Making economies

How can we make our economy work? That is the question facing not only the UK but the Eurozone too.

Bringing the economies of the 27 disparate member states of the EU under one umbrella so as to be good for all was always going to be a long shot. The initial response to the debt crisis in Europe has been to try to enforce austerity measures. With the accompanying hardship and loss of jobs, this has led to continuing riots and political turmoil in Greece, and a new President in France. Spain also teeters on the brink of needing a colossal financial bailout.

Money, money, money…

Having undermined the traditional family, the natural ‘social services’ (1 Timothy 5.8), the British government faces, among other things, a spiralling bill for the care of the elderly. But the headline of the Queen’s Speech in May was not a package for real economic growth but simply legislation to allow mothers to return to work quicker.

Hard-pressed families no doubt need money. According to Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, speaking recently: ‘We are still, by some margin, the most indebted nation on earth in terms of household debt’. He was trying to make the point that the banks only lent so much and got the country into so much trouble because people were willing to borrow way beyond their means. But what do you expect from people trained up in the secular / materialistic worldview which sees having money as everything? And if you can manage to die still in debt you will never have to pay.

What we are being taught by all this is that democratic capitalism in a society with no moral anchor faces an intractable problem. You have a government which controls neither the people’s choices nor the banks and therefore is not really in control of the economy. Furthermore, the government cannot assume that the banks will act in a way which will prosper the country rather than simply their business, shareholders and executives. But the way out is not to move towards state control of everything, which, as Communism proved, leads not only to oppression but to a moribund economy through lack of competition. The answer lies in favouring both entrepreneurs and ordinary people who have an ethical outlook which will lead them to act for the good of society. But where is our society going to get such an ethic except from the Christianity which is now so despised and rejected in our land? It is righteousness which exalts a nation (Proverbs 14.34) and makes economies.

Revival anniversary

Can our country be turned around? In 1949, two elderly women in the Hebrides, 84 and 82 years old, one blind, the other riddled with arthritis, became burdened for the spiritual state of their parish in Barvas. Not a single young man or young woman went to the church. But Peggy and Christine Smith were gripped by God’s promise in Isaiah 44.3: ‘I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground’, and they set themselves to pray twice a week, sometimes from 10.00 at night until 3.00 or 4.00 in the morning. One night, one of the sisters had a vision. She saw the church crowded with young people and a strange minister standing in the pulpit. It was out of the prayer of those two sisters that the revival on Lewis, under Duncan Campbell, began, which changed so many lives. This year is the 60th anniversary of the end of that revival. Let us ask God to send another.