Once upon a time TV adverts were tempting us to buy their brand of washing powder, toothpaste or breakfast cereal. You can roughly guess the age of a person if they can remember jingles like “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with …” or “The hands that do dishes are as soft as your face with mild green …”And don’t forget Tony the Tiger – “they’re great!”

Current advertising is a world away from these rather ordinary domestic and personal issues. How many thousands do you want to borrow? How much?! “We can organise your various debts. Just give us your money and we will charge you a handsome fee for the privilege.” The message is unequivocal –‘You want it. We have the money. Just  borrow from us - at a cost!

DEBT is OK!. The more debt you have the more ‘with it’ you are. It’s cool to be in debt.

British politics has recently been dominated by the row over university top up fees. The issue is the debt that students will amass during their time at ‘Uni’. There are easy ways to pay it back, over time, at a cost, if you pay it back at all.

So it’s official – it’s debt that makes the world go round. It is an accepted part of life particularly in the western world. Many countries in the third world owe huge debts to the more affluent parts of the world.  Debt is an accepted part of 21^st century life. But debt, by its very definition has to be paid back. The longer the debt remains unpaid the more interest becomes payable and is therefore more beneficial to the lender. Someone somewhere is making a huge profit out of other people.

The Christian faith is based very squarely on the belief that debt is unacceptable. We are all in debt to God through human sin… ‘for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3: 23-24). None of us is, or ever will be, good enough to pay the price of sin. We shall all always be in debt to God, but that is not how God wants it to be.

The message of Easter is that God has written off that debt though the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It requires us to turn to him in faith, repent of our sin and receive his forgiveness and his promise of eternal life.

In the Lord’s Prayer in Mathew 6:12 Jesus quite clearly equated sin with debt. The Aramaic word for ‘trespasses’ which Jesus would have used, indicates a debt or a sin.  Sin and debt are to be wiped out.  Further in the same prayer, Jesus clearly saw the Kingdom of Heaven as a present reality …‘thy kingdom come on earth as it IS in heaven.’ It is not something we wait for in the future but a present reality.

Debt is being corporately encouraged and has become an accepted part of modern culture This is courting disaster for both individuals and society and a whole.   For Christians debt is not acceptable.

Alan Hayday (Dean)