Doing Jesus' Work

5/31/19 USA Today has a heartwarming story about people deep in medical debt.  Churches are paying off these debts for those who lack the resources to do so and using a very clever way of doing it on the cheap:

A big part of RIP’s appeal comes from the impact even a small donation can have, say participating church leaders. When a person can’t pay a bill, that debt is often packaged with other people’s debt and sold to bill collectors for some fraction of the total amount of the bill. Those debts usually come from low-income people and are more difficult to collect.

RIP Medical Debt buys debt portfolios on this secondary market for pennies on the dollar with money from its donors. But instead of collecting the debt, RIP forgives it.

I know that many people who go into bankruptcy from medical debt often have other factors in play: gambling problems, substance abuse, and failure to obtain medical insurance when they had it available. 

Saving people from past stupidity is a lot like grace: God forgives us of our sins, even big ones, when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior.  If you keep throwing yourself back into sin, it will catch up with you again.  But think of this as a "Get Out of Jail" card from Monopoly.  And churches are doing God's work when they help with a crisis like this.  I think that I will let my pastor know about this.

Medical providers at least get some of their unpaid bills covered: better than nothing.