In the last 18 months we have seen financial events that have stunned the world. Banks and building societies have collapsed, or have had to be baled out with massive injections of public money that mean they have effectively been nationalised. Whole countries have become bankrupt. Confidence in the world economic system has evaporated. Share prices have tumbled. The world is entering a major recession, which will possibly take several years to recover from. In the midst of all this, the real human cost is the millions of people who will be made unemployed, lose their income, and suffer real poverty.
Not many people predicted these events; though many are now saying, “I told you so.” In times of recession there is always much talk of cutting public spending, and imposing severe wage restraint on public sector workers. In the good times, the boom times, there’s rarely the same talk about curbing the soaring pay increases of the private sector, the workers who are rewarded with annual bonuses which nurses and teachers couldn’t hope to earn in ten or twenty years - sometimes even a lifetime - of hard work. Yet it’s obvious that this spiralling greed is one of the major factors in the present crisis.
What has Christianity got to say about any of this? As it happens, the answer is: quite a lot. If you read the Gospels, you will find that Jesus had more to say about money than almost anything else; far more, say, than he said about sexual morality. Later writers in the New Testament and in Christian tradition followed his lead. The reason is not hard to find. The way that people use money and wealth is one of the clearest indicators about their moral and spiritual health. It’s the litmus paper that shows up what we think about ourselves, how much we love other people, and even whether we really believe in God.
Here are some of the principles that govern a Christian’s use of money. We are not to be anxious about it, but to trust that God will provide for our needs. This is because not only we ourselves, but also everything that we have, comes from God. He is the source and the ultimate owner of what we own. It follows from this that we will be content with what we have, and will not waste our spirits in resenting our poverty, or envying those who have more, or striving relentlessly to enrich ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we sit idly by, waiting for God to drop money into our laps. We are also told to work honestly and conscientiously for a living, so as to provide for ourselves and our dependents. “If any will not work, neither should he eat,” says St Paul; yes, we should help those who really cannot work, but not allow a free ride for any who choose not to pull their weight, whether the idle poor or the idle rich. And we are to be generous with what we have. There’s nothing attractive about the miserable, miserly hoarder of wealth. As Christians we are called to reflect God’s nature by being generous, by using our money to serve God, and to help other people. especially the poor. By doing this we are investing in a heavenly savings account, which is so much more worthwhile than any earthly treasure.
There is something profoundly unhealthy, even evil, about a society or a world in which there is so great a gap between the rich and the poor. The last few boom years have made many of us better off, so we and Governments of all political shades have been more than happy to collude with inequality. But this reckless greed has contained the seeds of its own destruction. Far too many have been left behind in the scramble for greater wealth, and they are the very ones who suffer most, now that the inevitable day of reckoning has come.
It is time for us all to decide what we really serve: the true source of life and well-being, or the idol the world of finance has set up in its place. For, as Jesus said, you cannot serve God and Mammon.
Published in the Marston Times, February 2009