This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Most people understand what a budget is. It’s a mechanism whereby we work out how much money is coming in and, therefore, how much can go out. Setting a budget tells us whether we can afford what we want or how to afford what we need. Wants and needs are, of course, different things.
What we do in our household is not very different from what happens in a business or a country. Tomorrow the Chancellor will unveil his response to these hard questions about how we pay for what we want or what we think we need as a society.
But, I think a budget is more than a simple transaction with numbers. In fact, a budget has been described – wisely, I think – as “theology by numbers”. A bit like “painting by numbers,” but with more powerful consequences.
If you don’t like the word ‘theology’, then substitute ‘worldview’ or ‘values’. Whichever words you choose, the point remains the same. A budget tells us what we really think about society (its businesses, industry, cultures, and so on) and what we really think matters. In other words, it demonstrates our real values and doesn’t just serve as a political ball to be kicked around.
When I think about a budget I go back to two powerful traditions. In the Hebrew scriptures it is very clear that God’s judgment about societies rests on how citizens treat one another and how they protect their weakest people. The prophet Amos, writing three thousand years ago, condemns the people for ordering their society in such a way as to celebrate religious revival whilst institutionalizing corruption. You could sing hymns of praise at the same time as buying off the judges and “trampling on the heads of the poor”.
This valuing of social justice wasn’t invented by the prophets, though. The earliest settlements in the Promised Land had instructions to leave ten per cent of the field’s harvest so that sojourners and homeless people could always find something to eat. A just society meant enshrining in money and produce an obligation to mutuality.
Jesus put it more starkly: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
This is difficult and challenging stuff for individuals as well as for a country. The process of constructing a budget compels us to at least try to articulate what we think matters and why. Who benefits from a budget and who loses from it tells us something about where our heart really is … and what or whom we really love. Facing that exposure takes courage.
