These are the Bible’s rules about money:

Don’t make money in deceitful ways, like extortion. If you gain riches unjustly, you will lose it all halfway through your life. (Protip: Wait until after the halfway point before you start gaining riches unjustly.)

Being rich is both better and worse than being poor. Remember, being wise makes you rich, but you can’t be both rich and wise.

Humans may value money, but God hates it. Don’t love money, or you’ll never have enough of it. Don’t trust money, because you can’t take it with you. Don’t even look at money, or it will sprout wings and fly away!

If, despite that, you don’t want to be poor, then…

• Don’t be lazy.
• Don’t be undisciplined.
• Don’t be stingy.
• Don’t be hasty.
• Don’t chase fantasies.
• Don’t just talk instead of working.
• Don’t love wine and olive oil or pleasure.
• Don’t be a drunkard or a glutton.
• Don’t give gifts to the rich.
• Don’t feel drowsy.
• And never get any rest!

(But if you are poor, that’s God’s fault.)

Don’t mock the poor. And don’t exploit them because they’re poor, only for other reasons. Don’t oppress them, or you’ll be punished. And don’t fail to defend their rights, or you’ll be punished again. Because only wicked people don’t care about justice for the poor. So don’t unjustly favor or disfavor the poor in court. Treat them the same as the rich.

Gifts, payments, and loans

Giving money to the poor is both mandatory and optional, and you have to both give up everything you have and save some for anyone who might ask you for it. When you give to the poor, don’t make a show of it.

And don’t give anything to the rich, or you’ll become poor. If you do favors to the rich, they will repay you, but if you do favors to the poor, God will repay you. (Protip: Don’t do favors for anyone, and then you won’t need to be repaid.)

The children and grandchildren of a widow should repay her and care for her, so that no one else has to support her. If you don’t provide for your relatives, you can’t be a Christian. Giving to your parents is more important than giving to God. But children should never have to save up for their parents, only the other way around.

You should donate to the church on the first day of every week. But anything you give to God should be an actual sacrifice, not something you got for free. Unless it’s plunder from war.

Jesus says you should also give away money to your enemies (reverse plundering?), and to anyone who asks you. But it’s better not to accept a gift that’s being given reluctantly.

Giving bribes is good for appeasing angry people and getting what you want.¹ But don’t accept bribes; that’s a corrupt, perverted thing that wicked people do, and it could bring a curse on you or destroy you and your whole country.

Jesus thinks if a coin has Caesar’s picture on it, that must mean it belongs to Caesar, and that’s why you should pay taxes. (The logical conclusion of this dumb argument would be that everyone in the Roman Empire has to give all their money to the emperor, and the people don’t get to have any money ever, which would make the money useless.)

Paul, on the other hand, says the reason you should pay taxes is that all human authorities are God’s servants. Whatever the reason might be, Jesus is happy to give his followers free money to pay their taxes with.

Paying people for their work is both mandatory and optional. According to David, everyone should be paid equally, even if they don’t do any work. But according to Jesus, employers have the right to distribute their money among their employees any way they want, and workers should be content with whatever pay they get.

Samuel and Ahijah, who were servants of God, were prophets for profit. Paul thought he deserved payment too, but chose not to be paid for preaching, for some reason.

Jesus seems to think it’s very important that if you borrow money, you pay it back with interest. God’s law doesn’t allow Israelites to charge each other interest, though. It’s okay to charge foreigners interest, but not other Israelites. It’s also against God’s law to charge the poor any interest or profit. If you do, it will be taken away from you and probably given back to them.

You shouldn’t take a person’s livelihood as security for a debt. When you make a loan to a poor person, you should return their pledge the same day. Giving someone a security deposit is also a senseless mistake, and will make you suffer and lose your bed. And if you put up security for a stranger, you deserve to have your garment stolen.

No debt should remain unpaid, except the debt to love one another. So don’t love one another, but do pay all your other debts. Unless your creditor cancels your debt. All debts among Israelites are to be cancelled every seven years. But debts that foreigners owe to Israelites don’t have to be canceled.

But if you want God to forgive you, you should forgive all your debtors. If you ever try to make people pay you what they owe you, God will torture you until you pay him what he thinks you owe him. Which you can probably never do.

So, people need to always pay their debts, but people should never be required to pay their debts. And people need to always pay interest on their debts, but God’s people should never be required to pay interest.

What economic system does the Bible favor?

Christians tend to strongly oppose communism, which they associate with atheism for some reason. That’s pretty weird considering how communistic the original Christians were. As described in the Bible:

The Christian community abandoned the concept of personal property and shared everything they had. Any money they earned had to be brought to their leaders to be distributed among the community, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs“. (That’s a communist slogan, likely inspired by the Bible.)

The goal of these Christians was to achieve equality, with no one having too little or too much. The Bible suggests that God approved of this system so much that he killed anyone who chose not to give 100% of their income.

Jesus said it was right to pay everyone the same regardless of how much work they did, which resembles the way communists would like things to work eventually. David said only evil men and troublemakers think people who don’t work shouldn’t get paid. Paul, on the other hand, told his Christian followers that “the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat”… which is another bible-based communist slogan, associated with the temporary transitional “socialist” stage.