Video for March 6th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
A month ago, New Zealand celebrated its national day. It marks the day on February 6th, 1840 that the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by Captain William Hobson as Consul for the British Crown and the Maori chiefs (Watangi) of the North Island. The treaty is of central importance for the New Zealand Constitution and its national mythos. Whilst not a treaty in the sense of international law, it is nonetheless an agreement based on established trust between the parties. It still plays out in national politics here. It has provided a basis to settle land disputes and provide restitution for the frequent illegal land seizures and sales that were a typical mark of British colonial practice.
Over the last few years there has been a resurgence in celebrating Māori cultural identity and language. At conferences here, speakers both Māori and Pakeha (the Māori names for those of non-Māori extraction), will begin by sharing their whakapapa or ancestry, as a way of establishing who they are. Māori people have a much keener sense than we do of family and community. Everyone sees themselves as part of a phanua or family. You will never experience the sort of funeral sadly common in the UK, with a tiny number of mourners. The passing of any member of the family is marked by the whole extended family. Māori mythology emphasises the connection to land and landscape and honours the spiritual reality that underlies all things.
The first missionaries here in the early 19th century honoured that cultural heritage and indeed enhanced it. They were the first to write down Māori language and sought to point people to Jesus without the expectation that they should embrace European values first. This Church, St. Francis in Rotorua, is an example of the cultural fusion that gave rise to a distinctive indigenous voice to the Gospel. Tourists come to see the glass engraving of Christ as a Māori, walking on the water of the lake through the clear window. Māori Christians’ faith is a challenge to a western individualism that sees identity as something that we can construct for ourselves with no reference to our network of family and community obligations.
The best (and most fruitful) Christian evangelism has sought to listen before it speaks. The Gospel is such a multi-faceted jewel that we should expect different cultures to amplify aspects to which our own culture has become blind. Similarly, there will be aspects of the Gospel that speak into the inherent contradictions of constructing reality without God that have become a unique distinctive of western culture. There is research that shows a strong corelation between a growth in secularism and anxiety and hopelessness. It is a tragic fact that suicide is the highest cause of death in young men in New Zealand – one of the most secular countries in the world. I was struck by Grace, an eloquent young Iranian background student at a conference last year who said, “Young people are coming to church for truth, having been being told in the culture that they have to be their own saviour. But Jesus is the saviour – the way, the truth and the life”. It is difficult to maintain that confidence in the face of the secular cultural monolith. However, you don’t have to dig very deeply to see how these secular claims to truth are simply not working for many people.
The paradox of the new atheism of Richard Dawkins and the like was that it gave permission to talk about God. It was marked by mockery and hubris. It sought to demolish faith but provided no counter-narrative to faith to provide the meaning and purpose that human hearts crave. Of course, if Christian faith has no grounds in historical truth, then we should honestly follow Nietzsche’s nihilistic despair, and Dawkin’s mockery and make the best of it. But, if we believe, as I do, that Christ really did rise from the dead on the third day, his claims to be the way, the truth and the life come as very good news indeed. And as our Māori friends from a very different cultural background show, it is good news for every culture, in every time and every place.
+Richard