Radio 4 on 15th November

TFTD
Saturday 15th November
Rob Marshall


Good Morning
There is plenty of analysis and expectation of this weekend’s G20 summit. The latest economic malaise facing world leaders is a rapidly rising level of unemployment: half a million jobs were lost in the US last week; and in the UK, comparatively, the news is not much better. The steel industry, here in Sheffield, has been badly affected and Virgin Media, with a base in this city, has also announced job losses in the past seven days.

On Monday, a close friend of mine employed in the IT sector working for a financial institution, told me he had faced a stark choice: take voluntary redundancy now or have no choice but to go before Christmas.

The G20 summit will inevitably recognise the need to modernise international financial institutions, to find a way out of an economic hole in which all of us, to some extent or another, now find ourselves.

Economic health & wealth, and the lack of it, are common themes throughout the books of the Bible. Lending money at interest is condemned more than once, but it must have been very common. Jesus, for instance, has a great deal to say about our attitude to money and riches, suggesting that it is a symptom of our attitude to many other things and can betray our weaknesses.

Perhaps influenced by the collapse of the Roman Empire where there seems to have been a tremendous misuse of wealth and where the middle classes were effectively destroyed and left with virtually nothing, the Early Church Fathers recognised that it wasn’t wealth itself which was the problem: as Boniface Ramsey says : "The consensus of the Fathers is that wealth of itself is not a bad thing as long as it is properly used".

It is incumbent upon our elected leaders to work diligently and effectively to restore confidence and a more financially secure future for our children. Sean O'Grady, writing in the Independent this week, suggests that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I quote, “seems to believe our economy will soon enjoy the greatest comeback since Lazarus. He adds: He obviously believes in miracles: the world hasn't changed that much.”

Miracles, including economic ones, surely, like any other miracle, require not only faith, but an element of putting right or restoring something that was previously wrong.

John Donne puts it brilliantly: “There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require or who need miracles.”

Surely that is what this weekend’s summit is really all about: recognising errors in the past; accepting responsibility for our challenging situation and world order: and then working towards a kind of restoration which not only needs traditional faith but a certain kind of restored belief.