Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life,

in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller. I love when the Bible jumbles our categories. For example,

we take it for granted that lowering taxes is a right-wing sort of thing to do.

And on the other side, we assume that paying off debt like college loans is a left-wing sort of thing to do.

And we tend to assume that God basically follows our division of policy issues. In other words, a lot of

Christians assume that God falls mostly on the right or mostly on the left. And they'd say that's

why I fall on the left or I fall on the right.

So I have a serious question to ask you, do you think that the transcendent kingdom of God Almighty

and all that he stands for falls neatly within either human constructs of the right or the left.

Can we squish God into a donkey? Can we squish God into an elephant? Does his agenda track well with one way of thinking?

Let's get back to my first example. Should we lower taxes or practice loan forgiveness?

That's a great question.

And now let's read Nehemiah 5.

The story picks up with a group of people who have been saddled by tremendous debt

because of heavy taxation. And they come before Nehemiah, who's a governmental figure

who acts on behalf of the Persian government, and they explain that they've had to sell their

families into slavery to pay back their loans. Let's pick up in

Nehemiah chapter 5 verse 1. Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry

against their fellow Jews. Some were saying, we and our sons and daughters

are numerous.

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