Deuteronomy 24:11-15

Deuteronomy 24:11-15 "When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into his house to get what he is offering as a pledge. Stay outside and let the man to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. If the man is poor, do not go to sleep with his pledge in your possession. Return his cloak to him by sunset so that he may sleep in it. Then he will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the LORD your God. Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin."

The biblical commands concerning doing business are very foreign and strange to western ears. It's not that they are against all of the ideas of capitalism, they are really just capitalism kept in check by virtue. The ideas of self-determination, and self-empowerment are still there, the ideas of a person receiving reward for working hard is there. But the ideas of profit at the expense of human dignity and causing pain and suffering to those less fortunate is not.

We do not see the callous pursuit of the bottom line above all else. Biblical capitalism does not consume the poor, it gives them the opportunities to get out of poverty.

In my heart I have always wondered the problem with poverty is not really as much of a political problem, as it is a spiritual problem. If the heart of capitalists was brought more in line with these ideas, they would affect the sort of changes that would change the world one family at a time, besides ultimately being more profitable in the long run to the bottom line.

AC