Fred Goodwin and the Gospel of Grace

Fred Goodwin, former Chief Executive of RBS group, rescued from bankruptcy with hundreds of billions of pounds worth of UK Government support in 2008, yesterday (31st January 2012) had his knighthood (for services to banking) rescinded by the Queen following advice from a government committee.

Most people are rejoicing at this news. coming just a day after RBS's current Chief Exec (Stephen Hester) turned down £1 million in shares after considerable public and political pressure it seems a potent symbol of people power - the 99.9% getting something back from the 0.1% perhaps.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks "Fred the Shred" did a good job (much as you would have been hard pressed in 2006 to find anyone who thought he had done a bad one - hindsight is a wonderful thing!). Yet as Charles Moore has pointed out in the Telegraph recently the decision smacks of political opportunism and is rather a cheap gesture. After all many other people who have been recipients of honours failed miserably in the banking crisis too - civil servants who were meant to be regulating the system, politicians who are elected to represent people not just rich people and ordinary citizens who have a responsibility only to buy things we can afford.

How is it decided who has behaved sufficiently badly to lose their knighthood? Previously it was only people who have been convicted of a serious crime. This means Goodwin joins Anthony Blunt and Robert Mugabe, which does seem a little bit disproportionate. Now it seems that just not doing very well at your job is sufficient and, indeed, politicians are now calling for other city figures to lose honours. I think these politicians are treading a path that might go somewhere they don't want it to. Would taking the country into a war in which at least 100,000 people died to find weapons of mass destruction when there were none count as not doing your job very well? If so surely the entire cabinet of the last government should cease to be Lords, Sirs and Honourables? How about fiddling your expenses? Won't be many politicians knighted in the next few years then...

The sad truth is that if honours are only to be given to the honourable there aren't going to be very many of them awarded! And if they are going to be awarded only to people we can be sure have made a reasonable decent fist of their life waiting till a good 10 years after their death before awarding a knighthood would seem wise - though it might rather limit the satisfaction of the recipient.

There are those, of course, who think of the badge "Christian" as a bit like an honour; earned by goodness and capable of being lost by failure. But the truth, gloriously, is the opposite. Becoming a Christian, that is receiving the gift of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, is an honour bestowed only on the undeserving. It cannot be lost by failure; indeed the regular admission of failure is just about the only true demonstration that you have received the honour at all.


Wonderfully the Lord Jesus Christ will not strip the title "brother," or the Father the honour of being called "child" (so much better than "Sir!") from anyone no matter what our failures.