We all knew the figures would be high, and yet somehow their release still staggered us. As revealed in the BBC's annual report, the stars of the corporation's most popular TV and radio programmes are paid mind-boggling amounts to do jobs which almost seem rewarding enough in themselves. Gary Lineker gets close to £2 million a year for fronting a football programme (albeit occasionally in his underpants); Graham Norton receives nearly £1 million for hobnobbing with celebrities on air. When we compare them to the salaries paid to nurses, teachers, and even senior doctors, they seem like offensively large amounts of money.
When we draw those comparisons, we're quite right to be outraged. And the BBC's stars, rather cruelly shamed in a way that most others escape, still aren't by any means the most extraordinarily-renumerated people in our culture. Footballers, part of a micro-economy which this summer is spiralling out of all perspective and control, are often paid in a month what Norton earns in a year, while some in the banking and finance sector wouldn't even get out of bed for what Cristiano Ronaldo earns. I know a currency trader who was actually invited to 'make up' his salary by his boss.
These numbers are morally questionable in their own right, but really become reprehensible when set in the context of a profoundly unequal society. In the age of austerity, many lower-paid workers haven't really seen their income rise in a decade, while the widespread need for food banks and government benefits demonstrates that the same country in which bankers can be paid what they want, houses people who literally can't feed their children.
So it's absolutely right that when we hear that Chris Evans earns over £2 million a year for getting up early (although not as early as the people who clean the bankers' offices each morning), we feel a measure of disgust. It's also right to feel a sense of righteous anger at the gender pay gap revealed in the BBC figures, which show that 2/3 of the corporation's best-paid stars are men, and that none of those earning over half a million pounds a year are female.
But is that really why we feel outraged? Is that really why this story rankles in our guts? Well, maybe, but I think there's a bit more going on than that.
The truth is that the vast majority of us wouldn't turn down a million-pound offer to host a TV show. I know I wouldn't. Yes, we feel the wrongness of the inequality these salaries reflect, but we're also at least partly jealous that our own pay packets don't match up. Speaking for myself at least, I find that stories like this jab a finger on our unresolved issues with greed and envy – both of which are frequently addressed in Scripture – and remind us of the tensions of living in a culture of acquisition.
When Jesus talks to and about the high earners of his culture, he responds with such strong words and radical measures that we can find them hard to process. When he tells the original 'rich young ruler' in Matthew 19:21 to 'go, sell your possessions and give to the poor' before following him, the hearer can't handle the implications and goes away 'in sorrow because he had great wealth'. In Luke 16 he draws sneers from the Pharisees for suggesting that you can't love God and money, while later in the same passage he addresses the gulf of financial inequality in the strongest possible terms, by having a poor man visit his wealthy oppressor in the apparent eternal conscious torment of hell. Jesus wasn't fuzzy on the issue of high salaries – he didn't prohibit them, but he had a lot to say about how they were spent.
So instead of feeling grumpy about the amounts earned by BBC starts, pro sportspeople and investment bankers, perhaps we should feel some sympathy for them. Their responsibility to the poor is in a way even greater, because they have the means to help them. Instead of chastising, we should be encouraging the rich to share what they have. And if we're going to do that, then we have to ensure our own attitudes to generosity and fighting inequality are as righteous as those we expect in others.
That means that the best response to these figures isn't just a cry of anger at the unfairness of the dominant mode of capitalism, but a counter-cultural commitment to generosity in our own lives. Since Gary Lineker's salary only makes me reflect on my own, perhaps the best thing I can do is consider how I spend my pay packet, rather than obsessing on what he does with his. More than that, it gives me an opportunity to reflect on where I'm still absolutely complicit in the sort of wealth-accumulation strategy from which Jesus seeks to liberate us. And once I've dealt with all that, yes, it's absolutely right to campaign for greater wage equality in our society. Let's just make sure that when we do so, our motives really are pure.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO ofYouthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders
