In this two-part episode, pastors Derek and Cliff apply a biblical worldview to the topic of student debt forgiveness.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to the With All Wisdom Podcast, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. And we are both professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And we want to launch right into today’s topic. So I’m going to encourage you now to check out withallwisdom.org, where we host this podcast and where we also have a lot of resources—written, and now video resources and audio resources like the podcast you’re listening to—all hosted there for your growth in the faith. And we want to encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org. And we want to launch right into our topic today because it’s a topic that we are always touching on, right, Cliff?
Cliff: Yep.
Derek: We want to talk about applying a biblical worldview. And you might be thinking, that’s what you talk about a lot. Well, it is. And we are trying to show our listeners how relevant scripture is, how it is sufficient for all things that we face in this life, and how it can provide answers for various issues that we confront in this life. And we want to help you to apply a biblical worldview consistently to your personal life, to politics, to your relationships, to everything that you experience and confront in this life. And we want to help you do that again today. We are going to focus on the topic of a recent Supreme Court decision on loan forgiveness. And we’re going to apply a biblical worldview to that topic and help you walk through how to do that. And so I want to hand it over right now to Cliff, and would you just begin, Cliff, with starting us off with how to think about things biblically, how to think about them consistently and why it’s important to do that?
Cliff: Yeah. Thanks Derek. We’ve done—are we up to 60 podcasts yet, Derek?
Derek: This is the 69th today.
Cliff: Wow. I was looking back at the topics we’ve done and I would say that the majority or super-majority of our podcasts have emphasized applying what we call a biblical worldview, which is synonymous with a Christian worldview. We mean the same thing to every topic under the sun, whether it’s a historic doctrine or a historic heresy or a modern day issue that we’re confronted by. And you and I believe that, well, the Bible has something to say about that. Not everybody agrees with us, but we believe that because we believe in biblical sufficiency—the doctrine of the sufficiency of the Bible, which means the Bible applies to everything in life that we’re going to be confronted with. So you and I are like-minded in that probably for a lot of reasons. I think both of us were trained at the Master’s University. I think you had Greg Behle, didn’t you?
Derek: Yep, I did.
Cliff: So he was the worldview guy. So he’s the one that introduced me to thinking with the biblical worldview. We also both appreciate and read guys like Francis Schaeffer and Van Til and all these guys who are worldview thinkers, which I think is just thinking biblically, applying the Bible to every area of life, and God’s word is sufficient for all things. So just for our listening audience, that’s where we’re coming from. That’s what we believe. To some people it sounds rather simplistic—naive, maybe. I don’t think so at all. I think that’s how Jesus thought. And Paul. The Bible has an answer to everything [and is] completely sufficient. And you and I as pastors, we shepherd our people. So one of the things we’re trying to shepherd them in is to be discerning, think through all things and vet all things that they’re confronted with or have to do with life through the Bible, which would be a biblical worldview. And then we are disappointed at times, you and I as pastors, when Christians—we know they’re Christians, they love Jesus, they love the Bible, and they say they love the Bible—and then a particular issue comes along and this person is not thinking through it with a biblical perspective. They seem inconsistent with their Christian convictions. And it happens a lot actually. It happens to people in our church, maybe members of our church at times, friends, and Christian friends we have that maybe don’t go to our church, but they’re close friends. It’s also disappointing when some of our spiritual heroes, whether modern day, well-known popular pastors, or authorities in the church, speak to issues of the day. And from our perspective, they’re not being consistent or they’re not doing it with a biblical worldview right now. It could be that you and I are wrong and they’re right, but sometimes I’m pretty sure that we’re disappointed because the person we have a concern about isn’t thinking it through thoroughly and biblically and they’re coming to the wrong conclusion.
Like I said, it could just be your average—I mean, we aren’t consistent in our thinking all the time, either. So we are dependent upon others to get us back on track or give us more information. Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Oh yeah, I forgot about that passage that plays into this as well. I think the Covid pandemic challenged every Christian in that area to think through things in a new way from a biblical point of view. And we had a lot of holes in our views. Everybody did, I think. But I think the Covid issue is an example of a few high profile church leaders that we respected that I think came out on the wrong end with the wrong conclusion about how to proceed. We even did a podcast on John Piper’s wrong view about the Covid shot, which was hard.
Derek: I really like Piper.
Cliff: Me too. But his was very specific. We thought he landed in the wrong practical position because he didn’t take into consideration the full counsel of God. I mean, you and I talked about how there were key informative passages from the Bible. He didn’t even mention Romans 14, which was a key one. He just completely neglected that. So that’s what we mean by a Christian worldview, is taking everything into consideration. So my first question that I want to have our people be thinking about here is why does this happen? Why do Christians—well-meaning Christians, Christians who truly love the Bible, many who are well-studied in the Bible at times on particular issues—not actually land with a biblical perspective? They don’t have a Christian worldview being applied to this specific issue. Why does that happen? It does happen. It happens to all of us. But I think if we’re aware of why it happens, then we can avoid it in the future and get better at it. So I’ve got six reasons why this might happen, why Christians don’t land on a proper conclusion and they fail to implement a biblical worldview. Before I list my six, what do you think might be a main one that comes to your mind? Even a guy like John Piper?
Derek: Boy, just the context you’re in, perhaps the people you’re around, the influences that are in your life that you’re maybe not even…you don’t even perceive how they’re influencing you.
Cliff: Wow, that’s actually not one of my six.
Derek: I’m sorry.
Cliff: That’s huge. That’s key. Who you’re listening to; who’s influencing your thinking. I think that has a lot to do with it. You said one a little earlier when we started the program, you said they’re inconsistent in their thinking, right? That was the last one that I wrote down here. When we’re not consistent in applying our Christian worldview to a specific issue, we will get it wrong. When we’re inconsistent, we’re all vulnerable to being inconsistent. Here’s some other things. Well, there are times where people actually don’t really believe in total sufficiency when they say that they do. Oh yeah, I believe in the Bible. You do? The whole Bible for every area of life? And then they’re off to advocating, seeing a secular psychiatrist for something that I would say is a spiritual problem, but they’re a Christian and they believe the Bible. They were taught the Bible. They know the Bible, and even at times will say they believe in biblical sufficiency, but I’m going to go see my secular psychiatrist. It’s an example that’s disappointing.
Derek: It is. I’m going to go to my psychiatrist for things that pertain to Christian discipleship. I mean, they wouldn’t frame it that way, but that’s what you’re doing. And yet you’re going to see someone who’s not skilled in scripture or spiritual things.
Cliff: I’m going to go get care of my soul from a pagan when the care of the soul is the domain of God. So people, on specific issues, they don’t really believe in total sufficiency when the rubber meets the road. Another reason why Christians might not apply the Christian worldview consistently is they don’t consider the whole Bible on a given issue. They either forget about something, neglect it, or it’s not a priority. That would be the example that we pointed out with John Piper on getting a covid shot. It’s in the Bible, and he didn’t even talk about Romans 14 because it was a gray area issue. That should have been the determinative passage. He didn’t even talk about it. So you have to consider the whole counsel of God in applying your Christian worldview. And that’s why we need help from others at our church. I get help from others—my counselors or the elders at our church and other Christians that I trust and other pastors and help me out here. Am I missing something? I need the whole counsel of God on this issue. Another reason Christians fail in this area is that we don’t have all the facts on the current issue that we’re trying to make a decision about.
Derek: Oh, that’s huge.
Cliff: That is huge. We haven’t talked about that a lot.
Derek: Yeah, that’s a really good point.
Cliff: That’s what I want to talk about today primarily. Not only do we have everything the Bible has to say on a particular topic, but when we want to take it and then use it as a magnifying glass or a microscope or a mirror for a particular issue of the day, we have to be fully informed on the issue of the day.
Derek: Well, and that just makes me think of the Proverbs. That’s just an incredibly insightful point. Proverbs 18:2 says, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. So here we are waxing on whatever topic it is but not fully understanding it, and therefore then applying a Christian worldview to it inconsistently.
Cliff: Great verse. Proverbs 18. Here’s another one. Read that again, Derek.
Derek: Proverbs 18:2 says, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. And then 18:13 says, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. So you make a really good point. And it’s kind of convicting, actually.
Cliff: So sometimes we don’t have all the facts on the current issue. We’re trying to think through, and here’s a corollary to that. Another one is we have wrong information on the current issue. So first is we don’t have all the information, but then we think, okay, I’m going to go get all the information. Now I think I’ve got all the information and some of that information is wrong, or maybe all that information is wrong depending upon my source. Which goes back to your first point. Who are you listening to? Where are you getting your so-called facts? So if you’re trying to say, yeah, I got all the biblical facts and data, but then I’m trying to apply it in the wrong way to a fiction that doesn’t even exist, then you’re going to miss the target completely. And the last reason I wrote here, Christians get it wrong in applying a Christian worldview or failing to apply a Christian worldview sometimes because they, even as believers, just have a hardened heart on that particular issue. We’re not submissive to scripture on that issue. We have a blind spot of a prejudice on that issue. It’s like, I vote. I’m a Christian. I believe in the Bible. I believe in biblical sufficiency, and I vote for a candidate who hates Israel, who’s an antisemite, and you scratch my skin a little harder. And you find out the true nature is, well, actually, I am an antisemite. I don’t really care for Israel. I don’t like Jews or whatever. Yeah, you’re a Christian. So that could be true of all of us.
Derek: I was going to say one more reason, or maybe it could be a subpoint of that last one, is there could be various reasons why our heart is hard or blinded to a particular issue. And I’ve written about this on withallwisdom.org. I entitled the article, “Intellectual Fogginess and the Fear of Man.” I think the fear of man can keep us, even imperceptibly, from applying a biblical worldview to everything. We know what it might cost us to do that or otherwise. So that might be something that keeps us from…the fear of man.
Cliff: Which is a corollary to who are you listening to? Who you being influenced by? Bad company corrupts good morals. Great point. So I want to walk us through, okay, how do we apply a Christian worldview in a proper, consistent manner with the current issue of the day? And I thought, let’s take a hot potato. Let’s take the recent ruling of the Supreme Court on the Biden plan to forgive college loans.
Derek: The reason I love this topic is because it doesn’t initially sound like the Bible would have anything to say about it.
Cliff: Yeah, Derek, I’ve thought about writing a Big Truth|little book called What Does the Bible Say about Joe Biden’s Plan to Forgive College Loans? And a lot of people probably say that’s not in the Bible. Someone who’s actually very educated and a Christian. When I told them that you and I wrote a book on What the Bible Says about Retirement—and this is actually somebody who’s a professional in the field as a Christian dealing with economics and retirement in a personal conversation—they said, well, the Bible doesn’t really have a lot to say about retirement. I don’t even see how you could write a whole book. So I’m looking forward to reading your book. And he read it and loved it. Okay, read it. This was a very well-educated Christian in the field, and his response to me was, wow, I don’t even know what the Bible has to say about—I mean, is there enough information to write a book? So I could see why people would say, you can’t write a whole book on what the Bible has to say about Biden’s plan to forgive college loans. So if that’s your thought, then there is a defect or something missing in your understanding of biblical sufficiency, because we keep hammering away saying, well, the Bible speaks to everything sufficiently, meaning adequately, and then at some level it has to be specifically, too, which means you probably have got enough to write a Big Truth|little book on it.
Derek: Are you going to?
Cliff: No, but just maybe in light of this podcast, maybe a with all wisdom article.
Derek: We also have booklets, too. You could write a booklet.
Cliff: Yeah, there you go. And I think there’s enough information to do that. What does the Bible say about the Biden student loan forgiveness program? And notice that title is perfectly neutral. I don’t reveal my cards one way or the other of whether I’m for or against it. So I thought it would be good, practical, fun, maybe even somewhat entertaining, but at the same time, challenging to use this topic as an exercise of walking through and applying a biblical worldview to this issue that I think is a very complicated issue. It’s kind of a lightning rod as well, because some people are very passionate about it. And even among Christians, who have differing points of view upfront. I want to say, first of all, here’s a spontaneous question for you, Derek. Do you believe in forgiveness, just generically forgiveness?
Derek: I do. In fact, I love forgiveness.
Cliff: Amen. And that’s what I want to affirm upon you and I—we are advocates of forgiveness. Even spontaneous forgiveness.
Derek: I’ll even take it a step farther. I’m advocate. I’m an advocate for debt forgiveness.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s even better. I’m a complete and total advocate. So upfront, people need to know. Our listeners, despite where we go on this specific issue of college loans, we are advocates of debt forgiveness. As a matter of fact, that’s where the terminology and the jargon they’re using comes from. It comes from the Bible. How about that? Relief, forgiveness, all those terms, debt forgiveness specifically—that’s right out of the Bible. So we are advocates of debt forgiveness. I also want to say before I start talking here, that I understand this issue of the Biden proposal on forgiving student loans at a personal level. I understand it at a personal level. Number one, as a student or former student, but also as a parent. I’ve got four kids. One still in college, the other three went to college. So as a student, little testimonial, I did not grow up in a wealthy home. I was the youngest of 10 children in the inner city of Denver. I would say on the lower income status there, and we didn’t have a whole lot of money. My parents were hard workers, but we had very little when I was growing up, and very few privileges. Those kinds of things. I had to learn to work hard and do with little to survive. Most of the 10 kids in my family didn’t even go to college. So I was one of the few. I aspired to go to college, not to learn anything, but to play basketball and get away from home. Those were my two goals.
And I landed on choosing a private college that was very expensive. I was in Colorado, and this was in California. I had no money to go to college. My parents didn’t have any money. So I applied for the college, and I got accepted. I was very excited. And then to pay the bill, they offered me all these things called student loans. So I got a quick education. I didn’t know what they were, but some of them were like $3,000, $5,000, $8,000 and just signed here. Here I was 18 years old. I consulted nobody. I didn’t ask for anybody’s counsel, and I just signed. I just cut $20,000. I’m going to college, baby. Didn’t really read the fine print at the time. So there were grants. There was a thing called a Pell Grant. So that was money you didn’t have to pay back, but it was provided by the federal government. But that was the basis of your loan package. So the grant, and it was, I don’t know, 3,000 bucks at the time, or maybe even less. But attached to that were all these loans. The college I chose was, at the time of 1985, it was almost $20,000 a year. So that’s very expensive. So today it’s even more expensive than that. And so I did that for four years.
Actually, I didn’t get any wise counsel until I became a Christian, until I was a junior in college. And then by then I had taken out gazillions of dollars’ worth of school loans. And then somebody told me, you know, you’ve got to pay these back with interest. What’s interest? So I was very ignorant. And then I did go to seminary. I had a few loans for seminary. By the time I finished four years of college, three years of seminary, I must’ve had over $40,000 worth of school loans. That’s a chunk of change in 1992. That’s a chunk of change. And then I married my wife. She actually went to college without any loans. And then she met me, and when she said I do, she inherited $40,000 of my college loans. Oh, we had kids. That’s a nice gift. Had kids right away. I graduated, and I went into nonprofit organizations for employment. Nonprofit means you don’t make a whole lot of money. And that was true. Small Christian churches or small Christian schools and organizations. So I made peanuts pretty much, had four kids right away, working three jobs, almost always at least three jobs to try to survive. Sometimes I was a teacher and you don’t make a lot of money there, so you’ve got to get another job. And it took my wife and I 18 years to pay off my loans. During those 18 years, we’re not putting money in a savings account. We’re putting money towards college loan debt plus the interest. So with interest, I don’t know, maybe it was over $45,000 and after 18 years, we paid off every penny. So that was quite an accomplishment. And just as we paid off my college loans, then my kids are ready to enter college.
And with every one of my four kids gave, I gave them counsel. Don’t do what I did, and get into debt like that. So they did well and were able to go through college. Three of them graduated, one’s currently about to graduate, and they took a little bit of college loans, but not a lot. But still, I had to be familiar with how college loans work. I was paying some of the college loans towards my four kids’ education. I thought it was a worthy investment, but learned a lot from the dumb mistakes I made when I was a student, taking out these student loans haphazardly. So that’s my background, and I just thought it’d be important for the listeners to know that I’m not completely clueless, because as even a parent, I’m filling out the FAFSA every year. It’s an application you have to fill out. It’s pretty comprehensive. To see if your family are qualified to receive any kind of financial aid from the federal government for your students to go to college. So I had to do that every year. So that’s my background. So in light of that, when I heard that President Biden—actually, it wasn’t President Biden. It was prior to the election of the 2020 presidency when the Democrat presidential candidate—every major presidential candidate that was Democrat—Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, both of them, and Joe Biden. But anyway, those were the main ones. Every single one of them was promising that if you vote for me for president, I will forgive student loan debt. But to varying degrees. Bernie Sanders was the worst, but he’s an atheist and a socialist, and he was literally promising, if you vote for me for president, I will cancel all $1.6 trillion of student loans, which means everybody who has a student loan will be completely forgiven. So his plan was a hundred percent all student loans forgiven.
Then there was Elizabeth Warren, and she was about 90 to 95% in line with Bernie Sanders. So her plan was also just as absurd and ridiculous. And then Joe Biden, he had a modified view, but he was willing to, yeah, we need to provide some debt relief. So he changed his terminology. His advisors probably were telling him what to say. Well, yeah, we should give debt, so you vote for me. We will give college students who are eligible and deserve it. Keyword like “some debt relief.” But he didn’t define what that was until a little later when it looked like he locked in the nomination where he went on the record on Twitter and unveiled his initial plan, which was that we need to give $10,000 of relief to those who deserve it in college loans. So that was his initial proposal. That was before he got elected. Then after he got elected and became president to fulfill his promise. Oh, it’s interesting that before Biden got elected, because he was a senator, he knew that if he became president, he didn’t have the authority to just make laws out of thin air—to just get rid of all this debt and student loans.
So that’s why as a candidate, he even went on the record and said, yeah, the executive, the president, doesn’t have legal authority just to forgive debts. He actually said that and defended that position. The Department of Education also in 2021 went on the record and said the same thing. They put out a memo and said, the executive, the president, does not have the authority to forgive student loans. Then he became president, and then everybody changed their tune. And so after a year into his presidency in, I think it was August of 2022, the White House put out on their website the proposal and the plan, and they unveiled it and it had more detail. And the original $10,000 of forgiveness was there if you’re eligible. And then there was a new thing, and it was $20,000. Some of you might be eligible for $20,000 of debt forgiveness, and the condition was based on your income. If you made less than $125,000 a year in 2021. So if you were low income, then qualified, you got to apply and you could qualify for being forgiven. And there were potentially 43 million students or former students who had borrowed money who would theoretically qualify. 43 million, to the tune of $1.69 trillion that President Biden was saying, yeah, you apply and then we’ll make it happen. And you can get forgiven of either $10,000 or $20,000. The $20,000 of those who could be forgiven were those who qualify for a Pell Grant, which means you were lower income, under $60,000 a year, or whatever the threshold is. So there it was. So when I heard this during the presidential election campaigns back before the 2020 election, and the Democrat platform is, they’re all saying, yeah, we’ll give you free money.
We’ll cancel your college loans. And all the Republican candidates are saying, that’s ridiculous. You can’t do that. It’s illegal. And I heard that and I thought, oh, this will never fly. This will never go anywhere. This is ridiculous. Everybody knows that’s illegal and theft because somebody’s got to pay for the loans, and then Biden actually becomes president. And then he formalizes that plan to what it currently was presented as $20,000 and $10,000 per individual to the tune of 1.7 trillion that the taxpayers are eventually going to have to fund. It was completely scandalous. That was in August of 2022. And to my surprise, there were a lot of people that I knew, even Christians, who were excited about this prospect and began applying. And so there were over 16 million people who applied for it, or 16 million people that qualified. Over 26 million people who applied as time went on, and it looked like they were all going to get their loans forgiven, and they’re just holding their fingers thinking they’re going to be forgiven of their college loans—current students, and those who recently graduated and those who had loans from previously going to college, hanging their head on this promise. And when that happened, in August of 2022, of the people I knew who were applying, I warned them and said, this ain’t going to happen. And they were concerned and said, well, why? I said, well, first of all, it’s illegal. Biden has no authority to do this. It’s morally wrong, and it’s completely unbiblical. This is theft. This is highway robbery. This is stealing. In the words of you, Derek Brown, as you told me a few days ago, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Derek: It’s not original with me, by the way.
Cliff: Where’d you get that?
Derek: I got it from David Bahnsen, who I think got it from Milton Friedman, who may have got it from somebody else.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s true. Milton Friedman, because he wrote a book in 1975. Milton Friedman, who we’ve talked about in our podcast. Great economist. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And he did get it from others before him. Okay, well, there you go. They traced its origin back to the 1930s, just before when FDR started doing his free lunches.
Derek: I see.
Cliff: That’s where it came from. Every chicken in a pot and we’ll steal it from somebody else to give it to you, or whatever. And I was telling these people, what’s going to happen is, I’m just telling you now, you just keep saving your money and get ready to pay back those college loans because this is going to the Supreme Court, and I think the Supreme Court’s going to shoot this plan of Biden’s down. And that’s what happened.
Derek: You spoke prophetically.
Cliff: Yeah, it was prophetically just based on who the judges were, and what the Constitution said. What authority does the president have? It’s pretty basic. The president doesn’t have this authority. As a matter of fact, in 2021, when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House—a very liberal democrat friend of Joe Biden and all those Democrat candidates for President—she went on the record and said, the president, the executive, can’t do this. You cannot forgive college loans.
Derek: I’ve seen that video floating around.
Cliff: Yeah, Nancy Pelosi. And she said very clearly, this has to be an act of Congress. This has to be a legislative act. The President has no authority whatsoever to do this. Well, she changed her tune as well, a year and a half later when Biden decided to do it. And she said, oh, wonderful. Let’s see where the president got his authority. That’s what she said. Let’s see where President Biden got his authority. And he supposedly got it from a law that was that was passed in 2003, but that was illegitimate.
Derek: Well, why don’t we take a break here and then when we come back, I think, do you have some quiz questions for us?
Cliff: I do.
Derek: Okay. We’re going to come back. We’re going to talk more about this topic and more about applying a biblical worldview to this topic. And we’ll begin with some quiz questions. So we appreciate you listening to With All Wisdom, and we encourage you to go to withallwisdom.org, check out articles, podcasts, and now videos, all of which are aimed at helping you grow in your relationship with the Lord Jesus. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord and His Word.
