‘It is not the colour of your skin, the God you believe in, or where you were born that will determine your success, but just your own hard work and endeavour.’
Rishi Sunak, speaking on Friday 1 March
The first half of this quotation from Rishi Sunak’s speech In Downing St., calling for hatred to be banned from British streets, is fine. Unfortunately, however, he misses the key point in the second half with his appeal to self-interest rather than generosity of spirit.
The two most dangerous motivational drivers for humanity are fear and greed. They are the primaeval drivers which have journeyed with us from our animal origins, and which define whether the outcome is flight or fight.
I recall people citing the same two motivations behind stock market trading activity, and CNN provides a 'Fear and Greed' index to measure it: the bulls buying speculatively for greed, or the bears selling desperately for fear of collapsing prices.
Yet again, we need to see these two impostors as essentially short-termist: in the long run, they don’t lead to survival for anyone, it is only generosity of spirit which will do that.
In the short term, it's fair enough to interpret almost everything as ‘zero sum gain’ — a struggle between winners and losers in which there is no overall benefit. Net benefit tends to emerge over the long term; but because their day-to-day horizon is so short, it's difficult for politicians to recognise this.
But compare living conditions now with where they were in the 19th century, when life was nasty, brutish and short for so many. See how civilisation has grown through democracy and a legal environment based on care for others and compassion — these are real achievements. They have not just grown out of self-interest, although that has certainly helped the commercial world deliver innovation; real benefit has come from a genuine respect for others from all backgrounds.
These grounds for hope are not only in the structure of society but also evident in media — remember the movie ‘Pay It Forward’? — and our various faith traditions speak of the abundance which arises from generosity. For example, the feeding of the five thousand when five loaves and two fishes were turned into twelve baskets of leftovers.
So, when holy texts tell us to love our neighbours, and go even further by calling for us to ‘love our enemy, pray for those who persecute us’, they are calling for us to go that extra mile of generosity. That phrase ‘go the extra mile’ originated for me from Sen Sinniah, a Sri Lankan gentleman I worked with in the early days of The Share Centre.
Fear and greed are both rooted in self-interest; they may keep us fed and watered day by day, but they're not going to resolve intractable differences between us or build a better society in the long run unless they are softened by generosity of spirit. If they take precedence, that's only going to result in unbridled revenge as we've seen in Gaza, and still more conflict.
Unconditional love lies at the heart of the world's faiths, and indeed it is often the key reality at the heart of those who have no faith: in the words of John Bell of the Iona Community, ‘Kindle a flame to lighten the dark and take all fear away’.
Therefore, a real yearning to celebrate the convergence of people of all faiths and none should draw on the analogy of a disc centred on unconditional love. This would envisage those very different beliefs being spread around the periphery but, as they all journey towards that central unconditional love, they are also journeying closer to each other.
Whereas fear and greed may drive separation on the disc’s circumference, the journey towards love, towards generosity of spirit, helps us all to understand our fellow travellers as we walk closer together, leaving our fear and greed behind at the periphery.
It's such a simple concept which starts by trying to imagine how life is for others, however different they are, and to help them in times of need. It doesn't just have to embrace our contemporaries, either: when in these commentaries we speak of inter-generational rebalancing we are proposing that same generosity of spirit, by making use of the human life cycle.
The news media has a part to play in helping us move forward. Of course, the reason why our news and current affairs are weighted so heavily towards tragedy and disaster is because it’s these which grasp our attention, appealing to those primaeval interests. But if instead they were to prioritise stories of hope and opportunity — and there are many to be given greater attention — that's appreciation of an upward-moving generosity of spirit which can create solutions, and benefit for all would grow.
So, I hope Rishi Sunak will build an understanding that it's not just hard work and endeavour which determines success, but a real care for others and a reaching for that unconditional love which lies at the heart of existence.
Finally, I challenge those of my own Christian faith to explain how to put into effect the clear instruction given by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’. The Church of England, referred to directly in Sunak’s speech, should help with guidance at all levels, including theological, personal, across society and between nations: also answering the question of how we can put this teaching into effect in these current times of conflict and strain within both our own society and overseas, and in discussion with other faiths — including, of course, those other Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam. We have to do more than, as Sunak put it, ‘underpin by the tolerance of our established, Christian church’.
How can we offer and live out our Christian faith as an active bridge between people so strongly opposed to each other?
Gavin Oldham OBE
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