Lesson video

Hi, my name is Miss Speakman, we're on lesson 11 of 14 of the Human Rights unit.

And in today's lesson, we're looking at Attitudes to Wealth.

So in our lesson today, we're looking at Christian teachings on wealth from both the Old and the New Testament, looking at Islamic teachings on wealth, understanding views on the use of wealth, looking at about.

Learning about interest on loans in Islam, and look at attitudes to gambling towards Islam.

So there's a lot of things to cover today.

I think we can do it.

I think we can do a great job today.

Let's get ready for our lesson, first of all though please.

So let's make sure we've got a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper or an exercise book, and a different coloured pen ready for corrections, and also making sure we've got a nice, quiet, clear working space.

So the TV, music off, phone to one side if we're not using it for the lesson, and we also need to make sure you've got a nice quiet space to work in.

If you need to get yourself ready at all, please pause the video now and do so, and then unpause when you are ready to move on and start learning.

Okay, brilliant.

Thank you so much for getting yourself set up.

Let's get started with our learning today.

So the first thing we're going to do is look at Christian teachings on wealth.

And as I said, we are going to do this in both the Old Testament, and the New Testament.

So in the Old Testament, the idea mostly, was that wealth was given in response to faithfulness from God.

So the more faithful people were to God, the more God rewarded them with money and wealth, and riches.

So in Chronicles, it says, "All riches and wealth come from You, "You rule everything by Your strength and power, "and You're able to make everyone great and strong." That's referring to God.

So many Christians would've maybe referred to the Old Testament teachings and said, well, this idea that wealth comes from responses to faithfulness to God.

There's not so much a common view within Christianity anymore.

Parts of the early Christians would have believed this and perhaps many Jews might believe this following the Old Testament, but it's more the New Testament that many Christians will focus on in terms of their views on wealth.

So they focus more on the fact 'cause the New Testament focuses more on the fact that there are dangers of wealth and there's dangers of selfishness.

So focus more seems to be in the New Testament on loving God and loving your neighbour.

So many Christians would perhaps maybe refer to these teachings much more than they'd refer to the teachings of the Old Testament, which talk about wealth being a response to faithfulness.

And they would refer to this passage in Mark, which I think is actually quite an interesting imagery to think about.

So, "It's much harder for a rich person "to enter the Kingdom of God, "than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle." Now I don't have a needle to hand, but I hope you sort of recognise in your head, like, what is a needle, this little things you sew with.

Think about how small that little eye is, that's the bit where you thread the thread through, and then you use the needle.

And if you think how big a camel is, really big, I don't know how big but super, super big.

A camel is pretty big.

You can't get a camel through the eye of that needle, can you? This is not going to work, is it? So essentially saying here, it's harder for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of God, than for that camel to go through the eye of the needle.

We've already established it's very hard for that camel to go through the eye of a needle.

I mean, it's impossible.

I know they say that there's, you should never say anything is impossible, but I pretty much think that it's impossible for camel to get through the eye of a needle.

So many Christians would say those people who hold wealth, who are greedy, who don't share it, who are essentially not good with their money in terms of sharing out, helping others, it would be hard for them to enter the Kingdom of God or Heaven.

So many Christians would say yes, perhaps there is this idea that wealth is given from God as like a reward for faithfulness.

But many Christians say, we have to be careful about the dangers of wealth.

And the dangers of wealth making people selfish.

And therefore the focus should be more on loving God, loving your neighbour, distributing wealth fairly and helping one another.

What we're going to do, is now do some multiple choice quick fire questions.

I think these are a brilliant way of testing understanding so far.

Essentially, I ask you a question, I then count down from three seconds, then after three seconds, you shout out loud or you point to your screen which was the correct answer, whatever you feel most more comfortable with.

But, it can be pretty fun if you make it fun.

If you get involved.

And then after that, I give you the answer, then we go through them, I give you any feedback, if we need to, if at the end of it you can say, yes, I've got all the questions correct, and you can say good, I'm pretty, pretty okay with this, this fits all right for me.

If you get any incorrect, that's absolutely fine.

It's fine to get things wrong when you're learning something new.

And even it's fine to get things wrong when you know some for ages.

And then it's just a way of us saying, okay, I'm going to go back to that a later date.

That's something I didn't pick up in the same way I should've picked up the other things.

That's absolutely fine.

So I'm going to disappear, we're going to do our quick fire questions.

Some Christians believe wealth is a reward for being faithful to God.

True or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that is true.

Some Christians do believe this.

Some Christians believe in giving tithe because of Old Testament teachings.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that's true.

So it wasn't explicitly mentioned in what I just explained to you there.

Tithe is the idea of getting 10% of your income.

Some Christians believe the Old Testament teaches this should be done.

But other Christians believe it doesn't have to be done.

The New Testament teaches it is wrong to be wealthy.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

It's false.

So it does talk about, it's hard for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

But doesn't say that it's wrong to be wealthy.

But it does say about the dangers of using wealth and hoarding wealth.

The New Testament teaches about the dangers of wealth and greed.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that's true.

So it does actually teach you that there's more of a danger of hoarding wealth and being greedy, not in itself being wealthy being something that's wrong.

Many Christians believe it's more important to help themselves than others.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, it is false.

They actually believe it's very important to help others.

Well done if you got those all correct.

And as I said, if you haven't gotten them all correct, that's absolutely fine because this is a learning curve.

This is what we're meant to be doing today.

Let's move on now to looking at Islam and wealth.

So I'm just going to appear up on your screen, hopefully.

There we go.

So we'll now look at Islamic teachings on wealth.

Many Muslims believe that wealth is a blessing from Allah.

So wealth is a blessing from Allah, a reward from Allah.

But Muslims believe that wealth ultimately belongs to Allah, because Allah is the Creator of all things.

And therefore it should be distributed fairly.

Islam teaches against the idea of greed and says, well, this doesn't actually really, in the long term, belong to you, it belongs to God.

And therefore should be distributed fairly so that everyone can share in Allah's blessings.

Muslims believe that there's a responsibility to help the poor.

This idea of Zakah, giving 2.

5% of your idle wealth to charity at the end of every year, if you can afford to.

This idea that it's an obligatory act to give charity It's a responsibility then for them to help others that are poor, who are in need of money.

And many Muslims teach that too much wealth can be a distraction from God.

That if you start to hoard money and think only of money, then that pulls you away from your main focus, which should be God, which should be Allah, submission to Allah.

Remember the first pillar of Islam, the Shahada, is about God being on your mind all of the time.

And many Muslims say if your focus becomes too much on money then that distracts you from the Shahada, thinking of God and submitting to Him.

The Qur'an also teaches against those who hoard wealth.

So it says, "And those who hold gold and silver "and spend it not in the way of Allah, "give them tidings of a painful punishment." Essentially saying here, when people hoard gold and spend it not in the way that Allah would be pleased with, they will be punished for it.

So Islam does teach the importance of, yes, wealth is a blessing, but it belongs to God.

It should be distributed fairly, and we do not want wealth to distract us from God.

So Islam has a very similar idea to Christianity, which is the idea of giving out wealth and distributing it fairly, is essentially what both Christianity and Islam teaches.

Let's do some multiple choice quick fire questions based on Islamic teachings then, and see how much we have learned so far.

So, let's go.

Many Muslims believe wealth is a blessing from Allah.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that is true.

Many Muslims believe ultimately money belongs to them.

True or false? Three, two, one.

False.

Many Muslims believe that it belongs to Allah.

Many Muslims believe they do not have a duty to help the poor, it is only encouraged.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good.

That is false.

Many Muslims believe they do have a duty to help the poor.

The Qur'an warns against greed and hoarding wealth.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good.

That is true.

Well done if you got all of those correct.

We're now going to move on to the use and responsibility of wealth.

Well done for keeping up so far.

Well done for working so hard.

Let's move on.

Looking now then, at the uses and responsibility of wealth both in Christianity and Islam.

Starting with Christianity then.

In Christianity, many Christians believe that the wealthy are responsible for helping others and for helping the Church.

So where able to, people should be giving money to the poor, to help others.

But also to the Church so the Church can distribute this out to people as well.

There are many teachings of Jesus, which we call parables.

Parables means it's a teaching or a story that Jesus told, which has like a meaning story behind it or an expectation.

So parables that Jesus taught that talk about the uses and responsibility of wealth and the importance of helping others.

So the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, where essentially the Rich Man is, literally is sent to hell because he did not help a beggar man, Lazarus.

Now, it's not the same Lazarus that was raised from the dead, but this story essentially teaches Christians that they should be helping the poor and that people who don't help the poor and they're able to, can be judged by God based on this.

We also then have the parable of the Sheep and the Goats within Christianity as well, which essentially says that God will separate the people like the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

The goats are like the good people who help the poor, who feed the hungry, clothe the homeless, help heal the sick, and they will go to heaven.

But then the bad people are like the goats who don't help people, who don't give money and advice and clothing and assistance to people when they are in need.

And they will go to hell.

It says in that parable, whatever you did for even the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

Essentially, Jesus saying, when you help somebody, you're helping part of God's creation and God will look favourably on that.

So many Christians believe that they are responsible for helping others, for helping the Church, when they have wealth available to them.

In Islam, there is a similar idea of a duty to help other people and responsibility for helping others.

So it's the duty of the husband within Islam to provide financially for the family.

So Islam teaches that the man should work to provide for the family financially to make sure that they've got everything they need.

And then after that obligation has been fulfilled, there is an obligation to give Zakah, which is 2.

5% of their yearly income or wealth to charity, which is then distributed out to those most in need.

So Muslims believe there's a duty, of course, to help themselves, but then of course, also to help others too.

And Muslims are encouraged to give voluntary charity.

This voluntary charity is called sadaqah.

Sadaqah is essentially this idea of giving extra charity, voluntary means they don't have to do it, but they are encouraged to give it where they can, which then helps people.

Many Muslims might give sadaqah in the place or perhaps if they can't fast, for whatever reason, they might give charity instead.

So in both Christianity and Islam, there is always this encouragement to give money to the poor and to help those in need.

What we're going to do now is I'm going to.

We're going to pause, I'm going to ask you some questions, and we're going to bring this all together.

So we've got a nicely written down what Christians and Muslims believe about the responsibility of wealth and the importance of helping the poor.

So let's move forward on to that.

So to answer the following question, spend about five minutes on these questions.

So give an example of a parable Jesus taught that encourages the proper use of wealth, what is the view within Islam about the uses of wealth, and what should be covered first, and then what is expected after this? And you see that I've got some sentence starters for you.

I hope this is really helpful in getting you to think about how we would write this out.

Don't worry though.

Give it your best go, and then when you unpause the video, we'll go through corrections together.

So pause the video now, unpause when you're ready for the answers.

Okay, if you can see the screen, I'm assuming then you are ready for corrections.

Please have your different coloured pen out, ready for corrections, and we'll go through it together.

So an example of a parable, is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

Where the Rich Man ends up in hell because he did not help the beggar.

This teacher's Christians that God wants them to help those who are in need and not to hoard wealth and be greedy.

For the second question, Muslims believe that the man should provide financially for his family and buy the things they need for the household.

After this has been covered, Muslims are expected to give 2.

5% of their idol wealth in Zakah payments each year, which is given to the poor and the needy.

If you need to need to make any corrections, can you please pause and do that now for me? And then we're going to use this information to answer an exam style question.

So pause now, make corrections, unpause when you're ready.

Okay, I'm going to appear up on the screen.

it, always does.

There we go.

So we're going to answer a question, which is, explain two contrasting religious beliefs about wealth.

Now, these answers, these questions, sorry.

I find, 'cause I teach AQA at my own school, always seems to stump people a little bit because they get stuck on this bit that says contrasting.

Contrasting pretty much just means different, in this case.

So essentially you are telling me two different beliefs in religious.

I'll start that sentence again, Explain two different religious beliefs about wealth.

So nice and simple once you put it like that.

Exam boards so will differ in their expectations for "explain" questions.

And this question I've got here above best fits with the AQA specification.

If you're not sure which specification you are with, best to ask your teacher.

Either now, if you can, or after the lesson, if you can as well.

This just then means you have a good understanding where this fits with your own exam specification, and of course, it is important to know, even if you're not with AQA, this question will still be important in terms of getting you to practise the knowledge of what we've looked at today anyway.

So if you think, oh, I'm not with AQA, doesn't matter, the knowledge and practising by doing it in this style, will be really useful anyway.

I would say in this sort of question, you could talk about just Christianity, but I think it'd be best to talk about Christianity and Islam as like nice two different separate points.

It's good idea to this sort of question, to you use the point, explanation structure.

So make a point, explain it.

Make a point, explain it.

With these types of questions, mostly in AQA, what they would look at.

These sorts of questions that look like this, would be about four marks, so you'd probably need about four sentences to answer this question.

It really is hopefully fairly straightforward.

I'm going to give you a structure as well.

So if you think, oh, I don't know where to start with this, this is tricky, I'm going to give you a structure, it'll be absolutely fun, I'll give you a model answer, you'll feel so much more confident at the end of this, I promise.

And if you don't feel more confident about it, then I've promised, but I don't know how we would solve you telling me, oh, I'm still discontent.

My best tip for that would be, keep practising , keep going.

You will get there even if you still find it tricky.

So.

Oh, oh, it's disappeared.

So we can pause the video on the next slide to complete your task.

So I'm going to give you your structure.

It's going to have sentence starters, you've just looked at those views on wealth, you've got those views, haven't you? You wrote them down in your answers earlier, so you can use that for part of your structure.

So you're going to pause the video on the next slide and I'm going to give you the sentence starters and you're going to get started on that question.

So explaining two contrasting religious beliefs about wealth, can you make sure please, that you've written down the question to, these are your sentence starters.

"One Christian teaching about wealth is.

." And then your second sentence will be, "Therefore Christians will.

." And tell me what Christians do because of this.

"One Islamic teaching about wealth is.

." Tell me your teaching.

"Therefore Muslims will.

." Tell me what they do.

You don't need to include direct quotations from scripture in this question, it doesn't harm it if you do, though, if you know any, you want to use them.

We need to pause the video now, please, to give your best go at one of these answers, and if you're not sure, but even if you are sure, we will go through a model answer together.

So you can absolutely do this.

Pause the video now, unpause when you're ready to go through the answers.

Okay, if you can see this slide, I'm assuming then that you are ready for corrections, please have your different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

If you do need to go back and continue, then you can do that and then return to us when you are ready for the corrections.

Let's have a look then.

My model answer is this, one Christian teaching about wealth is that having wealth itself is not bad, but the Bible teaches about the dangers of greed.

Therefore Christians will believe it's important to help others and to not hoard wealth.

This follows the teachings of Jesus to love your neighbour.

One Islamic teaching about wealth is that it's a blessing from Allah and that wealth ultimately belongs to Allah.

Therefore Muslims will believe it's important to distribute it fairly, and will give Zakah payments to help the Ummah.

And as you can see here, it's fairly brief, isn't it? I've given a very nice, clear explanation of Christian and Islamic teachings.

You might not have written exactly the same as me and that's absolutely fine.

There's lots of different ways you could answer this question, but hopefully you find this useful in thinking about structure, how much you need to write, and what sort of things you need to include.

If you'd like to make any corrections or notes based on this, please pause the video now, then unpause when you are ready to move on to the next part of our lesson.

Okay, so what I'd like us to do now is to consider these two questions.

Spend about two minutes on these questions.

Just want you to get your initial thoughts down.

What do we mean by interest, and what do we mean by gambling? So can you pause the video now for me, please, answer those questions, and unpause when you are ready to move on.

Okay.

Brilliant.

Thank you so much for writing those down.

Let's have a look then at some key definitions of these two and we'll see how much they match with what you've written down.

So, interest is money paid to a lender on top of the amount loaned.

So let's say I borrowed 10 pound off a friend, and they say, I want it with 50% interest when you give me back that money.

That essentially means that when I give that money back to that person, they would be expecting to have 15 pounds.

'Cause they've lended me 10, 50% of that is five, and I'll have to give that back on top of what I have loaned or borrowed off somebody.

And then gambling is playing for a game for a chance of money, such as placing a bet or playing the lottery.

Can you please write down these two definitions for me please by pausing the video now, then unpausing when you are ready to move on.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Hopefully they matched up pretty well with what you had written down yourself, but if not, that's absolutely fine 'cause now we've got the actual definitions.

We're going to to look at what Islamic teachings are on interest and gambling then.

So actually Islam teaches against gambling, such as raffles, placing bets, the lottery or visiting casinos.

Many Muslims believe that focusing on this and focusing on money, is a dangerous thing to do in terms of then it lessens submission to Allah, focus on Allah.

So, many Muslims believe that gambling is haram, which means forbidden.

Many Muslims also believe that investments, and investments say making companies, et cetera, shouldn't be made in companies involved with gambling or alcohol.

Since gambling is haram and also drinking alcohol is haram, any association with that too would be considered haram.

And also as well as is charging interest on loans is forbidden in Islam.

So, whereas perhaps, maybe you might borrow money from a bank and they charge interest on that or interest in general, Muslims believe that this shouldn't be done.

So many Muslims will have specific Muslim banks that they go to, which don't charge interest.

Some Muslims may be a bit more lenient on this, but the majority of Muslims would say that charging interest on loans shouldn't be done, and believe that the Qur'an teaches against this.

So, I want to say a huge thank you for taking part in the lesson today.

You've worked so, so hard.

I am super impressed.

Yeah, so really, really well done.

I hope to see you again soon for another lesson.

See you later.