Credit Score

For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 2 Peter 1:4 NASB

Promises – What’s your credit score? It’s a number that determines the risk banks are willing to take with you. It’s a measure of their confidence that you have the capacity and are willing to repay. In other words, it’s an assessment of your ability to keep a promise. A good credit score in this artificial system is anything above 720. The highest possible score is 850. Why is the system “artificial?” Because it is an impersonal abstraction derived from an algorithm. It is not about your personal trustworthiness. It is about the system’s evaluation of your financial status. In our world of mathematical reduction substitutes for reality, a handshake will no longer suffice. Your promise is no longer good enough. Now you and I must have a contractual agreement and you must demonstrate to me that I can trust you by proving you meet some artificial measurement called a credit score. One of the tragic consequences of leaving village life behind is the disruption of personal trustworthiness.

What is God’s credit score? Ah, don’t automatically jump to the conclusion that it must be 850 since that is the highest score anyone can achieve in this system. Instead, remember what the credit score is really about, i.e., a past history of capacity and willingness to pay. Now ask what is God’s credit score? Has He always demonstrated His capacity and willingness to pay, to keep His promises? That begs the question: By whose standards? Examine your own history with God. Has He always shown Himself capable and willing to keep His promises to you? I would be quite shocked if you answered, “Yes.” My guess is that all of us have experienced times when, in spite of the promises God made, He doesn’t seem to be willing (or able?) to keep them. Has He always kept you safe, healthy, prosperous? Didn’t He promise those things to His children who kept Torah? Has He always comforted you, encouraged you, given you peace? Didn’t He also promise that? Are you beginning to see a problem here?

If we measure God’s credit score on the same artificial grounds that we use to determine financial worthiness in our world, I’m afraid we must conclude that God doesn’t fare so well. There is no doubt about His capacity to deliver, but experience often shows that He doesn’t. What are we to make of this? Able to pay but doesn’t? That sounds like a very low credit score to me. And that demonstrates the great flaw in the way we think about promises. You see, God’s promises are not measured on the basis of delivery. They are measured on the basis of character. The fact that God doesn’t always seem to deliver does not affect the validity of the promise because the promise is not based on what He does. It is based on who He is. If God makes a promise, the promise is good because God made it, even if we don’t see the results of the promise in any way that we would have expected. Because we are conditioned by artificial systems of promise fulfillment, we begin to believe that the only effective measure of the trustworthiness of the promise-maker is payment. In our system, if you don’t pay according to the schedule, then you aren’t worthy of trust. But in God’s world, His promise is completely trustworthy no matter what because the terms of the promise are not set by us, the recipients of the promise. They are set by the promise-maker. We often confuse who receives the promise and who make the promise. In our system, we, the ones who borrow, make the promise to repay. But in God’s system, He, the one who loans, makes the promise, and we, the beneficiaries of His promises, do not get to determine the terms of delivery.

Now just a bit of curious linguistics. The Greek word for “promise” is epangello. In classical Greek, this word originally meant, “to declare, to indicate, to report” and was used with regard to issuing orders or judgments. Interestingly, there is only one occurrence where this word is used in relation to a promise of a deity. Do you suppose that is because pagan gods didn’t make promises? They could not be held accountable for anything since it was entirely up to men to placate and appease them before they would act. The curious thing about this word is this: “There is no prior history in the OT, for the MT and LXX use different words for God’s pledges or promises. Paul, however, links epangelía and euangélion and views OT history from the standpoint of epangéllesthai. We thus think of Heb. dbr and LXX laleín or eipeín (cf. Gen. 18:19) in terms of “promise.” The NT usage follows that of Hellenism; we find sense d. in 1 Tim. 4:8 etc. and sense e. in Mk. 14:11 etc.”^[1]

Amazing! In the Tanakh, dabar is the equivalent of “promise.” Do you realize that this is the basis of the aphorism, “A man is as good as his word”? In the Tanakh, the sense of community is so strong that what I say is my promise. There is no distinction between my words and my character. I am what I speak. And so is God. He is what He says.

This is difficult for us to grasp since we live in the artificial world of algorithms, substitutes for true human involvement and experience. We are not a “global village.” We are a global calculus, interconnected but essentially discrete and capable of disassociation. Words today are no longer promises. They are merely symbols for more complex equations, some of which have no solutions at all.

Welcome to Babylon.

Topical Index: promise, epangello, dabar, 2 Peter 1:4

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (240–241). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.