Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be

Yesterday my wife was practising* her semi-usual Sunday morning wake up routine, which consists of watching false prophets deceive the masses on television (don't worry, she doesn't buy it either). They stoned those sorts of people in the Old Testament. In today's world, we give them book deals and write them up in Christianity Today. Anyway, Sunday’s sermon was by James Kennedy, the patron saint of bullshit. Kennedy was extolling that fruit of the spirit known as Capitalism. He proffered many pearls of wisdom, including the ludicrous assumption that countries which practise Socialism have a higher suicide rate. How he arrived at that one, I honestly can't remember. It probably had something to do with the most deadly tool in Satan’s tool box: universal health care. At any rate, this got me thinking about one of my usual beefs with certain sects of Christians, which is that they hold to a very selective literal reading of the Bible. Yes, it's easy to believe in a literal creation or a universal flood. It’s easy to believe that Bloodthirsty Jesus will one day ride on a white horse, whupping pagan ass wherever he goes (and it helps when you have a handy get out of jail free card like the rapture to which to cling). Likewise, it's easy to continually harp on RepubliChristianity’s two favourite sins (and it's really sad that you know what they are without my having to tell you). But what about those sins which the Bible condemns over and over, the ones about which the church is eerily silent? Take usury, for instance (i.e. charging interest on a loan). The Bible forbids it. More than a dozen times. In fact, it's even called an abomination, just as homosexuality is. Yet the same groups that kick homosexuals out of churches have no problem with it. Well, maybe they do. But you'll never hear them say so publicly. And you'll never see them kick a banker out of a church. Unless he's gay. *From now on I use British spellings. You can deal.