Is it a moral or legal obligation to pay a debt to a bank?

Have you read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography?
He was supposed to be almost atheist with his beliefs according to the secular world.
But just the opening paragraph of his autobiography tells another story altogether. Benjamin gave to ALL church organizations. He was a member of none but he had his own copy of the scriptures. He was most definitely a believer!

You deserve an award for reading it. Most autobiographies of that era are very dry.

amen

we should have compassion on the poor and needy, on the alien and stranger, on the naked and the destitute -- we were spiritually the same as they are materially when we were found by God and heard and believed the gospel.

giving gifts to the rich? neglecting the poor? having no regard for the foreigner? those are things the Bible calls evil, every bit if not more than it calls excusing sin wicked.

but is this the job of the church or the job of the government? that's a question the church has struggled to sort out since the 300's when for the first time a secular ruler shared our faith.

and the Bible shows us that we should as much as possible not be a burden to others - to me, that principle means we should morally pay our debts. if i have to choose between helping a stranger or making a car payment, i would make my car payment first - i am obligated to do that or i make myself a criminal, but i am only obligated to the stranger to love, and love isn't about money. if i have excess, i can help those who have none - but if i am in debt already, i have to be free from that before i can help anyone else, just like i need to clean out my own eye before i can help anyone see.

((IMO))

and also Jefferson, who had "his own" copy of scripture from which he had deleted everything he thought was miraculous!

it's a mixed bag, just like it is today. you can't count on everyone in a church to be a believer much less everyone in any particular political party to be a Christian or a non-Christian.

It appears to me that you're blaming the bank in your description above for the ignorance of a borrower who has not examined what he/she is agreeing to. It's certain that the last 2 or 3 generations of Americans, at least, did not receive a proper education and may have difficulty reading and understanding a contract. The description above shows some ingnorance as well. As a loan is paid off over the period stipulated for the loan, the initial portion that is interest will be higher because the amount involved in the loan is higher. If the loan amount is $10,000, for example, and the rate is 5%, then during the first year, simply speaking, the interest portion of the payments will amount to $500, or 5% of the loan amount. Since the loan amount will decrease slightly each month, the actual figure of interest paid at the end of the first year would be slightly less than $500. Let's say that in the last year of the loan, $2000 is left to pay. During that year, the amount of payments that will be interest will be about $100. It is the same percentage paid as the first year, but since the loan amount has decreased, the total amount of interest decreased as well.

The banks did not get most of their money upfront, they got 5% for the entire period of the loan for the amount of the loan outstanding. There's nothing underhanded or tricky about that. If a person borrows money and there is an agreement to pay interest on the loan by the borrower, what is underhanded or tricky about that? Nothing, of course. Nobody should enter in to a loan without understanding what they're getting themselves in to.

Meaningless nonsense. It's obvious you're just rationalizing so you can get out of paying what you owe.

Just do what the Spirit of Christ tells you to do; that's what a Christian does. Those with a liberal political agenda preach and do what you do.

Give me the scriptures over Ben Franklin any day.

This is a different scenario from the one described in the original post. People are not banks. If people lend money they do not have, it's called fraud and they can go to gaol. If banks do it, it's called fractional reserve banking.

The biblical definition of usury is any interest. It's ill-gotten gains - gains which were not worked for. Hence the response of the master to the accusation by the wicked servant who was entrusted with only a single talent.

So if you are saying the banks are able to charge us interest because they are our enemies and at war with us, is that not even more moral justification for not paying them back after bankruptcy, when the very laws they follow state this is not required? It seems foolish to me that one would say otherwise. Did the Israelites continue to pay tribute to the Philistines after the Israelites had defeated them? According to your thinking, that would have been the moral thing to do, right? Lol.

Christ was talking about people - brothers and sisters. A bank is a corporation - a soulless entity.

I believe banks should be subject to the same laws everyone else is subject to - i.e. fraud is illegal. (Pretending to have money you don't, in order to lend it and obtain usury upon it, is fraud). Furthermore, I believe that usury itself is evil, and should be outlawed again, as it was for millenia AD.

I agree with this, but not everyone is so fortunate as we are. Indeed, a society which embraces fraud and usury as ours has will eventually reach a stage where one is forced to borrow simply to survive. We are even beyond that point, and such a society will reap what it has sown, in a financial collapse. No one benefits on such an occasion, and the entire situation could have been avoided by morality - using sound, honest money, and not engaging in theft (usury and fraud).

Can't argue with Moses.

His is actually better.
His story cuts off right before the revolutionary War. Ben was a loyalist to the King...a complete fan of King George. But George's actions/decisions and soldiers caused Ben to not be a fan anymore.
It's not as dry as most....he was a fairly decent writer unlike most in that era.

He also had a section where he tried to do better than God's laws....but he failed and decided God was indeed smarter.

He was a highly intelligent man and despite some hubris from time to time a definite hero of a founding father.

Deuteronomy 23:20
Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

this says nothing about being at a state of war with the one you do business with.

nothing in the Bible i know of tells us to deal dishonestly or treacherously with others. if you have made a promise, you should keep your word.

i have said previously, bankruptcy fulfills your obligation to the debts covered in those bankruptcy proceedings. it is a tacit recognition of inability to keep your promise and a framework for settling your accounts.

that wicked servant called the Master wicked, saying he reaped where he did not sow. but that Master gave his servants gold expecting them to increase it by trading without he himself doing any work but lending it to them.

Is he a wicked master?

Should a person pay his debt?
YES
If you do not you should return what you bought.
One reason things cost so much is because of unpaid debt.
What I see is most debt is for things not really needed.
Learn to live debt free.

What do you expect? Either people serve God or Mammon. The world is greedy and corrupt and will use whatever means it can get away with to get rich. A bank is a place where they use your money to make someone else rich. Almost always those people don't need the money. Don't borrow if you don't like the system. It's not just banks. Every publicly owned business is obliged to put shareholders first.

Multiply this by 100,000,000. If everyone decided not to repay their loans, the banks would go broke. Then countless people would lose vast amounts of money. You know, like the great depression.

The Lord is replying in kind. The wicked servant basically accused the Lord of being a thief (Matthew 25:24 "Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:" So the Lord responds in kind - "If you really believed I was a thief, why didn't you place my talent with the other thieves (usurers), so that by my return, I might at least have had some usury back with my talent?" The Lord isn't justifying usury - he is calling out the wicked servant for being lazy, in that the wicked servant knew the Lord was not a thief (else he indeed might have placed the talent with the usurers).

You make good points, I agree, I just want to add a little a "talent" was worth about 6,000 denari, a very poor man could make a denari a day a middle class man it was about a years wages, 1 talent = 750 ounces of silver is US$10,000 (2009), $16,613.64 (2023), but the equivalent purchasing ability of a Biblical NT talant is about US$260,000.

But indeed He did "sow" a great wage also, by giving the SERVANT a talent in the first place

’ And the one who had received the one talent also came and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed, and being afraid, I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’ And his master answering, said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. Then you should have put my silver with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to him who possesses ten talents."

My point was more that usury was not permitted within the land. It is a type of plunder. It was permitted externally, to other nations (e.g. enemies, but yes, this doesn't mean there is necessarily a literal war going on). See how Leviticus describes the stranger or sojourner that lives in Israel as a brother (i.e. usury not permitted).

Leviticus 25:35 - 37
And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.
Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.
Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

By engaging in usury, I hold that one forfeits any moral high ground to demand payment after bankruptcy proceedings, but I see you indicate you believe bankruptcy fulfills one's obligations, so I suppose we reach the same conclusion, albeit by different methods.

Just want to make a small correction, made a calculation error and these are the correct numbers

US $10,000 (2009), $14,249 (2023)

but the equivalent purchasing ability of a Biblical NT talant is about US $260,000 (2009), $370,471 (2023)