Ideologies and Leaders

 

Texts: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:33-46

The former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr Alan Greenspan, said something very interesting this week.  He had been called before a Congressional committee in Washington to talk about the present financial crisis, and in particular the role of the banks in the whole fiasco.  This is the man who held the position equivalent to the Governor of the Reserve Bank for over 20 years, so his views carried considerable weight, and it was expected that he would say something reassuring to boost investor confidence.

He didn't.  Instead, he did something almost unheard of in Washington.  He admitted he had been wrong – profoundly wrong.  He didn't mean that he had made particular mistakes from time to time; he meant that his ideology had been wrong.  The basic philosophy that had guided his entire career had, he said, with the benefit of hindsight, had a serious flaw in it.  And he prefaced his confession by saying that we all need an ideology of some sort to make sense of our lives, to guide us in the day-to-day decisions we make.

At the centre of his personal ideology, all his working life, had been what economists call the principle of laissez-faire.  In our terms it's the sort of opposite of what, until very recently, was damned as the Nanny State, but which is now called sensible regulation.  Mr Greenspan was speaking specifically about banks, and how he had favoured the lowest possible government intervention in the activities of banks.  According to his ideology, banks would act sensibly, without government regulation, because it was in the best interests of their shareholders to do so.  In other words, banks would act prudently out of self-interest.

We now know that banks, even huge, experienced banks, in the USA and elsewhere, did not act prudently; and this has been a terrible shock to Mr Greenspan.  His ideological belief system has been shown to have "a serious flaw" in it.  In the excerpt I heard from his testimony there was no explanation of this serious flaw, but it's pretty obvious what it is.  Banks, like any other institution, act through their officers and employees, who are human beings, just like you and me; and just like you and me, those people can also be motivated by self-interest.  It may well have been in the best interests of the banks (their shareholders) to act prudently, but it wasn't in the best interests of the officers and employees.

Suddenly, people like Mr Greenspan have been reminded of an old truth that was spelt out to me by one of our lay ministers in a sermon a few years ago in the Parish of Ngaio.  This guy was a highly trained economist, had worked in a senior position in Treasury for many years, and, when I knew him, was working with Roger Kerr for the Business Round Table.  He intrigued me because he also had a first-class degree in theology.  So I invited him to speak to the congregation about his faith in relation to his economic views.  And the thing that he said that has stuck in my mind ever since was this: capitalism needs Christianity, or some other equally strong ethical code, in order to work properly.

In his view, capitalism does not produce its own ethical standards, and without some ethical restraint, capitalism ends up devouring itself.  Unbridled competition results eventually in the eradication of all players except one monopolistic giant.  For capitalism to work properly it needs ethical restraints; without them it is self-defeating.

Isn't that exactly what we have seen around the world in recent times?  And this is not so much a commentary on capitalism as it is a commentary on human nature.  Human nature needs ethical restraints; left to ourselves we soon become self-defeating.  William Golding was right; the innocence of children is a complete myth; and the innocence of adults is even more so.  Another person who got it right recently was Garth George, whose columns appear in the ODT.  In his latest rant against what he still calls "the Nanny State" he says that we are inherently selfish or self-centred.  However, his conclusion is that we should be left to it; the government should not attempt to curb our selfish instincts.  As Philip Temple pointed out in a Letter to the Editor, that's a rather strange position to be taken by the former editor of a Christian weekly newspaper.

Perhaps he is one of those Christians who prefer not to read the Old Testament, including this morning's passage from the Book of Leviticus.  No one knows our human nature better than God, and God knows that we need ethical restraints.  That's why he gave the Jews five books of them, what the Jews call the Torah.  If you think we're over-regulated, read through the Book of Leviticus sometime!  But if you do, ask yourself this question: was the freedom of the people restricted or promoted by these legal codes?  Just think for a moment of a few of the rules we have before us in this first lesson: Do not defraud your neighbours or rob them...Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind...Do not pervert justice..Do not spread slander among your people...Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour's life.

Who among us would like those rules revoked?  And who among us believes that those rules are unnecessary because we human beings are to be trusted to act appropriately without such laws?  Our Creator obviously believed otherwise.

St Paul also had good reason to share those doubts.  He had been subjected to insults in Philippae, and has faced strong opposition in Thessalonica.  Why?  Because he has been preaching the Gospel, and it hasn't gone over all that well in some quarters.  Hardly surprising, given that the gospel is a direct challenge to our innate selfishness.  The gospel challenges our natural ideology – it demands a whole new mindset – a whole new attitude to life and to our fellow human beings.  Naturally, St Paul has come under suspicion.  What's in it for him?  Who's funding him?  He has to remind his own converts that he has been completely open with them – transparent, in the modern terminology.  He has worn no mask to hide deceit or greed.

Our gospel passage has two challenges to Jesus' teaching.  First, his opponents ask him which is the most important commandment.  What a stupid question!  Could we answer that sort of question in respect of our own criminal law?  What is worse, blackmail, kidnapping, or the theft of medals from the Army Museum?  Jesus deals very shortly with that question.  He sums up the whole law in two commandments and says that's what's important – the whole lot!

Then comes an examination of his credentials; and here it must be admitted that the New Testament as we have it does get itself in a bit of a muddle.  This debate only makes sense if Jesus is being hailed as the Messiah even though he is not descended from the House of David.  Jesus' remarks only make sense if the Messiah is not a descendant of David.  And yet the early Church went to great lengths to insist that Jesus was in fact a descendant of David, to support its claim that he is the Messiah.

The question for them and for us remains the same: to whom should we listen?  Who has the words of eternal life?  Who knows our human nature and who can lead us into a new creation?  The choice as always is ours.

Or perhaps I should say, the election is ours.  Do we elect Christ who challenges our selfish nature, or do we prefer the false prophets who have always been ready to tell us what we want to hear?