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  • Biblically Responsible Investing: Should Christians Avoid “Sin Stocks”?

    Biblically Responsible Investing: Should Christians Avoid “Sin Stocks”?

    There’s no direct command in Scripture about which specific companies a Christian can or can’t hold shares in, and this is a genuine area where thoughtful believers disagree. Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI) is the term for intentionally screening investments to avoid companies profiting from industries like alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or pornography. It’s a more specific question than the broader one we’ve already covered: is investing in the stock market itself gambling?

    The Case for Screening These Investments Out

    Some Christians reason that owning stock, even a small fraction of a share, makes you a genuine part-owner of that company’s profits, and by extension, its business. If a company profits specifically from something Scripture treats as harmful, some believers feel investing in it, however indirectly, quietly puts you in partnership with that harm.

    The Case for Not Worrying About It

    Others point out that broad index funds, the kind most people actually invest in for retirement, inevitably include hundreds of companies across every industry, and meticulously screening each one is impractical for most ordinary investors. This view holds that owning a tiny fractional share in a diversified fund is different in kind from actively working for or promoting a harmful industry, and that the more important question is how you personally earn and spend money, not which index a retirement account happens to include.

    A Real, Practical Option

    For those who do want to screen their investments, BRI-specific funds now exist that explicitly exclude these industries while still offering broad diversification, giving believers who feel strongly about this a real, practical middle path rather than a choice between full screening effort and no consideration at all.

    What Actually Matters

    Romans 14 addresses exactly this kind of disputable matter directly: “Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord… So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another.” (NIV, adapted context) Investment screening is precisely the kind of conviction Scripture treats as a matter of personal conscience, not universal command. What matters most is investing thoughtfully and prayerfully according to your own conviction, without assuming everyone who invests differently is being less faithful.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial or investment advice. Consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading

  • Is Refinancing Your Mortgage Ever Unwise, Biblically Speaking?

    Is Refinancing Your Mortgage Ever Unwise, Biblically Speaking?

    Refinancing a mortgage isn’t inherently wise or unwise. It’s a tool, and like most financial tools, the wisdom or foolishness lives almost entirely in the reason it’s being used. Getting the best rate also depends heavily on where your credit score actually stands.

    What Refinancing Actually Does

    Refinancing replaces your current mortgage with a new one, typically to secure a lower interest rate, change the loan term, or access home equity in cash. It resets the loan, which means new closing costs, generally 3-6% of the loan principal according to Freddie Mac, and often a new amortization schedule that starts the interest-heavy early years of repayment over again.

    The Good-Faith Reasons

    Refinancing to secure a meaningfully lower interest rate, one that genuinely reduces total interest paid over the life of the loan even after accounting for closing costs, is straightforward good stewardship. So is refinancing from a 30-year to a 15-year term to pay off a home faster, even if the monthly payment rises, because the household budget can genuinely support it. These are situations where refinancing serves a clear, measurable, long-term benefit.

    Where It Gets Riskier

    Cash-out refinancing, pulling equity out of a home as cash, is where the picture gets more complicated. Using that cash for a genuine, income-generating purpose, a major home repair that protects the property value, or paying off much higher-interest debt, can be reasonable. Using it to fund vacations, upgrade a lifestyle, or cover ongoing expenses a budget can’t otherwise support is a very different use of the same tool, and it quietly converts equity built over years into new, long-term debt attached to the home.

    The Preparation Principle

    Proverbs 24:27 offers a genuinely practical sequencing principle: “Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.” (NIV) The wisdom here isn’t really about farming. It’s about sequence: prepare the foundation before building on top of it. A refinance that’s carefully calculated, with real numbers run on the break-even point and total interest, is fields being readied first. A refinance chased quickly because a lower payment sounds appealing, without doing that math, is building before the ground is ready.

    The Simple Math Test

    Before refinancing for any reason, it’s worth calculating the actual break-even point: divide the total closing costs by the monthly savings the new loan produces. The result is how many months it takes to recoup what refinancing costs. If a refinance costs $5,000 and saves $250 a month, the break-even point is 20 months, meaning you’d need to stay in the home at least that long for the refinance to have actually saved money. A refinance that saves money on paper but resets the clock in a way that costs more over the full life of the loan isn’t wisdom just because the monthly payment looks smaller.

    Where This Leaves Us

    Refinancing itself was never the moral question. The question worth actually sitting with is simpler: is this decision being made from a place of careful preparation, real numbers, and a clear purpose, or is it being made because a lower payment or quick cash sounds good in the moment. The tool is neutral. The posture behind using it usually isn’t.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial or lending advice. Consider speaking with a licensed mortgage professional about your specific situation. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading

  • Should Christians Care About Their Credit Score?

    Should Christians Care About Their Credit Score?

    A credit score measures something Scripture genuinely does care about, whether you can be trusted to do what you said you’d do, even though the Bible obviously never mentions the concept directly. Whether that means you should actively pursue a high score is where thoughtful Christian voices actually disagree, and it’s worth knowing since it directly affects real decisions later, like whether refinancing a mortgage actually makes sense for you.

    What a Credit Score Actually Measures

    A credit score is a numerical summary of borrowing history: whether payments were made on time, how much available credit is being used, and how long accounts have been open. It’s not a measure of income, savings, or net worth. It’s specifically a measure of repayment reliability.

    One Well-Known View: Ignore It Entirely

    Dave Ramsey, one of the most influential voices in Christian personal finance, has taken a famously hard line on this. In a widely shared statement, he described a credit score as simply an I love debt rating, arguing it measures nothing about actual financial health, only how much you’ve borrowed and repaid. Ramsey has gone further, telling followers that having no credit score at all, a score of zero, is a genuinely good outcome, not a problem to fix.

    The Pushback From Other Financial Voices

    Plenty of financial professionals, including some who share Ramsey’s broader debt-averse philosophy, push back specifically on the credit-score-of-zero advice. In practice, a credit check affects far more than loan approval: utility deposits, cell phone plans, apartment rental applications, auto insurance rates, and sometimes even job applications all commonly reference credit history. Having no score at all, rather than a low one, can make basic parts of daily life measurably harder, not easier.

    What Scripture Actually Speaks To

    Scripture doesn’t weigh in on FICO scores, but it does weigh in on reputation and trustworthiness directly. Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” (NIV) A credit score, imperfectly and narrowly, is one modern proxy for a very old idea: whether your word and your follow-through can be relied on.

    Where This Actually Goes Wrong

    The real danger isn’t caring about your credit score. It’s chasing the number itself, taking on debt specifically to improve it, treating a high score as an achievement worth pursuing for its own sake, rather than as a natural byproduct of consistent, honest financial behavior. That’s where the Ramsey critique has real teeth: a credit score can start to feel like a scoreboard for something that was never supposed to be a game.

    Where This Leaves Us

    You don’t have to choose between Ramsey’s ignore-it-entirely camp and a maximize-the-number mindset. A middle path exists, and it’s probably the most common one in practice: pay everything on time, keep debt modest and purposeful rather than something pursued to build a score, and let the credit score be a quiet byproduct of faithfulness rather than a goal in itself. Whatever number results from that is genuinely secondary to the character it reflects.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial advice. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading

  • Is It Biblical to Negotiate Medical Debt or Settle for Less Than You Owe?

    Is It Biblical to Negotiate Medical Debt or Settle for Less Than You Owe?

    Negotiating a medical bill down, or settling it for less than the original amount, is not the same as refusing to pay a debt. Scripture takes honoring debt seriously, but it also has real precedent for structured relief when a debt becomes genuinely unbearable. This is exactly the kind of unexpected expense an emergency fund is meant to absorb, though many people are facing this reality without one already in place.

    A Real, Growing Problem

    According to Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) national surveys, about 41% of U.S. adults currently carry some form of medical or dental debt, whether it’s on a credit card, in a payment plan, owed directly to family, or headed to collections. It’s a uniquely difficult category of debt: it’s rarely voluntary, it’s often incurred during a genuine emergency, and the initial billed amount frequently has little relationship to what insurers or the hospital itself would actually accept. Hospitals routinely negotiate their own rates with insurance companies, which means the sticker price handed to an uninsured or underinsured patient is often not a fixed, non-negotiable number at all.

    The Biblical Precedent for Debt Relief

    Scripture doesn’t treat debt relief as a foreign concept. Deuteronomy 15:1-2 establishes the Sabbatical year: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts… every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite.” (NIV) This wasn’t a suggestion for the exceptionally generous, it was a structured, expected part of how the community managed debt. God built a rhythm of relief directly into the economic life of his people, not as an exception to good stewardship, but as part of it.

    Negotiating in Good Faith vs. Avoiding a Debt

    There’s a meaningful difference between the two postures worth being honest about. Negotiating in good faith means being transparent about your actual financial situation, communicating directly rather than going silent, and following through on whatever payment plan or settlement is agreed to. Avoiding a debt means ignoring it, hoping it disappears, or being dishonest about your ability to pay. The first is a reasonable, even wise, response to a genuinely difficult situation. The second is the kind of behavior Scripture consistently warns against.

    Mercy Runs Both Directions

    It’s worth noting that hospitals and billing departments are not automatically the villain in this picture either. Many have real financial assistance programs, charity care policies required of nonprofit hospitals, and structured negotiation processes built specifically for situations like this, and using them isn’t manipulation, it’s using the system as it was actually designed to work. Recent regulatory changes have also removed many smaller medical collection accounts from credit reports entirely, a meaningful, if partial, acknowledgment that this category of debt deserves different treatment than ordinary consumer debt. Mercy in this scenario isn’t just something the debtor hopes to receive. It’s often something already built into the system, waiting for someone to simply ask.

    Where This Leaves Us

    If you’re facing medical debt that feels impossible, negotiating it honestly, requesting an itemized bill, asking about financial assistance programs, or proposing a realistic payment plan, is not a failure of faith or integrity. It’s stewardship under real, often unchosen, financial pressure. The dishonoring path isn’t asking for help. It’s silence, avoidance, or dishonesty about what you can actually pay. Bringing the difficulty into the light, rather than hiding from it, is itself an act of the same integrity Scripture asks of every debt, however it eventually gets resolved.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial, legal, or medical billing advice. Consider speaking with a hospital financial counselor or a nonprofit credit counseling service about your specific situation. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading

  • Should You Tithe on Gross or Net Income?

    Should You Tithe on Gross or Net Income?

    There’s no verse that settles whether tithing should be calculated on gross income (before taxes and deductions) or net income (what actually lands in your bank account). Both are genuinely common, faithful practices among believers, and the honest answer is that this is a personal decision, not a biblical mandate either direction. It’s a natural follow-up to a bigger question we’ve already tackled: is the 10% tithe itself a command or a guideline?

    The Case for Gross Income

    Some Christians point to Old Testament tithing, which was calculated on the full harvest or flock, not after some portion had already been set aside for other obligations. Tithing on gross income, in this view, honors God with the “first fruits,” the full increase, before anything else touches it, including taxes.

    The Case for Net Income

    Others point out that taxes aren’t discretionary spending, they’re an obligation deducted before the money is ever truly “yours” to give from. Under this view, net income more accurately reflects actual increase, what a person genuinely has available to steward, and tithing on the full gross amount could mean giving more than 10% of real, usable income once taxes are accounted for.

    What Actually Matters More Than the Formula

    2 Corinthians 9:7 offers the principle worth anchoring to here: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (NIV) Scripture’s emphasis consistently lands on the posture behind giving, cheerful, willing, consistent, rather than a precise mathematical formula. Getting stuck on gross-versus-net can quietly become a way of turning generosity into an accounting exercise, when the actual point was never the specific number.

    Where This Leaves You

    Whichever way you calculate it, gross or net, do it consistently, prayerfully, and without treating the other choice as the wrong one for someone else. This is a genuine case where reasonable, faithful believers land in different places, and that’s alright.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial or tax advice. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading

  • Should Christians Use Buy Now, Pay Later Services?

    Should Christians Use Buy Now, Pay Later Services?

    Buy Now, Pay Later isn’t inherently sinful, but it is a form of debt, and it deserves the same honest evaluation Scripture asks us to bring to any borrowing. Here’s how to think it through. If margin is tight enough that BNPL feels necessary, it may be worth starting with building a real emergency fund instead.

    What BNPL Actually Is

    Buy Now, Pay Later services like Afterpay, Klarna, and Affirm let you split a purchase into several payments, often four installments over six weeks, with no interest if you pay on time. It’s marketed as smarter than a credit card: no interest, no annual fee, and it’s baked right into checkout at thousands of retailers. By 2026, roughly 96 million Americans are expected to use a BNPL service.

    Is It Actually Debt?

    Functionally, yes. You’re receiving something now and promising future payment for it, which is the basic definition of debt regardless of what it’s branded as. The absence of interest, when payments are made on time, is a real difference from a credit card. But according to LendingTree’s 2026 Buy Now, Pay Later Report, 47% of BNPL users say they’ve paid late on a loan in the past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024, a trend moving in the wrong direction, not the right one.

    The Real Risk: It Doesn’t Feel Like Debt

    The genuine concern with BNPL isn’t the mechanics, it’s the psychology. Splitting $200 into four $50 payments makes a purchase feel dramatically smaller than it is, which can quietly erode the kind of deliberate, planned spending Scripture consistently points toward. LendingTree’s research also found a troubling shift: a growing share of BNPL users now report using it for groceries, not just discretionary purchases, a sign the tool is increasingly covering needs rather than wants. Proverbs 21:5 says, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” (NIV) BNPL is engineered, by design, to reduce the friction between wanting something and buying it. That’s precisely the kind of haste this proverb warns against.

    A Simple Discernment Test

    Rather than a blanket rule, a more useful question is this: would you make this exact purchase today if you had to pay the full amount upfront, right now, from money already in hand? If the honest answer is no, the four-payment plan isn’t making the purchase wiser. It’s just making it easier to say yes to something you’d otherwise pause on.

    Where This Leaves Us

    Christians land in different places here. Some avoid BNPL entirely, treating any deferred payment as a discipline risk not worth taking. Others use it deliberately and carefully, for planned purchases they could afford outright anyway, simply to smooth out cash flow. Neither position is unbiblical on its face. What matters more than which camp you’re in is whether your use of it reflects patience and planning, or whether it’s quietly becoming a way to want things faster than your actual means allow. That’s a question worth being honest with yourself about, far more than a question of which app is on your phone.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial advice. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading

  • Is Investing in the Stock Market Gambling? A Biblical Look

    Is Investing in the Stock Market Gambling? A Biblical Look

    No, investing in the stock market is not gambling, and the difference isn’t just semantic. Gambling creates risk that didn’t need to exist, purely for entertainment. Investing takes on calculated risk in exchange for a share in something real: the ongoing growth of actual businesses. Understanding that difference changes how the whole question should be approached.

    What Makes Gambling, Gambling

    A casino game has a built-in house edge. The odds are structured so that, over enough time, the house wins and the player loses, by design. Nothing productive is being built. No value is being created. The money simply moves from one party to another based on chance.

    The stock market works differently. When you buy a share of a company, you’re buying a small ownership stake in a real, functioning business, one that makes products, employs people, and, if it’s run well, grows in value over time. Historically, the S&P 500 has averaged roughly a 10% annual return since its inception. That’s not a coin flip. It’s the aggregate outcome of real companies producing real goods and services over time.

    The Question Almost Nobody Asks: Is “Safe” Actually Safe?

    Here’s the part of this conversation that gets skipped most often. As of August 2026, the national average savings account pays just 0.63% APY, according to Bankrate. Inflation, meanwhile, sat at roughly 3.4-3.5% as of mid-2026. That gap matters enormously: money sitting in a typical savings account isn’t neutral or risk-free, it’s quietly losing purchasing power every single year, even while the account balance itself never goes down.

    Put concretely: $10,000 sitting in a national-average savings account for a year earns about $63 in interest, while inflation alone erodes roughly $340-350 worth of that money’s purchasing power over the same period. The number in the account grew. What that number can actually buy shrank. That’s a real, measurable risk, it’s just a quieter, less visible one than a stock price dropping on a screen.

    A Tool, Not a Verdict

    The honest answer is that the stock market is a tool, and like most tools, it can be used wisely or recklessly. Day-trading with money you can’t afford to lose, chasing hot tips, or treating individual stock picks like a lottery ticket does start to resemble gambling in practice, even though it’s technically “investing.” Broad, diversified, long-term investing, the kind most people actually mean when they talk about retirement accounts and index funds, operates on an entirely different principle: patient ownership in real productive assets, not a bet on a single unpredictable outcome.

    What Scripture Actually Points Toward

    Jesus told a parable about exactly this kind of stewardship in Matthew 25:14-30, the parable of the talents. A master entrusts his servants with resources before a journey. Two of them put the money to work and it grows. The third, out of fear, buries his portion in the ground to keep it perfectly safe, and he’s the one rebuked on the master’s return, not for losing money, but for refusing to put what he’d been given to productive use at all. “You wicked, lazy servant!” the master says in verse 26. “You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.” (NIV) The parable doesn’t celebrate the safest possible choice. It celebrates faithful, productive stewardship, and treats excessive caution, not risk itself, as the actual failure.

    Where This Leaves You

    Investing in the stock market, done broadly and with a long time horizon, isn’t gambling. It’s participation in real economic growth, the same kind of productive stewardship the parable of the talents commends. Like any tool, it can be misused, and caution about how you invest is genuinely wise. But caution about whether to invest at all, once you understand what the alternative actually costs, deserves the same scrutiny.

    This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial or investment advice. Consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

    References and Further Reading