Bulletin 153 Date : 18th Jan 2009
It’s Scandalous! I could hardly believe my ears when I listened to the news this morning. The Brazilian football player, Kaka, who currently plays for AC Milan is reported to be moving to Manchester City for in excess of £100 million. “What kind of a world do we live in?” I asked myself. What is this going to do for football? What is it going to do for the state of the nation as a whole? What does this say about the value we place upon ordinary, dedicated, hard-working people whose primary concern is the welfare of other people?  The worst part of all this is the fact that Kaka, whose real name is Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, is a committed, evangelical Christian. It made me smile to think that Manchester City, of all clubs, should be seeking to buy him for this scandalous sum, only a couple of weeks after Nottingham Forest had thrashed them 3-0 in Manchester. But that’s beside the point. They are going to need all the help they can get, including divine intervention, to recover from that.
Credit Crunch, what credit crunch?
The whole world is reeling helplessly because of the credit crunch – a phenomenon which was brought about by banks lending money they hadn’t got to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back. When the day of reckoning came, the whole banking system collapsed and we, the hard-working, honest, thrifty general public had to bail the banking professionals out of the hole they had got themselves into.
Have we learnt nothing from this disaster? Don’t people realise that when you pay out money you haven’t got, someone else pays the price. In the case of the banks it was everyone but the banks. In the case of the Kaka transfer deal it will inevitably be everyone involved in football – and, I suspect, many beyond.
Prosperity Gospel
Having paid many visits to the USA during the 1980s and 90s, I watched with horror as the TV evangelists plied their trade in front of vast audiences and often promoted the ‘prosperity gospel’ which says that material wealth is a sign of God’s favour. How little they know about the teachings of Jesus and his frequent references to the dangers of storing up treasure in this life and being captive to material possessions. As Kaka enjoys his £600,000 per week salary I wonder if his Christian conscience will prick him into action. I know that Shaun Murphy, the Christian snooker player, donated £25,000, one tenth of his winnings at the World Championship, to his church a few years ago.
But frankly what frightens me about the Kaka news is the impact it will have on the nation, should this deal go ahead at a time when people are losing their jobs, their homes, their health and much more because of recklessness over money by professional people who frankly, should have known better.
The Israelites looked upon their time in exile as a just reward for their unfaithfulness to the God who loved them (e.g. Nehemiah 1:4-7). Whether you see this as God intervening in the course of history to punish the Israelites or the inevitable consequence of moral decline within the land, they suffered dramatically. Who knows what the long-term consequences of the Kaka deal will be? As the psalmist says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.” (Psalm 127)
Never were the teachings of Jesus so badly needed as today! |
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