Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 August 2006 16:49:42
I got interested in interest.
The sort of interests that banks deal in. It's a neat trick, loved by the rich, and hated by others who prefer the more emotive word usury. It ensures the rich get richer at the expense of the poor and that's not a thought that makes me very comfortable. (Is that because, like the simplistic accusation levelled at most socialists, I think of myself as poor and thus likely to be better off if the rich would stop getting richer? A good question. Certainly on a conscious level I view myself as unspeakably rich. Not compared with the opulent standards shown frequently on TV and tabloid, but compared with the global average. But subconsciously I may still be fooling myself into thinking I deserve more. Who can say?)
So I take comfort in the condemnations of levying interest found in the old testament (although that seems to depend on your translation), and the thought that the jubilee concept was probably only necessary to correct the effects of interest. But that leaves me stuck when it comes to Jesus's words ("whoever has will be given more ...") which seem to confirm that this is both the way of this world and of the world to come.