The ability to deal with issues honestly

Tu Tangata, Issue 27, 1 December 1985, Page 10

The ability to deal with issues honestly

Na Sir Paul Reeves

A /hen I come into a Maori situation whether it be a home, a marae \ / \ / or a hui somewhere, I experience the warmth, the friendship, V v the openness, the ability to deal with issues honestly. Now sometimes Maoris fail, but they fail in the attempt. I think those are very spiritual values, they’re not human values. I think St Paul talked about that sort of thing.

I think where many of the early Christian communities fell down was that they were not able to be honest and open with each other.

So there is much in maoridom that I can endorse. I believe also that spiritual values are not the opposite of human values but are values that should help us to become human beings who are fully alive, who are open to each other, who are concerned for each other and are open to the prompting of God. Maoris have some things to work on and they have some things which are given to them because of their social structure, their family situation and the emphasis on relatives and aunties and grannies.

I see the Maori churches as tussling to make the Christian message come through this whole framework of Maori values rather than from a whole platform built out of the values of England or somewhere else.

So there is such a thing as indigenisation of the Gospel and 1 think Maori people have begun to deal with that, deal

with it better than pakeha people have managed to deal with it so far.

There are questions such as, "Did Jesus come as a stranger to Aotearoa?” "Did He come to offer us some criteria by which we could assess or judge our culture?”

I would say that Christianity belongs inside cultures but speaks beyond cultures. Christianity speaks out of a culture and also speaks to a culture. So when Christianity comes into a culture, it sets up a living dialogue. It’s got to dialogue with the history and experience of people and I think some people feel there is no need to dialogue, to look around, to understand our past where we’ve come from, because that’s something they want to get rid of.

I don't think so at all. I think inside that is riches there to be won, there to be assessed and Christianity is concerned with that. So I think maoritanga is vital and important and I say that from the basis of being a Christian.

TU TANGATA: Maori people may have an advantage in knowing they are the people of this land but some pakeha have difficulty accepting that they the pakeha are strugging with that.

"Part of that of course is the economic situation of many Maori people, where they are placed at a disadvantage. There is much emphasis in Christian teaching on a church of the poor, an emphasis on those sayings of Jesus, "Blessed are the p00r...” it is the poor that are blessed. But the situation of Jesus was one of being disadvantaged. If you look at the people who listened to Jesus, they were disadvantaged, people who were being pressured and subject to threatening possibilities. It was to them that Jesus spoke.

Many Maori people find themselves in a position like that, of the crowds to which Jesus spoke, so part of the sensitivity of Maori people comes out of their social and economic situation.

What does it mean to be poor and living in this country? It means lack of alternatives and makes for a desparate response. Many Maori people are in that situation and the Gospel of justice really speaks to them.”

TU TANGATA: What is the relationship between this Maori concept of spirituality and a pakeha one?

"The dominant European concept is very individualistic, to do with how I feel, how I act, what happens to me. It doesn't readily express itself as part of the way in which a group of people act or behave.

It doesn't easily see the history and the experience of what has happened, and what will happen to us as people living in this country as part of the raw materials. Their thinking tends to come from somewhere else, as if when they think spiritually they are still thinking and talking as if they were visitors to this country rather than as people who have unpacked their bags.”

TU TANGATA: What then is the role of church leaders to help bring about the unity of the people of Aotearoa?

"The church has the obligation always to be part of the experience of people who are on the receiving end of things and to help them articulate and speak and understand their own experience.

Sometimes church leaders speak on behalf of people and that may be a very necessary thing. But I discern in our community, the ability of people now to describe and speak for themselves. The role of the church is to provide space, support and encouragement for people to understand their situation. The church is a body that’s always looking, impatient with how things are at the moment. The church through its vision is always looking for something that is coming, something that is not quite here. So as the psalmist says, ‘How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?’

So the church must be aware of the imperfections and the drawbacks of society and seek not to be a body which benefits positively from the inequalities of our society, but rather seeks to remove them. That I think is part of the Gospel.”

TU TANGATA: How is that reconciled with separate religions having Maori sections within them now united in Te Hunan ga Whakawhanaunga o Nga Hahi o Aotearoa, the Maori Council of Churches?

"I think that people are going to be at different places at different times and that what we have got to do is bind and gain strength from each other. And so our strength is that we are all not quite the same.

I think that my role (as Anglican Archbishop of New Zealand) has been as a bridge builder. By that I mean I’ve provided means for people to get to where they want to get to, and I think there have been one or two gains in that area. The role I've held has been one where I have sought to work and minister in the total community as bishop of a diocese.

So I work on the assumption that what is good for the Maori is good for the pakeha, and what is good for the pakeha is good for the Maori. We are in the business of seeking the good which is common to all of us, but beware as you seek for that, it's going to challenge you and is going to require you to make decisions.

In order for you to get the riches that are in that discovery, you're probably going to have to give up a lot of things. But along that search for the common good lies the salvation of our country."

■ TU TANGATA: Sometimes the ability Maori people have to accommodate several religions in a service is seem as ambivalence by pakehu. Is this not real ecumenism as now being sought by European churches?

"It is as if their first loyalty is to being a Maori Christian rather than being an Anglican Maori Christian or a Catholic Maori Christian. I think that is the way it should be, that is proper. There are certain basic things which God has given us. He has given us our identity as people. That’s God-given. What we must not allow the churches to do is break that up.”

TU TANGATA: How then does this work?

"Well we must not let this ecumenism get in the way of the truth. It doesn't mean working on the lowest common denominator and therefore working with the slops and not with the good stuff.

Ecumenical spirit is a spirit of charity, a spirit which recognises that the truth is far bigger and richer than the limits to which our minds can take us. There comes a time when the ecumenical spirit means we must trust each other, and it's in that context of realising the limitations of our own human positions, the realisation that God is not defined by our limitations, that God is over and above that. That God is always calling us to come out and to find that place where we can truely acknowledge each other, whether it be as Christians together, whether that be as Maori and pakeha together, who knows.

I think that part of human experience is to disagree. I’ve never met two human beings who did not disagree, and if we ever got to a stage where we never had disagreements then it would not be very interesting.

The issue is not to take disagreement away. The issue is how do you work with the things that threaten to separate you. How do you deal with the things about which you seem to disagree? The issue lies with the process of working with those things, as much as with the final answer.”