December 08 +Graham When Money Becomes Our Idol
We all know that High Street shops are having a hard time. People are tightening their belts and spending less. This is a difficult Christmas. But there is much to learn from what has happened.
The sober mood indicates a degree of chastening. All over the world massive debt has built up. In order to keep satisfying our greed for more, households, banks and even nations have borrowed far too much - households to have expensive mortgages and more goods; nations to finance hospitals, education, roads and armies; banks to lend with a view to greater profits. And then - panic set in - loans might turn bad. Very quickly, banks were unable to borrow to meet their current lending obligations. Confidence collapsed; shares were sold; loans were unavailable. We call it the ‘credit crunch'. The world's banking system cannot manage without trust - the faith that my money will be safe, grow in value and what I am owed will be repaid to me.
Why has it happened? Because the insatiable desire for more has driven us beyond being prudent in the loans we took out; and the banks, looking for ever greater profits, took huge risks in the extent of their borrowing and lending.
What are the consequences? Good projects are being abandoned. Tax revenues are well down so our nation borrows even more. Huge sums of national money have been poured into recapitalising the banks; but ordinary business people are being denied what would previously have been routine loans.
Who will be the greatest losers in the credit crunch? It will be the poorer nations who lose the investment they need, who cannot now borrow to meet their obligations and who will have far less to spend on health, food and education. The losers will also be those whose livelihood is dependent on a thriving economy. We need to think about those who will have no jobs or who will lose the support of government funded social care, many of them among our weakest citizens.
Money has become our No. 1 idol. Even secular commentators have pointed this out. Humankind will always choose something to worship, something to be the supreme focus of our motivation and attention. If that is not God and his just ways, it will be something else: most commonly in Britain, a high standard of living based on money and possessions.
Yet at Christmas we remember that God came into our messy and fallen world to rescue us, to forgive us and to teach us how we might live. This Christmas is not a time for spending what we do not have and increasing our debt. Many children have far more presents than they have time to play with. And it really isn't necessary to feel that we must have all the Christmas trimmings. It is a time for common sense; for spending only what we have; and for worshipping the God who alone can help us to get everything into the right perspective. With God, life is about love, not possessions, about worshipping him, not the things that can collapse around us. With God in our worship, we are no longer driven and the things of daily life take their rightful and common sense proportions. Maybe all that has happened will help us to be wiser in the future.
Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle.
