MODERN NEW ZEALAND

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6443, 7 November 1947, Page 6

MODERN NEW ZEALAND

V MISSIONARY SEES MANY FAULTS A NEW FOURTH COMMANDMENT “Anyone will surely say that this land of ours has been singularly blessed of God,” said Dr Leslie Sutherland to an audience of 1200 at a public session of the Presbyterian General Assembly in Christchurch. Dr Sutherland returned a few months ago from nine years’ service on the mission fields of northern India. “It is a land flowing with milk and honey—although the honey, I gather, does not always flow as freely or as far as some would like; a land where the only unemployment is voluntary; a land where there is no shortage of food and no lack of money—if the drink bill or totalisator returns are any indication; a land where the sick and aged get money for what care they need—although all too offcgn they can get no one to give service for that money; a land where, on paper, at least, the four freedoms have full sway. But looking below the surface what do we find. “In the first place I think it very significant that among the people I have met in the last six m’ont'ds not one has mentioned what xye so often used to hear, that New Zealand is God’s own country. That is our whole trouble; it is not God’s country and we know it. “One of the earliest commands God gave to man was: Tn the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’ and we shall supersede that at our peril. God soon after that gave the Ten Com-

mandments and onlv God Himself can add or subtract from them. Our new fourth commandment goes something like this:— “Remember Saturday, to keep it holy. Five days shalt thou labour and do all thy work} but the sixth is sacred to the gods of ease and sport. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy shop assistant, nor thy factory worker, for these gods are jealous gods and the only ones held guiltless will be their own servants such as tram conductors, bar tenders, ice cream vendors, and so on.’ ” No one would deny that meat, butter, cheese, wool, and fruit had made New Zealand’s name—developing talents given by God—said Dr Sutherland; but by our strict observance of the sixth day and fear of getting sweat on our faces on the other five we were not now maintaining these talents as we sfiould. “We are doing-what Mr Fraser said only recently we should not do; we are making a fetish of the 40-hour week,” he continued. “In days of unemployment a 35-hour week might be good; but the time of Britain and Europe’s anguish is surely not the time for a 40-hour week.

“Swift emphasises that increasing production means making two blades of grass grow < T fiere one grew before. Our efforts have resulted in £2 buying what only £1 would buy before,” Dr Sutherland said. “Our social security scheme is grand in many of its aspects; but is it producing just the result we wished for? We pride ourselves on our healthly land; but might not a visitor get the impression that our busiest people are our doctors, dentists and chemists? I have heard of doctors who are so busy that all some, patients can hope from them is a prescription to drink more medicine, whereas if the doctor had more time, "the patient would perhaps come away with advice not to drink more but to eat less. Some of our schemes are ideal but they are being run by people and for people who are very human, and only God can change human nature.

“1 seem to see the same tendency in our educational system. I am inclined to agree with a visiting educationist who said that w r e tend to make it like a golf course without bunkers. Unless our children learn to deal with bunkers at school they will have trouble in dealing with the bunkers that life will surely bring them. Our educational system is officially a Godless one and we make it so at our peril. Do many of our children leave school with a sense of vocation; with the idea that by their lives they may give rather than get?” With the advantages Dr Sutherland said New Zealand possessed, he compared the needs of India in*the turbulent time following independence. Once people knew the need they should respond, he said.