TODAY is a solemn and special day for Christians. It marks the death of Jesus the man and for Christians the hope of redemption and everlasting life. For Christians the message is also one of sacrifice and unselfishness: Jesus taking on the sins of the world.
For non-Christians it is a four-day holiday, but none the less a special holiday. Its specialness is derived from the Christian tradition because Easter time is a time of giving and sharing and coming together, especially among families, and it remains thus. For non-Christians the Good Friday message can also be one of hope and of unselfishness.
The two messages are linked. Without sacrifice and unselfishness there can be no hope.
In the next four days many Australians will have time to get away from routine, to step aside from it and examine the conduct of their lives.
As Australia emerges from the recession, the messages of hope are the more important. The nation suffers from a legacy of too much greed, in the form of high unemployment, lost savings and economic uncertainty. If the message of hope is purely a selfish one, then the nation will not have a steady and secure lifting out of the economic mire. Rather, it will be a speculative event, emphasising the quick killing for a few rather than the steady improvement of living standards of all through hard work and sharing.
The sad realisation for Christians and non-Christians alike is that the suffering brought on by the recession was caused by the raising of economics to the nation’s high altars, its permeation into the greater part of the consciousness of the nation’s leaders, and the concomitant erosion of spiritual values.
The so-called rational economic human sees life as a series of consumer choices predicated on what is the best outcome for the individual, where everything can be subject to cost-benefit analysis. Even taking a four-day holiday is seen as an opportunity cost that can a quantified by the lost overtime income.
In the utilitarian economics-dominated world view, there is less room for giving, sharing or the higher values of asthethics and spirituality or environmental and heritage preservation.
This Good Friday is a good time for both Christians and non-Christians to reflect that too much economics is self-defeating (and even most economists would agree with that). The message of hope this Good Friday, as Australia emerges from the recession, is that more unselfishness will result in a better outcome than reliance on drab utilitarianism.