‘Putin said he believed in love at first sight — then added that he himself was in love, without divulging any more details.’ 

BBC report from the end of Putin’s TV marathon on 19 Dececember

 

Vladimir Putin's annual conversation with the Russian people and the media ended with the above reference to love, even including one couple who invited him to attend their wedding. He may have sounded marginally more conciliatory towards peace with Ukraine, but there is certainly no love lost there; the past four years will have resulted in generations of ill-will between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples 

As we commented a couple of weeks ago, it really is time for us to search out a deeper and more meaningful love across humanity. ‘Love your enemy’ does not mean ‘Kill your enemy’: it means showing them respect, rather than just demanding respect from them.

Putin’s call for respect reminded me of the discussions we had at The Share Centre about one of our key values, ‘Respect for Others’. There were those who wanted just the single word ‘Respect’, but in the end we agreed that without ‘for Others’ it might just have become the self-interested ‘am I being shown respect?’. Love must be about giving, not just taking and, in 2026, Putin needs to learn that, if we are to return to stability between Russia and Europe.

Rutger Bregman completed his four-part Reith Lecture series last week from Stanford University in San Francisco, at the heart of the giant tech world. He framed his final talk on The Moral Revolution around these five key questions:

  • Who are we?
  • Where did we come from?
  • Where are we going?
  • How should we live?
  • What is sacred?

After some appreciative references to Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell (who delivered the Reith Lectures himself in 1948), Rutger Bregman set out his struggle with faith, which perhaps explains why his last question is there. I can understand why those who apply logic to their faith journey find themselves in this quandary; it's something that I found challenging myself, particularly in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which left nearly a quarter of a million people dead, as a result of a disaster which had nothing whatsoever to do with human malevolence or stupidity. It simply is not sufficient for faith leaders to spread their hands and say, ‘It’s a mystery’.

The challenge is clear — how can a perfectly good God allow such an imperfect, but completed, creation within which such a disaster can occur?

The conclusion which I came to is that the Genesis-based theory of 7-day creation is simply not compatible with a conscious creator, who is both perfectly good and almighty to the extent that nothing more is required. St. Paul refers to the groaning of creation in his epistle to the Romans (ch 8 vs 22), and I believe that he was pointing directly to the fact that creation itself is an ongoing process — and that evolution is an integral part of this process. The cutting edge between construction and the chaos and darkness of emptiness is with us all of the time, and that's why our conscious creator is alongside us, sharing our suffering and inspiring us with unconditional love.

Rutger Bregman clearly understands the need for the co-existence of love and knowledge — he said as much at the end of his final Lecture — and perhaps this is why he displays his scepticism for artificial intelligence. He sees the risk of addiction to tech as equivalent to the call for constraint and regulation from the Temperance movement as regards alcohol. Indeed, he quoted a three-to-one majority in a recent poll, calling for a more regulated environment for artificial intelligence.

This brings us back to the Share Alliance proposal for Stock for Data and Creativity: not just enabling people to share in tech wealth creation but also to participate in steering its future.

It’s all part of evolution, which is the process of continuing change made possible by unconditional love. It's what Christmas is all about — a recognition that it’s entirely logical that our conscious creator who is unconditional love would choose to come and join with that creation, and to teach us how to behave with one another. We need more people, including Christians but also including Putin, to understand what that means.

With best wishes for a very happy Christmas.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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