Monthly media and arts column

I’ve got to confess that I’m a bit behind the times. The Secret Millionaire series was first shown at the beginning of the year but I have only just caught it in repeats on More4.

But I’ve found it so compelling that I have to talk about it. The series is produced by RDF media, the company who brought us Wife Swap, a programme which specialises in putting people into an alien situation in an alien culture and getting them riled up in the pressure cooker environment of an often quite bizarre family. Great TV, but not very subtle. Mercifully, The Secret Millionaire is free from the emotional firestorms that are born from big characters having to justify their lifestyles to people they don’t like. Instead, it is about people making quite a big effort to help others at quite a cost to themselves.

Needy causes

You can guess the premise of the show from its title. A millionaire goes to an impoverished community where they spend ten days looking for ways to make their money work for other people. They disguise themselves as a ‘person with camera crew making a documentary about people moving into the area’ and look for ways to get involved with the local people. The success of this mainly depends on the ingenuity of the millionaire who has simultaneously got to come to terms with living on unemployment benefit and trying to socialise sufficiently to identify needy causes. The best results seemed to be where the philanthropists identify individuals who are entrepreneurs in some way, employing and training local people who wouldn’t otherwise get a chance.

Tears

With a £10,000 booster, one is shown how much of a knock-on effect a relatively small amount of money can have on the community. The moment at which each programme reaches its peak is when the unsuspecting targets receive their cheques. Tears are shed (on and off TV) and there are few speeches because they are generally lost for words. There are many blogs on the internet criticising the choice of benefactors or the ‘smash and grab’ nature of the giving.

Yet I was impressed by the ways in which the millionaires made sure that the money was going to be used properly, particularly in commitments to employing or working alongside them long term. Rather than encouraging the viewer to judge and despise, as Wife Swap, Big Brother, etc. all do, these programmes leave the viewer with a little bit of renewed faith in what humans can do for each other when they put their minds to it. It is Dragon’s Den in reverse. Rather than having entrepreneurs come to millionaires asking for cash through slick presentations, the millionaires go out there and get their hands dirty.

Hip philanthropy

Philanthropy is nothing new, but it is certainly becoming more hip. The idea of giving money to specific projects to obtain discernable results is presumably gaining in popularity as obvious areas of global concern are highlighted by the media. Whether it is clean water, immunisation or environmental issues, wealthy people worldwide have grabbed headlines by giving blockbuster amounts to alleviate real or potential suffering. Bill Gates and the Ebay and Google teams are obvious examples and the Live Earth concerts earlier this month involved lots of rich people giving up their normal demands in service of the greater good (oh, imagine, English white wine rather than champagne! Still, darling, it does mean fewer food miles).

Eternal wealth

Yet it has struck me again and again that being a ‘secret millionaire’, that is, having untold wealth that others know little about, and having the potential to pass on that wealth for the outright gain of another individual, is something that many of us have as Christians.

The reason that we have such wealth is outlined for us in Philippians 2, because Jesus, ‘who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing…he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!’ The Lord Jesus sought us out in our poverty, in our state of rebellion against God, and gave us the biggest cheque of all; the cashing of which will obtain full forgiveness and an eternity with him.

He offers us not only the wealth of freedom from condemnation and eternal employment as his servants but also adoption as his sons and daughters and the inheritance of all the riches of heaven, no less! It puts Channel 4’s secret millionaires to shame and challenges Christians who have such wealth to be sure and pass it on to others who know nothing about it.

The Secret Millionaire

Needy causes

Tears

Hip philanthropy

Eternal wealth

Eleanor Margesson

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