It's about relationships - stupid!

A comment on the current bank bail-out in the US from Bill Coffin in SmartMarriages says “How big is $700Bn? It is equal to the cost of divorce and out of wedlock pregnancy over the last six and a half years.” In the UK, the cost of Northern Rock and now Bradford and Bingley is about four years of UK family breakdown.

The problem with both these analyses is that they are not alternative uses of the money – they are additive. The “toxic mortgages” are heavily skewed towards un-married couples who subsequently split and then defaulted. As a society we have encouraged this lifestyle, and as a society we are now picking up the cost – twice!

It is salutary to reflect that the apparent success, and now fragility, of the western capital system is built on foundations outlawed within Muslim banking circles, their system being based on the ancient biblical system which outlaws usury (lending for interest). This doesn’t mean they won’t lend money – it means that they build a relationship as the basis for any transaction in which risk and return are openly understood, and shared appropriately. The heart of the system is relationships, not interest rates.

As a society in the west we have built a society on a premise of having whatever we want, in the belief that there is no cost – a banking and finance system that sidelines the importance of relationships, and a mortgage market that ignores the impact of relationship stability, a “sexual market” in which gratification is set above care for the relationship.

The heart of a successfully functioning human society is relationships, and the pinnacle of these in terms of commitment, mutual care, and self-sacrifice is marriage. Until we shift our thinking onto a relational basis we shall continue to build sandcastles in the air – and the tides of history will quietly sweep them back into the sea, all over again.