I’ve been thinking about money – for the purposes of this post multiply the Scottish pound note by approximately 128 million.The following three headlines appeared on The Glasgow Herald website. One speaks of ‘record starting salaries and unprecedented competition’; the second suggests £128 million is incidental to a footballer’s lifeplan; the third comes on top of reports of record debt amongst Uk consumers.
Graduates are set to earn record starting salaries when they leave university this summer but face unprecedented competition for the best jobs, research has found.Former England captain David Beckham has denied his £128 million move to the United States is purely for money, saying he wants to boost the game’s popularity.Homeowners were dealt a New Year blow after a shock decision by the Bank of England to raise interest rates for the third time since August.
Away from the headlines was another piece of news with financial implications:
Scotland’s manufacturing industry received a massive blow last night with the loss of 650 jobs at NCR’s Dundee plant.
I have to say the money link was easy enough to make. And my unease came closer to distress listening to David Beckham’s disclaimer followed by the bewildered anger of hard working folk who feel they’ve been sold down the river (Tay, Danube?). Decades ago Abba inadvertently gave us lines of prophetic satire
I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay
Aint it sad
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
Thats too bad
In my dreams I have a plan
If I got me a wealthy man
I wouldnt have to work at all, Id fool around and have a ball…
Aint it sad
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
Thats too bad
In my dreams I have a plan
If I got me a wealthy man
I wouldnt have to work at all, Id fool around and have a ball…
Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich mans world
There’s something linguistically ironic about ‘bread’ being a slang term for dough, sorry money. ‘Human beings shall not live by bread alone, but by the words that come from the mouth of God.’ And anyway, said Jesus, ‘What does it profit any person, to gain the world and lose their soul?’ Jesus wasn’t against wealth, he just understood it better than us – he also understood us better than us – that part of us so easily tempted to equate security and happiness with the bottom line.
Is my unease, sadness, and simmering anger only the politics of envy, or do they stem from the feeling that the politics of Jesus inevitably give rise to such an accusation? How do we effectively call in question the set-up of a society where the bottom line is such a lethal economic weapon, and such a powerful economic motive? I don’t feel informed enough, or competent in economics to explain the decisions of the management of NCR, the inflationary fears of the Bank of England, or the ludicrously lucrative footballer contracts – not in business terms, anyway.
Theological ethics is something else. There is something unsettling about the fact that money can be so corrosive of our humanity. If you get £128m over 5 years are you a person or a commodity? If you have to fight in the marketplace of ‘unprecedented competition’ for a job are other people to be seen as opponents, rivals, threats to our life aspirations? On the other hand, what does it do to a person’s sense of worth and human purposefulness, to feel lied to, used, and then disposed of to protect the bottom line?
‘Two things I ask of thee; deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me faleshood and lying:
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny thee and say ‘Who is the Lord?’,
or lest I be poor, and steal and profane the name of my God. Proverbs 30.7-9.
A good prayer – wise sentiments – but the cool realism of the sage needs supplementing with the radical outrage of the prophet. "Selling the needy for a pair of trainers", "trampling on the heads of the poor", "the notable people of the foremost nation who feel secure" – Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and Jesus, represent an alternative, less comfortable economics!
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