Tim Holmes has one thing in common with George Osborne - they both went to Saint Paul’s School in London. In November, he was invited to speak to the school’s Christian Union. An edited transcript of that talk follows, in which he gives a wide-ranging analysis of the injustices inflicted by the policies and structures that Osborne and others like him pursue and support so vigorously, both at home and overseas.  Tim goes on to consider how, against the grain of a cynical and selfish culture, it is possible to generate the psychological and moral resources that are needed to challenge such injustices.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

– Luke 10:25-37

“Whether factual representation or factoid spectacle, the media’s boast that ‘the world is watching’ turns us all into metaphorical bystanders. We lack the instant and physical immediacy of actual bystanders. But this is replaced by a greater variety and intensity of demands in an average media day than the Good Samaritan would have seen in a lifetime. ...

“The free market of late capitalism – by definition a system that denies its immorality – generates its own cultures of denial. More people are made superfluous and marginal: the deskilled, unskilled and sinking poor; the old, who no longer work; the young who cannot find work; the massive shifting populations of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. The ‘solution’ to these problems now physically reproduces the conditions of denial. The strategy is exclusion and segregation: enclaves of losers and redundant populations, living in the modern version of ghettos, remote enough to become ‘out of sight, out of mind’, separated from enclaves of winners, in their guarded shopping malls, gated communities and retirement villages. ...
“In the post-modern world, there are not many one-off encounters with mugged strangers lying in the road, unexpected ‘moments of truth’ in which your moral instincts are tested. Our knowledge is not dependent on chance. It is permanent and continuous; those single moments when a crying Rwandan orphan appears on the screen are reminders of what we already know. The test of acknowledgement is not our reflex reaction to a TV news item, a beggar on the street, or an Amnesty advertisement, but how we live in between such moments. How do we carry on with normal life, knowing what we know?”

– from Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001, p. 163, 293, 295.

There is one former member of this school whose work I particularly wanted to talk about today. His is the first face you’ll see, in fact, if you look on the “Old Paulines” section of the school’s website, so it looks as though the school in its official capacity is pretty proud of the guy – which is maybe something we should bear in mind over the coming years. That man is of course George Osborne, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer – who is about to oversee the deepest, most rapid cuts in public spending in a generation. You may have heard of him.

So it’s worth asking, what is it exactly that the school is so proud of? It’s often actually quite difficult to answer this question. The news about what the Government is doing has been available mostly in fragments. It is often confusing, mired in technicalities and incredibly unclear about what the real impacts on people’s lives will actually be. But there have been some revelations in recent months that stand out. Here’s one example. A study in a recent edition of the very highly respected British Medical Journal concluded that cuts to things like support for the long-term unemployed, for disabled people and for families and children was likely to have severe health impacts, even worse than cutting spending on looking after the sick and injured. Kicking away people’s social support structures was actually likely to cause somewhere between 6-and-a-half thousand and 38 thousand extra deaths over the next ten years. That’s somewhere roughly between two and twelve times the number of people killed in the September 11 attacks – and even that is a deliberately cautious estimate. So that’s just one aspect of the record of the man the school appears to be so proud of.

Another is likely to be a bit more visible. By cutting the support provided for the poor in finding and keeping somewhere to live, according to homelessness and poverty charities, the Government is likely to raise the number of people sleeping out on the streets by thousands – potentially doubling homelessness in the UK. This again is the likely result of the policies of George Osborne. The same man of whom this school appears to be so proud.

Now these are just a couple of the aspects of the severe hardships we are likely to witness in the next few years in this country – hardships that are simply not necessary, and which there is a good chance could actually even deeply harm the economy, if some of the world’s most distinguished economists are to be believed. Which I think ought to prompt the question: how do we respond to this? What are Christians called to do about the preventable suffering of the poor and destitute on our streets? If you were awake during the readings, you will hopefully have noticed that I was trying to drop a big hint on this one. Which also suggests another question might be worth asking: how does a school which calls itself a Christian institution respond to this kind of attack on the poor? And does it respond with pride that one of its own happens to be the one carrying it out? I’ll let you mull that one over for yourselves.

So things are likely to get dramatically worse for a great many people in this country in the next few years, and the poorer you are, the worse you can expect to be hit. And when one looks at this through the lens of Christian thought – which surely has to be embodied above all in the selfless concern of the Samaritan passing by the roadside – it seems as clear as it possibly can be that we are not expected to be neutral in our response. We are not expected to be passive bystanders. We are not expected to simply shrug our shoulders, or pass by on the other side of the road. We are called to act – to do something about it.

But if all this is shocking, perhaps this is – partly, at least – because it is happening so close to home. Elsewhere, invisible and entirely preventable atrocities are taking place all the time. In Africa, tens of thousands of children alone die every day from easily preventable diseases. And the rich world is not neutral in this – it is an active participant. We have overseen a system of debt repayments from the poor world with a proven record of redirecting money away from basic services for the poor. We have forced economic policies on the poor world that perpetuate poverty and keep countries in a state of under-development. Often we use aid or offers of small amounts of debt relief to force even more sell-offs of public services and break down protections for fragile and developing industries. As leading anti-poverty organisations like Christian Aid have continually pointed out, British Governments have aggressively pushed the interests of their companies overseas, often promoting sell-offs of the most basic services the poorest people rely on.

Then there is the impact of our foreign wars. In Iraq, according to the most reliable estimates, the war in which the UK actively participated has cost the lives of at least a million Iraqis; unleashed endemic torture and death squads across the country; and pushed many millions of refugees into terrible poverty. In 2007, Alan Greenspan, an incredibly senior figure in US politics for two decades as Chairman of the Federal Reserve stated: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

This is already a dire picture. But there is a further problem steadily growing in the background that threatens to overwhelm and set back our ability to deal with any of these problems if we don’t do something about it. At the moment, some of the best scientific authorities estimate that the world will heat up by around 5 or 6 degrees centigrade by the end of this century if things continue on their present course. It is impossible to say with confidence exactly what this is likely to mean for the world – because the changes we are bringing about now have never happened before: we are, in effect, performing a huge experiment on the planet Earth. But it is worth bearing in mind that 5 or 6 degrees is roughly the difference between the temperature in which all of human history has taken place, and the temperature during the last ice age. 5 or 6 degrees’ climate change, then – in terms of its effects on water supplies, levels of starvation, refugee flows, wars – even the collapse of whole societies – could be profound and devastating.

Now, none of this makes for terribly brilliant light entertainment. But then that is, of course, not the reason I’m telling it to you. I’m telling it to you because it’s true, and if my reading of the Christian call to act in the world is a fair one, it’s something that we shouldn’t be able to avoid concerning ourselves with. We should not be able simply to pass by on the other side of the road.

But I’m also telling you in particular for a reason. Because I think there is something in particular that communities like this Christian Union have to offer to efforts to change the world for the better. A whole raft of psychological evidence is beginning to make clear that the huge changes involved in tackling problems like climate change – to take just one example – are only likely to happen if people are motivated by a particular set of innermost values. By values, what I basically really mean is our underlying goals and motivations in acting in the world – the things that really drive or inspire us. Now often the kinds of things we are told to do to help solve problems like climate change are designed to appeal to the more self-seeking side of our characters. So we may be told that we can save ourselves money – by driving greener cars or installing better lightbulbs. Or we are sold “eco-chic” – to make us feel like the most trendy, sexy person who’s ever lived for putting our recycling in the right bags, or something. Now all this might seem harmless, or even like a step in the right direction. But what happens when the problem is too big to deal with just by telling people what they want to hear? What if some of the changes they require are bound, sooner or later, to run head-on into our self-interested impulses? And what does fanning the flames of our more selfish desires do to us in the long run?

In fact, according to the body of research that has built up, in situations that require big and demanding changes, it’s the strength of different values – strong concerns for people or animals or the natural world – that inspire people to act, and to keep on acting, even when it’s not in their self-interest. But neither of these types of values comes from nowhere. Both of them – the selfless and the self-seeking – have to be built up, nourished and watered over a long period of time. So much of the society we live in encourages and nurtures the self-seeking sides of our personalities – and this can be hard to resist, even if we want to. It gets under our skin; it seeps into the way we see the world. According to one estimate, the average adult in this country will be exposed to as many as 3,000 pieces of advertising in the course of an average day. What does that kind of saturation in commercial messages do to the way we think of ourselves, the world, and our relationship to each other?

There’s another, maybe even more insidious example. The wealth gap between rich and poor in Britain is currently at a 40-year high. And again, there is now a large body of research evidence showing that the wealth gap between the rich and poor in different countries actually seems to divide us emotionally from each other. It seems to wear down our sense of a shared humanity – our ability to empathise with people unlike ourselves. And this response can even be seen as a way of adapting to the world around us. It is a kind of “defence mechanism”: a way of shielding ourselves from the unpleasant emotions we experience when we register other people’s suffering and exclusion. Some startling research, for example, has been done scanning the brains of students in America when they see a homeless person. The scans suggest – disturbingly – that the students don’t even recognise the homeless person as human. It’s only when the empathy of these students is deliberately triggered – if they are asked “do you think that person is hungry?”, for example – that the emotional centres of their brain suddenly start firing up. The echo across the two thousand years since the parable of the Good Samaritan was first written down is startlingly strong. The same image of the poor and destitute by the roadside; the same situation of division between groups; the same tension between the basic human impulses of compassion and disregard for others. But if the research is right, we have to ask what the biggest wealth gap between the rich and poor for 40 years – with more soon to come – is likely to be doing to our society.

So what was I talking about earlier on, when I said I was particularly interested in talking to you, as members of this Christian Union, about this stuff? The real reason is in the hope of finding communities able to buck these trends – to forge this culture of concern and fellow-feeling for others. It is groups that are able to preserve and help foster those values that will be crucial if we want to deal with the problems that will surround us – and could even begin to overwhelm us – over the coming years and decades. Groups that are rooted in spirituality – that are able continually to meet, talk, think, read, pray and act as a part of that community – may provide one of the best sources of inspiration and protection for those values. You are able to tap into a tradition of teaching and ways of understanding the world that help to insulate, protect and nurture the fragile compassionate side of our natures. Above all, then, I want to encourage you to find inspiration for action in your spirituality – to help motivate your efforts to change the world for the better. And I want to encourage you to use those efforts as a way of deepening, living out and practising your spirituality.

None of this is likely to be that easy. The social environment of this school alone has often been talked about in terms of its culture of arrogance and materialism – not an easy environment in which to try and nurture this side of ourselves. I remember one former member of this CU once comparing the general ethos of the school to the House of Slitherin in the Harry Potter books. It’s a comparison, if you know the series, that you might well recognise. And the school is itself, if we’re being honest with ourselves, a bastion of extreme wealth and privilege. It is designed to make sure that those with that wealth and privilege are able to buy up the opportunity to gain more for their kids. Would it be surprising if this kind of cloistered social environment had the effect of segregating us from the wider world, and the people in it?

Now it’s worth saying that I recognise these traits and tendencies in my own behaviour. And I know a great many, maybe even most such institutions are home to similar unconscious attitudes and social divisions. But the cultures and institutions we are surrounded by pile all sorts of pressures on us; they beguile us; they even become as natural the air we breathe. Not that this is actually a new problem for Christian communities. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”, as one New Testament writer advised. Easier said than done, perhaps. But I think there is also a certain sense of fulfilment, and a kind of contentment, that groups who are able act in the world alongside one another as a community of equals is often able to find. I would hope that this sense of peace and even joy which many Christians talk about is something that can emerge in the midst of this kind of struggle – a struggle to carve out a space for the flourishing of humane values in a world that desperately needs them.

Now the last time I was speaking here, I said some fairly similar things – basically encouraging people to take up concerted action in the world around them. And when people came up to me afterwards asking what I thought they ought to be doing specifically, I told them, in my own rather wishy-washy way, that that was something they ultimately had to decide for themselves. Now I shouldn’t really trivialise that reply, because I basically stand by it. But I do have a specific suggestion for you today – because I think the fact that a former member of this school is about to launch such an aggressive assault on poor people puts us – puts you – in a position of considerable influence: an opportunity for action that should not be passed up lightly.

So here is my suggestion. I want you, acting and speaking as members – and former members – of this school, to shame George Osborne. I want you to express your shame that someone with the same position of privilege and educational opportunity should use it to launch an attack on the poorest, most vulnerable people in the country. Get together as a group; stage an event. Make banners, costumes, pieces of art; hold a candlelit vigil for the victims of the cuts – whatever you like. And get in touch with the media – because if journalists hear that members of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s old school are planning a protest to express their shame and indignation at his actions, they’re going to want to know about it. And if you do want to do this, I’ll stand alongside you, and give you whatever help I can in making this thing happen.

Now all of this will probably be a lot of fun. But that’s not why I would urge you to do it. Nor would I urge you to do it out of spite, or the subversive thrill of making life a bit harder for a senior member of the Cabinet, fun though that will undoubtedly be as well. I want you to do it out of love – out of a sense of compassion for those thousands being pushed out of their homes, for those thousands descending into poverty, misery and death as a result of the juggernaut that is about to roll over them.

Finally, I want you to do this as a way of living out what you believe – not turning aside from the suffering of others, who might seem quite different from ourselves, but responding to that call to help, act and address ourselves to the needs of others that is at the heart of the Christian message.

Tim Holmes has previously researched and written on climate change, media, public opinion and new social movements. He currently writes for Climate Safety.