Taking on a sacred cow

I've been contemplating our "state religion", wondering why it is so sacred to New Zealanders and what its prominence means for our country.

When I was a child, and there were a lot of WW2 veterans around, Anzac Day was commemorated with poppies and we sang God Save the Queen (our national anthem then) at school. I think we even raised the flag. But it was a day - we commemorated the fallen, we were grateful - but it was just a day.

Sometime in the last 20 years, just as the veterans were disappearing, the whole Anzac thing has taken off and thousands of the younger generation (younger than me) are turning up for dawn parades and solemnly praying - something ...

And that is my problem. We have lost our religion in this country. Many of us still believe in something, but as a nation we have lost it. God is invisible in our public spheres. So Anzac Day has become a kind of secular celebration, an elevating of fallen heroes with no acknowledgment of who we are praying to. Are we praying to them as their ghostly shades haunt our land? Are we simply going through a form of words unable to acknowledge that there is nothing to which we pray? Or should we perhaps acknowledge that they died not only in the service of their country but also in the service of the freedom endowed upon them by their Creator?

Alas, Anzac commemorations are the only form of public spirituality available to Europeans in this country. (In a curious twist it is OK for Maori and Polynesian and the different Asian communities to be publicly spiritual.) I believe Anzac Day has become so prominent because we are being denied other public avenues for expressing the sacred in our lives.

And we have an odd attitude to war itself. I recently read an article about the shock expressed when it emerged NZers had actually fired shots in Afghanistan. The article basically said: "Well, d'oh, in a war you shoot people." I would say we're almost schizophrenic about war. At the same time as we honour our war heroes, our culture dislikes and devalues the current defence forces, consistently downsizing them and reducing their resources. I saw Gaylene Preston on TV recently (Sunday April 18 TV1), in a clip promoting her film memoir of her father's war (Home by Christmas), say war was always pointless - "Just remember, don't go." "There's no need for war." "There's no just war." (Actual quotes from TVNZ OnDemand.)

I don't think that's very honouring to our war dead and veterans.

War should always be a last resort. Many modern conflicts do seem pointless, resembling tangles more than the nice surgical operations the politicians tout before the event. But we need to think very carefully before we decide all war is pointless. Gaylene's movie was about WW2. Has she thought about the implications of allowing the aggressors their way in that conflict?

Simply put - sometimes the enemy is bent on aggression, injustice and intimidation. If you don't fight them, you lie down and die.

And that's pointless.