蜜芽传媒

Good morning. There can鈥檛 have been many occasions when a prime minister requests his parliament to vote in favour of something of which he publicly disapproves.

Yet the Greek Parliament has done just that by sanctioning the latest bailout. And it鈥檚 done so despite the IMF鈥檚 warning of unsustainability and whether there鈥檚 a need to cancel some of Greece鈥檚 debts.

To hear the IMF raising the possibility of debt cancellation must have come as music to the ears of veterans of the Jubilee 2000 campaign. In the run up to the Millennium in 2000 an international coalition of churches and relief agencies promoted the cancellation of unpayable debt by the world鈥檚 most impoverished countries. Greece wasn鈥檛 even on the radar then, and its current debts are part of an even more complex picture. Many of the poorest countries at the time were spending more on servicing their debts, often incurred by corrupt past regimes, than they were spending on education and health combined. So there was little prospect of economic and social improvement. Jubilee 2000 influenced the IMF and the World Bank to introduce the rather inelegantly named Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative. Its conditions were stringent and economic sovereignty curtailed. Sounds familiar.

In the Book of Leviticus a Jubilee happens every fifty years 鈥� more than an average lifetime in the ancient world. The 2000 campaign was based on the conviction that at the Jubilee all debts were cancelled, lands restored and slaves set free. The biblical record is a bit more complex than that. The Jubilee helped to keep the Promised Land in the hands of those who were given it by God. Aliens and sojourners could join in the feast but the provisions of the Jubilee didn鈥檛 apply to them. It gave stability and security to the people of Israel. That was the point. Forgiving debts was only part of it.

Some parts of the Christian world commonly translate one of the petitions in the Lord鈥檚 Prayer as 鈥渇orgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors鈥�. It seems strangely appropriate that how we translate that phrase should be based on how you understand Greek. The relevant word in Matthew鈥檚 gospel is certainly the Greek for the cancellation of a monetary debt. But in the context of the Lord鈥檚 Prayer it means much more. A reconciled world is not built just by forgoing some of what may be due to us. It鈥檚 a mutual generosity of spirit that鈥檚 needed to rebuild trust 鈥� and not just in Greece and Europe.

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