Where is God in the cost of living crisis?

Whether you lean right of left, no matter the paper you read, you will have noticed that the  national mood is grim as the cost of lockdown emerges; spiralling inflation, excess deaths, a dysfunctional State and- we can now add- rapidly rising energy bills caused by a toxic combination of warmongering, corporate greed, unbridled greenist ideology and short-term thinking on the part of elites who have left our nation vulnerable to cruel markets. 

Unless something radical changes we are facing not merely recession but depression. A humanitarian crisis unfolding across Europe because if bills rise as predicted small companies will go to the wall, prices will rise further to absorb costs, mass unemployment will follow and people will lose homes and savings. How has a prosperous nation like ours reached this lamentable point? 

You might think such subjects are not for the pulpit. That the answer is linked to economic principle and not religion. But you would be wrong because step back and look at the rise and fall of Empires throughout history and it becomes clear that societal decline is firmly linked to faith or, more truthfully, the loss of it. 

The American theologian and economist David P. Goldman argues this point powerfully in his book ‘Why civilisations die.’ His central thesis, drawn from a study of history, is that great civilisations emerge when people share a common religion. A common faith gifts a nation a strong belief system–and this unites and inspires people to such an extent that they themselves build a meaningful future without any need for coercion or regulation. 

During this growth phase people willingly sacrifice to build the centre and deliver the shared vision. Consider how the ancient Anglo-Saxons built wonderful stone churches to the glory of God whilst themselves living in huts. With a faith inspired hope for the future these emerging cultures also tend to have lots of children. They believe the future is bright. This too ensures prosperity, plenty of workers to support the aged and vulnerable. Regardless of the religion followed- in this enriching phase an empire grows valuing three essential things; family, faith and personal morality.  

But when a society loses its founding faith the opposite occurs. First morality collapses, then family gives way to individualism and, without sincere hope for the future, birth rates collapse. The culture is now in a death spiral of terminal decline. People no longer unite and they are not inspired to build the centre ; instead they start to take from the centre in order to look after the self. Economic collapse becomes a certainty- basic arithmetic explains it; labour is cheap when a united people build in love but is very costly when nobody gets out of bed unless personally profiting. Within a few years the emerging culture easily leapfrogs the tbloated state. Birth rates and sacrifice guarantees it.

Having rejected its historic Christian faith the West is now a hollowed out husk. It has no unifying inner life, no inspiring vision to sustain. Little wonder it has entered the phase of collapse; witness greed, decline and corruption. We reach a crossroads for Europe. Either we evangelise once more and reclaim the culture for Christ or things will get worse and then it will die to be overtaken by something else, almost certainly Islam. Atheistic secularism would love to imagine it offers us a third way but no; it lacks the requisite faith to unite and inspire and its pathetic birth rate makes viable long term future an impossibility. Hence no great Empire in history was atheistic; all such cultures have only ever been parasitical, feeding on the dying carcass of the religions they overthrew. Nature abhors a vacuum and in time a new faith always comes along to fill the void. The parasitical atheism is easily overthrown and the cycle begins once more.  

Let me put it this way. If our nation had a zealous and sincere faith in God the companies currently making billions from the production of energy would not need regulation when selling it. Those with the loot would freely choose to reinvest the profits to build up a common Christian life. They would want to care for their neighbour in need for that is what the Gospel teaches. This truth can be applied to every sector of society. It is not that we lack resources. It is that our resources are no longer put into the centre, no longer channelled where needed to build up a common life and vision. Instead they are plundered for the gain of a fortunate few. 

75 years ago all councils in England could afford libraries, free school buses, weekly bin collections (remember those!) and myriad other services which we are now told are simply too expensive. Yet the people then paid far less tax than we do. How can this be? The answer is obvious; inspired by a stronger Christian faith our grandparent’s simply chose to put more in the centre and less in their own back pocket. In the 1940’s and 1950’s there were no seven figure golden goodbyes for council leaders already on seven figure salaries, the elites took a much smaller piece of the pie for themselves; meaning there was enough residue for the good of society. Then money given to the NHS mainly went on treatment and medics not on think tanks, bureaucrats, a culture of litigation and the like. 

But perhaps the best example of this clearing out of the centre and into back pockets was seen in track and trace. People don’t realise the scale of corruption because they do not realise how much one billion really is. So here is an easy way to understand; if I gave you £1 per second it would take 12 days to reach a £million. A £billion 31.5 years. The 37 billion for track and trace -paid at £1 per second- would take 1165.5 years! Eg the person paying would have started in 856AD. Now do you see why the country is bankrupt? 

Do you see how much was taken from the centre and channelled into back pockets? Handed to “experts” who, at a time of great national emergency, did not give of their time freely or cheaply for the good of all but who charged eye watering rates for their time. That is how corruption often operates, not illegally but by taking from the centre with no regard for consequences or for future generations. Strikes me David Goldman called it right. What more evidence do we need that we are in a dying culture. That the further from Christ our nation has travelled the less we are able to flourish and be free. 

Understanding is one thing but what can we Christians do about it? The first thing is acknowledging the problem, we Christians will not change history if blindly endorsing the rot. The second thing is learn how to evangelise effectively. This too requires painful acknowledgment because the institutional church of recent years has been anything but an emboldened preacher of Christ crucified. It too has been hollowed out by worldly idealism as it swapped the hard truths of the Gospel for a fashionable espousal of favoured political causes. Yes the Western Church itself is in decline and for the exact same reason. Too many Christians, especially within the hierarchy, have lost zeal for Jesus Christ. The culture of the Church itself therefore collapses and does not unify or inspire. 

In truth it may be beyond our capability here in Pembury to save Europe! But fortunately God understands that and all he asks is that we ourselves remain faithful. When we stand before God to give account of our life he will not ask us to explain the looting I suspect is at the heart of track and trace. Nor why the global church is in crisis. But he will ask how we ran our little parish here in Pembury. It is, after all the society we can yet influence. It is our family, the place where we are being called to put into the centre and build for the greater glory of God. 

And I guess we will either tell God our little church remained little because we limped along each giving a minimum and refusing to evangelise. Or we will say our little parish thrived and grew because we really came together to look out one for the other; each giving sacrificially of time, talents and treasure. That together we built a place where all were authentically cared for, where the feeding of poor was second nature, where warmth was ever found, because, in the words of the Gospel today, we held our Eucharistic feast not to be paid in the present but because we looked to the greater repayment at the end of time. Let us look out for one another as we weather the coming storms of a failing empire. Do that with faith and, I promise, God will provide.  For in the words of the Psalmist this morning ‘In your goodness, O God, YOU provide for the needy”  Our culture needs to stop asking what can we do and needs to reflect on why we are doing it.