When Does Loan Me Mean Give Me?

Deuteronomy 28:12 - The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend too many nations but will borrow from none. NIV

C. V. White Quote: (When you fail to plan financially you plan to go into someone else’s checkbook.)

When Does Loan Me Mean Give Me?

Some people have not learned the difference between a loan and a gift.  Lend me and give me are two different things. The difference is a life skill that should be learned as a child. 

Have you ever heard a child say to a parent loan me a dollar or let me hold a dollar? It may be a different statement depending on what state you live in but for a child it literally means give me.  They know if they say lend me it is different from give me. But they are thinking that they will have a better chance of getting it if they ask for it as if they were going to give it back.  They know that they do not have any income except an allowance if their parents are parents that give allowances if not; they have no way to give it back. Therefore, they know that their parents have that information as well.  If their parents do not teach them the difference between loaning a dollar and giving a dollar, they grow up to be adults with that kind of understanding.  Adults are expected to have the desire to pay back money or any item that they borrow, however persons that were not taught the difference as children, still ask to borrow when they really are asking for it to be given to them.  Once the loan transaction is made they are very relaxed about giving it back if they ever do. 

This is more common among family and friends but some people have this attitude when they borrow from institutions.  If you ask some of them that do this, they may say something like I am not working to pay bills I am working to live.  The truth of the matter is that you are working for the lender if you borrow.  What you are literally saying to a person or to an institution when you borrow is “I am committing my future earning to you and when I get my check you get yours first”. If that is not the understanding that a person has they do not know the difference between borrowing and giving.

Sometimes people will have the money to pay their debts but they do not because they are still operating out of the mind of a child expecting adult results.  The adult reality is that if you go to family and friend too many times to borrow money or anything else and do not make a practice of paying it back they will not continue to loan you things, and when you really want a genuine loan there is not one available.