BANKRUPTCY

It has been three weeks since I wrote a column (and I apologise that I was unable to do a column last week as intended), and what a torrid three weeks they have been. The spotlight has been on the near financial collapse of certain European nations and the euro, the raising of the U.S. national debt ceiling to over $14 trillion, and the U.K. riots. And all this followed on from News of the World scandal of late July! The theme that runs through all these chaotic events is one of bankruptcy, financial and moral; we have been hitting some devastating “lows”. The problems will quickly move from the News Headlines, but they won’t move so quickly from our society.


The lasting legacy from the 2008 financial crash is the awful spectre of bankruptcy that now stalks the nations of the western world. For some ten years those western nations, and their people, lived on seemingly never-ending debt in a huge bubble of spending. The bankers played with the debt and made huge profits. Now the bubble has burst, the accumulated debt simply hangs like a great crippling ball on the feet of people everywhere and particularly on those sovereign nations who have had to step in and take on the debts accumulated by banks and financial houses through their appalling malpractices. Consequently national debt in all western nations stands at an appalling and unprecedented level. It simply has to be contained; we can’t live with national deficits and growing debt any more. At last the penny has dropped. This stands in sharp contrast to China and Middle Eastern countries which have gained massive savings through financing our debt. Debt means poverty, and we are poor.


This debt problem is not helped by the fact that the 2008 crash slowed down the economy, making large holes in national tax revenue when increases are desperately needed. No one quite knows how to get the economy going again – we can’t spend our way out of it – that means more debt. And while people generally recognise the need for cuts in national expense, they naturally don’t respond kindly to the cuts which touch them personally. It’s a politician’s nightmare! Obama has been badly wounded by the political quarrels surrounding the raising of the U.S. debt ceiling, Sarkosy of France and Merkel of Germany have yet to fully resolve the very difficult euro crisis, and George Osborne, the U.K. Chancellor, can only keep his head down and hope the massive dangers abroad don’t reach him. The ball of debt is firmly chained to all these nations, however, and when one falls (or the euro falls!) we are all likely to fall together.


The riots across the U.K. have revealed another kind of bankruptcy; a bankruptcy of moral and social conscience amongst a violent underclass at the bottom of our society for whom life offers little hope or purpose; an underclass bereft of disciplined family role models and locked into violent acquisitive role models. This has always been a recurring problem of city life and impersonal economic systems, and has a multiplicity of roots. The young teenage aspect is very distressing. Clearly, putting down riots, and forcibly if necessary, is expected from government. But we all know that, though necessary, it only puts a temporary lid on a very difficult issue. Much will be written and said – and that’s good!


Fortunately the rioting has also thrown up a rich vein of real social and moral consciousness among many, even among the victims. There was nothing to match the stature of the older Muslim gentleman in Birmingham who, having heard of the wanton killing of his favourite son, deliberately turned his back on anything of vengeance and pleaded with his neighbours and others from different cultures not to escalate the violence but to act for the quiet restoration of peace. As I thought about him I seemed to hear the loving words of Jesus, “Son, you are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven”. That man was anything but bankrupt. The same could be said of those who were spotlighted because they work among the underclass with incredible patience, sacrifice and compassion to try to reform. It is with these kind of people that future hope rests, when press and politicians have moved on.

What those people are doing propmpts me to say:
“Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven”.
That is Jesus' word to every individual living in dark times.



Bob




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