An old saying, half true
There is a piece of advice that circulates among men and sounds wise: if you want to keep a friend, do not lend him money. Whoever first said it had seen something true. Friendships are lost this way, and lost often. A man gives out of goodwill, the other delays, then avoids him, then begins to cross the street; and the one who gave finds himself hunting this fugitive with an account in his hand, where until yesterday he had a brother.
The saying is right in what it saw. It is wrong in what it concluded from what it saw. Scripture has long known this loss, describes it more closely than the sayings of men describe it, and arrives at a different end.
What changes between two men when money passes
The Proverbs of Solomon state plainly what happens: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7).
Here is the root of the matter. A loan does not add something to a friendship; it transforms it. Two men who stood face to face, as equals, end up one above and one beneath. The one who gave acquires a right, and this right permits him to ask, to count the days, to enquire. The one who took acquires an obligation, and the obligation makes him ashamed, makes him put off answering, makes him hunt for excuses. Neither of them willed this. It happened of itself, by the nature of the thing.
This is why the friendship spoils. Not because money is evil, but because an account has slipped in between friends, and an account has its own laws, which are not the laws of friendship. A brother keeps no ledger. A creditor does.
A writer from two thousand years ago describes exactly what we see today
Chapter 29 of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach is the most detailed scriptural text on lending. Whoever reads it today has the impression that it was written last week.
Sirach begins with what must be done: “Lend to thy neighbour in time of his need, and pay thou thy neighbour again in due season” (Sirach 29:2). Two commandments in a single verse, one for each of the two men.
Then he describes what actually happens. Many, when something was lent them, “reckoned it to be found,” and troubled those who helped them (29:4). Until he has received, the borrower will kiss the hand that gives, and speak softly about his neighbour’s money; but when the time comes to repay, he will draw out the time, return words of grief, and complain of the times (29:5). If he is able to pay at all, the lender will scarcely recover half; and if he is not able, he has deprived the lender of his money and has gained an enemy for nothing, repaying him with curses and railing, and with disgrace in place of honour (29:6).
A few verses that contain the whole story, from the kissed hand to enmity. Anyone who has ever given money to someone close recognises the steps.
Then comes the verse that concerns us most, because it is the very saying from which we set out: “Many therefore have refused to lend for other men’s ill dealing, fearing to be defrauded” (29:7).
Sirach knows, then, that men reach this conclusion. He does not pretend the world is other than it is. He acknowledges that many have stopped giving, and says why they stopped.
The commandment does not change because men break it
What follows in the text comes immediately after the acknowledgement of the loss: “Yet have thou patience with a man in poor estate, and delay not to shew him mercy. Help the poor for the commandment’s sake, and turn him not away because of his poverty” (Sirach 29:8-9).
Here the wisdom of Scripture parts from the wisdom of men. Both have seen the same thing. Men have decided it is better to give to no one. Sirach does not permit the loss to dry up mercy, and he shows towards whom it turns: the man in low estate and the poor man. These have need, and to these it is given, for the commandment’s sake.
This ground changes everything. If I give because I trust the man, then every man who deceives me diminishes my trust, and after the third or the fourth I give to no one. If I give because I have been commanded, the other man’s conduct does not touch the ground of the deed. I remain a debtor to the commandment even when he remains a debtor to me.
Sirach goes further and says what to do with the money: “Lose thy money for thy brother and thy friend, and let it not rust under a stone to be lost” (29:10). The verb is severe. He does not say give; he says lose, and a man who has lost something no longer keeps his eye upon it. This word concerns the heart of the one who gives and releases no one from his debt: the commandment to repay in due season, in verse 2, stands whole upon the man who took.
Lending that expects nothing
The Lord speaks the same teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and in the sermon on the plain, with a clarity no one can now avoid.
“Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away” (Matthew 5:42).
“Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again” (Luke 6:30).
And then comes the verse that weighs heaviest:
“And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil” (Luke 6:34-35).
Notice with whom such a man is set side by side. He who lends money expecting to receive back the same does what sinners also do. His deed is not condemned, since it is no sin to ask for your own money. It is only set in its place: a just account, which does not pass beyond what all men do among themselves. I gave, I received back, the account closed. The Lord does not attach to it the promise of the following verse; the great reward He promises to the man who does good without setting his hope on the other’s answer.
Notice too the ground the Lord gives for the other manner of giving: the Father is kind to the unthankful and to the evil. He who gives without expecting resembles Him in this work, and for that reason is called His son.
The measure: give what you can afford to lose
Out of all this comes a practical measure, which Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia stated simply.
He counselled that a man who lends money should think from the outset that he will not receive it back. So he is at peace and is freed from the fear of losing it. If it is returned to him, let him take it. If not, let him tell himself that he made a gift of that money and count it as alms. He added that it is better to give outright than to lend.
This measure answers both dangers at once. It guards the one who gives from remembrance of wrongs, since what you released from your hand at the beginning cannot be taken from you. And it guards the friendship, since no account now settles between two men. If the money returns, it is a joy. If it does not return, nothing has been broken.
From here comes the answer to the question how much. Give as much as you can lose without turning bitter. This sum differs from man to man and from season to season: for one it is fifty pounds, for another five thousand. It is measured not only by how much you have, but by how much you can release from your hand without your heart staying bound to the money, and without endangering the obligations you already carry.
When it is right not to give
From the measure above one also sees when it should not be given.
If the sum asked exceeds what you can lose, that loan may easily give birth to enmity. You will seek the man out, he will avoid you, and you will end up praying while holding his debt against him. A refusal spoken to his face is cleaner than a loan that turns into remembrance of wrongs. The man who cannot give and says he cannot has kept the friendship. The man who gives beyond his strength and then claims his right with bitterness has lost the money, the friend, and his peace.
Sirach sets this down with balance, immediately after speaking of suretyship: “Help thy neighbour according to thy power, and beware that thou thyself fall not into the same” (29:20). Mercy has a measure, and the measure is your strength. He who ruins himself in helping has not kept the commandment better; he has added a second fallen man where there was one.
It should also be said that not everything asked for is asked for out of need. Sirach speaks of the man in low estate and of the poor. He who asks for money in order to drink, to gamble, or to avoid taking up work receives a wound from you, and you, by giving, feed his passion. To such a man something else is given: food, clothing, help towards work, an honest word. Money is not put into his hand.
The part we do not speak of: the debtor
Until now we have spoken of the one who gives. Most of us place ourselves in this story so, as injured men who complain. We rarely examine ourselves from the other side.
The Psalm speaks without softening: “The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth” (Psalm 37:21). And in the same place, a few verses below: “He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed” (37:26).
The two stand side by side in one psalm. The first is not called wicked because he borrowed, but because he does not repay.
Here a distinction must be made which we lose easily. He who has the means to pay and does not pay keeps for himself what belongs to another, however gently his delays may sound. It is another matter with the man who would pay and no longer has the means: work has failed him, sickness has come, his house has fallen in upon him. Sirach speaks of this man too, of the one who cannot (29:6). His inability leaves him still a debtor, but it does not make him guilty of taking what is another’s.
The self-deception comes easily, precisely because everything happens slowly and with good words. Sirach names it exactly: many, when a thing was lent them, “reckoned it to be found” (29:4). They treat borrowed money as money they came upon, and the reckoning takes place inside a man, without asking anyone. There are men who would not touch another’s wallet and who have carried for years a debt they could pay, without counting themselves guilty of anything, because no one has broken down any door.
And when he cannot pay at all, he becomes an enemy to the one who gave (29:6). This too is often seen. The man who owes you money begins to speak ill of you, to find faults in you, to tell others that you are miserly or that you humiliated him. He defends himself from shame by shifting the blame. He remembers wrongs against the man to whom he is indebted, because he is indebted to him.
The debt that can no longer be paid
What does the man do who has taken and no longer has the means to give back?
First, he comes out of the lie. He goes to the man he owes and tells him how matters stand. It is not silence that heals him, but speech. Silence leads him to crossing the street, and from there to enmity.
Second, he repays according to his strength, even little, even late. A debt paid over two years, a little at a time, has been paid. A debt silently abandoned remains upon the man.
Third, he asks forgiveness for the time, for the trouble caused, for the delays. And this forgiveness is asked of the man, not of God only. The debt was made between two men and is loosed between them.
Fourth, he brings to confession what is to be confessed: the lies told to gain time, the fleeing from the man he owes, the deliberate refusal to pay, the spending of the money on something other than the need for which he asked it. Inability alone is not a sin to confess; the conduct around it is. The confessor will say what is to be done further. There are circumstances in which the one who gave forgives the debt from his heart, and then it is truly extinguished; and there are circumstances in which he himself has need of money, and your silence does him harm.
Suretyship
Part of chapter 29 of Sirach speaks of something else, akin to this: of the man who stands surety for another.
“An honest man is surety for his neighbour: but he that is impudent will forsake him” (29:14). Sirach honours the sacrifice of such a man: “Forget not the friendship of thy surety, for he hath given his life for thee” (29:15). And he warns at once of the danger: “Suretiship hath undone many of good estate, and shaken them as a wave of the sea: mighty men hath it driven from their houses, so that they wandered among strange nations” (29:18).
Whoever stands surety for another must know that he may come to pay himself. The measure is the same: stand surety only for as much as you could pay yourself without being ruined.
The hundred denarii
The eleventh Sunday after Pentecost reads the parable of the unmerciful debtor (Matthew 18:23-35). It is almost always expounded from the side of forgiveness, and rightly, since that is where the Lord brings the word at the end. But the matter of which the parable is made is money, and part of it is lost if we pass by quickly.
The first servant owed ten thousand talents, a sum that cannot be paid in a man’s lifetime. The master forgave him all of it. Going out, he found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, took him by the throat, and demanded payment.
It is worth seeing what exactly he was demanding. He was demanding what was owed to him. The hundred denarii were his, and the other had taken them and not returned them. The parable nowhere says the debt was not real. His claim, then, rested on something true.
And yet he is condemned.
The Lord says plainly why: “Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?” (18:33). It was not the real debt that undid him, but that he refused mercy after receiving it himself, for a debt beyond all measure greater. The hand laid on the throat shows this refusal; it is not the cause of the condemnation, but what is seen through it.
Here lies the hard thing in the parable for the injured man. Being in the right does not remove you from under the commandment. You may have money owed you by someone, and have proof, and witnesses, and be entirely in the right, and lose everything by demanding it as that servant demanded it.
And there is something further, which concerns the place from which we look at the parable. We usually set ourselves in the place of the second man, the one who owed a hundred denarii and was gripped by the throat. In the first meaning of the parable, the Lord sets us rather in the place of the first: the debtor who was forgiven beyond measure and who has, in his turn, something to forgive. The hundred denarii we have to collect from our brother are real; they are only small beside what was released to us.
What remains to be done
He who has to give: let him give as much as he can lose, reckoning from the outset that it will not return, and let him refuse cleanly what exceeds this measure.
He who has taken: let him repay in due season, and if he has come to real inability, let him speak, pay according to his strength, and ask forgiveness, knowing that the money is not his.
He who has lost money and holds it against the other: let him see that the mercy required of him is not measured against the sum lost, but against what was forgiven him.
The saying at the beginning told you not to give, so as not to lose the friend. The Gospel teaches you to give without binding your heart to the money’s return. The money you may still lose. What you are no longer compelled to lose along with it is love.
Illustration created for OrtodoxWay.