The illusion of debt

September 13, 2008 | 14 comments

While studying the story of the widow woman and her pot of oil in the Christian Science Bible lesson this week, a new insight into the unreality of debt grabbed my attention.

In the story, a woman’s husband dies leaving behind a huge debt for his wife. She has no money to pay. The creditors are ready to seize her two sons as bondmen. She appeals to the prophet Elisha for help, and per Elisha’s instructions, she pays off the debt in what appeared a miraculous way—her small pot of oil multiplying into many large pots of oil.

I asked myself, “What did Elisha see spiritually that enabled him to see the unreality of that debt?”

Just like a spiritual healer does not see disease as a reality, a prophet would not see debt as a reality either. “How is this?” I pondered.

And I got my answer. If I may ramble a bit…

Debt is not real, because everything a person thinks he gets from debt is not real either. It’s temporal.

My definition of “real,” is that which lasts forever. Only the spiritual lasts forever. Love, wisdom, genuine family ties, home, peace of mind, health, reliable supply, support, joy, and their kin, are spiritual. They come from divine Mind and last forever in divine Mind.

Debt comes from telling someone you’ll pay them money later if they give you something today.

What does debt purchase? Not anything real. It purchases things, stuff, matter-items, human services, and conditions of the temporal world. It does not purchase anything that comes from God.

The supply of God is freely bestowed. It comes in a spiritual form, and is a gift to all of us. We don’t need money to have love, home, peace of mind, health, and so on. These are all gifts of God and found in Mind, not in matter.

Back to the widow woman…

So, I thought, when the widow woman told Elisha she had no money, or in essence, she had no supply, Elisha knew her statement was wrong. Elisha knew the woman was entertaining an illusion about her supply condition. She really did have supply, because God was the source of her supply, and God supplies each of us abundantly, so her supply was present in her home. Elisha knew this. She just didn’t see it.

It seemed to me that the woman was entertaining her dead husband’s illusion that he had to go into debt to have supply for his family. And he went into debt because he had not grown to a very wealthy understanding of supply yet. He saw his supply as being material, and turned to material providers for it, thus strapping his family with a limited sense of supply.

Elisha knew better. Elisha knew that no real supply comes from worldly creditors. It comes from God in a spiritual form, and he knew that this woman’s family had always been supplied by God. The family had never been truly supplied by the things purchased with debt. Any effect from increased things is temporal, and leaves one feeling empty-handed eventually, which is what happened to the widow.

The love, joy, health, nourishment, sustenance, freedom and life of that family were spiritual and always had been. They were coming from God and hadn’t gone anywhere.

The husband’s passing did not take the family’s supply away from them. God was supplying that family with love, health, freedom, support, and protection after the husband’s passing just as much as before. Nothing had changed between them and God. The widow needed to drop her husband’s limited sense of supply in order to see the unreality of the debt.

Whoa…I was getting quite psyched to consider the implications of this insight…

So, that means right where the woman saw debt, Elisha saw supply. He did not believe the woman when she said she couldn’t pay her debt. He reasoned spiritually that her belief of debt was impossible. She was not in debt to the world for her supply. She was in debt to God, and God was supplying her as always.

Her belief of a matter-debt to the world for the supply-needs of her family was pure illusion. She never was in debt to the world and never could be for the real needs of her family were spiritual, and supplied only by God. She had been hypnotized by a false belief concerning supply. She was not in material debt at all to the world because the world could not give her anything that God was not already giving her, and it never had. In reality, she was swimming in supply. And Elisha knew it.

Elisha asked the woman, “What do you have in your house?” As if he knew she had to have evidence of supply in her life. And she replied that she had nothing in the house except a pot of oil.

You probably know the rest of the story. She poured the little pot out into several large pots, and oil kept flowing and flowing and flowing until there was more than enough oil to sell and pay all her bills, with funds left over.

The debt was illusion. What appeared to exist from a limited material sense, did not exist at all from a spiritually enlightened point of view. Supply was the reality, and Elisha scientifically proved it.

We can prove it too.

None of us are in debt to the world for the real supply-items of Life. God is the supplier, and it doesn’t cost a single dollar to have what the divine Provider gives. And that is enough.

14 thoughts on “The illusion of debt”

  1. Hi Even,
    Thank you! I will read and really think about these ideas. I changed career paths a while ago and have had to “borrow from Peter to pay Paul,” (if you know what I mean), to be able to pay my monthly expenses. I feel it’s the correct career because there have been so many blessings for others as well as myself, all of which I am most grateful. I often work with the truth that my only debt is to God, to praise and glorify Him, in everything I do. I will enjoy working with the ideas you have shared too. Again, thank you!

  2. Thanks Evan! I’m going to work with the thoughts and ideas that you have shared. You have given me a great insight to the meaning of this story. I have often read it, but now I can apply it to my own experience.

  3. You are welcome.

    Another thought that came to me last night…we cannot possibly owe to the world for that which comes only from God, from Spirit…

  4. Evan —

    This is great…I have been thinking this week about what the oil really represented, and it piggybacks on your insight too. The widow woman says she “only” has a little bit of oil. BUt Elisha responds, in effect, “That is exactly what is of value!” Oil, in SH, is “Consecration, charity, gentleness, prayer; heavenly inspiration.” IOW, MORE Oil will repay the debt! Pray importunately, without ceasing, and you will have what you need: spiritual ideas for daily supply.

  5. can’t owe to the world for that which comes from God?

    I will think on that … I have paid thousands to practitioners for treatment of a condition that has not yielded. I still have a stack of unpaid bills and diminished health. I guess there is more for me to see.

  6. How timely to have these ideas. Not only does it open up the ideas in this week’s lesson, but are such wonderful healing counterfacts to the belief of our “national debt”. A new movie on our debt (I.O.U.S.A.) is out, here’s the trailer.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBo2xQIWHiM

    Thank you for these powerful, spiritual facts. Spirit is supreme!

  7. Thank you Evan!
    Substance is the essence
    of God-Good-Being All.
    Love’s unconditional care provides only Good ever always-only-
    We profit always because
    God-promotes well-being by
    Love’s perfect design-
    all Good being All-in-all.

  8. This exchange of ideas is SO helpful! Thanks to all!! Something that also jumped out at me in this story is that Elisha instructed the widow “when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons …” For me, this command illustrates that before we do anything else, we need to shut off any fear or doubt that might be coming to us, and we need to shut off any other outside influence, whether within our family or world thought. If “what hast thou in the house” can also mean “what is in your consciousness” then we truly have to shut our mental door on fear-based thinking in order to be open to perfect Love’s free-flowing oil of consecration, gentleness, charity and heavenly inspiration.

    Thanks, Evan, for continuing this very helpful blog, which allows us all to share!

  9. Hi Evan,

    Thank you so much for taking the time to write out your ideas on debt in with reference to the Widow woman bible story.
    I am finally grasping these concepts and have glimpsed that I can’t owe the world, as all comes from God, and is not generated by me or another person,
    place, or thing. That all that comes from God is spiritual and cannot be diminished, used up, or held back from us.
    So this takes me to the point that, then the most important activity or job, then is to learn more about God and his constant supply to all.

    Many thanks.

  10. Yes, yes, you are getting the idea that I glimpsed. When we see that all of value and substance comes direct from God, we do not turn to the world, in the form of debt, to get it. We find it direct from God.

    God feeds us, houses us and clothes us, just like the lilies of the field.

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