Did Jesus Die To Forgive Student Loan Debt?

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Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll be answering the age -old question, did

Jesus die to forgive student loan debt? Now, in all of our time doing this show, we've never actually started an episode by sharing the good news with you guys, and so I thought it might be fun to just start the episode this way and hope that it's an encouragement for you guys.

But the good news is that our beloved president, Joe Biden, has demonstrated his love, his patience, and his mercy with us by willing that the taxpayer lay down his own dollar at his expense, unwillfully, in order to forgive $10 ,000 worth of student loan debt for anyone who makes under $125 ,000 a year.

Now, if that doesn't encourage you, if that doesn't inspire you to give thanks to Joe Biden, then

I just don't know what will. What a guy I am. Yeah. All right, all kidding aside, obviously that's not the good news.

The good news is that Jesus Christ came, lived a perfect life, died the death that we deserved, defeated death by rising from the grave so that we could have new life through his death, burial, and resurrection.

That's the good news. But if you haven't heard, Joe Biden is forgiving $10 ,000 worth of student loan debt to anyone who makes under $125 ,000 annually, which sounds great on the surface, but then there's a lot of issues with it, and there's a lot of conservatives, and especially conservative

Christians, who are really pushing back on this idea and are basically saying, hey, this isn't right.

This is not a smart idea. We should not be doing this. This is a bad thing. And in response to that critique, there are a lot of progressives who are coming along and saying, wow, that's pretty hypocritical for you to base your entire life on a religion that's focused on debt forgiveness, and then when the government comes along and say, hey, we're going to forgive some debt, all of a sudden it's a bad thing.

And so it seems like there's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of conflating the actual gospel of Jesus Christ with the student loan debt forgiveness.

And so, Tim, I wanted to ask you and just kind of get some of your thoughts. There's a lot of people out there who are basically looking at Jesus Christ laying down his life, right?

And they're comparing it as like a one -to -one comparison with student loan forgiveness, almost as if Jesus died to forgive student loan debt or something, right?

So what's your response to that? Do you think Jesus died to forgive student loan debt?

I asked in the most serious voice that I could muster. Yeah, it's difficult to know where to start at that point because there's just so many unshared assumptions that are even happening when you ask a question along those lines.

And so it's hard to even know where to begin, you know, responding to something along those lines.

But, you know, the thing which should be obvious in this kind of question, at the very least, is that, you know, obviously, you could say as you read through the

Bible, the Bible does encourage debt forgiveness in general. You know, if you were to make some kind of statement along those lines, there's a lot that is in the

Bible that would say that an individual willingly forgiving the debts of others against him is generally a good idea.

I don't know that you want to absolutize it in the way that's being asked of you. But generally speaking, when the

Bible talks about debt forgiveness and the kind of debt forgiveness that's generally encouraged, you know, if you want to make a modest statement along those lines, it's generally the type of...

What I'm trying to say though is there's an assumption behind all that and that assumption is that an individual has a right to his own property and that if he chooses to willingly forgive debts of others against him, that that would generally be a good thing.

But that's a choice that he makes of his own accord. It's not the kind of choice that you make for him. So when

Jesus died on the cross to, you know, save sinners, he didn't die on the cross to save sinners because someone, you know, made him do it, you know, against his will or something like that.

It wasn't as if like... Right. The Bible says that, you know, for the joy laid before him. Right. You know, and he...

No one takes my life. I voluntarily lay my life down on my own accord. And so Jesus, you know, died for us, you know, as a substitution, but then he paid the debt willingly and it wasn't as if he's being forced against his will to pay a debt that he doesn't want to pay by other people.

And so that's part of what's happening in this discussion as it relates to student loan debt forgiveness is that, you know, if you're

Joe Biden and you want to give all your voting base, you know, a nice Christmas present or something like that to encourage them.

I mean, you know, the issue is like you, you know, if you're going to declare through executive action that, you know, $10 ,000 of these debt or of these individual student loan debts are forgiven, like you...

The issue is that money doesn't just... There are consequences to doing this kind of thing.

You can't just, you know, give people money or cancel certain debts. Someone has to pay for it. Right. So this is an absurdity on the face of it.

You know, when you think about how irrational it actually is, you know, he's just declaring by divine fiat, you know, that these debts are forgiven and someone's going to have to pay for it.

And, you know, we've seen, you know, what happens when you just hand out money, you know, when the government just hands everyone money, you know, it ends up that all your groceries end up costing you double and everything else.

So there's going to be a cost by this. And part of what the immorality of the whole, you know, arrangement is that, you know, you have a lot of individuals who didn't go to college and chose not to go to college and chose not to get into student loan debt or made the responsible decision to pay off their debt themselves, and then now they're being forced essentially to cover the cost.

And so someone's going to cover the cost. You know, money doesn't just come from nowhere when you just, you know, hand money out in this kind of way, and everyone ends up absorbing that.

And so what you're doing essentially is, like, it's very different than what Jesus did. What you're doing is you're essentially taking money from other people in order to pay for a debt that they may not want to pay for, you know.

They may not want to pay for the, as the common memes are saying, the gender studies, useless gender studies degrees that many of these individuals are getting, you know, and they may have made different choices in their life to make different kinds of decisions because they didn't value these same things in these same kind of ways.

And so, you know, that's one response you want to have is that you, you know, an individual voluntarily deciding of their own accord to forgive debt is very different than being forced by someone in authority over you to forgive, like, other individuals' debts that you may not wish to absorb in that way.

Yeah, it's funny because I remember probably like a year ago, maybe,

I came to you and I was like, hey, you know, I've got, so I've got these,

I've got this student debt, and I can really start paying a lot of money into it now, and I'm kind of in a place where I can put a lot of money towards it and get it down pretty quickly.

But with all of these conversations about student loan forgiveness, is it worth waiting and just seeing if it'll get forgiven and I don't have to pay for it?

And you had basically told me, hey, look, you know, the Bible says that, you know, it's, if you take on a debt, it's your responsibility to pay it, right?

The wicked borrow and do not repay. Right, so if you want to be someone who is honoring the

Lord, then you need to, regardless of what happens, you just need to put money towards your student loans.

And so I did, and I actually, you know, like, because God blessed me with a lot,

I was actually able to pay mine off all the way before any of this happened. So I led you astray.

Right, so I'm the person who's like, I would have benefited from this, but I was being responsible and making a lot of progress towards paying off my student loans, and now

I'm not going to, you know, I don't get any student loan forgiveness. So the way I see it is basically,

Tim, I think you owe me $10 ,000. Well, yeah, the issue definitely is that I was in a similar situation myself, and I had to think through these things also.

So, I mean, I had a chance to, you know, put the nail in the coffin and pay off the remainder of the student loan debt that I had around the same kind of time, but you're thinking through those things.

So, you know, in my own defense, I will say that I was also aware of the, you know, the plans to cancel at least $10 ,000 worth of student loan debt.

That number has been thrown out there at a time. And, you know, I did have to process for myself, am

I just going to leave, you know, $10 ,000 left and just, you know, let them pay it off, you know.

But, I mean, honestly, I encourage you to do the same thing that I actually did. So I guess I robbed both of us, you know.

So now you owe yourself $10 ,000 and me $10 ,000. Well, maybe I'll just decide to take the $10 ,000 that I owed myself and use that to pay the $10 ,000 that I owe you.

So I'll just forgive them both, you know. I'll forgive them both. I've decided to forgive both of, like, my debt against myself and my debt against you.

Very gracious of you. By means of, you know, I use my debt against me to pay, you know, your debt.

That makes about as much sense as what we're talking about here. So basically, the big distinction is, like, willfully being charitable versus coercion, right?

Sure, yeah. But, I mean, I think, you know, related to that discussion you just brought up, though, I mean, there are many people who are acting as if they've been done wrong because they're in the situation that we're both in, if that makes sense.

And so they're acting as if, like, they're being punished by not having their debt paid.

So they're being punished for doing the right thing. And I would say, well, I understand that to a certain degree.

Like, the government does incentivize people, as Thomas Sowell says, to fail, right?

And so, like, there isn't a reward that is given for individuals making smart choices or the choice to pay off your debt or, you know, the choice to not get it in debt in the first place.

There's no financial incentive there. You're incentivizing people to make poor decisions. But at the same time, if you consider the morality of what we're talking about, we are talking about a government stepping in and stealing money from, you know, individuals who are more responsible and giving it to those who are more foolish.

And so that's, I mean, essentially that's theft, right? So that's theft. Right. And so, you know, as individuals like us who, yeah, we paid it off, and we now, you know, because we made a smart choice, we're not benefiting this way.

Like, the issue is, like, you don't want to benefit from theft anyways. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And you're not being robbed by not having an opportunity to benefit from theft, right?

So, like, in some sense, that kind of, like, outcry, I just want to say, well, you know,

I'm in that situation. You're in that kind of situation. And, you know, all kidding aside, like, I mean, I just, we, you know, like, it's not as if I, I mean, there's part of me, like, the issue is there's part of me that wants to be kind of irritated about it, right?

But I consider that, like, that's covetousness in my heart. Yeah, yeah.

Does that make sense? Yeah, that's what it, no, that is actually, like, that's what it feels like, yeah. Yeah, but that's all it is.

It's just covetousness. And I'm not trying to say I'm immune from the sin of covetousness, but I am able to identify,

I'm not immune from the sin of covetousness, but I'm able to identify it, right? So, like, the sin of covetousness is the desire to have something that belongs to your neighbor.

And that, like, if you do feel, like, you know, ed up about it, you know, to use a Southern expression, if you do, like, that's covetousness there, and that's not good.

So, I mean, I, and the issue is, you know, and what I encourage you to do, I encourage you to do the same thing

I did myself, and that is just honor the Lord with your wealth. And, you know, the Bible says that we can borrow and do not repay.

Just, you know, let Him worry about it. Just make a responsible choice. Do the right thing. And don't, you know, don't wait until later.

Like, if you can get rid of it, then get rid of it, you know, and let God take care of you, and let God bless you, and let

God honor that choice. And even if that means that you miss out on some opportunity to, like, not have to repay it, you shouldn't want to, you shouldn't want it to be repaid that way anyways, you know?

Now, if you're the kind of individual who is being paid against your will and you can't do anything about it, well, okay, you know? Like, I don't know what you're doing.

Darrell Bock I mean, you're getting taxed so much anyways that, you know, that's just a drop in the bucket.

John Dickerson Yeah, at that point, I just think, well, okay, you know, well, praise the

Lord, I guess, you know? Like, what do you do? But so, like, there shouldn't be – the point, though, is just you shouldn't be, like, all bent out of shape and, you know, in other words, your outrage towards me is totally misplaced.

Darrell Bock No, I mean, you know, I'm messing with you there, but then I do think there is – like, when

I paid off the last bit of mine, I think there was a little bit of, you know, maybe this is a little dangerous to say, but I do think there was a little bit of, like – there was a lot of thankfulness there when

I paid it all off, right? John Dickerson Sure. Darrell Bock But then there was a lot of – there was kind of, like, a little – a sense of pride in a certain sense, too.

Like, hey, look, you know, God blessed me with a lot, and I was able to do something good with it.

I was able to do something responsible with it, and I could have done a lot of really bad things – or not really bad things, but maybe just, like, unwise things, right?

John Dickerson Yeah. Darrell Bock But instead, you know, I've put it towards this debt because he said that's a good thing to put it towards, regardless of what's going on, and so I think there is, like, a – there's, like, a temptation to say, oh, man,

I missed out on 10K, you know, a free 10K, right, as if it was actually free, but then, you know,

I think there is something to be said about, like, hey, no, I just, you know, by God's grace – John Dickerson There's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of fulfillment, a sense of, like –

Darrell Bock Like, doing the right and responsible thing, you know. John Dickerson It's nice to get that monkey off your back and, you know.

Darrell Bock Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, to be fair, it's not like the system is, you know – when

I say the system, I mean, like, the college education system in general.

It's not like it's set up to, you know, benefit every student that goes through it, right?

It's – I mean, it's ridiculously expensive to get a college education. So, but anyways, so we're not being theologically inconsistent, right, by saying that, hey, this student loan forgiveness is bad.

John Dickerson Well, yeah, we're just not – we're not equivocating. I mean, we're not just saying all debt payment is – like, debt payment period is a universal moral absolute in all cases.

And, I mean, certainly, you know, you're living in a society right now that doesn't believe that in any – like, at all, right?

So, like, we're living in, like, the least forgiving society in the history of the world.

So, don't talk to me about – don't lecture me about forgiveness when, you know, you're counseling people who lived 150 years ago, you know, for things that you currently find scandalous and you're trying to remove, you know, all the, you know, basically erase history, rewrite history, turn all the, you know, the heroes into villains.

And, like, you're the least forgiving people – like, this is the least forgiving society you can possibly imagine, you know?

So, you know – You can get canceled at any moment if you're out in public and say something and get recorded, right, where you –

John Dickerson Yeah, where's all the forgiveness – You're loving your livelihood. John Dickerson Yeah, where's all the forgiveness for conservatives? Like, you know, half the population is basically being treated as, like, functionally

Hitler, and then, you know, you have the audacity to say that we should, you know, be individuals who are advocating for forgiveness.

You don't even know what that word means, you know? Once you cancel someone, they're done, you know?

Like, and you would like to wipe them off the face of the earth, you know, or prevent them from ever getting a job again and everything else.

So, you know, it's all a joke anyways. But no, I mean, there is – like, there is – you know,

Christians should be forgiving people, you know, but, you know, that should be voluntary, for one.

It shouldn't be just forced, you know, like, coerced in a certain sense.

And then, you know, there are rules to how this should work and, you know, biblical laws that we need to think through as it relates to some of these things.

And so, it's not just a, you know, forgiveness period. Like, it's as if there's no such thing as justice and there's no such thing as, you know, capital punishment.

There's no such thing as – it's not just mercy, mercy, mercy. There is justice there, and, you know, there are rules to how this works.

So, you know, we're not being inconsistent at all by trying to say that this is a different kind of situation than what you think, you know?

Yeah. I've seen a lot of people mentioning the year of Jubilee, too, from the

Old Testament. Now, I think we've already talked about why that doesn't, you know, why this student loan forgiveness stuff is not the same as really any kind of debt forgiveness in the

Bible. But thinking about the year of Jubilee just in general, do you think that that's, like, something that should be applied by the government?

I don't know how to even answer a question like this because it's, like, so ludicrous that –

I mean, you know, probably the biggest theological bugbear out there is, like, the issue of theonomy, you know, or Christian nationalism.

And you have individuals who are arguing from the Old Testament law to try to, like, come up with some sort of government -sanctioned debt.

Yeah, I didn't realize we all agreed on Christian nationalism. I didn't agree that we were – I didn't understand we were all Christian nationalists or we were all theonomists at this point, you know?

And so, you know, but that's – I mean, I – you know, honestly,

I think that those kind of laws should apply, but they're not the kind of laws that you can just kind of apply in a thoughtless way, you know?

You can't just – you know, there's a lot of laws within the

Old Covenant that I think that if we as a society were to enact right now, that would be good for us.

So, you know, without just getting into all those things – but what you can't do is you can't apply them all retroactively.

So, I'd be totally in favor of, you know, adopting the Old Covenant penology as it relates to, you know, capital punishment laws.

You know, I'd be totally in favor of that, but you can't just do that, like, retroactively. You can't do that without any preparation.

You can't just, you know – so, like, the Bible says that adultery should be a capital offense, and I think – well, that's –

I'm fine with that. But what you do is, like, if – I mean, I think if you were living in a just society, you would take that sin that seriously, and then everyone would hear and fear and never again do such a wicked thing than that.

But you don't just apply it after the fact. You know what I mean? You don't just, like, right now say, okay, we're going to do that.

Now we're going to round up everyone who's ever committed adultery and put them all to death. That isn't the way it works. What you do is you make a law, and then going forward, that law serves as a warning to, you know, warn people against certain behavior that it is going to be punished in a harsher way.

And then going forward, they have ample warning. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And so, with something like the year of Jubilee, I do think that that could apply in a certain sense to what we're talking about.

But you don't just decide right now that, you know, by divine fiat, as a president who's just making an executive order, that you're going to enact a year of Jubilee, you know, with no thought and everything else.

So part of this is just related to the idea of, like, you know, how does the law treat indebtedness in general?

And, you know, in Israel, there would be, you know, every seven years a release of debt. But then the whole entire society was built around this kind of knowledge that, you know, every seven years you're going to have a debt forgiveness that is coming down the pike, so to speak.

And so then, like, you work within that framework, and you understand what you're doing along those lines.

And, you know, like that informs your mind and informs your heart about the kind of debts that you enter into and everything else, right?

And so, you know… So, like, for example, no one…if you have the year of Jubilee set up and it's a regular thing, no one's doing a 30 -year loan, right?

Well, right. That's what I mean. And, like, you don't have 30 -year loans set up because, like, that you know that you're living in a system that's very different from that.

And so we'd have to restructure the entirety of how our society actually operates to go in line with that.

And I would think it would be good if, like, our society did think through reducing some of these long -term debts in general and to not be…

I mean, the Bible says the borrower is a servant to a lender. And, I mean, the way that, like, there are predatory, you know, debts out there.

And I do think that student loans can fall into that category. I mean, you know, I think I heard

William Wolfe or something basically saying that, you know, student loans are not predatory because the federal interest rate on student loans are 5 % and that's not entirely unrealistic.

And I would just say that he just, you know, he…God bless him. But what he doesn't realize is that, like, that's not the situation.

Like, many people who find themselves in student loan debt, that's like significant student loan debt. And I guess I have more sympathy for individuals in this kind of framework.

I don't think the solutions that are being offered are right. But, I mean, you know, if you get… Like, the issue is when people are getting into, you know, three or six -figure loans like this, like, when they're getting into those kind of loans, like, they have to take not only federal loans.

You can only get federal loans for a certain amount. And then you get private loans to cover the gap. And if you don't have some rich person co -signing for you with your private loans, which no one really wants to co -sign for student loans, you know, what ends up happening is that a lot of people are getting into, you know, six figures of student loan debt at an interest rate…at interest rates on most of them, like, up to 15 % or something ridiculous like that.

And if, you know, when individuals find themselves in that kind of scenario, it was dumb for them to enter into that kind of scenario.

And it's unwise for them to enter into that kind of scenario. But it is… It's not the kind of thing that's easy to pay off.

And you may get trapped. And if you're sold a bill of goods to say that this education is going to pay for itself and that you have to get it in order to be okay in life and you have to, you know, get it in order to be successful in life, you can be trapped in a system by individuals who are preying upon you to make a foolish choice.

And you make these… I mean, you make these foolish choices and then, you know, you're stuck with…

I mean, you know, if you have six figures with 15 % interest, that's a lot, you know. And that's, you know, for many people, they really, you know, you get out and you're trying to get some entry -level job outside of where your education is.

And that can be… It can involve significant amount of, like, permanent financial bondage where you're a slave to these companies and everything else.

And then, if you can't make the payments, it just goes up, you know. So, imagine 15 % interest on, you know, six figures of…

And you can get into, you know, a situation where you're owing a debt you can never pay, you know.

And then, if you try to make responsible choices in terms of family and everything else, it's just not delay everything out indefinitely, you know, it's a problem.

So, I mean, I just think, you know, I think there are…

I don't think the solution to student loan forgiveness is the right solution to fix the problem, but then I don't want to underestimate the nature of the problem that some people might actually find themselves in.

But then, when you think about something like a year of Jubilee, and think about, like, the interest requirements within Israel, and, you know, part of this is related to like a usury kind of discussion along those lines.

And, like, is it okay? Can Christians charge interest on their loans and everything else?

And so, it can get a little bit complicated as far as that goes. But then, you know,

I do think a society that is Christianized and, you know,

Christians in society should be working towards, you know, not… They should have some sort of category for predatory debt, and we should be working to find solutions to that, but then just erasing it all by divine fiat with no warning whatsoever, with no plan, you know.

Like, you know, if you wanted to make the schools who are offering these worthless degrees pay for it, that would be more just than making, you know, taxpayers across the board pay for it, right?

And so, you know, if you have… Darrell Bock Or even just the people giving out the loans to begin with, you know.

Ryan Young Right. So, but then, like, they're not the ones who are being asked to absorb it.

And so, now, I'm not saying that it would be good to force them to do it. I'm just trying to say that, you know, what we're having right now is a situation where individuals who didn't take out these loans are being forced to pay for them, you know, and that's the least helpful thing.

But, yeah, with the Year of Jubilee in general, I think, you know, I do think if a society had a means of trying to prevent long -term debts, that would be a good thing, that would be a good feature, and then everyone could plan, you know, the kind of indebtedness around that kind of thing, for sure.

But then, you know, it isn't true, though, that there's just this universal condemnation of charging interests.

Like, the Israelites were forbidden from charging interests for their brothers, but then they weren't, you know, forbidden from charging interests, you know, for the nations as a whole.

And so, there are different rules there because the nations as a whole, they had a different way of relating to the nations as a whole.

Because, I mean, the reality is that not everyone is just the same, you know, as far as that goes.

And so, you know, it's a complicated discussion, but I didn't realize that everyone was a theonomist now and everyone was a

Christian nationalist, apparently. So, excuse me. But the thing to learn from this is that there's a little bit of Christian nationalist inside each and every one of us.

Jared Yeah, there's that Christian nationalist spaced hole in their hearts that, you know, we apply selectively, apparently.

But… Pete Okay, well, I think that's a good place to end this episode on. It's a little bit of a shorter episode, but we've got a few different things that we want to be able to talk about.

And so, we wanted to just try and see if we could get some shorter episodes out for you guys. But hopefully, this has been an encouraging episode for you to listen to.

Just to know that, like, not everyone out there is totally crazy when it comes to these things.

And there are legitimately different categories when it comes to forgiving debts, right?

Especially when it comes to charity and understanding the difference between willfully, you know, being charitable and being coerced into charity.

So, hopefully, this has given you guys something to think on. It's encouraged you guys.

And we thank you for all your support and we look forward to having you back on the next one. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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