why Hitler hated us? Maybe he hated our big noses and was jealous of our financial success?" Nope, try again, methinks it was a bit more complicated than that.
 
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