Prostitutes and Bankers

I've spent much of today dwelling on issues of morality. Living in America and in Georgia in particular we have lots of laws that have their basis in Mosaic law or other Biblical sources.

I'm not posting the specific passages, you can Google things just as well as I can, but doing a search for references to prostitution in the Bible yields about the same number of results as searching for references to usury, and as an aside there are WAY more references to usury than tattooing.

Usury, for those unfamiliar with archaic language, is the act of lending money for a profit, charging interest on loans. Somehow now usury is only used to refer to the act of charging exorbitant interest on loans, but traditionally it referred to charging interest period.

At some point in history it was decided that usury was no longer a sin. Why? I understand that in much of the Muslim world that they still treat it as a sin. Somewhere along the way the other children of Abraham forgot.

I propose that we treat anyone involved in the banking industry the same as we would a prostitute.

Tell them that there are other ways to make a living, that there is no reason for them to lower themselves to such a base trade to survive. Let them know that we love them, that God loves them, and that we will pray for them to find a better way and seek a real change in their lives. That as long as they seek a better path and ask for forgiveness that they can redeem themselves.