p. 11 | Dignified Credit by Bert Rhoads

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California, U. S. A. · Sep 9, 1930

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 57, No. 35.

Dignified Credit

By Bert Rhoads

BERT RHOADS

Much of the business of the world is done on credit. Almost anything, even diamonds, can be bought on what the world calls “dignified credit.” It is a very human frailty for men to be constantly wanting to put the cheap and low on the pedestal of dignity. And everybody knows that what the world calls “dignified credit” rests on the ability of the debtor to pay his bills. If he fails in his payments and his mortgaged property is taken or if the payments need to be forced, the credit becomes anything but dignified.

One Exacts, the Other Forgives

But there is a real dignified credit, and it is outside the realm of worldly business. What the world calls “dignified credit” rests at its best on the debtor’s dollars. If the dollars fail, the dignity is gone. But in Christian business there is genuine dignified credit. And it is dignified because the payment of the debt rests on the creditor and not on the debtor. When the thief on the cross acknowledged his inability to pay his spiritual bills and asked Jesus to do it for him, he did the most dignified thing a thief could do. And when Jesus forgave the debts of the thief, He did the most dignified thing Heaven could do, He extended to the thief dignified credit.

Worldly business exacts the debt; Christian business forgives the debt. Worldly business rests on dollars,—something the debtor has. Christian business with its real dignity rests on something apart from, and outside of, the debtor, something God has,—His forgiveness.

Worldly business asks if a man is successful. Christian business asks if he is faithful. Measured by worldly standards, Moses was a stupendous failure. He rejected a throne with all its wealth and glory to become a herder of sheep and men for eighty years, casting his lot with a race of slaves. And just on the border of the goal of his hopes he saw another leader take his place, while he was called to a lonely grave on a mountain, outside the goal. Worldly business calls him a failure; Inspiration says the man Moses was “faithful in all his house.” Christian business has far more to say about faithfulness than about success. But, regardless of what worldly dictionaries say, in the lexicon of heaven, success is faithfulness.

Credit in Heaven Exalts

Worldly business seeks to do the spectacular thing; it gives and bestows and rescues when it can be done in spectacular ways. It does apparently big things in cheap ways. Christian business gives in obscurity its cup of cold water, mingling with it the tear of sympathy. It bestows the needed garment with the trembling touch of love. It rescues the sick or sin-prisoned one with the broken voice of kindness. Christian business dignifies everything it touches. Where worldly business gives its dollars, Christian business gives its tenderness, its tears, its heart.

It is humiliating to ask credit of a money-lending institution or to affix one’s name to a mortgage note. But the bank of heaven says, “Come unto Me, . . . and I will give,” and it is transcendent dignity to accept that credit. Your debts to an earthly bank may humiliate you and the bank. Your credit at the bank of heaven exalts and dignifies you, your bank, and your Banker.