The Two Debtors is based on Luke 7: 41-43
Does This Parable Need Retelling?
I nearly put this parable in Parables That Don’t Need Retelling, so – no, not necessarily. Money lenders and debt still exist, as I mentioned in the commentary on The Unforgiving Debtor. But the way we handle that debt has changed enough that we might need to retell this parable.
Do We Love Banks?
If a bank forgave you your mortgage, would you love them?
Most people in the UK, where I live, owe money. The main debt will be a mortgage, but about 65% of UK households also have some financial/personal debt. And, most likely, much of that debt came through the bank. Banks offer you credit cards, personal loans, overdrafts – in fact, banks will offer us anything that will get us into debt, because debt makes them most of their money.
Lending Money in Jesus’ Time
There’s a difference between theory and reality. In theory, Torah forbids a religious Jew lending money (at interest) to another Jew. In reality, people sometimes need loans.
Now, there’s nothing morally wrong about lending at interest; it was prohibited between Jews because they should have been treating each other like family. Loans between family members should be interest free.
Yet the Roman banking system that Jews might have used was largely based in Roman temples – even worse than borrowing from a fellow Jew at interest. The result was that lending money between Jews (at interest) happened all the time.
And, as well as Jesus’ parables about debt, we’ve got letters from ordinary Jews. So we know Jesus’ debt parables seem to have been based on everyday life. People borrowed money at interest. Usually they borrowed one-to-one. Annual interest rates were huge – but these loans weren’t annual affairs. More ‘lend me X and I’ll pay you Y at the harvest,’ or maybe ‘I’ll lend you X if you pay me Y when you next get paid.’
So it’s possible the moneylender in the parable might have been a friend, or well known in the local community.
Do Friends Lend Money?
Not if you want to stay friends!
In modern life, lending money to friends and relatives is the reason behind a lot of family/friend break-ups. Even ‘£50 until payday’ can turn poisonous when payday rolls around – and the debtor realises they’ve already committed every single penny. They don’t have that £50!
That’s the situation the money lender in the parable is in – and they decide to treat the loan as a gift. If a friend did that for us; realising we couldn’t repay and telling us ‘treat it as a gift’ – how grateful would we be? Wouldn’t we think they were a true friend?
Now imagine they lent us £50,000 towards our mortgage deposit. Then, when we couldn’t pay the £50,000 back, told us it was a gift.
We would ‘love them more.’
Previous Parable: The Big Parade: Matthew 25: 1- 12.
Next Parable: The Dogs and the Cats: Matthew 25: 31-46.
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