Forgive Us Our Debts

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Matthew 6:12

Accounting metaphors run throughout the gospel. In the Lord’s Prayer, debt is used as a metaphor for sin. In other places in scripture, Jesus is spoken of as remitting (i.e. paying a bill for) our sins. When I was explaining the concept of grace and sin to a classmate who had not grown up in a Christian society, the metaphor I used was that repentance erases our sin the same way bankruptcy erases our debt.

Money is one of the last taboos in American culture. I work for the government, so my salary is a matter of public record. My colleagues all make the same amount, and we all know it. We still don’t talk about it!

That said, I’m going to talk about money today. Or rather, the time when I had a severe lack of it, and the fallout from that whole situation.

I used to own a small business. It was profitable, and I made enough money to support myself and to create jobs for an employee and a small handful of contractors. Then Covid happened. I kept thinking that the economic devastation wrought on my business would be temporary and things would look up soon. I availed myself of the aid available, and I borrowed against future earnings to keep the present afloat.

Things weren’t temporary. The business went under and I had to get a job. I was able to land my dream job, so I figured I would just pick up and keep going. But even with a good salary, I was struggling under the weight of the debt I had taken on back when I thought I could save my business. My largest creditor, one who was known for being tenacious and unreasonable, began to hound me and ultimately demanded immediate repayment of what was supposed to be a 30 year loan. I called a lawyer who specialized in negotiating settlements with this specific creditor. He listened to my situation and told me that he couldn’t help me. I was in too far over my head. He said I needed to talk to a bankruptcy attorney instead.

I reached out to my professional network and got a recommendation. I set up a consultation with a lawyer, and after talking with him, we made a plan, and I decided to hire him to help me. For a brief moment, I considered handling it myself. After all, I went to law school. But I realized that this was too important to risk messing up, so I wised up and decided to hire someone who knew what he was doing. I have absolutely zero patience with bureaucracy, so it was money well spent to not have to deal with any of that.

Before filing for bankruptcy, I had to take a consumer education course. (This is required by the court.) I decided to treat it like traffic school and not take it personally. It was a ridiculously judgmental and offensive course. Most people who file for bankruptcy do so as a last resort because of medical bills, job loss, divorce, or business failure. The course was all about how not to waste money on frivolous purchases like shoes or fancy cars. At the end, I had to answer a question about what I would do differently in the future to avoid a repeat of this situation. I answered, “In the future, I won’t own a small business during a global pandemic.”

This is the first correlation between bankruptcy and repentance. There’s a lot of judgment heaped on people who are trying to fix things and do better. Everybody has made some regrettable financial decisions in life, and everybody has sinned. Let he who is without a monetary mistake cast the first stone.

I had to spend down my bank account (such as it was, anyway; I wasn’t exactly flush with cash going into it) to a small amount, and I had to stop using my credit cards. I couldn’t even use a card to buy gas or groceries a few days before payday to pay off after payday. It was humbling to have to once again live paycheck to paycheck.

I struggled, and sometimes my bank account had mere pennies on payday (or, on one particularly bad week, a negative number), but through the miracle of community, I never went without. There was a time when my electric bill was due three days before payday and I was $100 short. I tried to sell plasma, but because of a brain injury I suffered a few years ago, I was rejected. I walked out of the plasma center in tears. I messaged a group chat with a few friends asking them if they had any other ideas for quick ways for me to make $100. Without hesitation, one of my friends Venmo’d me the money and said to pay it forward someday. Another time, an acquaintance I hadn’t talked to for probably 15 years (but who I interact with on Facebook) sent me some Bitcoin that when converted to dollars was enough to cover another emergency bill that came up. My debit card number got stolen the day before my mortgage payment was due, and the thieves made off with about half of my mortgage payment. A family member floated me until the bank was able to recover the money. There were other acts of generosity too numerous to detail. The windows of heaven were opened to me.

I have a very strong testimony of food storage. I’ve always had a well-stocked pantry. I’ve spent most of my adult life either working as a temp or being self-employed, so I’ve had highly variable income. That bag of beans or canister of flour in the back of the cupboard has saved me on more than one occasion when there was month left at the end of my money. When friends found out how much I was struggling during the bankruptcy, the first question they always asked me was “Do you need help with groceries?” I was able to tell them that food was the one area where I was doing just fine.

There were people who owed me money when this whole bankruptcy thing started. I kept hoping that they would pay me back. A few hundred here, a few hundred there, and it would have made a difference. But as the process dragged on and on, I kept being reminded of “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” It was hard. I needed that money. But I also knew that I was getting a much larger sum wiped away and that I would be a grade-A hypocrite if I didn’t let it go.

When I started this whole journey, I had planned on telling almost no one. I told my lawyer, of course. I told my sister and swore her to secrecy. I told one or two close friends. That was it. I call my parents every Sunday, and I managed to get nearly all the way through the bankruptcy before I had to tell them because of the bank account theft. If my bank account hadn’t been stolen, I likely would have never told them. I didn’t want them to worry. (I’m in my 40s and I haven’t lived with my parents for two decades, but I know they still worry about me.)

Shortly after I set this whole process in motion, it was fast Sunday. I hadn’t planned on saying anything, but God marched me out of my pew and up to the pulpit where I said that I paid my tithing faithfully and that my business failed and I had to file bankruptcy. Tithing, while a true gospel principle, does not prevent us from financial hardship, and the windows of heaven being opened does not necessarily mean we will become rich. I don’t know who needed to hear that that day, but I hope someone benefited from it, because it was awkward to stand up and announce to the whole congregation that I had gotten in over my head like that.

I got my court order discharging my debts the day after Easter, which seemed like an appropriate date for it all to wrap up. It felt like a huge weight was lifted off of me. A debt I would never be able to repay under my own power was erased with a few words by someone with the authority to forgive. Go, and sin no more.