December 23, 2024

Not Forgiving Debts

February 1, 2005 by

Not Forgiving Debts

This was written for the Church Times February 2005

The debt forgiveness campaign has taken a steady move forward this week with the G8 summit and its commitment in principle to cancel debts of the poorest countries. It is encouraging that Gordon Brown has led the way in addressing the issue amongst finance ministers, and the work to come will test the real strength of the resolutions. The campaign is now a broad one, but its roots were in the biblical principle of debt cancellation, echoed in the Scottish version of the Lord’s prayer: ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Forgiving the debts of the poor, not least of poorest countries in Africa is a very high priority. The link between debt and poverty has long been clear. Currencies quickly become depressed by repayment burdens, and annual debt repayments can take half the export earnings in some countries. Nevertheless, the cancellation of three hundred billion dollars of debt is a substantial undertaking, and will need to be done with care about how the new resources are used. And debt forgiveness will not close down other issues of trade fairness and openness, or exploitation and global slavery. These all will have to be addressed if African and worldwide poverty is really to be cut in half.

There are some interesting economics which surround this kind of decision. The link with the Marshall Plan after 1945 is often drawn. Then, the United States gave help to the devastated countries of Europe which enabled them to rebuild and recover much more quickly. The trade benefits and export buoyancy also allowed the United States to enjoy a level of growth that would not have otherwise happened. Giving and writing off debt proved of benefit to the giver. This process is not some kind of magic. It grows from the interdependence of our economic activities. At the same time, the costs of debt forgiveness are real, and the decision has to be one of principle. The motive has to be concern for our neighbours and not self-interest.

The Marshall Plan was a long time ago, and this week the United States was in different  mood, deciding against participation in the process of cancelling debt. Given the size of the American economy, this is a major set-back.  There is also a deep irony embedded in this decision. For the United States is by far the world’s greatest debtor. Their debt is not directly owed to the IMF or other international agencies, but is the accumulated debt resulting from trade deficit. The figure is some $4 trillion and is running at an astounding annual rate of half a trillion dollars. This is big, resulting from the United States’ demand for goods and energy to support an affluent lifestyle. And although the dollar has lost about a sixth of its value recently, this kind of deficit will not easily shrink. As long as investors worldwide are prepared to hold their investments in US dollars the debt can be sustained. If they are not, the dollar will slide further and disinvestment in the United States could be considerable.

Jesus told a salutary story of a great debtor who refused to forgive the debt of small debtor when he himself was not having to pay anything back. The double standard brought condemnation and disaster. It’s a parable which has a frightening relevance. Where the richest nations are the world’s greatest debtors, and the richest of all is not prepared to forgive the debts of the needy and exploited, something seems amiss. And the effects of the decision could reverberate in world affairs for years to come.

Oxford

February 2005

 

Filed Under: Church Times

All Schools are Faith Schools

January 1, 2005 by

All Schools are Faith Schools

This was written for The Times, Education Section in January 2005

As new concepts become established in our normal vocabulary we often need to question the assumptions they carry. This last week independent faith schools have been  probed on their teaching of citizenship by the Ofsted Chief Inspector, and the words, “faith schools” have been used repeatedly. Of course we know what they are. They are schools where Christianity, the Jewish faith, Islam or Sikhism is taught as part of the process of education. That much is clear.

The problem lies more with the other category created by the concept of ‘faith schools’, namely, ‘non-faith’ schools. and the pupils within them. “Faith” is an outlook on life by which a person chooses to live. And we could say that every person so chooses, actively or by default. We can have faith in money, science, progress, technology, fame or God. These commitments may not be exclusive, or they may be. (One can have faith conjointly in science and technology, but God and money might be more difficult.) In this sense of the term every school has a range of faiths which it teaches implicitly or explicitly. They may well be embodied in a school’s mission statement, and involve ideas like excellence, service, self-fulfilment, rounded education and so on. It does not seem contentious to say that in all schools staff and students are probing issues of faith much of the time.

Yet throughout much of the modern era, some educational traditions have tried to deny this. They have often asserted that what children were to be taught was not a matter of faith, but of universal publicly agreed knowledge. They were to be taught the facts, or science, or objectively or in a value-free way. History is a good example. The subject was 1066 and all that, effectively a catalogue of the political regimes which dominated British and world history. Yet the actual process of study gradually uncovered a history that was  social, economic, cultural, women’s, the underdog’s or religious. The value-free approach presumed that the history of the British Empire was important and the 19th century missionary movement could be more or less ignored. Now the latter may seem more important than the former in terms of its long-term effects. History, properly understood, has always been a matter of faith, of faith in nation, empire, Rome, God, Allah, free trade, the revolution or advertising, and it is the tussles between these commitments that students study and reflect on, doing better history as a result.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to education is the dulling of faith in pupils as a result of their media exposure. Now, from a very early age children are drenched in a media culture which offers a good time, entertainment, fame and the unqualified rewards of advertised goods. Of course, it is illusory. Jeremy Clarkson, like some ancient romantic, offers the thrill of the open road; actually we all sit in slow moving traffic. Yet, for a decade or more this media culture dominates the lives and faith of many children while they are being educated. Teachers know that students hearts and lives are partly with computer games, going out, how they look, sex, dating and a new gadget, rather than engaging with the issues teachers believe are important. It is the student who just wants to be entertained and is bored with the meaning of life who is the greatest threat to the process of education.

The other great challenge to education has been the belief that the State should be the arbiter of what education is. The attempt by Bismarck to control Catholic education in the late 19th century has often been repeated with much greater success, because the State believed that it knew what education should be. Indeed, Thatcher initiated such a process in Britain with the strong imposition of a national curriculum and testing in which “subjects” became “skills”. Suddenly, we believed we knew what education was, or rather a few politicians and gurus did, replacing the plural understanding of thousands of teachers. Now we have moved in part back from that doctrinaire position, but it, too has acted against the understanding of the necessary role of faith in all education.

Perhaps, therefore, the way forward in education is the more explicit recognition of faith alongside evidence as inevitably linked to education in all schools, and as present in all disciplines. Then education once again becomes about life and not about skills for a job. Of course, education becomes harder and not just a question of jumping over technical hoops. It becomes again linked to a quest for truth and involves questions for which there are no ready answers. Yet, perhaps we are better off when all schools are acknowledged as faith schools, rather than as being performers for the Department of Education and its particular view of what education is.

The Times Education 

Jan 2005

 

Filed Under: The Times

A Minimalist God?

December 1, 2004 by

A Minimalist God?

This was written for The Independent in December 2004.

I’ve always loved reading Anthony Flew. As a philosophy student in the 60s and  a recent convert to Christianity, I was intrigued by the dogmatism of his atheism. Given that he has been a leading atheist for half a century, his conversion to a kind of theism, now at the age of 81, is even more intriguing. Flew justifies it by saying simply that he ‘has to go where the evidence leads.’ And in an interview with Gary Habermas he makes it clear that the evidence leads him towards recognizing God as First Cause of the universe; towards an ‘Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence.’

Flew attributes his change of mind to theistic arguments supported by scientific discoveries: like big bang cosmology, fine tuning and Intelligent Design reasoning. This is not so surprising. There is a concern in big bang cosmology that all the basic parameters of the universe, both at a cosmic level and at the level of elementary particles, had to be sorted within the first few seconds of the universe. And it is difficult to understand how that might happen randomly in any way without a Designer. Linked to these cosmological questions are the issues of the basic structures of the universe, which tax the intelligence of the greatest scientists.  The overwhelming sense from much of contemporary science is that research is a process of design detection, searching out orders, codes, matrices and systems of conveying information. Again, it becomes difficult to dismiss the idea that such intricate systems may be the outcome of intelligent planning or to exclude, out of hand, the notion of Designer.

The fine tuning argument is also significant. It points out that many other possible configurations of the physical universe than those which provides the necessary conditions of life could conceivably exist, and they leave us with the problem of why these do exist. Evolutionary theory posits complex molecules without addressing the question of their generation. Flew points out that Darwin’s argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers, yet Darwin realized that he was unable to  account for why this should be the case, a fact, Flew says, constantly overlooked by Richard Dawkins. For Flew, there is now a more obvious conclusion, since findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have  added great weight to ‘an enormously powerful argument to design’ The evidence points to a purposive creation of life, rather than an accidental one.

Flew’s position is thus no longer that of an atheist but he is also anxious to point out that there are limits to his theism. Although he is prepared to consider revelation, resurrection and life after death, and indeed thinks that for a convinced Christian belief in these is not irrational or absurd, such belief is not part of his own position. Nor does he see himself likely to move into any kind of credal faith, aligning himself with religious worshippers. His own conversion is based simply on a single step out of unbelief, taken because of arguments supported by evidence which seems reasonably conclusive. One atheistic commentator has added in a slightly relieved tone that his change from atheism to theism is therefore only a change to belief in a minimalist God.

Yet the concept of a minimalist God is a problematic one. What kind of God could it refer to? One who created the universe – elementary particles, strong and weak forces, atoms and molecules, yet, for example, has no relation to the emergence of a clever humanity? Or could it be a God who was intelligent enough to create galaxies, and amazingly intricate communication systems like DNA, yet not intelligent enough to communicate with humankind?  Although Flew does not believe in revelation, and may not feel that the Book of Genesis provides a useful account of creation, he does not seem to have quite this kind of minimalist God in mind either. In fact when pressed as to whether his ‘First Cause’ embraced omniscience Flew admits, that a First Cause, if there is one, has clearly produced everything that is going on, and this implies creation ‘in the beginning.’

Flew is interested in finding out what the universe is actually like and has taken the step of standard scientific humility. It has led to a change of mind about what undergirds our existence. And certainly, the first step of acknowledging God does not easily become the full journey. But it can be like stepping on to a slippery slope. For the God who is Creator of heavens and earth is not easily minimalized or  limited, whatever freedom we have to form our own concepts. And just as we acknowledge our parents, not just as first cause, but as parents who relate to us, in a similar but more total sense it becomes easier to know God, not as a remote First Cause, but as our Creator-Parent, in whom we live and move and have our being.

December 2004 The Independent

Filed Under: Independent