The 2016 Newman Lecture at Mannix College
Social Justice, Equality and Individual Leadership Reverend Timothy Costello AO CEO, World Vision Australia
Contents Bibliography of Reverend Tim Costello AO................................1 God helps those who help themselves?......................................2 Where is the need?.......................................................................... 3 The tipping point.............................................................................. 3 Tony Campolo’s experiment........................................................... 4 The old man and the scorpion...................................................... 5 Understanding justice..................................................................... 6 The role of Australians in meeting the great challenges..........7
Bibliography of Reverend Tim Costello AO Timothy Ewen Costello, AO (born March 4, 1955) is a prominent Baptist minister, CEO of World Vision Australia. He was educated at Carey Baptist Grammar School and graduated in law at Monash University in 1978. In 1979 he practised as a solicitor in family and criminal law and in 1981, travelled to Switzerland with his wife Merridie where they both studied theology at Rueshlikon College near Zurich, before returning to Australia in 1984. Ordained a Baptist Minister in 1987, the Reverend Tim Costello, along with a team of others, rebuilt the congregation at the St Kilda Baptist Church, opened a drop-in centre and worked in a legal practice for those for whom the law is normally inaccessible. As elected Mayor of St Kilda Council in 1993, he became well known for championing the cause of local democracy and his clashes with Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett. Costello’s political career ended when his mayoral position was abolished with the whole St Kilda Council in Kennett’s reforms and consolidation of local government. From 1995 to 2003 he was a Minister of the Collins Street Baptist Church and the Executive Director of Urban Seed, a Christian not-for-profit organization created in response to concern about homelessness, drug abuse and the marginalisation of the city’s street people. Costello was an elected delegate at the Australian Constitutional Convention in Canberra in February 1998. He served as President of the Baptist Union of Australia from 1999 to 2002. He has been Patron of Baptist World Aid, a member of the Australian Earth Charter Committee, a council member of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, a spokesperson for the Inter church Gambling Taskforce, a member of the National Advisory Body on Gambling and a member of the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s he was frequently seen in the Australian national media commenting on gambling and other social problems. Costello has spoken out in favour of stronger gun control in Australia, acting at times as the chairman or spokesman of the National Coalition for Gun Control. In 2004, Costello was appointed CEO of World Vision Australia. He was awarded ‘Victorian of the Year 2004’ in July 2004, in recognition of his public and community service. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in June 2005. He is the 2008 winner of the Australian Peace Prize awarded by the Peace Organisation of Australia. He is also listed by the National Trust as a ‘National Living Treasure’. He is the brother of the former Federal Member for Higgins Peter Costello.
‘Social Justice, Equality and Individual Leadership’ Reverend Timothy Costello AO Newman Lecture 03 August 2016 Mannix College
God helps those who help themselves? God helps those who help themselves. That’s a popular phrase that, at first glance, seems to be quite plausible because it emphasizes the importance of self-initiative. At first glance it also sounds a bit spiritual. On his Tonight Show, host Jay Leno once asked random people on the street to name one of the Ten Commandments. The most popular response was “God helps those who help themselves”. A US survey found that about 80 per cent of Americans were convinced that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is from the Bible. Of course it isn’t. It is commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who possibly pinched it from one of Aesop’s Fables from the sixth century BC. It is probably the most quoted phrase that is not found in the Bible. In one sense, the statement has a germ of practical truth. We might trust in God but we also seek medical treatment when we need it. We are called to be active in our faith. Our trust in God does not negate the importance of human effort. But as a concept, God helps those who helps themselves is bad theology. It implies that those who are less fortunate have done something wrong in order to deserve God’s lack of compassion. In my work with World Vision I have found that there are places and times where people are under such enormous economic, political or social pressures that they can’t even begin to figure out how to help themselves. The concept of God helps those who help themselves is aligned with the ugly little New Age philosophy called the law of attraction. It goes something like this: if you wish for something you will get it. All you have to do is ``put in your order with the universe’’. You can manipulate objective physical reality -- the numbers in a lottery draw, your weight, illness, and the actions of other people, who may not even know you exist, through your thoughts and feelings.
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If you are sick or impoverished it’s really your fault. Your plight is the result of a lack of positive attitude. If bad things happen to you, it’s your fault. The cause of everything bad is just bad thinking. Tell that to the victims of the Holocaust, or the tsunamis. Surely the last thing we need is encouragement to be more self-absorbed. John Henry Newman said: “God has created me to do some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.” That’s a world away from “God helps those who help themselves.”
Where is the need? About 800 million people on our planet still live in extreme poverty and suffer from hunger. Global emissions of carbon dioxide have increased over 50 per cent since 1990 and water scarcity now affects 40 per cent of people in the world and is projected to increase. Without doubt the greatest moral issue of justice is why 16,000 children around the planet still die each day before celebrating their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes, from not having enough food, from dirty water, from not having access to the medicines you and I take for granted. And what about the poor and homeless on our doorsteps? Do you know how many were forced to sleep outdoors in your neighbourhood last night? We may accept all this suffering as inevitable, but for perhaps the first time in history we have the information, technology and resources to do something about poverty and injustice. We simply lack the collective moral will to do so. We don’t have money problems in the West. We have priority problems.
The tipping point We live in a society that is increasingly competitive, consumerist, and isolationist. It seems the whole world is becoming more isolationist. Just look at Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump’s campaign of fear that wants to build walls instead of tearing them down. In Australia, just one week before our own recent federal election, a survey by Canberra University found that only 42 per cent of people are happy with the way democracy works. Trust in Australian politicians and the political process is at its lowest level in two decades. A report last week from social demographer Mark McCrindle found the gap between rich and poor in Australia continues to widen, with the top 20 per cent of households receiving half the income, while the bottom 20 per cent gets just four per cent. Our middle class is diminishing.
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Mark McCrindle observed that our egalitarian society, which is pretty central to our Australian identity, is under threat, and if the gap continues to widen we will end up with entrenched pockets of have and have-nots. Australians traditionally have empathised with others who aspire to the things we enjoy, be that justice and democracy or simply a fair crack at a decent life. But it seems some of our most senior policymakers have their heads firmly in the sand. Our foreign aid spending has bottomed out. As a nation, we have lost direction when it comes to compassion. The truth is that we are still a wealthy nation that can and should be giving more. Our relative standing in the world – as the fourth wealthiest country in the OECD per capita - means we can contribute more. If a country like Australia won’t lead, who will? This isn’t just because of Australia’s wealth and our resourcefulness, but also because of who we are and the values we hold. In good times and bad in the past, Australians have always put their hands up. We have been willing to reach out, and we have long preferred openness over isolation in international affairs. But are we now doing enough? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, investigates how an idea, product or behaviour moves from the edges of society to broad acceptance. Along the way, there is a tipping point that transforms a minority perception to the embrace of the majority. Our sense of justice for all has clearly not yet reached the tipping point. Fighting for justice requires commitment. It seems we don’t automatically love ourselves, others, the world or God. And human rights seem to have their roots somewhere outside the material world. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said we had two different ways of understanding the world. One was when we are divided, distanced and alienated from each other and we feel nothing except jealousy, indifference and hatred. The other was when we understand the unification of all people. “In this state, all people seem close to us and all are equal. This arouses compassion and love within us,’’ he said.
Tony Campolo’s experiment The cause of injustice is often apathy, Apathy because we are either unaware of the suffering or apathy because of the enormity of injustice in our world today. Is it possible for one person or ca small group of people to ever make a difference? A few years ago the American sociologist and pastor Tony Campolo was running a sociology class. He gave his class an assignment in which they were asked how a small group of Christians could bring social change through large corporations. His students decided to focus upon the practices of the Gulf and Western Corporation in the impoverished Caribbean region.
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Each student purchased shares in Gulf and Western and showed up to the annual general meeting. As shareholders they were entitled to have a say in the running of the company. One by one, they stood up, read passages from the Bible that condemned injustice, and then asked why Gulf and Western was treating people unjustly. They wanted the company to address the issue of low wages for the sugar workers, to do something about the fact that they’d made the country more and more dependent on a single crop, and to provide education and medical services for the people. The purpose was to shame the directors into action, and they were effective. The directors of Gulf and Western invited them to meet to talk the issues over. Over the next five years, Gulf and Western released a plan to act in a more socially responsible way in the Dominican Republic and spent half a billion dollars creating health care, education facilities and cheap land for local farmers .And the lives of thousands were dramatically improved. So seemingly small acts can bring about social justice. But what is the personal cost?
The old man and the scorpion The Dutch philosopher and writer Henri Nouwen tells the story of an old man meditating by a river who opened his eyes and saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the water. As the scorpion was washed closer to the tree, the old man quickly stretched himself out on one of the long roots that branched out into the river and reached out to rescue the drowning creature. As soon as he touched it, the scorpion stung him. Instinctively the man withdrew his hand. A minute later, after he had regained his balance, he stretched himself out again on the roots to save the scorpion. This time the scorpion stung him so badly with its poisonous tail that his hand became swollen and bloody and his face contorted with pain. At that moment, a passer-by saw the old man stretched out on the roots struggling with the scorpion and shouted: “Hey, old man, what’s wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don’t you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?” The old man turned his head. Looking into the stranger’s eyes he said calmly, “My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save.” Well, that’s the heart of the matter: Why should we give up our nature to be compassionate even when we get stung in a biting stinging world? It says this in scripture, “If you close your ear to the cry of the poor, you will cry out and not be heard.” (Proverbs 21:13). God clearly cares about those who can’t help themselves. God expects us to do something about their plight.
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Understanding justice Equality among human beings is an idea that seems to be intuitively right. We know that there will never be any such thing as perfect equality, but we still see it as an ideal to strive towards. Inequality is more complicated than it sometimes seems. It is not just a matter of money – the distribution of income and wealth – though that particular type of inequality is especially important. At World Vision we have come to realise that poverty and other forms of injustice are for the most part the product of failed systems – failed economic systems, political systems, social systems, environmental systems. This has meant understanding poverty differently as time has gone on. Our first understanding of poverty is often just about deficiency. People are poor because they lack things, so the solution must be to give them things. Over time, we come to understand that it’s more complex than that, and more systemic. Poverty isn’t an accident that just happens to some people, and nor is it a punishment for something they have done, or something they haven’t done. Poverty doesn’t for the most part happen because people are lazy or unmotivated or disorganised. Poverty and injustice can be overcome – we have the skills and the resources to tackle them – but we also need the will, the political will and the moral will. And time and patience and persistence, because the world evolves over time, and real, sustainable change also takes time. In order to be successful in reducing the impact of poverty and bringing about social justice, we first need to shift our minds around – to think not just about the negative condition we want to abolish, but about the positive condition we want to achieve. We need an overarching sense of purpose, otherwise the many useful concrete goals and targets we set ourselves in the short term won’t add up to much. The work that World Vision does is not all about crisis intervention or humanitarian relief. We are deeply involved in community development, often through micro financing projects, policy advocacy and change, collaboration, education about poverty, and emphasis on personal growth, social justice and spiritual values. Most importantly, we empower people to become self-reliant. When I started to work for World Vision, I naively assumed that whenever the alarm was raised for an emergency where innocent lives were at risk, the international community would rush to act. I discovered that this was not always the case. The Australian response after the Asian tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 was remarkable.
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World Vision raised $118 million to help the victims. It was an unprecedented avalanche of generosity. A few months after, the north of Pakistan was hit by a devastating earthquake which claimed 80,000 lives. However the humanitarian appeal we launched for this disaster struggled to get much support at all. Why? I had to conclude that this was case because no Australians or Westerners died in this earthquake. There were no headlines telling the story of Aussies caught in a disaster zone. No great outpouring of emotion and compassion. The deserving, when entirely of another tribe, had failed to quite touch our hearts in the same way as the tsunami. I believe that all human beings share a particular quality that gives them certain rights, and demands that they be respected. This particular quality can be called ‘human dignity’. As a Christian, I find a basis for this belief in my faith. However the idea does not depend on everyone sharing that same faith – people of other religions, and people with no religion at all, often share the same idea.
The role of Australians in meeting the great challenges We now need to ask ourselves as a nation what more we can do to inspire justice at home and overseas. Firstly, I believe there is an urgent need for ordinary Australians to continue to engage on the issue of refugees and inform the debates about an offshore detention system that imprisons vulnerable people. It should concern every Australian that there are children in our detention centres who are living lives behind bars, lives that were already blighted in some way by the circumstances which pushed their families from their homes, lives that are suspended. In a democracy like ours, politicians take their cue from what they understand to be public opinion. So when we as a nation, as citizens, as respondents to opinion polls are either complacent about this issue or complicit in the punitive approach to asylum seekers, we have lost something that sits at the core of a decent society. How did this happen? Letting fear dominate the discourse also diminishes our way of life, and our democratic ideals. Sometimes, something happens that inspires a change of hearts and minds. The photo late last year of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a Turkish beach prompted worldwide sympathy for the plight of the region’s asylum seekers. For six years, World Vision had been showing photos and telling stories about children dying in the regional conflict and we were largely met with indifference. In the minds of many, suffering inflicted by human evil falls into an entirely different category
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than suffering caused by a tsunami or earthquake or some other natural disaster. It’s a division that can be traced back to the nineteenth century Victorian notion of the deserving poor and undeserving poor. Where blame can be laid at the feet of corrupt government or economic mismanagement, for example, there is the perception that those suffering in these circumstances are less deserving – or less in need – of our help. Yet this one photo of the little Syrian boy lying dead on a beach triggered a 3000 per cent increase in donations from the Australian public. The funds meant that, within hours, World Vision was able to send essential supplies to refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, giving families the hope needed to stop them from fleeing and putting their lives into the hands of people smugglers. The photo cut through the bubble of indifference overnight. It’s in tapping empathy that we can prompt change. Governments have a role to play in ensuring reasonable quality of life and opportunities for everyone – for example, through a fair tax system and providing good services such as health and education. And in delivering adequate foreign aid. Business has a role to play through being socially responsible – making sure their business doesn’t impact badly on vulnerable people, and creating good job opportunities. Voluntary agencies have an important role in supporting disadvantaged people and in advocating for them – as well as speaking up against the systems and structures that create disadvantage. As citizens, we all have the power to do something – many people volunteer and do important work for the benefit of others – and others fundraise or contribute towards voluntary agencies. We also have the power of our voice as citizens. We have more influence than we sometimes realise, in our own lives – at work and at school, in the family and among the people we know. We can all do something. If you aren’t sure why you’re here on earth, or what God wants you to do, think how the world would be poorer if you were not to carry out your unique talents.
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Social Justice, Equality and Individual Leadership Text Š Timothy Costello 2016 Published by: Mannix College Wellington Road Monash University Victoria 3800 Australia www.mannix.monash.edu A missionary endeavour of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne Mannix College is a residential college affiliated with Monash University. The Newman Lecture, named in honour of Blessed John Henry Newman, commenced in 1981 and is delivered annually.
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