God Will Pay Your Debts Part 4
If you are a creditor, be careful of the kind of thoughts you hold over your debtor. Avoid the thought that he is unwilling to pay you or that he is unable to pay you. One thought holds him in dishonesty, and the other holds him subject to lack, and either of them tends to close the door to the possibility of his paying you soon. Think well and speak well of all those who owe you. If you talk about them to others avoid calling them names that you would not apply to yourself. Cultivate a genuine feeling of love for them and respect their integrity in spite of all appearances. Declare abundant supply for them and thus help them to prosper. Pray and work for their good as well as for your own, for yours is inseparable from theirs. You owe your debtor quite as much as he owes you and yours is a debt of love. Pay your debt to him and he will pay his to you. This rule of action never fails.
Far-seeing Christians look forward to an early resumption of the economic system inaugurated by the early followers of Jesus. They had all things in common, and no man lacked anything. But before we can have a truly Christian community founded on a spiritual basis we must be educated into a right way of thinking about finances. If we should all get together and divide all our possessions, it would be but a short time until those who have the prevailing financial ideas would manipulate our finances, and plethora on one hand and lack on the other would again be established.
The world cannot be free from the bondage of debt and interest until men start to work in their minds to erase those things from consciousness. If the United States forgave the nations of Europe all their debts and wiped the slate clean, the law would not necessarily be fulfilled; for there would probably remain a thought that they still owed us and that we had made a sacrifice in canceling the obligations. We should not feel very friendly about it and would not truly forgive them, and in that cast the error thought would be carried on. We must first forgive the error thought that they owe us money and that we would be losing money by canceling the debts. The man who is forced to forgive a debt does not forgive it.
Above all we should fill our mind with the consciousness of that divine abundance which is so manifest everywhere in the world today. There is as much substance as there ever was, but its free flow has been interfered with through selfishness. We must rid our mind of the selfish acquisitiveness that is so dominant in the race thought, and in that way do our part in the great work of freeing the world from avarice. It is the duty of every Christian metaphysician to help in the solution of this problem by affirming that the universal Spirit of supply is now becoming manifest as a distributing energy the world over; that all stored-up, hoarded, vicious thoughts are being dissolved; that all people have things in common, that no one anywhere lacks anything; and that the divine law of distribution of infinite supply that Jesus demonstrated is now being made manifest throughout the world. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”
There is a legitimate commerce that is carried on by means of what is called credit. Credit is a convenience to be used by those who appreciate its value and are careful not to abuse it, for to do so would be to ruin it. However, many persons are not equipped to use the credit system to advantage and are likely to abuse it. In the first place, few individuals are familiar with the intricacies of sound credit systems and often assume obligations without being certain of their ability to meet them, especially should some unforeseen complication arise. Frequently an individual loses all that he invests and finds himself involved in a burden of debt in addition. Such things are not in divine order and are largely responsible for retarding prosperity.