Easter is coming with eggs and other trivia; Christ will be ignored. New Zealand is not a Christian country in the sense that most of us are faithful believers but like the rest of the West it remains, for a while, 'Christianised'.
Most New Zealanders take equality of everyone under the law, from Prime Minister to the bottom of the heap, for granted. Only countries with a Christianised history benefit from this tradition. Ancient Rome did not hand this on to us and neither did any Greek city state or tyrant. That contemporary priestly vocation, secular multiculturalism, is an amnesiac devouring its own roots. Diversity can be fun but it's a foundation for nothing.
The conviction that all men and women are created in God's image is the essence that infuses equality under the law. Together these inhibit the totalitarian state. They are the only barricade civil society has against creeping tyranny. Democracy decays without them.
We are deeply flawed creatures. We used to think we were sinners. Still, none of us can live up to his or her own standard.
As belief in God weakens we rely on increasing legislation for salvation. 'There must be a law to improve the situation.' Eternal truth is religious fiction. We break the slate as we wipe it clean.
Having given up on God the law will make us better. This fantasy changes the game, necessarily giving rise to an embedded political correctness. The dissenter is silenced. Its guardians insulate their self-righteous moral adventurism from popular complaint. They continually restate their claims while stigmatising the mental health of those who oppose them. 'Bigot' is their favourite accusation.
The French Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira would sit nicely in New Zealand. In reference to same-sex marriage she said, 'it's a reform of societyyou could even say it's the reform of civilisation'. Dissidents, on this claim, are enemies of civilisation.
Having denied the transcendent foundation of human dignity, civil rights law, torn from its roots, must proliferate to placate the equality demands of competing groups. The irony is obvious. Examine Magna Carta and the increasingly dechristianised drafts that eventually gave us The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The message of Easter speaks into this irony with a trumpet so loud only the unbending cannot hear it. The creator God has declared that we are his rebellious creatures. Some, in a vainglorious search for rights, might grasp the tragic and heroic rebel, Prometheus. Most of us are wimpier, like J. Alfred Prufrock.
God has declared that all we have to do is trust him. Most of us don't and fall victim to another master. The old idea of vision; the one without which the people perish, becomes impossible to imagine because the sublime affirms the transcendent.
In spite of their rebellion God loves his creatures. To prove it and to fulfil the just demands of the law, in the person of Christ, he becomes man and dies on a cross. The Creator of Life is killed by his creatures; the irony is deliberate. The debt incurred by the creature's rebellion is paid. Death, the consequence of our rebellion, cannot hold Jesus. He rises on the third day fully human and fully God. At last the rebel can be liberated from the power and consequences of his own folly.
This is the story of our culture. It declares our dignity by teaching that freedom is first of all about self-control that comes from trusting God. It is not about the counterfeit of undisciplined choice. The more godlike the sovereignty of choice becomes the less free our lives will be.
It is vacuous to claim that we are creating a new story to replace the old. The equality shibboleth of diversity and tolerance will have a limited life. Rubbing along together by excavating what we least disagree about is tiresome. It leads to increasing group self-interest and conflicting rights.
There are only two stories. Either the Easter story is true and Christ is our redeemer or it is a lie. The second story is a tragedy. The State, with or without paganised civil religion, is the default saviour.
When I was a boy most of us believed the first story; some of us put our trust in its Hero. We are sinners no longer. Guilt and shame and certainly sin, are psychological fictions; humility a weakness. Government, like Caesar, is the priest and king unable to forgive our trespasses. It tells us how to think, live and worship. Don't imagine you won't worship; you will. You are locked into it. There is a dubious consolation. Risk and suffering will be at arm's length and you can 'choose' death with illusory self-esteem secure.
Bruce Logan is a writer living half his time in France.