Christians and Banking

Should Christians invest money in banks, or borrow money at interest?

by Terje Ronneberg

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No Copyright - Dedicated to the public domain - Copy, share, use, and modify freely without any limitations.

Prologue

"What would your reaction be if you discovered that there was a deadly man-made virus released into the world, which when it infects a populace:
-Causes depression and suicide rates to go up.
-Causes an increase in the occurrence of aggressive and murderous behavior.
-Causes entire nations to break into war when infections reach epidemic levels.
-Causes multitudes of deaths among the poor from preventable causes.
-Causes women to have less babies, especially among wealthier nations, often so few that infected people groups become at risk of extinction.
-Causes babies born to infected parents to often carry the disabling impacts of the virus for their entire lives, and they may even pass these on to further generations.
-Causes the average worker to use up more energy in their labouring for a living, but with much less reward for their efforts.

So, how would you react to learning of such a terrible virus? Perhaps you would want to know how to prevent being infected, and stop such a thing from plaguing your own family and community.

The truth is such a "virus" actually does exist in the world today, and causes all the negative effects described above and more. The name of this man-made infliction is "Interest-bearing debt". One of the goals of this article is to shine the light of divine truth upon this deadly contagion, and bring to light its true nature.

In the 1800's when people became enlightened to the fact that microscopic germs were behind much disease, they quickly accepted that washing hands could prevent the spread of disease. Since its widespread adoption, washing hands is said to have saved more lives than any other medical breakthrough. This article seeks to inspire a similar enlightenment in relation to the corruptive scourge of interest-bearing debt, such that people would see that washing one's hands of it would help make the world a better place now, and for future generations.

Introduction

This article presents some of the numerous reasons why many past and present followers of Jesus have chosen not to be involved in certain financial practices such as lending money at interest, borrowing money at interest, and investing money in banks.

The article was not written to define a set of strict rules to live by, but rather to enlighten peoples minds and consciences to the teachings of Scripture, so that they may more freely judge for themselves how to best glorify the Lord in the handling earthly riches. For all Scripture is useful for teaching, correcting and showing us how to live a God pleasing life (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

For those who want only a brief overview of the reasons, they can be found in the below table which offers a short summary of each chapter. Those willing to read the full article, can jump the below summary to the start of the article." (snip) ...

NOTE: Read the complete article (book) at this website:
http://www.truth.info/life/christians.and.banking.htm