Heroes
The urban search and rescue teams that have worked in Christchurch and similar situations have been hailed as heroes. What makes someone in real life, a hero? Risking one’s own life to save others’. In real life, it’s not about having invincible powers that you can use, but being willing to give everything you have (however great or weak), even to the extent of giving your own life.
Why does a person take great risks for others? Why do people sign up to do jobs like search and rescue, police, ambulance, fire-fighting and such, when they know they might be injured, or even killed? A major factor is that they put a high value on human life. They value other people’s lives as least as highly as they value their own. What’s the alternative? To be selfish. It’s interesting isn’t it? Jesus said, “If you save your own life you’ll lose it.” I’m sure that if you were to ask these people at least some of them would say, “I do it for them because I would want someone to do it for me if I was in their position.”
Human life is valued by all societies and all people, but some put a higher value on it than others. In New Zealand this is a strong value, but some of our people seem to have lost it or not to have acquired it. They kill and maim people and don’t seem to care.
Freedom
Another thing we value is freedom. Freedom of thought and belief, freedom of choice and association, freedom to be ourselves. Freedom of religion. Have you noticed religious freedom being eroded? Of course we shouldn’t take it for granted. There hasn’t been a great deal of religious freedom in human history.
Steven (see Acts 7:54-60) is regarded as a hero of the faith because he gave his life for what he believed. He was the first Christian martyr. He lived in a society under the control of two religious authorities. The first was the Roman Empire with its state-enforced worship of a number of deities, the second was the local Jewish religion, society and culture. Judaism was a legal religion under the Roman rule. While the Romans thought Christianity was part of Judaism they left it alone. But Judaism was quick to separate the Christians thus denying their legitimacy. So, first the Jews and then the Romans persecuted the Christians. This went on for 300 years until Christianity became the religion of the empire.
But persecution doesn’t hold Christianity back. Since Jesus got it going, Christianity has spread all over the world, evangelising and re-evangelising the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa and America. For centuries Europe has been either Christian or Christian-based. The countries now known as the Western World have Christian origins and traditions. Today most Western governments are considered secular. Church and state are separate – the church does not run the country – and the state does not favour any one denomination or religion over another. Indeed the state guarantees freedom of religion – freedom to choose, to believe, to practice, to associate, and so on. Is it still that way?
When we look at New Zealand today we see that the majority of the people recognise that they are spiritual and believe in god. But ‘god’ in that sentence is not defined. We also see that people who adhere to a religious faith are still in the majority. 55.6% affiliated with a Christian religion in the 2006 census. In that census 29.6% stated they had no religion which means that 70.4% of new Zealanders are religious people. Among the no-religion group are those who are anti-religion and poltical correctness is their way of pushing our society and our government in opposing religion.
They may struggle with htis but I say that those who claim no religion are still religious. Call it atheism, agnosticism, humanism, evolutionism, secularism or whatever you like – it is religious. This quote pretty well sums it up: “Your ‘god’ is whatever you ascribe ultimate value to, and shows up in your words, cheque stubs, and how you spend your leisure time.” (David Riddell, Living Wisdom.) Whether you see yourself as religious or not, your ultimate value determines how you live. We all have life-shaping ultimate values so we are therefore all religious. Therefore the pressure that we are facing in this country, as well as others, for everyone to adopt and live by secular beliefs and values is the domination of one religion over the others and a denial of religious freedom.
A couple of examples, from Australia because they’re current
In Australia, from January next year, it will be illegal for Early Childhood Centres to involve their children in any religious activity. No nativity stories, no Easter eggs, nothing. Where has that come from? I’d call it extreme political correctness. In New Zealand all science taught in our schools (officially) is evolutionary science. Secularism is calling the shots and our religious freedom is being limited.
In recent years, all Western countries have seen the number of different cultures and religions among their people increase dramatically. Integration is increasingly problematic. The New Zealand Herald, Friday 20 May, 2011, has an article about Muslim integration in Australia. The Islamic Council of Victoria is quoted as saying, “The overwhelming majority of Australian Mulsims want nothing more than to get on with their lives and make meaningful contributions to this wonderful country.” Amen. Isn’t that what we all want? But we have many opinions on how that can be achieved.
Back to history for a moment. For centuries the European nations were Christian (or at least Christianised). And so it is that the Western nations are based on a set of essentially Christian values. Values like service beyond self; equality, meaning a more even distribution of wealth and power; equality before the law; fairness, innocence until proven guilty; the value of the individual, hence freedom of thought, etc., and human rights.
The way forward that I am recommending is derived from a booklet by Patrick Sookhdeo, CEO of the Barnabas Fund.
We suggest that the best context for cultures and religions to coexist is that of a secular society. But this is not the ‘hard secularism’ of contemporary secular humanism, which regards all religion as mistaken and exclusive and tries hard to push it out of the public sphere into a purely private and personal one. Such attempts to marginalise or destroy religion tend to provoke strong and even violent reactions.
Nor is the best context the ‘softer secularism’ of postmodernism, which regards all religions and traditions as equally valid and tolerates them all absolutely. This tends to encourage the development of parallel societies isolated from one another.
In New Zealand, as in other Western nations, there has developed a kind of secularity where religion and state are kept separate but the state is grounded on Judeo-Christian values. As long as that is the case, the presence of all religions and cultures is affirmed and their distinctive beliefs and practices are respected – to the extent that they are consistent with our traditional values which have been formed from centuries of Christian faith and practice. In other words, these Judeo-Christian values are the ones that will keep our society free.
It is not always recognised that some of the foundations of Western society, such as respect for the individual person, religious freedom, and the right to criticise the beliefs of others, are not universal values. The fact they’ve been embedded in Western culture makes them seem self-evident, but they are not so in many parts of the world. In fact these values derive from the Judeo-Christian tradition. So where that tradition has a certain primacy (without asserting itself in an exclusive way), all religious groups are best able to live together in peace and harmony.
If this analysis is correct, New Zealand (and Australia, and the others) will integrate our various ethnic and religious groups most effectively by keeping itself grounded on shared national values derived from its Christian heritage. This model for society sees the state as a single community of individual citizens united by these core commitments.
I’m arguing that our core values are being eroded and that we are in danger of being dominated by a particular religion (even if it is a non-religion) which is intent on removing the freedom we value so highly. Hence it is vital at this time to restore our core values to restore our freedoms.
And the reason I am preaching this today is that I want everyone in this country to re-evaluate – to look again at the values we share and the way we together live out those values with a view to re-establishing the free society we’ve come to appreciate. This discussion needs to go on throughout the country at all levels of society. I want to see this discussion mainstreamed and I will be doing what I can to have that happen. This is just the introduction!