God Forgives. VISA Does Not -PART 2 By Drew Dyck

Why are 20-somethings — especially college students — so prone to debt? Tight budgets make credit cards tempting; they also make paying them off difficult. Add to that skyrocketing tuition costs, increased cost of living and corporations who aggressively peddle credit cards on campuses and you’ve got lots of stories like mine.

Thankfully, we’re not without help. There are lots of resources to help avoid or escape financial trouble. Here are just a few:

“Controlling the Credit Card Beast,” by Todd Temple.
“Self-control key to managing credit card debt in college,” by Sandra Block.
Credit and Debt Advice from youngmoney.com.
Advice for students from smartmoney.com.

Yet for many, runaway debt is about more than fiscal ineptitude; the problem often stems from an inability to curb excessive spending.

Of course popular culture only fuels the spending impulse. Flip through the channels, leaf through a magazine or glance at a billboard. The message is the same: Consuming products (often expensive and superfluous) will make you happy.

But like most messages the culture sends, this one turns out to be a lie. Any happiness from consumerism is fleeting at best. The result of rampant spending looks nothing like the blissful depictions offered by advertisers. The real story is considerably less cheery. It involves angry creditors, harassing phone calls, repossessions, eviction notices and long hours at work. That’s the true picture of undisciplined spending – the ugly enslavement of debt.

Fortunately the Bible provides a very different model of money management. And thankfully I tuned into it before debt ran away with me. It says our money doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to God. He merely entrusts us as stewards and expects us to conduct our financial affairs with that in mind. And (just a hunch) I don’t think that involves spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need. I guess God cares about small things – even if they’re only three inches long and a millimeter thick. He cares about how we use them because He loves us. He wants us to be free from consumerism and debt so we’re free to live for Him.

I wouldn’t recommend running up credit card debt to learn lessons (there are less painful ways to learn), but my experience did teach me a couple valuable things:

First, God forgives. Visa does not.

No matter what stupid things we do, God stands ready to forgive, to return our balance to zero — even when we’ve treated the things that are really His as though they are ours.

VISA has no such concept of mercy. I know they seem nice in the commercials, but they’re not. They didn’t care one iota about my deep contrition and sincere repentance. In fact their customer service reps found my confession and pleas for mercy “strange and inappropriate.” (Sigh) I guess some people just don’t understand grace.

Copyright © 2005 Drew Dyck. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.