I was swimming in tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt I thought I would never repay. And then, one day not long ago, I was free. Was it luck? The result of some kind of mystical event? Definitely not. Actually, it came about through prayer and spiritual growth. I’d like to share how.
For a while, I’d been praying about student loan debt, not just for myself, but also for the millions in my country, the United States, and around the world who are burdened by it. At this time, borrowers in the US collectively owe over $1.5 trillion in student loans. The issue has already promised to play a role in the 2020 presidential elections, with some presidential hopefuls making ambitious proposals for canceling much or all of student loan debt in this country. Others aren’t sure such ideas are feasible or practical, but regardless, many agree that countless people need to find relief.
Whatever may or may not change politically, I’ve been learning that there are solutions to this crisis that are rooted in God. In fact, I’m convinced the real answer people need must ultimately come through divine Mind, God, enlightening human consciousness. Debt forgiveness isn’t just a political issue. It’s a spiritual one. It’s about relying on God. And I’ve found in my own life that relying on God is practical—this reliance actually meets our needs.
What does this reliance look like? I think the first step is simply to acknowledge that forgiveness of debts needs to be understood in spiritual terms. When Jesus included in the Lord’s Prayer the line, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), I don’t think he was talking only about money. I think he was describing the concepts of debt and forgiveness in a much deeper way. Many Christians who recite the Lord’s Prayer use a different Bible translation than the King James Version, with the word “trespasses” instead of “debts” and “those who trespass against us” instead of “our debtors,” giving some hint of the larger meaning of forgiveness.
Of course, Jesus’ prayer could include forgiveness of literal financial debts. But even when financial debt is front and center in an individual’s prayer, there may well be troubling issues weighing on the heart that need to be forgiven. When we make mistakes, for instance, we want to find forgiveness for those mistakes in the mercy and love God has for us—a love that, when felt and known, transforms us spiritually to such an extent that we no longer even need to be forgiven because we stop repeating the same mistakes. We live more of our true spiritual nature as the eternally innocent child of God. When we pray for forgiveness, including even forgiveness of financial debts, we should want to know God’s love for us in this profound way, just as we would want to express that love toward others. This deeper meaning is at the heart of Jesus’ prayer.
In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy gives a spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Prayer. The line, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” is spiritually interpreted, “And Love is reflected in love” (p. 17).
Praying along these lines takes work! It isn’t just asking God to forgive us; it’s asking for us to grow spiritually, so that we actually know God’s love and express that love in our lives. God’s love is infinite and all-encompassing. When we grow in that love, we are truly rich and express in our lives more of God’s infinite abundance. And this abundance of love can be demonstrated practically in debt relief.
We pay our debt to God by serving and loving Him.
As I mentioned earlier, I recently found myself with the means to pay off a substantial amount of student loans. But that only happened when I fully yielded to God’s love and knew I could rely every day on the divine law of abundance that is available to anyone.
I finished graduate school about ten years ago with an overwhelming amount of student loan debt. I was grateful for the education I received, and was initially at peace with the debt I had decided to take on. But within a few years of graduating, it seemed this debt was likely to cripple my family’s financial future.
I prayed with all my heart to God, just for guidance in general, because I knew God is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalms 46:1). The answer that came to me in prayer was that if I fully consecrated my life to serving God, in whatever way God led me to serve Him, my debts would be paid.
This was a humbling message because I knew it meant I might need to sacrifice the career path I had envisioned for myself—the reason I went to graduate school in the first place! By yielding to God, the infinite, all-knowing Mind, I was in fact ultimately led in a completely different direction.
To pursue this new career path, I actually had to return to graduate school a second time to earn another degree. Doing so meant leaving full-time employment (though I was able to keep working part time), and by now my wife and I had a young son. On the surface, this would have appeared to be a stupid financial choice. But between scholarships, grants, stipends, and my half-time pay, my take-home monthly income actually rose slightly. And I was able to earn my degree without incurring another cent of student loan debt.
When I had started this second graduate degree program, it appeared I had a few options for eventually paying off my student loans. But long story short, none of those options turned out to be viable. I was temporarily tempted to be frustrated and angry.
This is when I had to learn more about what paying my debts really meant to my heavenly Father-Mother. Because what mattered most to God wasn’t my financial prospects. What actually counted was “paying my debt” to God. What did that mean? We all owe a debt of gratitude to God, divine Life, Truth, and Love, for the gift of our life and all the blessings and beauty God bestows on each of us. We pay our debt to God by serving and loving Him with all our heart, soul, and mind, as Christ Jesus instructed us to do.
Science and Health explains, “Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul” (p. 60). I thought deeply about this promise of happiness. I finally realized I could stop worrying about my student loan debt and start focusing on “paying my debt” to my Maker. I determined that even if student loans followed me the rest of my life, I would find happiness and peace in Soul, God. I knew I was following Jesus’ footsteps in relying on God, and in doing so I felt spiritual freedom and hope.
Soon after this, my wife and I put our house on the market; we were getting ready to move so I could report for my first assignment as a Christian Science military chaplain in another state. We were stunned to discover the amount of home equity we had earned after living in our house for just a few years. The house had needed regular maintenance, and we had been required to invest significantly in repairs.
To our amazement, our house sold for substantially over asking price. We walked away with enough funds to pay off all my student loans, as well as our credit card debt. And we were able to put a down payment on a new house for our family in our new location, with some savings to spare. Truly, it was a humbling story of financial redemption for me and my family.
As grateful as I am for these financial adjustments, I feel in some ways I’ll always be paying my debt to God. I know I’ll be spending eternity growing closer to and learning more about our divine Parent, infinite Mind. But each step along the way opens up new views of God’s divine riches. These riches aren’t material, aren’t made up of dollars and cents, but are the spiritual abundance of divine goodness, love, peace, and freedom. These divine riches are always available to us to meet our needs and to help us grow in an understanding of God’s infinite grace.
