Paid in Full. But no Credit.

A few weeks ago I went to see my uncle, who was recovering from a severe case of the flu and a mild stroke.  He is currently doing well, but at that time was spending a few days in a long term care facility getting physical therapy.  Normally we both have busy lives and don’t see each other often, so it ended up being a nice chance to catch up.

And then, in a rare moment of nostalgia, my uncle started telling me stories from his 27 years of owning a small business in east Dallas.  I asked him what he thought made it successful and he told me.  And then he started talking about the way he handled outstanding debt from customers.

“In the early years it would seriously rankle me to see unpaid balances in the ledger. I would go after folks and once even put a lean on someone’s house for a few hundred dollars.  But then one year I decided to do something different.”

My uncle told me how he sat down with his secretary at the end of the year and took all the outstanding balances and wrote “paid in full.”  Then he sent each customer a letter stating that they now had a zero balance, and were welcome back in the store at any time, as long as they paid cash.

“It was worth the financial loss to me to have the peace of mind of a clear ledger.  With no outstanding balances showing there, I wasn’t bothered anymore.”

This is pretty radical, and in my mind I immediately came up with a couple of sermon illustrations as well as a blog on topics of Jesus paying our debt in full and on the importance and power of forgiveness. I thought about those for a little while, but then my attention was caught by the post script to the story.

This was the part about him not giving those customers who had proven themselves untrustworthy any more credit.  My uncle generously released these people from their debt, even continued to do business with his former debtors, but never gave them the opportunity to take advantage of his generosity by making purchases on credit at his store again.  They had lost his trust and lost that privilege, and he was wise enough not to put himself in the position of risking financial loss at their hands again.

This is the part of the story that Christians sometimes forget when they are working with hurting people and discussing the importance of forgiveness.  It is a fact that we are commanded in the Bible to forgive others as God forgave us.  It is a fact that we do this to set ourselves free, not because the other person deserves it. However, it is not a given that this forgiveness includes letting the person abuse us, hurt us, or take advantage of us again.

We are not commanded to continue to offer relationship credit, time credit, or trust credit to those who may continue to hurt us with “debt” through that interaction.  It is not harsh to choose not to give a person a second chance if there is a chance they might hurt us in a significant way again.

Interestingly on that note, my uncle mentioned almost sheepishly that in one case he did, against his better judgement, let one of these forgiven debtors buy on credit again, not really feeling good about it, but hoping he had changed.  “Boy, that was a mistake,” he admitted.  Again, the debt built up.  That person had obviously not learned anything from the mercy that had been offered him. 

Of course, maybe with other forgiven customers it would have been different.  But sometimes it isn’t worth the risk to find out. If that is the case with you, never feel guilty or pressured to offer credit in the store of your life to someone who has hurt you, abused you, taken advantage of  you, lied to you, or in other ways shown they can’t be trusted.  It’s okay to say no, and it doesn’t mean you haven’t forgiven them. 

It just means they don't have any credit.