"Hardwired for Integrity" -- by the Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire

The past months have seen the most chaotic and severe malfunction of the banking system since the 1920s if not in history. Billions of pounds have been wiped off stock markets worldwide, and the Governments throughout the world acknowledge that the financial system is on the verge of total meltdown. The dismay of the media has been evident in the intensity of their language. The Wall Street Journal spoke of financial carnage and derivatives as weapons of mass destruction. The Financial times, of hurricanes and shifting tectonic plates. The Economist wordsmithed gloomily on: ‘there is no such thing as a free crunch’.

Economist Paul Krugman’s blog provides key tables on the crash. But more poignant was an early signoff underneath a set of interest rates that had not been seen even in the Great Depression. “Professionally, I’m fascinated,” he wrote; “As a citizen, I’m terrified.”

As people who read the papers and watch the news in the presence of the living God, we are now in a position to reflect on money, and our attitudes towards it as Christians and as a church. And the fundamental point is that we need not be terrified. This is not a terribly innovative point, because as people of faith we need never be terrified “for nothing can separate us from the love of God.” But it is worth remembering at this time for three reasons.

Objectively there are legitimate causes for concern, both individually and collectively. We genuinely not know the impact that the crash will have on ourselves, on jobs, and on the economy, and on other aspects of our lives. It may yet calm, or it may rechart our days. Fundamentally, terror comes from that uncertainty and fear blended with a feeling that we are not in control. Not only are people like you and I not in control, but we don’t even know if we will understand what has happened. So we pause to listen beyond the media, into the stillness.

The dominant view, portrayed by the media, is that the crash is totally unrelated to matters of faith and prayer, and to the habits of God. It is a malfunction of a human system because of human error. God may be omnipotent, but God, Bless God, does not deal in derivatives hedge funds or shorts. Expertise in such systems is human not divine – it sits in the treasury, not in the monastery. Hence the power to heal the system lies in techniques, not wisdom. Wisdom is lovely, but when it comes to these matters she is also a bit quaint and out of touch with reality.

Is this dominant view of a total divide between faith and economy accurate? If true, we would have part of our life in which we could live as persons of faith – perhaps related to family, gardening, justice, church, and music. And in a different part of our life, not lived under the shadow of the living God, we would address our technical conundrums and make necessary decisions: savings and investments, pensions, mortgages, and indeed negotiate other technical bits of life such as cell phone contracts and the trials of windows vista. We have fallen into this habit of interior division as a society – but do we need to?

It is interesting to note that in other cultures, when technology enters, religion is not marginalized. All of you will know of the buses and taxis in developing countries which are decorated with Jesus, or a cross, some other form of blessing, as if to remind the driver and all others around that this vehicle remains under divine review (one wishes the driving reflected that awareness as keenly). Now that may seem a bit superstitious, but underlying it is an important acknowledgment. For our faith does not recognise a total divide; it teaches, and I believe, that God’s will and purpose and wisdom extends with piercing relevance across all our lives, relational and financial, even if as now we see only darkly.

In Proverbs we are urged to seek wisdom and understanding “for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold”. And the psalmist echos the priority of God’s wisdom: “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces”. So the first point is that if the economy is not totally cut off from the living God, then we need not be afraid, for the wisdom we have known is and will be true.

A second point is rather more mundane and practical: even if the economy did come down around our ears, we will still come to church. It’s what people do in crises – we come to church. We come to church because at church we still have one another, and we help and hope and pray together and find a way through. And as church we will remember too those who are not merely worried about their financial future, but also those perched on the margins of very survival today throughout the world. We know we are not alone, we know that people care, and together we are strengthened and encouraged to live out of our higher values, to reach out in faith and love and service – not close down in terror and dismay.

The third point is that if wisdom is true, then it may have some piercing insights into this situation that we can draw upon, both individually and a society. Some Christian groups are interpreting the financial downturn as a divine tantrum about greed and materialism by an emotionally unstable God. I do not happen to agree with them. But I do think we have some serious correcting to do, and that human excess has directly created the present situation.

At the heart of the particular problems that exploded this month, is not greed but denial. There was willful wishing away of reality, which edged into deception. An FT editor observed, accurately, that “the financial system has been operating as if it were an off-balance-sheet vehicle of the government.” Financiers wanted to quantify risk and uncertainty in numbers that seemed acceptable; they wanted to believe the numbers; they reassured us by the numbers. But the numbers were wrong. The system failed because in the end truth prevailed, and there were no bank regulators to act as a circuit breaker and shield us from poorly managed institutions.

Going forward, we need to encourage and reward truth rather than denial. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians describes the openness of his ministry, and how he hides nothing: “we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.” One of the reasons that people believe the economy was distanced from God is that it appeared that a different set of rules operated there – that there, lies were acceptable; ambition, required; and cunning alone deserved reward. But it was not so – there is one wisdom, stretching across the whole of life.

And as we all know, greed is not too far away. As Frank Wade preached just 12 days after Sept 11th, “Of all of the things that Jesus talked about while revealing to us the mind of God, the single most mentioned topic was the spiritual danger of wealth. We are the richest people the world has ever known. As a consequence, we live in the greatest spiritual danger that has ever been experienced. It’s not about having money or not having it. It’s what we do to get it, the lengths we go to keep it, the principles we serve with it, the meaning it has for us. [Given the events of this month, and their repercussions on others across the globe, we need to do] some serious wondering about those things.”(Wade, Wrath of God. 23 Sept 2001)

The past month has seen the most chaotic and severe malfunction of the banking system since the 1920s if not in history. But the wisdom and ways of God are of intense and piercing relevance even here. So consider this week what it means to be a worker, a consumer and a banking customer who does not react with terror come what may, but remains hardwired for integrity. There is life in such wisdom. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire is a priest, development economist, founder of the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative and author of What Can One Person Do. Sabina is an EGR board member.