|PIC1|The plight of the long term unemployed was highlighted in the recent ABC television Four Corners program (20 April 2009) by illustrating the heartache of some residents of Wollongong who have found themselves in this situation. The program highlighted that the lack of meaningful employment leads to 'idle hands'.
Usually, it is energetic young people with perhaps quite low education or skills levels who suddenly find themselves with nothing to do, and a much reduced income. Some were trying to raise young families, and these factors themselves, can create domestic tensions.
Where groups of people in a similar situation are living close together, as in one particular block of flats where people were interviewed in the Four Corners program, then the level of violence can sometimes be perceived to increase.
This can then have a 'knock on' effect, where law-breaking and disorder can be seen as 'normal' behaviour, and where the normal community mechanisms for keeping violence in check can break down.
This is nothing new. And, despite the occasional accusations in the popular press about one particular 'violent' cultural group or another, any short delving into the history of cities will show that it has always occurred in disadvantageous areas where the unskilled and unemployed live close together, sometimes isolated from mainstream community services.
When Christian people find themselves unemployed, in M V Tronson's view, their theology will determine how they perceive their 'self worth'.
"A fundamental tenet Christianity is that our self-worth is affirmed, based on what Jesus Christ has already accomplished on the Cross by taking our sins and worthlessness upon Himself, setting us free," M V Tronson claimed. "In this case, being unemployed becomes primarily an issue of society's economics."
If people retain their sense of personal worthiness, and if they also adhere to the Christian principles regarding social morality, then such people are less likely to become so utterly frustrated that they resort to violence and law-breaking.
In contrast, the sort of attitudes to becoming unemployed that the Four Corners program described imply that people feel that any sense of usefulness to the community has been denied to them. In such cases, their self-worth becomes devastating. They subsequently may have:
* feelings of being unable to contribute to society as a whole, such as simple things like attending a P&C meeting, and feeling confident and willing to comment on an issue;
* a sense of being so distraught that they feel unable to even produce something, anything;
* an inner anguish that somehow they have 'failed' in many ways.
Moreover, these feelings are dehumanising.
The theological position that is central and unique to the Judeo-Christian belief is that, as a human being, one is valued and loved by God, for each person is made in His image.
Since there is a clear unmistakable understanding of self worth based on God, not on man, individuals are free (for example, the story of the talents that Jesus told) to explore how they can achieve anything they feel able to try.
"Christian theology goes further with the beautiful person of Jesus Christ who took the darkest aspects of unemployment upon Himself at the cross. A Christian's understanding of self worth encouragingly is based on what Jesus has done for them, not on whether they are caught up in an economic global meltdown unimaginably out of their control," M V Tronson explained.