The value of life and Mental Health

People with mental health problems and learning difficulties were the subject of two articles in Church Times recently.

The two articles were printed alongside each other, and between them they told both a negative and a positive story.

Negatively, one of the articles begins

More than 100 people with mental-health problems are having their benefits cut each day, effectively because of their condition.

The information was produced in a Freedom of Information request by the Methodist Church, it shows that the most common reason for being sanctioned is that a person has been late, or not turned up, for a Work Programme appointment.

The Methodist spokesman, Paul Morrison, commented that this is ‘like sanctioning someone with a broken leg for limping’.

The Chief Executive of the mental health charity Mind, Paul Farmer, adds:

Stopping benefits does not help people with mental-health problems back into work. In fact, it often results in people becoming more anxious and unwell, and this makes a return to work less likely.

The other article reports on Jean Vanier’s talk in the House of Lords on Monday 26th January 2015, on the subject of why the strong need the weak.

Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche community. He said:

When people have been trained to trust themselves and not others, it’s a long road… My hope one day is that they will fall down and break their leg, and then maybe in hospital, in a little bit of quiet time, they can change.

Regarding the L’Arche communities, he said,

A lot of young people come to do good, but they have also been formed by a culture of winning, of success, of being recognised, applauded, and so on. And so, when those who are moving up to the top through education meet those who are at the bottom of society, something happens. There’s a spark, and both groups change. People who came to do good discover that the people with disabilities are doing them good: they are becoming more human.

Putting these articles together, we are witnessing two completely contradictory attitudes to people with mental health problems.

In one they play their own part in the spectrum of human personalities and activities.

They belong to us and we belong to them, none of us chooses which body or which brain to live with.

We accept the differences and each of us plays a different part, between us we get the work done and we get the celebrating done.

The other attitude is that they are a problem and we know the reasons for the sanctions only too well, since political rhetoric is full of them:

Benefit recipients are a drain on the economy and they should be made to get a job 

Those who can’t get a job - if only they didn’t exist! We the hard-working taxpayers are subsidising them. They make us worse off, and they stop the economy growing.

So these are not only contradictory attitudes to people with mental health problems.

They are also contradictory answers to the question ‘What is human life for?’ They are about all of us.

Is life about enjoying each other’s company, doing things for each other and giving and receiving love in the process?

Or is it about constantly striving towards a different future state, pouring all available resources into skills and technologies designed to achieve it?

In one case people with mental health problems are part of the rich diversity of life, to be accepted and valued for what they are. 

In the other case they are a drain on the rest of us, preventing us from doing better.

The present British Government’s regime of sanctioning those with mental health issues is a particularly unpleasant example of a more general disdain for people who do not contribute to the economy.

What it feels like for a person with learning difficulties to have no money is something they do not measure, so it gets ignored.

This is not the same as Adolf Hitler’s attitude to people with learning difficulties, but it is heading in that direction.

There has never been a time when most people engaged in economic activity, there have always been more people who are too old or too young or too ill or too handicapped.

We should not see this as a problem, because there are also enough people able to do the work and look after them.

Rock or Sand? Firm foundations for Britain's future

To be published on Thursday 20th January 2015

Even before it is published, the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu’s new book 'On Rock or Sand?' is causing a stir.

According to the Independent it says

The Christian values of solidarity and selflessness have been discarded in favour of “every person for themselves” with “rampant consumerism and individualism” dominating politics since the 1980s.

One contributor is Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He criticises the “general social assumption” that the economy “has the power to dictate what is and is not possible for human beings”…

“We believe that if we can fix the economy, the fixing of human beings will automatically follow,” he says.

“That is a lie. It is a lie because it is a narrative that casts money, rather than humanity, as the protagonist of God’s story”…

“Our human journey is not a journey of individuals, it is a journey held in common, and no individual can safely be left behind.”

“The principle of the common good and human flourishing finds its foundation here. We really are all in it together.”

The book quotes Marx’s ‘From each, according to his resources, to each, according to his need.’ Sentamu adds:

That sounds extremely left wing doesn’t it? The truth is it is the theology of where I am coming from…

If God has created us unique, [and] all of us have got his image and likeness, is it ever right that I should have more when somebody else has nothing?

There is a similar report in the Daily Telegraph, which also compares it with the 1985 Faith in the City Report and tells us that the Prime Minister has ‘pledged to do more to help poor families’, the Guardian reports on the book and offers quotes from it.

I particularly like this quote from Sentamu who after citing Archbishop William Temple’s saying, in the 1940s, that the art of government was ‘the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands’ he added:

This marrying of justice and self-interest is deeply unfashionable in a political scene where parties rush to outdo each other in enticing and beguiling the swing vote of middle England not with a vision of justice but with appeals to individual preference, interest and consumer choice. 

But if we are to build firmly for the future, we need to embrace the kind of wide and generous vision which Temple and Beveridge conceived.

More detail is provided by Pat Ashworth’s report in the Church Times and Andrew Brown offers a good commentary.

What comes across strongly is the complaint that political commitments to national economic aims is happening at the expense of the poor, and more generally at the expense of people outside the south-east of England.

They are right. Over the decades the role of the economy has gradually changed.

Time was, especially just after the Second World War, when it made sense for governments to foster economic growth as a way to help people provide for each other’s needs.

For a long time the economy grew and grew and we produced more each year, we consumed more each year, we threw away more each year.

We reached the stage where most of us had so much that, left to our own devices, we would have been content with our physical assets and developed our lives in other, less consumerist ways.

Unfortunately, various political establishment have been of one mind that the success of governments was to be judged by economic growth and governments have tried every trick in the book to get people to earn more, spend more and consume more.

Economic growth is measured by adding up everything everybody has spent and been paid.

Because this is the measure, what rich people do matters more than what poor people do and if one person spends as much on one lunch as a family elsewhere spends on food for a week, the two count as equal contributors to the economy. 

Hunger doesn’t get measured, so the cult of the economy has become bad for the people.

Those of us who have enough physical things are under constant pressure to work harder, earn more and buy more.

Spiritually, we would be far better off slowing down and developing other, richer dimensions of life.

Meanwhile those of us who do not have enough physical things are unable to make much contribution to the economy – so those people cease to matter.

The Archbishops will no doubt be accused of being politically motivated.

However they are basing their appeals on principles which precede modern political and economic debate by thousands of years and extend well beyond the developed capitalist world.

Current political debate speaks the language of a small and contracting world; their motivation is a moral and spiritual source well transcending what the politicians of today say and do.

Some European political parties have policies that echo what the Archbishops are saying, the best known are Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Italy.

In the UK, the closest match must be the Green Party.

Twenty years ago it would have been the Labour Party and now, sadly, it is divided along the lines the Archbishops describe.

On Tuesday 13th January 2015, the Labour Party in the House of Commons voted in favour of the Charter for Budget Responsibility, which was all about managing the economy and accepting many of the targets imposed by the current Government.

The following day the Labour Party councillors in Liverpool unanimously voted for a very different motion, which included the following:

• Freezing gas and electricity bills until 2017,

• Building 200,000 homes a year by 2020 and giving tenants a fair deal with longer, more predictable tenancies and a ban on rip-off lending fees,

• Giving working parents 25 hours of free childcare a week for three and four year olds,

• Raising the minimum wage and giving tax breaks to companies that sign up to pay a living wage,

• Cutting income tax for 24 million people by bringing back the 10p tax rate,

• Supporting small businesses by cutting business rates for 1.5m small firms,

• Guaranteeing a job for every young person who has been out of work for more than a year and access to training to develop the skills they need, and

• Scrapping the bedroom tax.

There is of course no need for Liverpool councillors to agree with MPs just because they belong to the same party and it is good for democracy if the disagreements are out in the open.

However these two votes are an excellent illustration of the tension running across political debate.

The idea that ‘managing the economy’ is the most important task of governments remains popular. Increasingly, people are realising that it is a false aim.

In the past, in specific situations, it was useful but now it is only a means for some to benefit themselves at the expense of those less well off.

We need a change of priorities.

The economy was made for the people, not people for the economy.

Happy New Beginnings 2015!

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”  Lam.3:22-23

Thursday 1st January 2015, represents new beginnings for many of us, the flip-side is that thousands of people will make resolutions they won’t keep – like losing weight, stopping smoking, spending more time with God, having more fun in life, making more time for family… the list goes on

They’ll start off with the best of intentions, even do well for a week or two and maybe even a month.

But then it happens, they blow it.

How sad, but not for the reasons you might be thinking.

The sad part is not that people won’t keep their resolutions. (I don’t even make resolutions anymore because I usually blow them within the first few days.) No, the unfortunate part is that they’ll forget they can start over again. Tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And the next.

So, instead of wiping the dirt off and trying again, they’ll succumb to their failures.

They’ll think things like… I blew it again… I’ll never be able to get this… Forget it… Maybe next year…  

And that’s why I believe most of our resolutions never succeed, we stop trying and we forget that the road to success is paved with failures. 

If we would only place each failure in front of us and use it as a stepping stone, using each one as an instrument to propel us forward, instead of piling them up in front of us, only to impede our progress.

Maybe success is not about an end result, but maybe it’s about a way of living.

I am so glad God’s mercies and faithfulness are new every morning, I need a new batch every day!

Did you know they’re available for you, too? Every single day.

So, here’s my challenge. Use His mercies. Use His faithfulness.

The verse quoted at the beginning goes on to say…

 “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”  Lam. 3:24

Wait on Him and make Him your everything, then give Him your failure and let Him turn them into successes.

Make that resolution, fail, and then try again and again and again… until, before you know it, you are well on the road to success!