THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - 11th July 2007

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

Clear blue water was emerging yesterday on this programme when Ian Duncan Smith went head to head with Ed Miliband about the State’s attitude to marriage. But both agreed that the interests of children were paramount.

It’s clear that many children in Britain today are being brought up in emotional poverty, deprived of the security that flows from a stable family relationship. Recent evidence shows that those raised in a family structured on marriage achieve significantly higher results at school. It’s also clear that when you have children the family spending increases hugely. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that a single-income household that feeds four or even five people should, on the grounds of justice alone, be taxed very differently from a double-income household that keeps only two.

But there are problems with these arguments. Firstly, it doesn’t take long for the media to find an immensely successful achiever who was brought up by a single parent. Secondly, pundits immediately invoke the language of ‘discrimination’ which is the new orthodoxy. And thirdly, marriage becomes the latest political football, kicked around the pitch with all the accuracy of a team struggling to stay in the third division.

Meanwhile, the nation’s children, in whose interests all this is being debated, look on bored and neglected like kids standing hungry in the aisle of a supermarket while their parents bicker about the shopping!

Of course, there’s another problem. Politicians say they don’t like preaching. By this I think they mean they don’t like being seen telling people how to run their lives. What they’re really scared of is saying that marriage is best and then the media reveal some infidelity in their ranks – as if this hypocrisy would undermine their policy.

Hearing a Bishop speak about marriage you’d’ve already drawn your own conclusions about where I stand. But that’s not the point I want to draw from the Christian faith. This may sound rather depressing. And it’s certainly not very fashionable – not even in the church! It’s the doctrine of original sin. None of us is perfect. Not even our leaders. Which is strangely liberating. Especially for leaders. It means that moral weakness is our human condition. It means the fact that we don’t always do what we say does not undermine what we say we should do!

Marriage is an ideal. God gave it out of love – for love, and for the nurture of children. Are there bad marriages? Yes! That’s human nature! We’re forever struggling in the real world to live up to God’s ideals. That’s also what makes us human. The fact that we’re all flawed human beings is not a good enough reason for denying that marriage is best for children or for divorcing public policy from our ideals – providing there’s also ample compassion, which, God knows, we all need.