VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Rev Rob Marshall, Team Rector of East Ham |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130223.html][img=images/2013/02/pic130223.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]Unemployment - everyone's talking about it, the newspapers are full of it. It's been the [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21517854]top headline[/url] on every news bulletin all week.*

Not having a job is really bad. To feel that you have nothing useful to contribute, nothing to say, to have no future or aspirations can be really depressing. Believe me, as a vicar, I know.

Unemployment is a spiritual issue. I know this because Pope John Paul II said having a job was really important. If he was right then that just goes to show how really rights he was. It takes the kind of caring wisdom that only people like Pope John Paul II have to say something as caring and wise as Pope John Paul II did: that having a job is really important.

From a theological point of view having a job is seen as being really important. So, now that you know that from a theological point of view having a job is seen as being really important, you now know how important it is. This just goes to show how useful and insightful theology can be: telling you that having a job is really important.

Jesus told many parables about work, workers, wages, people who have jobs, the employed. He never said anything at all about the unemployment figures in first century Palestine. So it's very difficult to gauge whether he was a Keynesian, a Monetarist or whether he subscribed to a more classical Laissez-faire model of economic management. In short, Jesus had nothing whatever to say on the matter. I just thought I'd mention Jesus and the fact that he contributes, zero, zilch, zip diddly squat to the debate.

Somebody needs to do something about youth unemployment. It's my firm conclusion that somebody, somewhere has to come up with some sort of an idea for creating jobs for young people, because having a job is really important.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p015k7yj]Listen/Read[/url]

[i][*Ed - there doesn't seem to have been much about unemployment at all in the news this week.][/i]|CATEGORIES|84,53|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|DATE|1361607844|CREATEDBY|admin
