ECONOMY 14 – SURETY FOR OTHERS
Proverbs 6:1-5 No surety for a friend
“If you be surety for your friend, if you have stricken your hand with a stranger, you are snared by the utterance of your lips, caught by the words of your mouth. So … save yourself, for you have come into your neighbor’s power: go, hurry, and plead with your neighbor. Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber; save yourself like a gazelle from the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler.”
Proverbs 11:15 No surety for a stranger
“To guarantee loans for a stranger brings trouble, but there is safety in refusing to do so.”
Proverbs 17:18 No pledges of surety for a neighbor
“It is senseless to give a pledge, to become surety for a neighbor.”
Proverbs 22:26-27 Why hurt yourself?
“Do not be one of those who give pledges, who become surety for debts. 27 If you have nothing with which to pay, why should your bed be taken from under you.”
- Do not become surety for anybody, not even a friend or a neighbor, far less for and unknown person or a foreigner.
- Strong emotive language: “If you are caught, get yourself out of it, now, whatever it takes, save yourself!… requesting, humbling oneself, backtracking, pleading … all is better than remaining in a ‘surety’ situation.
- This presupposes the importance of words, being “caught” in one’s words. Words are a contract once spoken, we are accountable to our spoken word. Though there are ways to take back words or vows (Le 27)
- Why must I get out? “you have come into your neighbor’s or others’ power.”
- Giving surety or pledges is about a third person, entering a giver-debtor relationship. God seems to not want that. He wants direct lending, direct accountability, direct pay-back or direct release, not via third parties.
- Once you sign, you have lost power. From now on you can only hope (and plead) that the other person be faithful, but you are legally bound.
- Why is this not good? Accountability is inverted. The person who didn’t handle money badly now is responsible to pay back. The unpleasant but God-given, healthy consequences that were meant to fall on the one losing money now fall on another person. It is an inversion of God’s “cause and effect” (see picture). The person punished is not the person guilty. God will have none of this!
- Don’t make yourself responsible for what you have no decision power over. We are meant to be responsible only for what we have decision power over. Never give up your self-determination to another.
- Don’t give away power, control, accountability, self-determination. This makes you unable to act rightly, to fulfill your responsibility to yourself and your dependents (family).
- Your responsibility to your spouse, children, parents is higher than to a friend or neighbor … do not sacrifice family.
- We feel cultural obligations: Bangladesh “Ditei hoy”, “I cannot say no”.
- Korean example: a father standing for a friend’s loan ruining his own family.
- Bangla Proverb: “if I say ‘no’, I am bad once, if I say ‘yes’, I am bad seven times” Giving in to manipulation now will not save me from negative emotions later on, rather the opposite. So you might as well resist now.
- This Scripture helps us to say ‘no’: I can quote the law: “It is forbidden, so I can’t do this for you’. These verses are a protection for the too kind, the nice guys, those struggling to let a friend down.
- These verses try to limit the emotional-relational manipulation concerning money … if I don’t feel free to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I probably should say ‘no’.
- Gayle Erwin: “I have lost the freedom to make a loving choice, so I won’t do it”.
- God protects the faithful, the stewards, the kind, the big-hearted, the overly merciful, the ‘can’t say no’ types from the careless, irresponsible, manipulating
- Do not abuse the trust, faith, simplicity, gullibility of a surety giver! Do not manipulate people emotionally to sign! Honor your financial obligations!
- Careful with recommendations, blank checks and easy assurances…
- God hates people being defrauded.
- Are these verses law or an advice? Surety is not directly mentioned in the Law of Moses. But this is still a serious Word of God. It addresses what was probably a common problem among Jews.
- Some say: Giving surety is not directly prohibited in the law, it is not a sin.
- Yet even so it is strongly counseled against > Do not build systems, committees, societies around it! Do not command, expect or normalize it!
- If it is no sin (if!), in an extreme case you feel lead to grant it. But: You must set aside that entire amount, don’t touch it and manage expenses from the rest.
Proverbs 20:16 Command to hurt a surety giver
“Take the garment of one who has given surety for a stranger; seize the pledge given as surety for foreigners.”
- Strong pro-active command to give surety-givers a hard time! Make them feel the weight, the ‘caughtness’ so they don’t do it again.
- Better you being mean now (over a limited amount) than them falling into much deeper trouble later.
- This seems to counteract our usual ‘give to anybody out of pity’ interpretations. Pity is not a basis for action, principle is. I am responsible for what my “gracious covering over” is producing for the one I’m “helping”, as well as for me and those dependent on me and my ability to act responsibly.
How about Christian Committees requiring surety?
- Though commonly practiced, – I do not think this is biblical! What Bible are we reading??
- Committees encourage people to live in debt, over-expenditure, un-realism
- Focus on encouraging saving, rather than on the ability to take out loans
- If the risk is too high for a committee, it’s too high for a single person > don’t do it!