Note:This post is part of our Online Social Justice Bible Study (click the link to see all the entries so far).
Through
the voice of the prophet Jeremiah, God speaks:
For scoundrels are found among my people;
they take over the goods of others.
Like fowlers they set a trap;
they catch human beings.
Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich,
they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice
the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord,
and shall I not bring retribution
on a nation such as this? 272829 (Jeremiah 5:26-29)
If any of this sounds familar, perhaps it is because you have recently watched the news: The markets are plummeting and the banks are collapsing left and right. Why? Most analysts are willing to trace it back to predatory lending practices.
When a banker designs a loan repayment plan that takes 50% of a family’s take home pay and then encourages them to do it, they have set a trap; default is not a matter of if, but when.
Who is the target of subprime mortgages? The lower income brackets. The widow whose only asset is the home her husband left her, the young couple trying to get a start in life, the blue collar worker who gets a letter telling him that he qualifies for $10,000 to add on to his house-these are the target of the predatory lender. And the game is rigged from the beginning in favor of the lenders, some of whom are now getting multi-million dollar bonuses as rewards for faithful service (they have grown fat and sleek…)
As the author of Eclesiastes tells us, there is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before. Bankers who prey on the poor are nothing new, and this won’t be the last generation to do it. I guarentee that some of those lenders were upright men and women, who professed to be followers of Jesus, who sat in church on Sunday and sang praises to the God who tells us here that he will punish such things.
Can you think of examples of how the poor are trapped by practices of the wealthy?
Well I can tell everyone what is occuring at this moment in my life and it is truly disgusting. This is a perfect example of corruption in the society we live in today.
My father passed away last year in 2008 and I was his only child/son. My father made a will leaving me everything that he worked to attain in his lifetime. I was there with him during his last days.
About four weeks before he died I got a call from an attorney and my father’s ex wife whom he has been divorced from for 10 years. She said she wanted to talk about money. She is a EX WIFE and my father was not dead yet. A few days went by and her attorneys allready had me in court. Her attorneys sent a court appointed attorney to my father’s home uninvited and she asked who do you want to give your money to when you die your son or your ex wife. This was very sad for my father to have spent his last days like this. He said when asked this question, I want to leave everything to my son and I have a will. The court charged $1,200 for their visit that day. His ex has a divorce decree with one sentence in it that states my father must make a will for her when he dies leaving her everything. No attorney has ever heard of such a thing. It is not legal and nobody would ever divorce the person they despise and then say they want to give them everything. She lives 1500 miles away and on my fathers telephone bills he had not made one call to her in 14 months, but she trys to tell the court they were friends. Well this is still going through the courts so lawyers can keep making money. She negotiated a deal with her attorneys that if they can win anything for her that they get half of my dad’s money.
I meant this woman once and I have found out she is a truly wicked person. I think I find her attorneys more disgusting than she is.
I have had a disease for 21 years and am on disability now.
My fathers’ friends have now told me how she used my father when they were married and how she slept with other men they knew.
Our Court system lacks all common sense. I think the only way the world would hear my story is if I took my own life or something. I am not going to do that but seems like nobody is out there who cares. This is happening in the midwest.
I do not know how these two attorneys can sleep at night and I hope God has a special place waiting for them in hell. I am sure they somehow try to justify what they are doing so they may sleep at night.