Yet there is much more in the Bible that is often overlooked from this perspective. If one considers the legislation about the Jubilee year<\/a> in Leviticus 25<\/a>, what one finds there is quite far from the notion of private property. Indeed, the land is emphatically said to belong to Yahweh, and about once per generation, the land would return to its original owner.<\/p>\n I do think Christians ought to be concerned about poverty<\/a> and social justice, which is emphasized in the Bible to such an extent that it can be baffling how it is ignored by such large numbers of Christians. But perhaps a key reason is not a failure to notice what the Bible says, but confusion about how to apply it. Reinstituting the Biblical \u201cyear of Jubilee\u201d would not help alleviate poverty. Wealth is amassed rather than land, and presumably it would make no sense to suggest that dollar bills should return to their original owners once every 70 years. Our economic system is very different than that of the ancient economy for which the author of Leviticus sought to offer a solution.<\/p>\n An interesting case in point is the Bible\u2019s condemnation<\/a> of usury<\/a>, of lending with interest. There is probably no better example of the selectivity nearly all Christians today practice when it comes to the Bible. But for those of us who are aware that we are not trying to practice the whole Bible and don\u2019t think it makes sense to do that, this is less of a problem. Modern banking and loans depend on interest, and were all lending with interest illegal, many people who are slowly but surely buying their homes would never have been able to do so. The point of the laws against usury is to protect the poor, and the challenge for Christians, as for all people concerned with issues of poverty and social justice, is to find creative ways of addressing these issues in a world very different from that in which the Bible\u2019s laws were crafted. Would a world without a stock market<\/a> (and thus without modern retirement pensions), without banks, and without mortgages really be more just? The challenge is to find ways of ensuring justice and fairness.<\/p>\n
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