Thought for the Day

Good morning. Economists, climate scientists and delegates are gathered in Paris to address what’s called the polycrisis: climate breakdown, political extremism and rising social tension. They’re considering taxes on billionaires, reductions in working hours, a change in diets and transfering investment from industry to education and health.
Right now, attention is focusing on tech bros. Some believe a few geniuses will invent our way out of our multiple crises, and are entitled to the rewards. Others maintain only a flattening of wealth across our whole society will make life sustainable beyond this generation.
It seems like a face-off between liberty and equality. What’s seldom recognised is that these are originally theological notions. Liberty says we’re fundamentally solitary creatures. Our well-being is for ourselves to determine; sin is a personal failure: repentance is a chance for individual renewal. It’s an imposition for the state to inhibit that.
By contrast equality says we’re fundamentally collective beings. Our situation in life is profoundly shaped by the social, economic and psychological conditions around us; sin is about structural and systemic forces beyond our individual ability to withstand: by combining with one another we find power to address them. The state rightly steps in to assist and protect when we’re struggling, and to catalyse and redistribute to make society fairer.
There’s plenty of support for both positions in the Bible and theology. But another thing that’s often overlooked is how these rival perspectives shaped the most basic things about early Christianity. Women and slaves flocked to the first-century church because there they found dignity and security in the face of the predations of their masters. Early Christians shared material goods and supported the needy. These were significant practices of equality. But the church also called for individual conversion. It never forgot the centrality of personal relationships and discipline.
Most tangibly, it created a weekly event in which each person, based on their individual income and material affluence, brought their respective gift to a common table; whereupon a priest described the personal and social transformation made possible by Christ; after which everyone gathered ate and drank – but crucially, each received the same.
Over the centuries this came to be called the eucharist or the mass, and was ritualised into an elaborate ceremony. But originally it was a vivid social practice that harmonised a focus on the individual in their gifts as well as their need for repentance, with the collective ideal that all could flourish and none need be left behind.
To get through the polycrisis we’re going to need all the wisdom we can get. But sometimes that wisdom lies in the past, not just the future.

04 JUNE 26

Good morning. One of the clichés of the media industry is that the public have a ‘right to know’ especially when things go wrong. It’s often true. Think of the post office scandal or the recent investigations into some of our privatised water companies. It’s important for the public to know when rules are being broken and when there’s manifest injustice.
But the right to know must be balanced by prudence. On issues of security or defence, or when vital decisions are waiting, secrecy can be important. The whole point of a democratic system is that it’s for us to choose who we trust, who we allow to keep secrets on our behalf. And all this is fine of course, until it goes wrong.
In recent days many files relating to Peter Mandelson have been made public. We’ve learnt of indiscreet remarks between him and the then Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden. There are scathing comments about the Prime Minister and other leading politicians which were never meant to see the light of day, and come across now as disloyal. Reading them I can’t help but suspect part of this was simply letting off steam. Politicians have a right, as we all do, to trust that casual remarks sometimes made in frustration won’t go any further. But of course they sometimes do and in the days of smart phones this trust is coming to seem naïve. Perhaps these days we could reflect that Jesus’ prophecy: ‘What you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in an inner chamber will be proclaimed on the housetops’.
This is very challenging. Who hasn’t said something disparaging behind someone’s back and then interacted with them as if they’d never spoken? Hypocrisy is part of the human condition. And Jesus himself warns against it. ‘Let your yea be yea and your no be no’.
That leaves it up to us to make judgments about who we trust and why, who we can safely let off steam to and who it is better to avoid. The public’s right to know has to be balanced by common sense, because in the case of secrecy, context is all: another journalistic cliché of course. But it’s true. And perhaps we should extend our sympathy to those who carry the burden of secrecy on our behalf. Not everything is a plot. Not everything said in private actually matters that much, though its exposure can be deeply embarrassing.
Jesus told his disciples to be innocent as doves but I don’t think he was telling them to take everything at face value. In the same sentence he had advised them to be as wise as serpents.

02 JUNE 26

01 JUNE 26