Yesterday in New Zealand an international inter-faith forum was opened, attended by 165 religious and cultural leaders from 15 countries. The forum was sponsored by the New Zealand, Australian, Indonesian and Philippines governments as a response to the 2002 Bali bombings, the aim being to prevent religious-inspired terrorism by building links between various faiths in what is potentially the world’s most volatile region. In a sign of the importance they are afforded by member states, the opening was attended by NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark, the NZ Foreign Affairs Minister, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and the Australian Foreign Minister. New Zealand has a Statement on Religious Diversity, prepared by the Victoria University Religious Studies Programme, and is the subject of a national process of public consultation coordinated by the Human Rights Commission. It was endorsed by the National Interfaith Forum in Hamilton in February 2007 as a basis for ongoing public discussion. The statement reads as follows:

1. The State and Religion
The State seeks to treat all faith communities and those who profess no religion equally before the law. New Zealand has no official or established religion.

2. The Right to Religion
New Zealand upholds the right to freedom of religion and belief and the right to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of religious or other belief.

3. The Right to Safety
Faith communities and their members have a right to safety and security.

4. The Right of Freedom of Expression
The right to freedom of expression and freedom of the media are vital for democracy but should be exercised with responsibility.

5. Recognition and Accommodation
Reasonable steps should be taken in educational and work environments and in the delivery of public services to recognise and accommodate diverse religious beliefs and practices.

6. Education
Schools should teach an understanding of different religious and spiritual traditions in a manner that reflects the diversity of their national and local community.

7. Religious Differences
Debate and disagreement about religious beliefs will occur but must be exercised within the rule of law and without resort to violence.

8. Cooperation and understanding
Government and faith communities have a responsibility to build and maintain positive relationships with each other, and to promote mutual respect and understanding.

Background to this statement is the understanding that New Zealand is a country of many faiths with a significant minority who profess no religion. Increasing religious diversity is a significant feature of public life. At the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Governor Hobson affirmed, in response to a question from Catholic Bishop Pompallier, “the several faiths (beliefs) of England, of the Wesleyans, of Rome, and also Maori custom shall alike be protected”. Christianity has played and continues to play a formative role in the development of New Zealand in terms of the nation’s identity, culture, beliefs, institutions and values.

On the face of it, these eight points that comprise the statement do look fair and reasonable. In our secular society every person receives equal protection under the law - protection from each other when the “right” to freedom of expression and practice of religious beliefs are under threat. The virtue of equality in law is upheld, but with it the less virtuous levelling of our national identity to whatever ingredients just happen to be in the mixing pot.

Less virtuous? The addition of a very small amount of salt may be excessive in flavouring the soup, and so too may the original ingredients forming our nation’s identity, culture, beliefs, institutions and values be overwhelmed by the influence of a small but forceful component without certain protections for those original ingredients. Just as has happened in the United Kingdom with the over-reaching impact of Islam from a population percentage still in single digits (about 3%) and in Europe from a greater percentage range, so may our Judeo-Christian heritage also require extra protection if we are not to lose it’s influence in several decades from now. Muslim youth in Sweden are wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words based on socio-demographical predictions: “2030 and we take over”.

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At the opening of this inter-faith forum yesterday were 2,000 protesters led by “Bishop” Brian Tamaki of the Destiny Church, a traditionally Bible-based evangelical Christian church that many would describe as fundamentalist. The protest was against the statement of religious diversity which says the country has no “established or official religion”. Bishop Tamaki branded it “treason” for failing to properly recognise New Zealand’s Christian past, and delivered his own statement which demanded the Government formally recognise New Zealand as a Christian nation.

“Our government intends on presenting to primarily what are Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist countries that New Zealand has no established religion. I contend and say that we do have an established religion, it’s Christianity and I think … every New Zealander should be involved in making that officially recognised.” ~ Bishop Brian Tamaki, Destiny Church.

In response, our Prime Minister defended the Statement on Religious Diversity by saying that NZ has never had a state religion. Some further debate on this issue has been reported here. In the 2006 Census, those professing a Christian faith dropped from 60.8% of the population in 2001 to 51.2%, but were still 10 times as numerous as all other religions combined (5.1%). Those professing no religion rose from 29.6% to 32.2%, and 13.3% refused to answer the question.

How does one protect our Judeo-Christian heritage while receiving immigrants from different cultures and religions? I personally would like to see formal recognition of our Christian heritage, and an amendment of that first point which so upsets Brian Tamaki and others. After all, we do indeed have an established religion, that being Christianity - historically and currently. Our national anthem is God Defend New Zealand. It is not Allah, Buddha, or Krishna (etc) Defend New Zealand. In teaching about different faiths, I would like Christianity favoured over the teaching of other religions in schools - and taught realistically, such as within a Biblical Christian world view that explores some of the essential apologia for its tenets of faith, not just a random assortment of Bible stories for children. And the cessation of the current politically correct effort to eradicate Christian influence and practice where that is taking place, such as the over-sensitivity to the meaningful (as opposed to commercial) celebration of Christian festivals in case a practitioner of a different faith might possibly feel offended. The practice of other religions needs be kept reasonable in regard to the existing culture, which doesn’t mean hiding one’s face inside a burqua when that engenders suspicion and fosters segregation rather than assimilation.

Puritan Lad, in his Covenant Theology blog, has posted an entry entitled “Christianity and Immigration” in which he writes that, whereas “the Bible commands us to love the immigrant, it also commands the immigrant to assimilate into a Christian society that welcomes him.” He references the following Scripture:

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.” (Exodus 22:21-24)

“You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the LORD your God.”
(Leviticus 24:22)

“And if a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its rule, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the sojourner and for the native.”
(Numbers 9:14)

This is about assimilation, and assimilation into a country with a Judeo-Christian heritage upon which our culture and national identity is based. Our society may be largely secular due to the separation of state from religion, but we are not religion-free and there should be no covert invitation for any other to make the soup too salty to the taste. Yes, of course I am biased towards Christianity. The first of the Ten Commandments just happens to be: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

One of C.S. Lewis’s most popular books, and the one he said was the hardest to write, is The Screwtape Letters. (See my entry of 2 years ago).

They are a collection of letters written by a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew and apprentice, Wormwood, which cover an interesting curriculum designed to mentor Wormwood in meeting the objective of shipwrecking humans on the rocks of evil and eternal damnation.

I am not sure if The Screwtape Letters are quite as popular today as they were when they were written back in 1941 since the “sophistication” of this post-Christian age scorns the idea of personified evil in the form of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Father of Lies, who masquerades as an Angel of Light. However, Lewis writes masterfully of the wiles of the devil and his subtle influence on ourselves to claim us as his unwitting followers on a path in the opposite direction of Heaven.

One of the most primary methods outlined is that of convincing us of Satan’s non-existence. If we can be made to believe that he does not exist, then he can move more stealthily about as invisible, nicely hidden from our modern secular cognizant selves by our own spiritual blindness. How much easier it is for him to do his dirty work when nobody believes he is there! What a stroke of genius!

It would seem that the Prince of Darkness could well be winning the battle for people’s souls. One of the functions of The Barna Group is to provide primary research regarding the religious or spiritual views currently held by people in America, and I am using this very large population as generally representative of our western civilization. In a recent study directed by David Kinnaman, it was found that…

Most Americans do not have strong and clear beliefs, largely because they do not possess a coherent biblical worldview. That is, they lack a consistent and holistic understanding of their faith. Millions of Americans say they are personally committed to Jesus Christ, but they believe he sinned while on earth. Many believers claim to trust what the Bible teaches, but they reject the notion of a real spiritual adversary or they feel that faith-sharing activities are optional. Millions feel personally committed to God, but they are renegotiating the definition of that deity.

As regards the existence of Satan…

~ In 2006, more than half of adults (55%) say that the devil, or Satan, is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.
~ In 2006, 45% of born again Christians deny Satan’s existence.
~ Slightly more than two-thirds of Catholics (68%) say the devil is non-existent and only a symbol of evil. (2006).

In Scripture, Satan first appears as the snake who successfully tempts Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit (OK, who thought it was an apple that she ate, and why?) but that is one representation of many. Satan is said to be a non-corporal spiritual entity, originally an angel of some stature who lead a rebellion against God. So in talking about him, in whatever way at all, he originates from the spiritual realm, that which mainstream Christian belief acknowledges co-exists with our physical reality.

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Changing tack just a little, it strikes me as amazing that millions of Americans say they are personally committed to Jesus Christ, but also say they believe He sinned while on earth. To whom then are they committed? It cannot be the Jesus of the Bible because there is no doubt in Scripture that Jesus Christ, the One who was crucified on the cross as our Redeemer, is indeed sinless. To say that He sinned is to deny that God is holy and righteous, and it flies right in the face of true Biblical Christian belief. A Jesus who sinned while on earth is simply a figment of the imagination; a Jesus that anyone can make up and manipulate anyway one likes. And quite sadly, too many folk do go around with a made-up version of Jesus in their heads, believing in some non-Biblical mythical person instead of the real One who is the Second Person of the triune Christian Godhead.

If these so-called Christians can believe in that made-up Jesus instead of the real One, then it is no wonder that they can believe the Father of Lies who sets out to convince them that he doesn’t really exist.

Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics…

…I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

~ C.S. Lewis, the words of Screwtape in a letter to Wormwood.

Yes, the straw man argument! Create a ridiculous image and notion of Satan or devils and such, and then demolish that ridiculous image and notion - claiming that you have just demolished the real thing. C.S. Lewis was really on to something when he penned his popular book, but how sad that the truth embedded therein is being so disregarded these days. The spiritual realm is real, but so many will not believe that until they leave their mortal bodies behind. For them, Satan will so likely have cause to celebrate.

POSTSCRIPT: Check this out.

We knew we were going to be s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d in our definition of “music” before we even got there, but the programme’s first 12 minutes was just awful. Our ears hurt. A Kiwi composer, now resident in Edinburgh, had come up with something for the trumpet player and orchestra. While not wishing to discount the trumpet player’s skill, all we could see was the naked emperor, the one whose new clothes had been made of nothing. Call that music? Not for us.

Apparently Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) had half his audience respond much the same way when he sat down at the piano and gave vent to his anger and grief through his second piano concerto back in August 1913. His startled audience found it all far too modern - schizophrenic, unbalanced, enraged, terrifying. The score was later destroyed in the upheaval of the Bolshevik revolution, used as fuel for a cooking stove. But Prokofiev re-composed the concerto and peformed the new version, no less dramatic albeit a little less alarming than the original, in Paris in 1924. Prokofiev's friend Vyacheslav Karatïgin described its première as “leaving [us] frozen with fright, hair standing on end.”

But that was 83 years ago now, and we have had a little time to get used to it. Known to be a staggeringly difficult piano piece to play, and probably the most challenging anyone has ever written, 29-year-old Freddy Kempf managed it brilliantly. The applause was tremendous. Standing apart in its almost entirely pervasive, red-eyed rage, Prokofiev’s second piano concerto incorporates not just grief over, but also anger at the wasteful loss of his great friend, Maximilian Schmidthof. And knowing something about Max helped us to appreciate the raw unbridled passion and cut some slack for the composer as well. I can even say that I liked it.

So, what happened to Max? Max was a fellow student from the St Petersburg Conservatoire and talented, highly intelligent, and equally keen to shock colleagues and tutors. But in April 1913 Prokofiev received a letter from Max, and it said: “I’m writing to tell you the latest news - I have shot myself. Don’t get too upset … the reasons are unimportant. Farewell. Max.”

Oh boy! What a terrible letter to get! And so the second piano concerto is full of the horrendous raw emotion of terrible grief and rage, attempts to comes to terms with, then further relapse into more of the same. To suffer the loss through suicide of someone close, this composition says it all.

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Suicide… such a bad-tempered response. Some will say that it must take courage, others that it takes terrible despair, but what it really comes down to is murder. One murders oneself. It takes all the worst of suffering and throws it straight at those closest around. No, I have not lost anyone close through suicide, but two friends, a colleague, another I knew of, and the 9-year-old child next door all wasted their lives in that way. The child’s death was the worst and left a burden of guilt, both rational and largely irrational, throughout the neighbourhood. It is such a hard thing to reconcile.

A Friend’s Suicide
(I believe he was wrong to do it)

When my position has me here
The stretch is far to over where
The other side does beckon too
Compassion’s ask is also due

I must not judge a friend’s despair
His motives question when unclear
Being human can be tough
Especially when it cuts up rough

Please forgive my limitations
I’m not the One behind creation’s
Plans, designs, or greater view
A friend I am but human too

© Judah (June, 2003)
Judah’s Journal

So when it comes to Prokofiev, I did understand a little of where he was coming from, and his composition makes great sense when one knows about Max. I was not alive 83 years ago to react as the audience did then, but can say that today’s modernism does nothing much for me… except to hurt my ears and produce visions of naked emperors!

In Memory

I planted freesias on her grave;
her favourite flower, the last I gave
her on that final Mother’s Day
before she quietly just slipped away.

The perfect scent and perfect flower
speaks softly of that final hour
when shadows fell as night time came
and nothing more would be the same.

She is not there in that cold earth;
my loving mother who gave me birth
and nurtured me ’til torn apart
by death ~ she now is living in my heart.

© Judah (May 2007)

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Some of the questions posed by those who are non-believers concern the character of God. If God is indeed a loving God, then why does He not stop all the evil that is going on in the world? How can I believe in a God who lets such terrible things happen? Is He not all powerful after all? Or if He is, then isn’t He cruel not to prevent them when He could? Well… good questions! They may seem daunting to answer, but the answers have much to do with perspective and from where one sits to view.

First of all, it helps to consider Who is God. Is He greater than you, or are you greater than Him? Do you know more than Him, or does He know more than you? To find adequate answers to the original questions requires agreement that God is greater than all of us, and that His knowledge - and also His wisdom - is greater as well. It also requires a more basic agreement that God does exist and that we can have knowledge of Him (or why ask such questions in the first place?)

Now to digress for a moment… Our pet moggy got herself in a fight and was rewarded with a very nasty deep puncture wound in her neck. When we discovered it, the wound was already beginning to fester and it was obvious she needed to be seen by the vet. This always causes a problem for our moggy who hates travelling in vehicles almost as much as she hates taking medicine. But without medical treatment our moggy’s life would certainly be in considerable danger and a painfully miserable end be quite likely. So we bundled her into the car anyway, subjected her to the indignities of a thorough examination by a stranger, a needle stuck into her body, and a course of tablets daily for the following week. She howled in protest and her cries were piteous. Her torturers were the most evil beings imaginable for inflicting all this upon her. But how could she know, as we did, about the existence of pathogenic micro-organisms and what is required to combat their disastrous effects? Or that the vet had spent years at university studying such matters, or that the trip by car was necessary? How could she know that the tablets we had to force her to swallow were in effect saving her life, and that the evil we were doing was not evil at all? It would have helped us greatly if she could have had more faith in us, in that we knew more than she did about these things, and that the outcome would be best for her in the long run. But from our moggy’s perspective, we were certainly thumbs down.

If we believe that we are purely physical beings, that there is nothing more to us than a body and mind, and that these things which are temporal are all there is to us, then we are not sitting in quite the right place to have much of a view. The view stops at the temporal horizon and goes no further. There is no way to see anything beyond - into the spiritual realm. It is quite easy from there to say such a realm does not even exist. Of course that would seem so… if one does not see it. And if there is no acceptance of ourselves as spiritual as well as physical beings, and the existence of a spiritual realm, then questions about God (who is spirit) become rather meaningless anyway, as do accusations about Him. It is necessary to be somewhat open-minded to the view that we are not just physical beings, but spiritual ones also. And that our temporal existence is momentary in time, and secondary to our spiritual being. Could it be possible that God, who has greater knowledge and wisdom than we, is considering our spiritual well-being far beyond this temporal world wherein events occur that we call evil, even allowing this evil to occur while having our best interests at heart?

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Just as a wounded animal may not understand the reason for those things that it finds distressing and protests against, we often do not understand why God allows us to be afflicted by evil events. It is an assumption to jump from that lack of understanding to the conclusion that God is not all powerful to stop it, or that if He is all powerful then He is cruel to let it continue. Is it right to assume that evil events must always have evil outcomes? And that if evil events do not necessarily have evil outcomes, then in order to be loving that God must stop evil? I think those assumptions are fallacious; they are short-sighted. They are certainly understandable to entertain from a temporal perspective, but not so from a spiritual one. They are not accepting of the view that God has far greater knowledge and wisdom than I, and that He is indeed loving when He allows them to occur where their outcomes are in my best spiritual interests. This perspective acknowledges our temporal existence as momentary and secondary to our spiritual existence.

Only from this spiritual perspective can we have an adequate answer to the problem of evil in this world and how God, since He is sovereign, allows it to occur. If worldly answers are required, then they will be found wanting. And the one who wants an excuse not to address God and His invitation to meet at the foot of the cross will have found what he wants, albeit not in the best interests of his non-temporal soul.

1 Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong;
2 for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.
3 Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37

Another response 1
Another response 2
Another response 3
Another response 4

The Pixie Quilt (shown here) was made by me for two friends of mine. It was given to them on the occasion that I, with my family, were able to visit and enjoy their generous hospitality back in January 2004. The quilt illustrates a poem I had written (dare I admit to that?) about a little pixie who contemplates something of both a worldly and spiritual nature, and comes to the realization of an important spiritual truth.

In his book “True Spirituality” (1971) Dr Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) discusses this same spiritual truth, pointing out significant connections between covetness and the lack of thankfulness that underlies this sin, and how it interfers with substantial healing in one’s relationship with God (and others). In simple terms, it works like this…

We are by nature selfish creatures, prone to putting ourselves first, putting ourselves in the centre, and wanting for ourselves those things we do not have. The Tenth Commandment tells us we are not to covet. To covet means to want that which is not ours, that to which we have no claim and no entitlement. God is our Creator, the Creator of the universe and it is He, sovereign over all, who has sole authority to decide all matters concerning us. Covetness arises from a dissatisfaction with what we have already, and the envying of others accordingly. It arises from a lack of gratitude for what we have already. That does not mean we are to ignore our needs and not ask for them to be met, nor ask for good things on behalf of others. The Lord’s Prayer includes such asking, and we are told to ask in faith and as God ordains, so it will be given. Covetness is sinful desire, something quite different again.

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The Bible tells us in many places that we are to be thankful, to give thanks, and even to give thanks for all things. While it may not be too difficult to give thanks for those things that we want, like having, and happen to enjoy, we are actually instructed to do more than that.

Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Ephesians 5:19,20)

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

We are to give thanks for everything, and to give thanks in all circumstances. This is the crunch. How inclusive should we consider those words? Dr Schaeffer points out another verse which also mentions “all things” and we cannot accept the comfort of the following verse without keeping the same meaning in the ones above.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
(Romans 8:28)

But surely we should not be thankful for those things that have gone wrong, that have hurt and upset us, that are causing problems for ourselves and those whom we love?

Well… that’s not what it says in the Bible. And if you are going to take any notice of those verses (and many more like them) just quoted, then how can you reconcile this disturbing thing?

Reconciliation occurs when you consider the role of trust in your relationship with God. Dr Schaeffer explains it this way…

Two things are immediately involved here, if we are to see this in the Christian framework rather than a non-Christian one. The first is that as Christians we say we live in a personal universe, in the sense that it was created by a personal God. Now that we have accepted Christ as our Savior, God the Father is our Father. When we say we live in a personal universe and God the Father is our Father, to the extent that we have less than a trusting attitude we are denying what we say we believe. We say that, as Christians, we have by choice taken the place of creatures before the Creator, but as we show a lack of trust, we are exhibiting at that moment, in practice, we have not really so chosen.

The second thing we must comprehend in order to understand a contented heart in the Christian framework, rather than a non-Christian one, is illustrated by Camus’s dilemma in “The Plague“. As Christians we say we live in a supernatural universe and that there is a battle, since the fall of man, and that this battle is in both the seen world and the unseen world. This is what we say we believe; we insist on this against the naturalists and against the anti-supernaturalists. If we really believe this, first, we can be contented and yet fight evil, and second, surely it is God’s right to put us as Christians where he judges best in the battle.

In a Christian understanding of contentment, we must see contentment in relation to these things. To summarize, there is a personal God. He is my Father since I have accepted Christ as my Savior. Then surely when I lack trust, I am denying what I say I believe. At the same time, I say there is a battle in the universe, and God is God. Then, if I lack trust, what I am really doing is denying in practice that he has a right, as my God, to use me where he wants in the spiritual battle that exists in the seen and the unseen world. The trust and contentment must be in the Christian framework, but in the proper framework the contentment is deeply important.

If the contentment goes and the giving of thanks goes, we are not loving God as we should, and proper desire has become coveting against God [wanting to grant for ourselves what He alone has authority to decide to grant].

True Spirituality, pp 10,11 (Tyndale, 1971)

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
(Romans 1:21)

And so we also come to know life without the joy of a substantially healed relationship with God when we forget to give thanks in all things, even those things that throw our plans awry and cause us heartbreak and grief.

Pixie knew that he had found the answer to his quest;
How he was always certain, at peace and richly blest.
He trusted God beyond all doubt, gave thanks in everything
With praise and humble gratitude, his joy was never ceasing.