And His Truth goes marching on

Sometimes I have to conclude that New Zealand is a confused little country. According to the 2013 census the number of people who identify as having no religion has reached 1.6 million, an increase of 26 per cent since the last census in 2006.

And yet a Massey University survey taken in 2008 found that 72 percent of New Zealander’s believed in God. The survey was of New Zealanders above the age of 18 and was said to have a margin of error of 3 per cent.

I imagine that many of the remaining 28 per cent who don’t believe in God still respect and support the comparatively liberal moral values that Christianity has imposed on the Western world and support the holiday seasons of Christmas an Easter for sensibly secular reasons.

The new census figure disclose that Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian church membership have all contracted while Pentecostal congregations have increased.

The number of followers of Hinduism and Islam also increased.

This sort of information is always imparted around Christmas when I suspect editors tell their junior reporters to go out and find some stories to counteract this madness that we call the festive season.

I’m a little confused because from my observations the only people who don’t sing the national hymn “God Defend New Zealand” with a surprising degree of enthusiasm at a rugby test are the All Blacks themselves. And unambiguous religious services to commemorate ANZAC day are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among the younger generation.

I was talking to a nurse recently who did her training at Masterton Hospital in the 1970’s and is now a midwife attached to Hutt hospital and she told me that most patients today are generally unsure of their religious connections. They used to say Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist, but many now have no denominational roots and, if asked, describe themselves as either Christian or atheist.

The end result is that whereas once there was an army of church ministers swarming through the wards at all hours of the day or night looking eagerly at the religious affiliations shown on the cards at the end of the bed, the hospitals are now largely bereft of clergymen and the comfort that faith can bring has diminished.

And so, given the season, I thought perhaps we should re-acquaint ourselves with the founder of Christianity and the best explanation I have encountered comes from Swiss-born American theologian Philip Schaff (1819-1893) who said that: “Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms conquered more millions than Alexander the great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon.

“Without science and learning He shed more light on things human and divine than all the philosophers and scholars combined.

“Without the eloquence of schools He spoke words of life that were never spoken before or since and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet.

“Without writing a single line He has set more pens in motion and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and sweet songs of praise than the whole army of great men and women of ancient and modern times.

“Born in a manger and crucified as a criminal He now controls the destinies of the civilised world and rules the spiritual empire which embraces one third of the inhabitants of the globe.

“There was never in this world a life so unpretending, modest and lowly in its outward form and condition and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations and classes of men.

“The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and astonishing success in spite of the absence of those material, social, literary and artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to success for a mere man.”

You can’t deny His existence; dare you question His divinity?

Oxford University Don and famed author C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity wrote the following: “I’m trying to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’

“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

“You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with this patronising nonsense about him being a great human teacher.

“He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.”

And so two thousand and thirteen years on, during the festive season and beyond, wise men seek Him still.

Have a great Christmas!

“There are no atheists on a turbulent aeroplane.” – Erica Jong

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A New Year nightmare in the making

Weston Ten-Green-Bottles settled back on the chair in his office in Martyrdom’s imposing Town Hall and felt somewhat apprehensive. The elections were over, the new lady Laud-Mare, Linley Pattercake, was ensconced in the adjacent office and he ought to have been at peace with the world.

But there were potential obstacles on the road ahead. The Regret Theatre owner Brenton Goodloser was back on the town kownsil and was inclined to rattle cages around the table whenever he fancied. Weston noticed however that he had matured over time and now without the signature pony-tail he may have become a quieter beast.

The view from Weston’s office was bleak. He was staring at the stone walls on the old Public Rust building whereas Ms Pattercake got a birds-eye view over the splendid new Town Square that David Bored-Man had instigated and produced with help from other local philanthropists and philanthropic groups.

In another life he and Bored-Man had got themselves offside with the kownsil when he had inadvertently allowed the bustling builder to demolish the derelict dunny’s at Koora-poo-knee.

Weston had taken to wearing dark glasses whenever he looked out of the south facing windows of the building as the contrast of the bright-green freshly-planted lawn and the karitane-yellow of the newly painted Wire-rapper Times-Rage building was dazzling.

His office did have its compensations. If he lifted the double-hung window ever so slightly he would get a tantalising whiff of the burger and fried onion aroma coming from the two fast food outlets of the adjoining corners which would inevitably get his juices running.

And if he leaned out far enough and stretched his neck a tad he could see the inspiring artwork that the Rust Lands Rust had put on the side of their Starry-Eyed block in Lincoln Road.

The Multi-coloured corrugated-iron mural suited a town that seemed to have more than its fair share of corrugated iron buildings that pesky upstart columnist Licky Wrong was constantly complaining about.

Of course, thought Weston, Licky’s taste was all in his mouth.

There was some good news. According to the latest census Martyrdom’s population had gone up by 729. Back at the last census in 2006 the increase had only been 54. Weston tended not to see people in the figures, but rather ratepayer dollars and it comforted his tortured soul.

So he decided he would enjoy Christmas, but the new year was certain to bring its own challenges. Local gu’mmint Kommission chairperson Basher Horrorsin would soon report on their view of where they considered Wire-rapper’s local body directions lay. Horks Bay weren’t happy with their re-organisational plans and he feared that when the Wire-rapper draft proposals were announced the citizens would be revolting.

Weston shuddered at the thought.

All sorts of options had been submitted to the Kommission and potential outcomes could see Weston spend the rest of his natural life fishing at Lake Toe-Poor. Ms Pattercake had already prophesied that she would be the first and last lady Laud-Mare of Martyrdom.

Down the road-a-piece Carleton Mare Kim-Jong Maka and his sidekick Colon Wrong (no relation to Licky) had no such qualms. The gu’mmint had already appointed Kim-Jong to the Wire-rapper and Mower Cut Hospitality Boards and he felt certain he would also be the chosen one to lead the Wire-rapper, though Adriana Nails would be breathing down his neck.

The real risk however would be if Basher Horrorsin and his commissariat decided that the Wire-rapper should join with Das Kapital and become part of a Souper-Sitty.

In that case it would be Cecelia Wade-Green who would lead the charge of the light-headed brigade and Kownsil cars would be exchanged for bicycles.

Weston grabbed the sun glasses off his desk and decided to call it a day. In the haste to flee his office he nearly tripped over the metre-high stack of correspondence from Richard Iceberg regarding the symmetry gates, and he bounded down the stairs, bypassing the under-utilised lift installed at great cost back in 1995 by gu’mmint decree, and headed for home.

As he navigated his way through the new town square he looked fondly back at his beloved Town Hall and realised in the worst case scenario the grand old building would become redundant; it would have to find another use. An old person’s home perhaps?

Or maybe David Bored-Man would paint it shocking-pink and turn it into a museum.

“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” - Richard Lovelace

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Tracing the world's money-go-round

According to the oral history of our family, my great-grandfather on my father’s side was a remittance man from England. Remittance men were the ne’er-do-well sons of well-to-do families who were banished to the colonies so not to further disgrace their kin-folk. They were sent a regular remittance to live on and this was maintained as long as they never set foot again in the old country.

My great-grandfather’s Achilles’ heel apparently was the demon drink and the final straw came when as a young man he had a night out with a friend who was a Lord, the eldest son of an Earl, whereby they both drank more than was prudent and attempted to walk back to their respective London homes in the snow. Not far from the hostelry where they had imbibed they fell over and stayed comatose all night while the snow all but buried their personages. In the morning they were dug out; the Lord was dead, but he had fallen last, and on top, and the warmth of his body had kept my great-grandfather alive.

As claimed in the family narrative, my great-great-grandfather was the biggest shareholder in the Times of London and desperate to keep the sordid story out of the paper sent my great-grandfather to the antipodes with a modest annual remittance to allow him to maintain his viability. Well anyway that’s how the story goes as told to me by my maiden aunts as I sat at their feet as a child and it may have got embellished over time.

My great-grandfather was by all accounts a big man in every sense of the word. Big in stature - he was six foot five - big on generosity and a big appetite for fun, frivolity and gambling which inferred he hadn’t learnt any lessons from his shameful conduct in Britain.

It also meant that very little of the remittance reached my great-grandmother, who struggled to raise a large family.

Now if you thought remittance men were a relic from the past, you couldn’t be more wrong. Today’s remittance men are the migrant workers who send money home to their families. In this case the situation is reversed. There is no disgrace involved and the money goes back from the colonies to the home countries.

People in the first-world societies rely more and more on migrant workers to do the menial tasks they feel they’ve outgrown. You can see this in the army of all-night office cleaners who descend on the streets of downtown Wellington late in the evening. They are almost always Pacific Islanders.

Their extended family members will be grateful for whatever help they can get from the leftovers of their meagre wages when it is remitted home.

We found out recently when their devastating storm caused us to focus on the Philippines that there are 40,000 Filipinos skilled and unskilled living in this country, apparently here on work visas to do the tasks that New Zealand’s unemployed seem unwilling or unable to do.

The Philippines is famous for sending its citizens out into the world to toil; 9.5 million of them live outside the country. I read where remittance payments sent home to the Philippines totalled $US21 billion in 2011, but it is thought that officially recorded remittances are only a fraction of the real figure.

This must be a great boost for the Philippine economy, but I’m intrigued to know just how it is accounted for in its country of origin.

We were taught at school that governments had to keep a tight rein on the money supply. To overprint money - though apparently an attractive option for the Greens - would cause inflation of the kind that occurred in the Weimer Republic in Germany and led to Hitler’s rise to power and the eventual advent of the Second World War.

But if billions of dollars are being sent overseas by migrant workers worldwide, how can the money supply be kept track of?

All of this revenue transfer is ably abetted by the international banking system that now moves money from one country to another at the push of a computer keyboard button. Just how governments account for this money and why it doesn’t disrupt their balance of payments disciplines is an abiding mystery.

Of course these days little printed paper money is involved. In our near cashless society the banks are said to be awash with ersatz money which they lend out on credit cards at rates that a few decades ago were the sole preserve of charlatans, usurers and loan sharks. The world banking system, as we witnessed in 2008, is now so convoluted that surely no-one would know how to untangle it.

My great-grandfather came from simpler times. I guess his money arrived by boat and the pound sterling would have been eagerly changed into local currency and then just as eagerly received by the local brewers.

But I must go now; my offspring have called a family meeting. Something about shipping me to England and sending me money to stay there.

I haven’t a clue what they’re on about.

“A person may be indebted for a nose or an eye, for a graceful carriage or a voluble discourse, to a great-aunt or uncle, whose existence he has scarcely heard of.” - William Hazlitt.

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