Rob Rattenbury: Our faith changes, but right and wrong doesn’t

Faith is changing, but most of us are good people, writes Rob Rattenbury. Photo / Paulus N. Rusyanto, Creativa Images

OPINION

When I was growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, almost all the people around me had a faith of some kind.

My parent’s Jewish friends; Mr and Mrs Wong in our greengrocers; dear Mrs Isaac next door, who delivered her Salvation Army pamphlets around the boozers every week; my Methodist mate, who I’d walk to church with every Sunday.

He’d disappear into his crowded place of worship and I’d trot on further down the road past the Baptists to where us Doolens hung out. Just a bit further down the road, the Anglicans were worshipping. Churches everywhere.

I’d be in time to often see my uncle Jack arrive with my cousins in the family A40 for mass after dropping Aunty Dot off at the Presbyterian church.

My uncle Charlie, who lived in a different parish, often called in to visit on Sunday nights after attending mass in our parish. He was a milkman, so missed morning services in his own church, which did not have a Sunday evening mass.

Sunday mornings would echo with church bells. Good people in their Sunday best off to worship.

In those days, places of worship were crowded on Sundays. We intermarried, went to each other’s churches.

We all had funny wee ways. My Methodist mate’s parents didn’t drink. Odd in my neighbourhood. We didn’t eat meat on Friday. My mate found that funny, as we always had fish and chips for dinner on the floor in front of the telly every Friday night.

Life went on. Our different faiths were deep and respected. We just were what we were. People didn’t bang on about it.

I guess we were just traditional Christians. We all enjoyed Christmas and Easter. We left-footers also had holy days of obligation, extra days off school. We’d race it up our state school mates, too.

I don’t ever remember religious difference being a barrier anywhere except when I was invited to my Methodist mate’s church for a family day, with cakes, icecream and soft drinks. I stayed at the door. I’d been told by some crabby old nun I must never enter a Protestant church. I was about 10. Load of codswallop. I told our priest in confession. He laughed and asked if I enjoyed the cakes.

Then at some stage we started seeing people front up on our doorstep at home, trying to convert us to their religion. We all called them God-botherers. They wouldn’t shut up about their beliefs.

My mum, a woman of strong faith until her dying day, would often invite them in and argue with them. Funny as, watching these earnest believers resist my mother’s attempts to convert them to Catholicism.

They’d be out the door tout de suite, with Mum grinning mischievously behind them.

Two can play that game. She’d say “dear people”.

In later life, I got to know people from these faiths. Good people, of course. We weren’t used to missionaries back then.

We never talked much about religion. It was us. We were what we were.

Our clergy mostly went their own ways, but even they mixed at times. Why wouldn’t they?

Times change and so do people. Many in New Zealand society have moved on from active religious worship.

We are, as a society, still open to respectful conversations about spirituality and religion.

Like most people, any faith left in me is still a private matter. Something I deeply respect in others too. I also deeply respect my atheist friends. I’d never browbeat them. That’s their thing - good on them.

Despite that, we all somehow know the difference between right and wrong and most of us try to be the best people we can be. Did religion do that? Maybe - maybe most of us are just wired to be decent people who learned by example from others.