Should Christians Be Landlords?
Should anyone?
The more I speak up about what the Bible actually has to say about economics, the more church-goers have started to bare their fangs and claws.
This comes as no surprise, of course, considering it was the chief priest of the religious establishment who engineered Jesus’s assassination immediately after Christ overturned the tables of his moneylenders.
Most of my wonderful Surviving Tomorrow audience is anti-theist, atheist, humanist, and agnostic, so today I thought it would be interesting to give you a behind-the-curtain peek at the civil war that’s erupting between modern capitalist-worshipping church-goers and what Christians for millennia have traditionally believed about money.
We’ll focus on something I posted on my personal social media the other day:
Land-lording (which is the sin of interest-profit on lending) is harmful for countless reasons, but Christians abhor it because it denies the character of God.
God does not take more than He gives.
God does not hoard his possessions.
God does not make the poor homeless.We are all tenants living rent-free on God’s land.
So, Christians, in the name of Christ, I appeal to the character of God and exhort you:
Sell all your real estate and banking stocks and bonds and rental properties today.
Some Christians didn’t take it well.
To my knowledge, no one divested a single penny of their parasitic portfolio.
One woman — a wonderful, social justice advocate who has devoted her life to serving some of the poorest and most ill people on the planet — was particularly unimpressed:
Where in scripture does it say that being a landlord is a sin?
I don’t agree with using scripture for your own purposes unless you are quoting scripture accurately.
What about the landlords who provide good homes at a reasonable rent, take care of their tenants and keep them safe and warm?
Where do you think we should put all the people who no longer have homes because you have erased landlords?
I obviously wasn’t using the Scripture for my own purposes. I was literally doing the opposite — using the Bible to defend the poor.
And, of course, it’s unsound argumentation to say anything like “Where in Scripture does it say that being a [pornographer/sex trafficker/heroine dealer/etc] is a sin?”
That’s not how it works. Christians look at the whole body of Scripture (66 books compiled into a book called the Bible, or “books” in Greek) and ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
And the evidence on land-lording is unmistakable:
The Bible in multiple places (ie Deuteronomy 23:19–20) says to lend nothing at interest… which obviously includes land/houses.
If I lend you $500k and expect it back with more, that’s profit on lending.
If I lend you a $500k house and expect it back with more, that’s profit on lending.
Interest and rent profit are the same thing.
The root word for rent and interest are the same in nearly every ancient language, including Sumerian where writing was invented, where rent literally means “interest of a house.”Jesus in Luke 6:34–35 says to lend and expect nothing in return.
The Bible in multiple places says not to charge interest or any profit off the poor (Leviticus 25:35–37, Exodus 22:25, Proverbs 28:8, etc)
Isaiah 5:8 pronounces woe on people who hoard land and houses. (Read it in context, it’s terrifyingly descriptive of today’s billionaires buying up neighborhoods.)
Whether land-lorders like it or not, God declares a future is coming without this kind of economic exploitation, where workers will retain the full value they create:
“They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat… my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain…” -Isaiah 65:21–23
Zechariah 3:9–10 suggests the day is coming when all people will have their own stewardship of land.
St. Jerome (347–420 AD) in his Commentary on Ezekiel— “The man who demands interest on his loan is a usurer, not a Christian.”
Then there’s the Bible’s greater context on greed:
Philippians 2:3–4 says to do nothing out of selfish ambition but to look after the interests of others.
The Bible never shuts up about contentment (Hebrews 13:5)
And hoarding excess (Exodus 16:16–18, Luke 3:11)
And not accumulating earthly wealth (Matthew 6:19–21, 1 Timothy 6:17–19, Proverbs 23:4, James 5:1–3)
So that… there may be equality (2 Corinthians 8:14–15.)
Furthermore, Christians are called model Christ. Christians serve a creative and contributive God, not a hoarding and extractive God. Christians should actually earn their money by creating new useable wealth for others, not from hoarding resources. (Jeremiah 17:11, Proverbs 28:8, Isaiah 3:14, Proverbs 22:16, Proverbs 13:11, etc)
St. John Chrysostom (347–407 AD) in his Homily on Matthew said, “Nothing is baser or more cruel than to enrich oneself by the sweat and toil of others.”
The early church fathers are virtually unanimous on the truth that the earth is not the land-lord’s to hoard.
Saint Ambrose: “The earth was made for all, rich and poor, in common. Why do you rich claim it as your own by right of occupancy? For it was created not by you but by God for all.”
Saint John Chrysostom: “He left the earth free to all alike. Why then, if it is common, do you have so many acres of land, while your neighbor has no portion of it?”
Saint Gregory of Nyssa: “The earth, after all, does not belong to the rich, but rather to everyone. It is the gift of God for all to share.”
The commenter on my post made two massive false assumptions:
What about the landlords who provide good homes at a reasonable rent…?
There is no such thing as “reasonable” rent or interest or any other form of theft based on the monopolization of resources that God made common to all, to say nothing of market rent price distortion due to the plague of excess demand caused by investors devouring homes.
What about the landlords who… take care of their tenants and keep them safe and warm?
Land-lorders do not “take care of tenants” or “keep them safe and warm.” Land-lorders hoard excess resources to extract profit from people in need of shelter and make them homeless if they cannot pay.
Saint Ambrose counsels land-lorders not to delude themselves:
“You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone.”
Jesus says his gospel announcement (that the kingdom of God is invading) is good news for the poor.
How, exactly, is status quo capitalism good news for the billions struggling under compounding debt, declining access to resources, rising prices, currency debasement, and skyrocketing rents and house prices?
The commenter also doesn’t understand how housing actually works
Where do you think we should put all the people who no longer have homes because you have erased landlords?
Homes don’t magically disappear when land-lording decreases.
Financialization (turning anything into an investment) skyrockets prices.
(Think: Taylor Swift concert tickets, Beanie Babies, etc)
If society once again banned profit on lending and land-lording disappeared, shelter prices would simply plummet back to affordability for the vast majority to buy for far less than they’re currently paying to rent.
Then federal governments, state governments, city councils, denominations, churches, charities, trusts, foundations, and not-for-profits could buy the now-much-cheaper homes for the rest (ie, mentally disabled people.)
Just like Christian Britons did for centuries. (There are over 20,000 poor British people who still live in not-for-profit almshomes dating as far back as the 900s!)
The cosmological truth: We are all tenants living rent-free on God’s land
See Mark 12:1–12, Matt 21:33–45, Luke 20:9–18.
This means land-lorders are an archetypal case of the unmerciful servant Jesus speaks about in Matthew 18:21–35.
The good news of the kingdom of God is very bad news indeed for unrepentant landlords.
In Micah 2:4, God says that when He punishes land-lording families, the people they oppressed will make fun of them by pretending to “moan bitterly,” saying,
“We are utterly ruined; he changes the territory of my people; how he removes it from me! To those who betrayed us He divides and allots our fields.”
Modern translation: Boo-hoo.
In conclusion
So, those 28 biblical passages give you a decent idea of what Christians should believe about for-profit land-lording, economic exploitation, and hoarding God’s assets in general.
Sadly, most church-goers are as colonized and propagandized by globalist finance capitalism as everyone else.
But the fact remains:
One simply cannot make a biblically faithful case that hoarding excess resources in order to exploit a profit off of otherwise homeless people accurately reflects the character of a Christ who willingly sacrifices himself for others.
And that’s really good news for the poor.
4 weeks to go! Pre-order my new book on the devil now.