Trying to follow

I’m not sure how much money was raised through Comment Love in the month of June, I do think it was close to $30, which is worth an applause for you. If you don’t know what Comment Love is, basically it’s an opportunity for you to raise (out of my pocket) $0.25 for every comment you make at Trying to Follow. Each month we’ll decide on a charity to give the money to and every comment will earn a quarter toward that cause (up to $40 normally).

Since June involved a new Mom and Baby in my life, I thought I should spread the joy and excitement to another mom and baby through World Visions Gift Catalog. Here’s what your comments are donating to:

Many mothers in countries like Angola, Romania, and East Timor lack the basic supplies they need to properly care for their newborns. Your gift will give a child a safer and healthier start in life — and help his or her mother breathe easier. You’ll provide essentials such as a bassinet, diapers and diaper pins, a blanket, a storage container for clean water, a baby bathtub, and soap. Pregnant women attending prenatal classes will also be trained in hygiene and how to properly use these supplies.

The donation was a little more then what we raised, but I figure it’s worth it. I’m definitely thinking in baby mode now, which might influence future posts, and donations as well. Please continue to comment, and encourage conversation on all the topics we discuss here.

I had a poll going for were to donate and it was a dead tie between Kiva and World Vision, so will let it be the deciding factor for July. Vote Now:
[poll=3]

The Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25) is one of the most radical things I’ve come across in the Bible. It’s one of those passages non-Christians should know and ask all the Christians they talk to about, and expect some sort of a response regarding it. The Year of Jubilee is many things, but one thing it is in particular is a time for all debts to be forgiven, and everyone to have a fresh start. Could you imagine this happening? It’s supposed to happen about once every 50 years, so let’s just say, oh 2009 happens to be the next Jubilee Year. What would happen if this was carried out on an Individual Level? Church? City? Country? World?

Individually
Before we ever write things like this off as being irrelevant, because ‘No country would ever do that!’, I think it’s worth discussing how we can begin enacting these radical ideas into our own lives. So, let’s see what 2009 would look like for me and my family. Well, if I had any debts still (which I don’t plan on) it would be neat for the lenders (Aunt Sallie) to send me a letter in the mail, ‘paid in full’ and be done with it. What would you do if suddenly your car, house, student loans and anything else were suddenly paid off? Would you see it as a blessing from God to put that money into buying a new boat? Maybe a diamond ring? Or would it actually move you so much that you took the extra income you had and started using it to give to others so that they could pay off their loans and experience the same freedom? Would you use your excess resources from the Jubilee to feed and clothe others?
Nobody, to my knowledge, currently owes me anything (except you Zach, I’m still waiting for my $5), but what if they did? What if my business partner has yet to pay up on his split of our company, maybe my housemate owes me a grand in overdue rent, or my brother never paid me for the bike rack he took from me. If those things were true, I could see how thinking about, asking about, and pursuing that money could take up a lot of my time and energy. But what if 2009 rolled around and I sent letters to each of those in debt to me and said, “Celebrate the Jubilee, your debt is gone.” What ramifications would that have on our relationship and personal well being?

Church
This is when it starts to get cool. I actually heard a pastor suggest this, and It would be brilliant to actually see it carried out. What if the Year of Jubilee rolled around and churches actually participated in it? It might look like this.
At the beginning of the year, one Sunday is dedicated to writing letters to all those who owe anyone in the church a debt. If there is a debt owed between to church members they our reconciled then and there. Then everyone goes out to their neighbors, friends, family and business associates and declares that all debts that were owed to them (the church folk) has been canceled because of the Jubilee. Once all outstanding debt owed to the folks at the church have been relinquished, it’s time for the church to reconcile all debts owed to those outside of that church.
On another Sunday, all the church members bring their house and car notes, student loan bills and any other outstanding debt they have. It’s all brought before the church and then collectively checks are written from bank accounts of those who have extra resources, until all the debt of the church has been paid. I wonder if that is even possible? I mean, I wonder in our country and churches how many people actually have a positive net worth? Could the members of a church actually pay off all of their outstanding debts? (I bet it would cash out a couple retirement funds).
What ramifications would this sort of activity have for that church? If every member of the church left the Year of Jubilee with no debts, how would they go out and choose to spend their money and live their lives? Would it change their giving habits? Their buying habits?

City, Country, World
I think we’ve done enough imagining for now, so I won’t indulge these at the moment. But if your interested in global visions for this, I’d highly recommend you check out the Jubilee Partners website. They are an organization whose actually putting this into practice in the sense that they are standing up against the illegitimate debt that nations have been trying to hold over one another that has kept many in poverty for years.

The Conversation about housing got my wheels turning and I started thinking about different ways we might live creatively outside the box of what we are currently used to in our culture. I’m gonna write a few things this week about just ideas I’ve had of ways to live out our convictions creatively. This is the first.

Instead of taking out huge Mortgages and taking years to pay them off and effectively paying three times the cost of our houses, we should pay each others mortgages. I’m not quite sure how this would work as traditionally we all want a house and we want it now, not later. But really think about it.
If you could pay cash for your house today, then over the course of the next 30 years you could take what you would have spent in interest to the bank and give it to some wonderful cause you believe in. As one person or family this doesn’t quite seem possible, but collectively it’s not as difficult.
What if five or ten families got together and decided that each year they would take all the money they could muster and pay off one persons mortgage (assuming they already have one). Over that time the pay-off would speed up exponentially as a persons house is paid off and they no longer have a monthly payment themselves. By the end of the time (maybe ten years max) everyone has a house completely paid off and they are able to do a world of good with the rest of the money.

Or, what if folks lived communally in a house, that was fully paid off. And then they pooled their resources and were able to buy one house a year, which a family would move into and start a communal living opportunity for others to follow a similar pattern.

There are some assumptions I’m making here. You can’t be living paycheck to paycheck, nor can you be living just below your income, you need to make some radical life changes. Of course, those are things you should have done even before you bought a house to begin with.

Here’s a brief (I didn’t have much time) example…

So you’ve got five families, with differing incomes. The goal is for each to buy a $100,000 house. If they all contribute 25% of their income to a pot it would take 11 to accumulate $500,000 (enough for each family to have a house). If they lived on just $16,000 a year they’d have enough in 5 years.
The “5 Year House” column is just showing what cost of a house they could pay off in five years if they were putting 25% of their income to the house.
And the “Years to 100K” column shows how many years it would take each family to actually accumulate $100k if they were doing it themselves (by which time their house cost would be double if they were doing their own mortgage).

Of course these are simple numbers not taking into account other housing costs, inflation, etc, but hopefully you get the idea (or maybe your totally lost).

Any math geeks out there want to help me make more sense of something like this?

We’ve had a fabulous discussion over at the Home Sweet Mortgage post, and I’d love to continue it. The thing is, the direction I would really like to take it is into the area of creatively brain storming how a Christians might live and function if they decided Debt really was completely unacceptable.

I’m not saying it is (Mindy and I have chosen to take loans out for her to finish school), but I’m contemplating what things might look like if we firmly believed that it was. You see, I think too often we are quick to interpret and justify away some of scripture because we can’t figure out how it would “work” in our world today. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t believe in non-violence (a topic for another post). I think this is also why most people give the “buying is better then renting” statement and then give the short financial advice to back it up.

Again, I’m not saying buying is bad, I’m just saying maybe we can think of ways to think of all of it in a completely new way. Jac, mentioned people in the church giving others loans. That’s a neat idea that is outside the box of what we ever consider. I want to brainstorm ideas like that.

So, the floor is open. The one rule is that what ever idea you present, it has to be given with the assumption that Debt is unacceptable and not an option.

How do we live? were do we live? College? Cars? the floor is yours…

At the place we’ve been hanging out on Sunday’s here in Nashville, a number of people have purchased homes in the last 1 1/2 that we’ve been there. It’s not a large community so it was a significant percent of the people that were making this major life decision/change/move. I posted on the online forum and tried to strike up some conversation about it, but was met mostly with perplexed looks. Basically, I wanted to know how as people of faith, they processed through choosing to purchase a home. I was hoping for a whole sermon series on it, but there wasn’t one.

It’s my understanding that if you believe in something as truth, then it should affect every facet of your life. This isn’t exclusive to religion or faith, our faith in gravity applies as much to standing in a bathroom as looking over a cliff’s edge. A couple verses in the Bible run through my mind specific to this idea of thinking about everything we do as it relates to our beliefs and faith:
“we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

I would venture to say most major religions, and most people of faith, understand it’s impact on everything they do. That being said, I honestly wanted to know the thought process folks had gone through in deciding to purchase a home. It wasn’t that I disagreed with their choice, I just wanted to know more, and I finally realized, there wasn’t more.
Buying a house is just something you do. Just like millions of other little things every day that are just a part of our society, part of the “American Way of Life.” And boy is it dangerous.

The Old Testament book of Proverbs is chock-full of maxim’s about the dangers of debt, “The debtor is slave to the lender.” And yet we take out student loans (even I am guilty) and home mortgages without thinking twice about it. Most folks eventually pay off their student loans, but I’m not sure I know a soul who actually owns their house. We refinance, we upgrade, we take out second mortgages to our hearts content, and I don’t think most Christians have even given a thought to how their faith should affect that part of their life.

Mindy and I are about to have our first child. She’s about to finish school and we’ll pay off all our loans in a couple years. I can see the benefits of owning rather then renting, but I also see some of the negatives. I see the trap of wealth and greed, of always wanting more and going into debt to get it. Everyone around us seems to be buying houses, you would almost think it’s a necessary part of following in the faith.

Houses make me think. Does isolating ourselves in single family home make it difficult to carry out Christ radical call to love our neighbors and live in community with other believers? Does living in perpetual debt keep us from being the generous, sharing, and financially open church Christ calls us to be? Does the “American Dream” really look like what Christ aspires for us to obtain, or are we terribly off-track?