I was recently asked to comment on this subject matter for a major blog whose premise is that Christians don’t care about the elderly, poor and other unfortunate citizens of America.

Of course they care, but this election will be about something far more volatile than their concern for Social Security or Obamacare. For most Christians, who have long been afraid of what is happening in the country, it is not about economic issues so much as their non-acceptance of the moral issues of the Democratic Party.

Never in the history of the nation has it been so divided, and clearly one party is the extreme opposite of the other. There is no such thing any more as a “conservative Democrat” or a “liberal Republican.” The solid Democratic South broke up after Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program because they blamed the Democrats for all the entitlements that were the root cause of this country’s economic problems, and that whole other country down there in the South has been solidly conservative Republican since 1968.

In 1995, I wrote a bestseller based upon the Christian philosophy of economics in this country. Although a Christian book, its sales jumped the Christian market and 75 percent of it volumes sold were in secular bookstores. The matter landed me on over 500 radio and TV talk shows including some of the biggest.

I declared the Social Security System would not go broke even though Harry Figgie, Ravi Batra, and other economists who wrote doomsayer books were making millions with the philosophy. Their predictions of the demise of Social Security in mid-1990s were wrong, and I am still right. The Baby Boomer generation coming to the peak of their purchasing and spending power will control elections, countering fear-mongering and messing with their retirement for the next 24 years and longer. To think otherwise is mere conjecture and fear-mongering.

The facts are that every seven to ten years since 1910, we have an economic downturn. Three or four have been very bad, and we are in one of them now. These situations are created by the bad decisions of policy makers. Political changes alter the landscape as policy makers enact corrective measures to keep the economy sound. Don’t talk to me about how if they keep doing this and that we’re all going down the tubes. The only way that is going to happen is a catastrophic event that can’t be corrected, and we’re not even close.

Christians blame the Democrats for the decay in moral issues such as abortion, gay rights, same-sex marriages, and a host of other anti-biblical issues that have caused God to be legislated out of the political and education systems in our nation and was never the intention of the founding forefathers.

That’s the way they see it. If not, why are there so many thousands of Christian schools that still say the Pledge, display the Ten Commandments, and start the day with the Lord’s Prayer?

I have heard every debate there is so need to respond to this and try to argue because Democrats are clearly on the other side of these issues, and nothing I can say can change that, or nothing they can say can change this side.

Hopefully, there are more of us than them, so this election win, lose, or draw will not be predicated on jobs or anything else tied to the economy alone. It will be a combination of bad conditions and moral issues. You can’t get elected when the Catholics and the Southern Baptists vote on the same side, but this time they will—unless I am really out to lunch. I may be, but it won’t change the dynamics of this situation.

I released Life Under Pressure, Moving Beyond Financial Meltdown, which will go into syndicated distribution in a few weeks. That book talks about current economic conditions with practical advice for those suffering through this recession. I don’t always write about political stuff—there are plenty of blogs on those matters—but I do deal with the moral issues related to economics, and not many are doing that.

Anyway, I am not worried about Social Security, Medicare, or any of that stuff. It will all take care of itself just like it always has. Obamacare will get repealed, or at least become a pittance of what it is now because social economics burdened to the taxpayers won’t work in a capitalistic society.

I fear the Government and the power Government has over the people, and the ignorance of people who have lost their freedoms and don’t know the difference. Like Chaucer said, “Children lost in a haunted wood; never been happy, never been good.”

That is what will destroy this nation.

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The marvelous saga of Paul’s voyage to Rome with its trials and triumphs is a fine pattern of the lights and shades of the way of faith all through the story of human life.  The remarkable feature of it is the hard and narrow places, which we find intermingled with God’s most extraordinary interpositions and providences.

It is the common idea that the pathway of faith is strewn with flowers, and that when God interposes in the life of His people, He does it on a scale so grand that He lifts us quite out of the plane of difficulties. The actual fact, however, is that the real experience is quite contrary. The story of the Bible is one of alternate trial and triumph in the case of everyone of the cloud of witnesses from Abel down to the last martyr.

Paul, more than anyone else, was an example of how much a person may suffer without being crushed or broken in spirit. One account of his testifying in Damascus, he was hunted down by persecutors and obliged to flee for his life, but we behold no heavenly chariot transporting the Holy Apostle amid thunderbolts and lightning from the reach of his foes. Instead, “through a window in a basket” he was let down over the walls of Damascus and so escaped their hands. In an old clothesbasket like a bundle of laundry or groceries, the servant of Jesus Christ was dropped from the window and ignominiously fled from the hate of his foes.

Again we find him left for months in the lonely dungeons; we find him telling of his supervisions, his bonds, his desertion by friends, of his brutal and shameful beatings, and here even after God has promised to deliver him, we see him for days left to toss upon a stormy sea, obliged to stand guard over the treacherous seaman, and at last when deliverance comes, there is no heavenly galley sailing from the skies to take off the noble prisoner; there is no angel form walking along the waters and stilling the raging breakers; there is no supernatural sign of the transcendent miracle that is being wrought; but one is compelled to seize a spar, another a floating plank, another to climb on a fragment of the wreck, and another to strike out and swim for his life.

Here is God’s pattern for our own lives. Here is a gospel of help for people that have to live in this everyday world with real and ordinary surroundings, and a thousand practical conditions, which have to be met in a thoroughly practical way.

God’s promises and God’s providences do not lift us out of the plane of common sense and commonplace trial, but it is through these very things that faith is perfected, and that God loves to weave the golden threads of His love into our everyday life experiences.

I have no idea how many people read these blogs I write, so sometimes I write to myself because sometimes God needs to speak to me. We must have faith without sight. When we can see, it is not faith but only reasoning. How many times have we reasoned with God instead of acting on simple faith and trust in Him?

Waiting on God brings us to our journey’s end quicker than our feet can ever take us. I am a philosopher. I have a doctorate in it, so it is easy for me to write and theorize about faith, but it is not so easy to live by it. God often casts us into crucibles of fire to try us and to separate us from the dregs in the bottom of the cup that would destroy us.

Remember this: It is better to be in a storm with Christ than to sail smooth waters without Him.

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If I could change one thing about the education system in America, it would be this: I would require every student who graduates from high school to take one year of Business Math, whether they liked it or not.

In this class, they would learn to function financially. The basic rules of how to run a home and business would be taught. I would include case studies showing how people should react in given situations as the inevitable financial pressures of life threaten to burn them alive.

We have kids graduating from high school who can do complicated logarithms but have no idea how to balance a checking account. Why not prepare kids for real life and then add other courses to their studies that are relevant to their chosen careers?

Remember health class? I hated health class, but I had to take it. Today, I see the value of that class. In my day, we didn’t have AIDS and never heard of HIV, but we did know about syphilis and gonorrhea. We were trained in physical hygiene that made our lives cleaner and healthier. We were also taught how to dress properly. In fact, I learned how to tie a tie in health class!

What is proper attire today? The schools make a stab at a dress code but fail miserably at it. Neat clothing is thought to be square, so students dress like every day is Halloween. Kids carry guns, belong to gangs, and buy drugs in the restrooms. Health class is now gender-mixed sex education that borders on or is pornographic. Condoms are distributed in the classrooms.

The liberal minded educators who have been in charge of our kids for the last 40 years have brought us to where we are today. If our schools continue to be undisciplined breeding grounds for sex, violence, and socialism, America will be destroyed as quickly as 70 percent of our teenagers have lost their virginity.

What is the answer? It is a strange one coming from me. We need to revamp our entire education system. My intention is not to take on all the social problems festering in our schools today. My subject is money, but my point is still the same. Unless we teach our kids how to function properly in life, we doom them to failure.

Practical teaching in basic home economics is just as important in life as learning how to light a Bunsen burner or dissecting a frog. If parents fail to teach these life principles at home, at least kids could learn them at school.

Instead of helping, our failed education system continues to fuel the moral and financial crisis we face in America today. It all started back in the day.  I struggled with Algebra, Physics—and forget Chemistry. Business Math class was set up for the kids who couldn’t quite grasp the concepts of complicated math. They were sent to this class so that they could get promoted to the tenth grade.

My school actually fid me a favor. While the whiz kids were excelling in the advanced subjects that 99 percent of them would never use the rest of their natural lives, I was learning how to figure the squares on a roof, the amount of concrete block to build a wall, and how to figure the square yards of carpet I would need in my new home one day. Practical stuff I use every day.

Something else happened during these practical classes on how to manage a budget and live within your means. I excelled in English, discovered a talent for communicating with the pen, took four language classes in one year, and believe it or not, the economics I learned in basic math paved the way for an MBA in International Business, a Ph.D. in Business Management, and a law degree.

Go figure.

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Living like the grasshopper will catch up to you in time, which is why a famous verse from the Bible cautions you to live like an ant (Proverbs 6:6).

Ants don’t spend all their resources. Instinctively, they know they have to put aside provisions to make it from winter to spring. As a result, they are diligent in storing away what they need. They don’t live paycheck-to-paycheck and hope everything works out all right.

If we spend all our money, we are going to be in trouble at some point in time. Millions of Americans, however, have not yet caught on to the fact that they need to save money and not spend every dime they make.

In this economy, it is almost every day I talk with people who have been through disasters and experienced all kinds of tragedies. In almost every case, they tell me, “We could have made it through all right if we had just saved some money.”

I am a firm believer in the fact that if you save 10 percent of your income and live on the balance, you more than likely will never get into financial trouble. Since I believe in tithing, that principle results in my living off 80 percent of my income. My experience has been over the years that people who save at least 10 percent of their income seldom need money.

Financial freedom depends on your ability and discipline to save money. An elderly woman recently made an appointment. Although she was well off financially, she was concerned about her children.

“They are grown,” she said, “and doing all right, but they aren’t very much ahead. I just can’t understand it. They’ve been given all the advantages. My husband and I came from poor families. We had nothing when we first got married, but we started putting five to seven dollars a week out of the paycheck into a savings account.”

“How much were you making back then?” I asked.

“Fifty-cents an hour,” she replied. “But before we knew it—within three years—the account had grown to over seven hundred dollars. We then took the seven hundred dollars and put a down payment on a house, where we still live to this day.”

Of course, houses were a lot cheaper back then, and it took less money to buy one, but in real constant dollars with adjusted inflation, everything is still relative. In fact, real dollars aside, most people today earn more money than anyone living and working 50 years ago.

Do you know most people can’t live two months without any new money if they are forced into a difficult situation? Because they didn’t save, they have very few assets accumulated to sell in case of an emergency.

For years, I have been teaching high school and college students to begin saving money early in life so that they won’t be in dire circumstances later in life. Forget the get-rich-quick schemes and quit chasing rainbows. Start saving now and utilize the greatest capitalistic invention in the world—compound interest. Here is an example I have been using to illustrate how a smart, normal, young person can get wealthy on a regular salary.

If you are 20 years old and put $100 per month into a retirement savings plan at 10 percent and do that until you are 28 years old, you could then quit saving, spend all the rest of your money, and never invest another penny the rest of your life.

If you never touched the money, when you are 65, you will have almost $497,000 in the bank. If you annuitize, it’s $532,000. How do I get 10 percent? Invest in secure balanced mutual funds, and you will realize those averages over the years without too much risk.

Now listen up. If you start saving at age 28, you would have to put away $250 per month for the rest of your life to have the same amount of money you would have if you had started saving $100 a month at age 20! That is the power of compound interest.

How many kids would forego forcing themselves into a $400-500 car payment every month and saved the money instead? Imagine if you saved twice or three times that amount and did it your whole life? That’s how you get wealthy and financially secure on a regular salary.

If I only knew . . .

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I wish that I could say that I have avoided mistakes in my personal and business life, but I haven’t. Unfortunately, I learned them the hard way—through experience.

When I was a young man starting out in business, my partner and I had set our goals for the future. We were young men with dreams and little money, but we were hard workers and had a lot of talent. With some creative thinking, we built our small construction business into a large operation.

When we first started out in the foundation contracting business, all we did were the footings for the foundations, and we did the work ourselves with no hired labor. It was hard. After a while, we built a unique little business into a major operation and were doing almost 100 percent of the footing work in our growing community.

The business eventually grew to encompass customers all over the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. My partner and I looked for ways to expand. Since we used a lot of concrete, it seemed logical for us to build a concrete plant and sell the concrete we were using to ourselves. Although it took a major investment for a couple of young guys who didn’t know anything about the concrete business, we plugged along rather well. That was until truck maintenance and a zillion other complications started depleting our cash flow.

We then decided to start building entire foundations and create money to support our projects by doing the masonry work. My partner, who had never laid a concrete block or brick in his life, put a crew together and started into the masonry business. He caught on quickly and after a couple of years, we were major contractors doing entire building foundations and servicing ourselves with concrete that we produced in our own plant. Everything was going great.

Soon a concrete block plant came up for sale in our city. Since were laying most of the concrete blocks in our area and were having a hard time getting service from the other manufacturers, we decided to buy the block plant. Although the plant was a major investment, the price we paid was nothing compared to the millions a plant like that would normally cost.

I remember the day we closed the loan. Alex and I stood alone in the middle of the ten-acre manufacturing plant, looking at the more than 2,000 feet of railroad siding coming onto our premises and viewing the fleet of trucks and equipment used to move and store the product.

Alex turned to me and asked, “What did we just do?

Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that what appeared to be such a great investment could go so sour. When you take giant steps, you have giant risks.

We knew absolutely nothing about the concrete block manufacturing business. To make matters worse, we took in a partner who had money, but who didn’t know anything about managing a manufacturing plant, either. As a result, we had to rely on other people to run the operation for us. We lost control of our circumstances and a huge white elephant ended up taking us down.

Alex and I both lost everything we had spent many years accumulating through hard work and self-denial. In the end, we found ourselves not behind the desk or on a golf course, but back in the ditch starting all over to pay our debts. It wasn’t fun watching the bank take everything away that we had worked so hard to accumulate. Just as Alex and I had stood there gazing at the plant we had just bought, we stood there as the auctioneer sold everything to the highest bidder.

This was not an easy little lesson to learn; it was a major, life-changing jolt, which strained a beautiful friendship. Today, I spend a lot of time counseling business people to help them avoid the potholes into which I fell so many years ago.

I remember the day I left Kentucky to move to California: Alex and I stood in the parking lot of the café where we drank coffee every morning. I was sad and apprehensive, but I knew God had a plan for my life that was going to take place in California.

Alex put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, SS; go on and do what God has called you to do. You have God, your family, and your health. You’ll do fine.”

It was a moment of friendship that I wouldn’t trade for all the gold in Fort Knox. Those experiences were tough medicine to swallow; it set us back a few years, but it is also why I went back to school to earn a Ph.D. in Business Management, and why today I can write books and blogs. The principles I have learned did not come from lectures in Business 101; I learned them in the world of trying to manage my life—through its successes and failures.

Today, I wouldn’t trade my life for anything I could have had back then.

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I live-stream a Bible study every other Wednesday night that originates from a home in an orange grove near Sanger, California, close to Sequoia National Park.

I’ve been doing this for nearly five years. At the present, we are studying the Book of Revelation, so I am particularly interested in what economists have been saying about a “cashless” society since many Christians believe all that is happening with the changes in currency are going to usher in the era of the Antichrist.

There are opinions of some religious doomsayers trying to make things stick concerning the prophecies in the Book of Revelation and correlate those events to what is happening in the world of economics today. Let me add that most preachers fooling around with this genre are quite over their heads.

For instance, one such popular preacher said: “Money no longer exists because of the trillions of signals between interlinked computer terminals in search of choice trades in hot markets.” That’s a large mouthful from a person with a seminary education. What he is really saying, but doesn’t understand, is that swift capital flows can derail markets when they reverse course.

A more bright doomsayer economist said: “How can there be equilibrium if money becomes transformed from something solid and substantial with demonstrable equity value such as silver or gold into something new, strange, and ethereal?”

It is true that the electronic economy has changed the way the markets operate, but I don’t believe it has destabilized the world’s markets and created financial chaos as these guys suggest. You simply cannot present an emerging global economic system beyond the control of regulators.

When I read or hear from preachers trying to spiritualize the Book of Revelation and equate the inventions of men to the ushering in of the Antichrist, I can’t help but smile. Let me give you a fact from history, and what one majorly popular television preacher said concerning the invention and deployment of ATMs:

“The people who spawned Automatic Teller Machines have created a speculative explosion that threatens to destabilize the world economies.”

These religious prophets have been preaching for years that the electronic age will usher in the Tribulation Period and the Antichrist. As a result, they see the Social Security numbering system, electronic banking machines, and bar code scanners as part of a worldwide scheme centering on the number 666 and the Mark of the Beast.

Let’s face it, the era of the Antichrist will be ushered in whether the proper electronic equipment is in place or not. The end times are God’s timing, and we must be careful about tying in technological progress with doomsday myths.

If transmitting capital via computers can make money easier to manage and companies more profitable by lowering their costs, then shouldn’t we exploit the technology rather than try to stall because we are afraid it will usher in doomsday? Besides, electronic money can’t bring about doomsday any faster than advancing the technology of the automobile, train, plane, food processing, or medicine has hastened the return of Jesus Christ.

This is a fact: The way the world exchanges goods has changed many times since the dawn of creation. Electronic transfers are just another step in the evolutionary process of how trading is accomplished. Those of us who have nothing to fear call this phenomenon progress.

I will never forget the day I took my grandfather to the bank to show him how to get money out of the ATM. It was a brand new invention.

“Look, Grandpa,” I said as I inserted my card. “See how simple this is?”

“Good morning, SS,” it said in robotic fashion.

Grandpa jumped back and shouted, “I’m not touching that thing! It’s too spooky for me!”

Shaking his head, he walked away and waited in the car while I finished my transaction.

I can understand why older people often fear change, but who wants to return to the days when there were no electronic calculators, computers, or the convenience of ATMs?

I don’t. Advancing technology has enhanced our living standards, allowed us to communicate more easily, improved medical treatment, and in many ways has helped spread the Gospel to every corner of the globe. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Antichrist.

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I spent many years employed as a stockbroker.

Because I am a Christian, I was often judged by my well-publicized advice to invest in the Stock Market. In fact, I wrote a popular book, Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is, which focused and taught how to invest in the stock market as well as all the existing public investment markets.

Selling stocks goes back centuries. When companies needed to expand, the banks could not handle the loans required to support expansion because there was not enough money deposited in the banks. Companies then went to the public and sold interests in their businesses called “shares of stock.”

When a person bought a share of stock in a company, he or she was promised part of the profits, if any. These were called dividends. The dividends would be paid on a regular basis as the company shared its profits. Selling shares of stock to the public brought the money into the banks and spread the risk of the business over a wide number of people. In fact, if it weren’t for the stock market, few of us would have jobs because the companies we work for would be out of business or scaling back because of a lack of funds to operate.

People often ask me, “Is playing the stock market gambling?” It can be. When I first became a broker, I quickly learned about the option market—the stock market’s answer to the horse race. When a person buys an option, he does not purchase or sell the stock. Instead he buys a contract and then bets whether the stock will go up or down.

If he bets that the price will fall and then it goes up, he loses money by every dollar the stock raises in price. If he bets the stock goes up and it falls in price, he loses for every dollar the stock goes down even to zero. On the other hand, he can also gain much money if his stock rises, and the profits are unlimited as to how much the stock may rise.

The stock market can also be considered gambling when a person buys a stock and doesn’t know what he is doing or doesn’t listen to a sound researcher’s professional advice. A theory among bona fide financial advisors is: The individual investor making his own choices is wrong 90 percent of the time. It has been my experience that it’s more like 95 percent; especially, for first-time stock pickers who act on a tip they learned from co-workers standing around the water cooler.

The stock market should not be used purely for speculation—although speculating is not wrong. The stock market, however, has outperformed every other investment in total returns since 1936, including real estate. That’s why I do not consider investing in the stock market to be a form of gambling no more than investing in property is a form of gambling. You have to be experienced at investing in either, or you will lose money.

Now here is some very sound advice taken from many years of experience:

1. Since I have also been to law school, I give legal advice. One of the things that you learn is that people hate lawyers. They also hate stockbrokers, but does that mean every lawyer or broker is sleazy? Of course not, and you would be lost without one in the courtroom, and you should have one in your “court” when you are investing your hard earned cash.

2. Avoid discount brokerage firms because you have nearly zero account management, and that increases the risk of losing your money.

3. Pay commissions and keep a professional on the job. When you are buying equity securities without paying commissions to someone who advises you, it is like buying an airplane. The investor buys the plane and does not pay for and does not get the services of a pilot. The question therefore becomes: “Are you absolutely sure you know how to fly this plane?”

Professional advice carries a price tag no matter what its source. That’s why I don’t treat myself medically or defend myself in court. The same principle applies to investors who consider selecting their own stocks, mutual funds, or bonds.

If you are not experienced enough to know all the ins and outs of the simple investment tips that I’m providing here, then you probably should not be buying your investments directly.

You could be gambling with your own future.

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When I was a child, I looked for a pot of gold every time I saw a rainbow. Digging for buried treasure in hopes of finding something valuable fascinated me.

Some adults are like that—always looking for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. On the beach or in a field or park, you can find them with a huge headset over their ears and a metal detector in their hands. Others play the lottery or bet on horses. Some are even more ingenious and hope to make their fortune through get-rich-quick schemes promising a bright future and monetary rewards.

I read stuff on the Internet all the time about how you can make $2,000 or more a month and never leave your house. However, you will need a credit card and at least $300  credit available to buy the software that will tell you how to do this. The only people getting rich off those schemes are the ones selling the wares.

Years ago, Wealth Without Risk by Charles Givens and the sequel, More Wealth Without Risk, were on the bestseller lists for months. Why? Because people want to get rich the easy way. During that time, I read every book and pondered how these books with great titles but no substance could make people wealthy.

Gullible audiences are making these economic snake oil peddlers rich by buying their anemic advice on the hope that they will someday become like their mentors. The truth is, it rarely happens to anyone and most important never happens to a person who has read one book. The fact is: Bad advice can lead to some terrible consequences.

There are scriptural references to financial freedom. One of those is found in the Bible in the Book of Galatians 6:7-9. It is the principle of sowing and reaping. What we sow, we also reap. This applies to the spiritual influences of man but also the principle applies to material things such as money.

For our wealth to accumulate and grow, it needs to be planted in the right soil and fertilized just like you would a crop. The first step is to understand this. A few years ago, our church was struggling a bit, and I asked the congregation to be praying about our needs.

After my appeal that Sunday morning, one of the young married men in the church came to me and said:

“Pastor, I’m going to Reno, Nevada, to play the lottery. If I win, I will give the church my winnings. Do you think God will bless that?”

I remember well my answer. “God’s blessings do not hinge on whether you would give Him all your earnings or not,” I said. “The test of His blessings hinges upon what you are doing with the dollars in your pocket right now.”

It is not God’s plan for us to gain money by chance. Millions and millions of lottery tickets are sold throughout the United States each year. Only on rare occasions out of hundreds of millions of chances have I ever seen someone praise God for the winning a lottery—much less give a large portion of the money to their church.

In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus teaches us to invest our money wisely. We need to plant our money where it will grow by sowing it in prudent and safe investments.

A lady in our town came to me one day and said, “You have to get a hold of my husband’s money. If you don’t get it and put it where he can’t find it, we’ll have nothing left for retirement.”

“What is the problem?” I asked.

“My husband plays the futures and options markets and has wasted $150,000 of our retirement money because he listens to these brokers who call him on the phone and tell how they can make him rich!”

After talking to her husband about the unnecessary chances he was taking, I was able to put what money they had left away in low-risk investments, and they ended up retiring in fine shape.

God doesn’t want us to throw money He has given us down rabbit holes or bet on racehorses. By the way, investing in options and futures is the stock market’s answer to the horse race. God wants us to follow the principle of sowing and reaping.

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In 2 Kings 4:1-7, we read about the widow of a prophet (today we would consider her a preacher’s widow) whose husband had died, leaving her poor and in debt. Although he had revered the Lord and had not lived riotously and luxuriously, he died owing more money than he was worth. Now his creditors were harassing his wife.

Many people today, who live under the constant pressure of collection agencies, can identify with this woman’s distress. Her situation was much worse, however, because the man to whom she owed money was coming to take her sons as bondsmen for seven years to work off the debt. In desperation, she went to Elisha for help.

He asked, “Do you have anything in your house you could sell to make money?”

“Just a little Crisco oil,” she replied.

“Okay,” he said, “go to your neighbors and ask for as many jars as they will loan you.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “what then?”

“Then fill the jars with oil.”

Although the widow had nothing of value to sell, Elisha reasoned that she had credit with her neighbors. Apparently she had somehow managed to keep her credibility by paying her own debts in the past.

Elisha asked the widow to borrow oil jars from her neighbors and shut the door behind her so her creditors would not interrupt. Then the miracle began.

As soon as the jars were full, the oil stopped flowing.

When she told Elisha, he said, “Sell the oil and pay your debts. Then you and your children can live on the profit that is left over.”

There are five lessons I have learned from this passage of Scripture and applied over the years:

1. Sometimes we get into trouble and can’t help it. Circumstances prevail beyond our control. (And we certainly don’t need to go on a guilt trip over circumstances!)

2. It is wrong to go into debt just to support our lifestyle.

3. Borrowing is not wrong if it serves a moral purpose.

4. If our neighbor wants to borrow something from us in time of need, we should be more than willing to let him or her use it for a time.

5. Sometimes, we need a financial miracle.

In America, credit turnover is important to our economic well-being. If people hold on to their payments too long, it forces the creditor to borrow and pay more interest. If the debtor doesn’t pay, that eventually hurts the lender’s financial status and will drive up prices as the lenders need to recoup profits lost by delinquent loans. This is true at banks, merchants who give credit, and individuals.

No American should be in debt unless the debt is advantageous to better living and doesn’t threaten the long-term economic condition of his or her home or business.

When I counsel people about their finances, I know when someone is falling through the cracks. If I see that happening, I always advise, “Get out of debt. And if you can’t handle credit, don’t use it.”

If you want to avoid the problems with which this preacher had strapped his widow, ask yourself this question:

If I do go broke, will the people to whom I owe money be adversely affected by my failure to pay?

To risk someone else’s money when you’re not sure you can repay is totally irresponsible and unfair to your creditors.

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Some Christian financial experts and writers have spent a great deal of time trying to convince their peers and others that the Bible teaches that credit is wrong. I’ve heard the subject debated ad nauseam, but the matter is volatile in some circles.

You absolutely should not have any debt according to the Scriptures. Why? The financial advisers to Christians say the reason lies in the word “usurious.” You are biblically prohibited to pay interest on money you borrow. So borrowing is wrong? Yes, if you pay interest. Is earning interest wrong?

The problem lies in the definition of “usury.” No doubt the Bible condemns the practice of usury. What is it? It is the unfair extraction of interest charged on loans. We get our laws against usurious practices from the Bible, but the Bible does not teach that earning or paying interest is wrong.

Interest on money is simply the cost of doing business. A dentist from Tennessee called me recently and said, “I’ve read all the books on debt-free living, and I’m convinced the economy is headed for collapse, and no one can stop it.”

“Well,” I said, trying to find out why he had called, “how’s your practice doing?”

“To tell the truth, I’m losing patients and don’t know what to do,” he stated in a worried tone.

“Would you mind if I ask you some questions?”

“Shoot,” he replied.

“Do you tithe?”

“Well, when I get completely out of debt, then I’m going to start tithing.”

His answer didn’t surprise me. A lot of debt-free living people think that way. Because they believe debt is sin, they figure it’s better to stop sinning before they start tithing.

“Do you need new equipment in order to upgrade your practice?”

“Yes,” he answered, sighing heavily.

“Do the dentists you compete with have this equipment?”

“Yes.” I could sense the discouragement in his voice.

“Have you lost customers because your equipment is outdated?”

“Yes, they’re all going to the new guy across town.”

“Do you want my advice?” I asked.

“Of course, that’s why I called you.”

“First of all, start tithing and quit worrying about getting or staying out of debt,” I told him bluntly.

“Second, borrow more money and buy the equipment you need, advertise that you have it, and get your customers back.”

“Third, make your borrowing short term only. As your cash flow increases, paying back the loan should be no problem. That’s the proper use of debt.”

“What about the interest I’ll have to pay?” he quizzed.

“If inflation is 6 to 7 percent, then the cost of making those same purchases 10 years from now is going to be the same, or more than the interest you would save by not financing the project now and doing it later. So you will lose what you would have gained by not paying interest on the money during that time.”

Those principles apply to any business. In fact, you wouldn’t have a job to go to tomorrow if your corporation or place of business didn’t use debt as leverage. Your company leverages through sales of stocks, bonds, debentures, and creative bank financing. That’s how they finance their business, so they can employ people like you to work for them. Leverage is essential in a free-market economy.

Walt Disney knew how to use debt to his advantage. One afternoon Roy Disney—Walt’s brother—was very discouraged after poring over the financial records of the Disney Companies.

Walt walked in and noticed the rather depressed look on Roy’s face. “What’s wrong?” Walt asked.

We are $4.5 million in debt with absolutely no way to pay it off at this time,” Roy replied. “We have 1,500 people on the payroll, which is getting harder to make each pay day. It looks like we’ve had it.”

Walt started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Roy asked.

“I can remember when we couldn’t borrow a thousand dollars,” Walt replied.

What’s the difference between leverage and financing with debt? Leverage is debt used only for a short amount of time and only for the reason of the cost of doing business.

Leverage is right, but financing with debt is wrong.

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