Finance, Religion, & Drugs (Part 2)
Apocalypse: A Brief History of Debt Forgiveness
This essay is the second in a five part series. Part 1 is about the ubiquity of debt forgiveness in pre-Greek and Roman societies. Part 2 connects debt to the idea of an apocalypse. Part 3 relates apocalyptic religion to psychedelic drugs. Part 4 focuses on the twin illusions of time and ego. And finally, Part 5 reveals the true meaning of the Holy Grail.
It’s hard to explain how something as seemingly innocuous as debt could possibly be the most dangerous thing in the world. It destroyed my life and it still took me a decade to piece that together. Most of us think of debt as a convenient tool for buying a house or starting a business. Yet we can all remember how it nearly obliterated the entire global economy only a few short years ago in 2008.
Debt is a cursed implement; a double-edged sword for the ages. And there are certain factions within our society who have a financial interest in concealing that reality. There’s a good reason why virtually all major religions have seen fit to ban usury. Not only are the dangers of debt hidden, the whole crazy history of debt is kept hush-hush. I can’t wait to show you what I mean. Believe it or not, the actual Holy Grail is waiting for us at the end of this little Substack quest.
To get started, let me explain the hidden danger of debt as clearly as I can. Then we’ll travel back in time to the sunset of the Roman Empire to make a stunning historical connection.
Why is debt the most dangerous thing in the world?
It’s because debts are too easy to make. They’re just promises to pay later. Once spoken into existence, debts often turn out to be unpayable. A debt might be unpayable because someone, like me, was foolish enough to borrow more than they could ever hope to repay. But even the most prudent borrowers can’t predict natural disasters, wars, or economic downturns.
Whatever the reason, there is ALWAYS far more future money promised than can actually be delivered. Rich creditors figured this out thousands of years ago. They realized they just had to wait for hard times, like a flood or a famine. Then they could use foreclosure as a crowbar to pry away the property of the debtor class. Ancient farmers could find themselves working as peasants on their own repossessed family estates. After a few rounds of this Monopoly game, a handful of wealthy creditors can consolidate most of any society’s wealth into their own hands.
And the best part of this whole scam for creditors is that they get to blame delinquent debtors for their moral failings…while laughing all the way to the bank.
The Kings of ancient Mesopotamia feared these creditors becoming rich enough to seize the crown for themselves. And they feared even more an angry mob with nothing left to lose but their pitchforks and torches. That’s why, for thousands of years after its invention, kings always took care to pair interest-bearing debt with periodic forgivenesses called “jubilees”: they were defusing debt bombs.
But the advent of democracy changed all that. The Greeks and Romans became pioneers in NOT forgiving debt for the simple reason that democracy has no king. There was no one with the authority to keep their game going by resetting the scoreboard—and the numbers on that scoreboard reached historic highs before people finally started rage-quitting en masse and their society crashed back down to Earth.
If not handled with extreme care, debt has the power to bring down entire societies. That’s what makes it the most dangerous thing in the world.
But there was one guy living during the twilight of Rome who saw the collapse coming. At his debut sermon from his hometown of Nazareth—inside the Imperial occupation of Palestine—Jesus waved an old Hebrew scroll in the faces of his disciples and boldly proclaimed the debt jubilee.
How did Jesus come to know about debt jubilees?
In an episode known as the “Babylonian Captivity”, Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and carried its Jewish population off to Babylon as slaves. But there’s always a bigger fish—the Persian army later returned the favor by sacking Babylon. The Persian king Darius freed the Jews and sent them back home to rebuild Jerusalem. There, they re-consecrated the Temple of Solomon (where the Knights Templar would later be said to recover the Holy Grail) and finalized the set of documents we now know as the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. These Jews recognized the importance of the debt jubilee they learned about in Babylon, so they baked that notion into their own scripture. And that’s where Jesus found it 500 years later.
In many languages, like Hebrew and German, there aren't separate words for “sin” and “debt”. As the title of Dr. Michael Hudson’s recent book suggests, the Gospel of Saint John could just as easily have been rendered in English as “forgive them their debts'' instead of “forgive them their sins''. Words like “forgiveness”, “redemption”, “armageddon”, and “salvation” are all perfectly intelligible in a financial context. This casts Christianity in a whole new light.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Class struggle between rich and poor is a recurring theme in the New Testament. Jesus is often grumpy with the rich. In all four gospels, he bodily expels money-lenders from the aforementioned Temple of Solomon. In Matthew and Mark, he announces “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Legendary historian Will Durant referred to this recurring theme as “the Communism of the Apostles”. In keeping with that theme, debt was square in Jesus’ crosshairs.
But as Christianity morphed from an obscure cult into the state religion of Rome, the rich and powerful stood to lose a fortune if the ancient tradition of the debt jubilee was actually observed. They didn’t want any Christians expecting cancellation of their debts in this lifetime; they wanted on-time payments. And so the idea of forgiveness was relocated over the horizon of death, where it couldn’t inconvenience any earthly balance sheets. This twisting and garbling of Jesus’ message is arguably the greatest feat of propaganda ever pulled off. After all, the masses are much easier to sway than a king.
Two thousand years later, democracies are still in the process of learning to discipline their financial sectors. Will we learn before the United States follows Rome over the falls in the same stupid barrel?
Hi Nathan,
I was raised Protestant (Congregational); in the Lord's Prayer, we said, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Believe it or not, it never entered my mind that this might be literal. Later in life, I learned that Catholics say, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that tresspass against us." So now, when I say the Lord's Prayer, I tend to say the Catholic version, assuming it is the more authentic. But now I am very curious about the history of this difference. I naively always thought, or was told, that the Protestants were just simplifying all those syllables! Also, I am just beginning your writing; however, I want to mention a book I am reading called, "How to Profit from the Next Great Depression." The title is unfortunate, in my opinion, but the author is right in line with you and I highly recommend his writing to you. Melodie
Hey Nathan,
Thanks so much for this write-up, I love reading about lessons from Rome because they're so prescient, especially in light of system collapse.
I did notice you wrote:
"In many languages, like Hebrew and German, there aren't separate words for “sin” and “debt”."
In German, we do have different words for these:
• Sin = Sünde
• Debt = Schuld
So I'm a little confused by what you were referring to?
Many thanks again for writing this 🙏