COGWA Members App
Feast App
ROKU AppEconomic Stability Is Coming!
Written by Ralph Levy
Has everything been tried in solving the world’s economic problems? Consider an ancient idea that could have prevented the whole mess. The good news: Someday soon its time will come!
I couldn’t resist the title “13 Out-of the-Tinderbox Ways to Save the Global Economy” in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine (January-February 2012). So I read the article over lunch. It was worth the time. Wouldn’t we all like to know how to bring an end to the worldwide economic instability of the last three years?
The proposals ranged from the sensible (“Tame the world’s crazy currency system” by David M. Smick), to the debatable (“Cut defense spending” by Congressman Barney Frank), to the worrying (“Whip up inflation. Now” by professors Menzie Chinn and Jeffry Frieden), to the bizarre (“Buy more yachts” by economics professor Robert H. Frank).
A debt jubilee?
Yet it was the first of the 13 that caught my eye: “Write off the world’s debt” by Kauffman Foundation senior fellow Paul Kedrosky. Kedrosky admits his idea isn’t original; in fact, its origin is ancient.
“The original debt jubilee idea comes from the Old Testament’s book of Leviticus, which … decrees that every 50 years we should forgive all debts. It is doubtful that such festivals of debt deliverance ever happened regularly. After all, who would lend to anyone in Year 49, knowing full well that in Year 50 you would have your debt repudiated? But the idea is the thing: the notion that societies steadily accumulate the dead weight of debt until it becomes too much for the economy to bear, at which point it must be sloughed off,” Kedrosky writes.
This economic law is found in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus, to be precise. This wonderful law, given by God to ancient Israel, enjoined that all debt was to be released and forgiven in the final year of a 50-year cycle. The land was to return to its original owners, debts were to be forgiven, and indentured servants were free to depart in peace.
Proclaim liberty
The importance of the jubilee law is enshrined on the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its inscription, taken from Leviticus 25:10, says: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
Yet that liberty from slavery—both personal and economic—eludes us. Our world has seen precisely the kind of buildup of economic tension that the jubilee law was designed to prevent. And as economist Kedrosky writes, the biblical law was rarely ever applied.
Yet, while knowledge of the cycle may have been lost, the effects of such economic tension were felt yet again in this century, beginning in 2008. Economists and politicians are still struggling to find ways to alleviate the crisis—with limited success. The world’s economy still groans under an excessive pile of debt, both public and private.
Imagine the relief
How would the world be if the jubilee law were ever to be followed? Imagine the relief, for individuals enslaved to personal debt, for states enslaved to unmanageable budgets and spiraling public debt, and for the world freed from the specter of wars resulting from economic chaos.
The history of the 20th century would have looked quite different. Chances are, the Second World War would not have taken place had Germany not confronted a crisis of raging inflation and loss of the value of its currency. Karl Marx would not have espoused the theories he wrote in his Communist Manifesto, absent the “class contradictions” that would not have existed if the jubilee had been practiced. Nor would there have been the corruption, revolutions, class envies and overconcentration of wealth in the hands of very few in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.
What did Christ say about the jubilee?
The good news is that this law will be enforced. And all the ensuing benefits will follow. How do we know? Jesus Christ said so! Almost 20 centuries ago, on a visit to the town where He had been brought up, He visited the synagogue, where He was given the scroll of the book of Isaiah.
Every eye was on Him as He read from the prophet: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor … to proclaim liberty to the captives … to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD” (Luke 4:18-19, quoting from Isaiah 61:1-2).
The last phrase is an allusion to the jubilee law.
The prophecy has yet to be fulfilled. The “acceptable year of the LORD” has yet to be proclaimed, but it will. Liberty throughout the land has yet to be decreed. And release from debt has yet to take place.
But these events will take place! Once Jesus Christ the Messiah returns to this weary earth to set up the government of God, all these things will take place. The times of debilitating debt will end. A time of economic stability will be ushered in. It’s going to be a much better world!
Ralph Levy is a minister of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, who grew up in England and now lives in the United States. Dr. Levy enjoys reading, travel and foreign languages. He has a Ph.D. in biblical studies and has worked in foreign language and religious education for much of his life.
For more about the economic crisis, see:
