English: Offering subprime mortgage. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Those who … do not lend money at interest … Those who do these things shall never be moved. Psalm 15

Uh oh. Did anyone tell the banks? Just to be clear, the translation is a sort of double negative. The psalmist is saying that we’ll “always stand firm” in our relationship with God if we don’t do the things listed. “Never be moved” is the NRSV and makes better sense if you read the entire Psalm.

Systems based on Sharia law and perhaps others do not, as I understand it, charge interest. However, other means of charging a premium to a borrower serve the same function.

Either way, can you imagine how the circumstances around the “Great Recession”, and for that matter our entire economic system, would be altered if we followed the spirit of this direction?

No subprime mortgage crisis. No punishing credit card interest rates. No multi-million dollar bonuses for glass tower executives.

What would it take, I wonder, for those who work in the financial industry and who consider themselves Christian, to “stand firm” against such manipulation?