Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: March 2010

Austerity is the watchword of the moment. When the government felt that the only measure it could take to save the economy from collapse was to bail out the banks with huge amounts of public money, it knew that the taxpayer would be paying for it over the next decade or so.

Now, councils are waiting to find out just how much money they’ll have to save to help fill this hole in the public purse. Many of them have already begun the process of making cuts, with schools, care homes and libraries likely to be downgraded or closed.

This all seems horribly depressing – no matter who wins the next general election, many of the services we’ve come to expect our councils to provide simply won’t be there for a very long time.

Where does that leave us as Christians? Do we fight to save the things we care about? Well, yes, we probably should and no doubt we will – in particular, the proposed closure of the maternity ward at Kingston Hospital brings it all home to me, because it was a midwife there who raised her concerns about my son’s pallor, almost at the last minute, thereby uncovering a serious heart defect.

However, there’s also a certain practical response that we’ll have to make. Like it or not, some of these cuts will have to be made. Over the years, Christians have made pragmatism and perseverance part of our core (“Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” [James 1:4]) – as well as a third ‘P’: perspective.

Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie Ten Boom, who helped her family save an estimated 800 Jews in Haarlem, The Netherlands, during World War II, said “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the driver,” and “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

A lady who suffered betrayal, capture and imprisonment at the hands of the Nazis, and the death of her father and sister during internment, knew a thing or two about perseverance and perspective. When viewing a pragmatic faith like hers, cuts in public services don’t seem so serious – yet it helps us deal with them and anything else the future can throw at us.