Excerpt:
A reflection on parenting, morality, and the teaching of Jesus — showing how the true measure of life lies not in worldly success but in moral fruitfulness. Wealth and compassion need not be opposed but reconciled through the law written in the heart.
The Inner Law and the Fruits of Inequality
We often ask how a child can develop morals without exposure to religion. The answer, I now think, lies in the quality of parenting itself. Good parenting — like good teaching — allows the child to develop an inner strength and an intuitive sense of right and wrong. It does for the spirit what nourishment and exercise do for the body. Together they foster an individual strong in both body and mind.
1. The moral imagination
Parents, long before priests or teachers, are the first moral educators. They intervene when the child behaves selfishly, helping it to imagine the feelings of others. Bible stories, folk tales, and nursery rhymes all serve a similar purpose: they dramatise good and evil, courage and cowardice, pride and humility. Through them, the child learns that actions have consequences and that empathy is a form of wisdom.
Good parenting — like good teaching — allows the child to develop an inner strength. No one would disagree with this, yet few adjust their lives accordingly. Studies such as those by the Sutton Trust have shown that parenting in modern Britain is often fractured: broken families, single parents under strain, both partners working long hours, and rising child poverty. The moral nurture once given at home is increasingly outsourced or neglected.
It seems that our race for opulence has ended in worrying austerity. The paradox is that the imposed austerity of the war years—with rationing, shared hardship, and social cohesion—produced one of the healthiest and most equitable periods in British history. Food and goods were distributed according to need, not greed.
The historian John Collee, in The Vitamin Murders (2004), argues that this period of enforced equality did not suit those who viewed fairness as a threat to personal prosperity. When rationing ended, private profit soon reclaimed moral ground once occupied by public conscience. The story of postwar Britain thus mirrors the story of the soul: a gradual forgetting of the inner law that once bound communities together.
This early formation is what Jesus later called the heart’s law. When asked about the greatest commandment, he replied:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… and your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37–39)
The commandment is not about ritual but relationship. It describes a love that begins in the family and extends outward — the moral imagination enlarged to embrace the world.
2. Inequality and moral responsibility
Western society today reveals a troubling polarisation of wealth: in Britain, ten per cent of the population own around half of the national wealth, while another ten per cent possess almost nothing. Inequality, it seems, is woven into human life. Jesus recognised this reality without glorifying it.
In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30), each servant is given resources “according to his ability.” The master commends not the possession of wealth but its use: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The lesson is that privilege carries responsibility; potential unused is the true moral failure.
Likewise, his warning — “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16) — turns attention from what one has to what one does with it. The measure of a life is fruitfulness, not status. Inequality, then, becomes a moral test rather than a social ideal.
3. The integration of success and compassion
It is natural to envy those whose lives seem more “integrated” — who have achieved success and stability — while condemning oneself for not having done so. Yet inner worth cannot be measured by external attainment. Jesus asked,
“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)
He did not despise wealth; he warned against mistaking it for life. The one who lives truly is the one whose outer abilities serve inner goodness.
The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) reveals this balance. He is prosperous enough to travel, to pay an innkeeper, and to promise further repayment — yet his compassion outweighs his wealth. His “fruits” are mercy and honesty. Jesus concludes, “Go, and do thou likewise.”
History, too, warns us what happens when power is divorced from conscience. Figures like Henry VIII show that education and privilege, unguided by moral imagination, can breed arrogance and cruelty. The challenge is not to renounce worldly ability but to redeem it through compassion.
4. The Beatitudes: the reversal of worldly values
At the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaimed blessings that overturn every common measure of success:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth…
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled…
Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”
(Matthew 5:3–11)
Here, poverty, meekness, and rejection become signs of authenticity, not failure. To be reviled for conscience’ sake is to stand in the company of the prophets. Jesus’ teaching thus reverses the social hierarchy: what seems weakness before the world becomes strength in the kingdom of the spirit.
5. The rebirth of moral life
Perhaps the rebirth of the Church we long for is not institutional but inward — a renewal of parenting, education, and conscience. The moral law must again take root in the heart, where family life first shapes it.
“The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
When families nurture both compassion and courage, when wealth is used with justice and imagination, when strength serves mercy — then the outward inequalities of the world cease to corrupt the inward law of the soul.
To live by this law is to live, in Jesus’ words, life abundantly (John 10:10): a life in which success is measured not by possession but by fruitfulness, not by reputation but by love.
In the end, every life is an attempt to redeem itself — not by escaping the world, but by learning to live truthfully within it. To thine own self be true.
