Dialogue: Those who ignore their past are lost

By GARTH GEORGE

I have long been persuaded that New Zealand is entitled to be described as God's Own Country, or Godzone as some would have it.

Ours is indeed a land richly blessed by the benign hand of the Creator, who gave it its mountains and lakes, its rivers and streams, its fertile valleys and plains, its unique flora and fauna - a land of sometimes heart-stopping beauty and a veritable cornucopia of good things to eat, to drink, to make clothes from and to build with.

But what confirms it for me is that it is one of only two countries in the world that doesn't have snakes, those descendants of the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve into talking Adam into eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus brought sin into the world.

(The serpent is paying for the deception to this day, for God told him: " ... you alone of all the animals must bear this curse: from now on you will crawl on your belly and you will have to eat dust as long as you live. I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head and you will bite their heel.")

The only other place I know of that doesn't have snakes is Ireland. One of the first things the redoubtable St Patrick did when he arrived on the Emerald Isle was to cast them all out so he could get on with one of the most successful evangelistic efforts of all time.

But all that apart, there is indeed ample evidence that God took a particular interest in this little land at the bottom of the world, and there was a time when most Kiwis, Maori and Pakeha alike, were only too ready to thank him for it at the least opportunity, certainly every Sunday.

This nation was founded on Christian principles and it flourished from the time its first settlers arrived and kept on flourishing for well over a century until in such things as the equality of the sexes, the welfare of society, the growing of primary produce and the playing of sport we became a nation admired and respected throughout the world.

Like most children of my generation I was taken (yes, a lot of kids were sent) to church and Sunday school, and in every city, town and village throughout the land well-filled churches and halls rang to the sound of adults and children lustily singing hymns and praising God.

In Sunday school (and at home and in secular school, too) we learned the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, excess and moderation, decency and immorality. We learned that God loved us and cared about us and that there were certain limits to our behaviour if we were to please him and be acceptable in society. We were left in no doubt that there were penalties, often severe, to be paid if we went beyond those limits.

And, just as important, we learned the history of our nation and its people, that we were part of a community, that we had a future ahead of us and that the best way to secure that future was to work hard and play by the rules.

Sure, most of us flagged it all away as soon as we were old enough to make plausible excuses and behaved as children and young people have done since time immemorial, pushing the limits to the very extreme and sometimes right over the edge.

But we knew absolutely that there were rules and if we ignored them we did so at our own peril; that there was a punishment in store and that that punishment might not necessarily be inflicted by others, but that we would suffer discomfort, if not torment, within our own minds and bodies.

If anything grieves me in the New Zealand we live in today, it is that so few of our children are given the opportunity to learn those things - not at home, not in school and certainly not in Sunday schools, many of which no longer survive.

It is one of the principal reasons for one of the most dreadful tragedies we suffer today, the scourge of youth suicide.

For if young men or young women know not where they came from, where they are or where they're going, when they have none of the security provided by the parameters of life as I learned them, it is no wonder that in confusion and bewilderment they come to the conclusion that life is not worth living.

Youth suicide is but one of the penalties we pay as a society for turning our back on our history and a tradition of behaviour formed over centuries of human experience. Watch this space.

* garth_george@herald.co.nz