It’s comforting in any crisis to have a scapegoat to savage, and the most obvious targets in our market meltdown are the fat-cat financiers who erected towering portfolios on sandbanks of debt. Did they never hear of King Canute?

As Will Hutton wrote so angrily in the London Observer: “For 30 years, greedy, callow, ignorant financiers, supported by no less callow politicians from all parties, have proclaimed the wonders of financial innovation. The price tag for their behaviour is an economic calamity. We should never have bought such snake oil. The consolation in these dark times is that we never will again.”

It’s true that a long spell of barmy weather saw many financiers seduced by incentives that made them both reckless and greedy, but it’s equally true that their bingeing was possible only because so many of us have big appetites.

For starters, they were under huge pressure from their own shareholders – you and me perhaps – to declare ever-higher returns. Their own jobs hung on it, as Keith Leslie noted in the UK Tablet. “So managements put the same pressure on their people to meet targets, and their people responded by seeking out higher-risk deals to deliver higher returns.”

It’s the capitalist way, and in the feeding frenzy of the new millennium many investors ignored the age-old lesson that bull markets are prone to run amok without careful regulation and clear ethics.

Even the Church of England had its fingers burnt on this chestnut. Less than 24 hours after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York had decried the greed of “city robbers,” it turned out that investments controlled by the church itself were involved in short selling and that the staid old CofE had shares in a major hedge-fund.

But big investors’ greed doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook. Western society likes its fill of good things – now, not later – so can we blame the money shovellers for heaping us with shonky credit to indulge our various hungers? Queen’s Freddie Mercury offered up more than a pop song when he sang, “I want it all; I want it now” – he was giving us an anthem for our age.

I’m old enough to remember the 1950s, when most households got by on the average wage and delayed gratification was a family staple. The closest thing to a credit card then was a dog-eared book under the counter of the local grocer, and it was monitored as closely as the National Debt.

The worst aspect of being a delivery boy in those days was having to ask slow-payers for 10 shillings off their account before the groceries could be unpacked on the kitchen table. I managed to pass on the request as a directive from higher up the food chain, and most householders were decent enough to dig deep and salve a schoolboy’s embarrassment.

There was hire purchase, of course, but that was a bit like marriage – never to be entered into lightly. The only other path to that coveted radiogram or fridge was lay-by… Now there’s a Kiwi relic.

The sweet irony of lay-by, of course, was that the anticipation afforded as much pleasure as the fulfilment. Truly.

My lack-lustre performance in the sixth form had little to do with a slow brain; I was dreaming of a Fender Stratocaster guitar on order from California and which seemed to navigate every port around the globe before finally docking in Lyttelton and clearing the mysteriously accident-prone goods sheds.

My point again: the long months of waiting actually added to the pleasure of finally... yes, finally opening the case and smelling the duco of that mighty axe. Try explaining that to today’s youngsters who pick over the imported goodies in the Rock Shop.

“It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive,” says Anthony Daniels in a review of the book Hunger. “For fulfilment is always in some sense a disappointment simply because it never leads to completion, only a further cause of discontent.” Or as Haitian wisdom has it, “Behind mountains are more mountains.”

So, what does all that have to do with the credit crunch? Simply that it’s our collective desire for more money, and therefore more things, that has dug the debtors’ pit in which we now languish. The very people who should have known better did grease the slope for us, but many of us skated down merrily on our own credit cards.

Why should we be surprised that we’ve hit rock bottom with such a thump? The spirit of acquisition that led us deep into the Land of Hock is about as dependable as a 10cent compass. Always has been; always will be.
Jesus said: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.” For the evidence is that real wealth accumulates not through playing the FTSE 100, but by investing in relationships – and money becomes a blessing only when we use it to enrich lives less fortunate than our own.

Which brings us to the prosperity paradox: that material gain brings fleeting joy, and may even heighten social and individual distress. This flies in the face of Lotto mania, I know, but research proves it – the excitement of a lottery jackpot or a flash car or a palatial house pales surprisingly quickly. Whereas coherent values, strong social networks and a generous outlook pay dividends of meaning and purpose. With compounding interest, moreover.

The final contradiction in the money crisis, however, is that hunkering down is a prescription for Depression. We’re seeing it already: a creeping paralysis induced by fear of scarcity. Whereas what makes the money go round in any situation is personal largesse and ongoing community care.

The gospel for the Feast of Christ in all Creation (November 16) might have been written for our current predicament, because it centres on three servants who are given commissions according to their abilities. Two respond with imagination and daring, while the third digs himself into a hole of fear and trembling – and we all know who gets fired at the end of the day (Matt 25:14-30).

Forget about the money, because that’s not what the story is about. The real point is that the first two servants are able to take the risks they do simply because they know their master. Unlike the fearful servant, they trade on the generosity of his will and the security of his embrace, and their blessings multiply.

Keep the faith.

Brian Thomas is editor of Anglican Taonga.