Gareth Barry, Premier League salaries, and the Fruit of the Spirit?

I've never been reticent about criticising the salaries of Premier League footballers. Even today the transfer saga is about a player who might have to take a cut in his £52,000 a week salary. That's not to mention (not much anyway) those good few who are on a six figure sum weekly. That such a culture of greed and reward has grown exponentially is due to a distortion of values that makes greed good, and life valued by income, and a topsy turvy worldview about what is important and what sustains human community, welfare and flourishing.

But sometimes other stories need to be aired and heard. One of them concerns Gareth Barry of Manchester City whose story you can read over here. The short of it is that his luxury villa in Spain is to be made available to sick children for a holiday. Now I know that Barry earns more in a week than three nurses doing overtime can bring in for a year's shifts. But kindness remains kindness when someone chooses to be kind when they could have done otherwise. Generosity is not diminished because someone is rich. In fact Jesus told a story about a rich man who never noticed the poor man on his doorstep.

Now the theological question this raises for me is – Is kindness a fruit of the Spirit whether or not the person who acts kindly is a self-confessed Christian? Is generosity, compassion, kindness a sign, even a sacrament of the work of God? And if so, is the Spirit subverting the culture of greed by persuading, encouraging, guiding those who profit from it to make gestures of generosity, to turn disgrace into grace, to give for no other reason than it's a good thing to do?

I hope Gareth is well rewarded by letters and texts from children saying thank you for unlooked for fun and happiness.