New Zealand Corner
Another season has rolled past in our corner of the world, and here in New Zealand we are anticipating summer, with hopefully some warmer, drier weather. We are looking ahead to the New Year and have even begun discussing our next face-to-face mini conference, which we hope to hold in March. Although we maintain fortnightly Zoom meetings, the face-to-face experience is so much richer.
Things have been progressing much as normal here. Lots of New Zealanders are moving to Australia, as they always have done, in search of opportunities and a better standard of living. Lots of people from other parts of the world are moving to New Zealand, for much the same reasons. It all contributes to the growing diversity of the global population, with all the challenges that this can bring.
One recent event of note here has been an official government apology in Parliament to all people who suffered from abuse of all kinds while in state care between 1950 and 1999. This is not the first time such apologies have been, and the Australian government has also made similar apologies. How can we view these government apologies through the lens of The Urantia Book view of the world? The word ‘apology/apologies’ occurs only six times in the book, and not with any elaboration of the social or spiritual equivalence of such an act. Further contemplation of this led me to the concept of forgiveness, placing the apology in a sequence of first repenting of a sin or wrongdoing, apologizing to the person who has been affected, asking for and receiving their forgiveness, and then gaining reinstatement of a good relationship.
This is described in some detail in the Sermon on Forgiveness (159:1). Jesus states, among other comments, that ‘you may legislate regarding the conduct of the group’(159:1.2). It becomes a bit tricky when the group (i.e. the government) is legislating regarding the conduct of other members of the group (i.e. state institutions) – and needing to apologise for the wrong behaviour of such members. It becomes even trickier when this behaviour happened well in the past, and most of the perpetrators have passed on to the Mansion Worlds and no doubt judged accordingly for their past actions.
It seems that the social environment we are living in is full of challenging moral and spiritual situations and it is not always easy to decide the best way to respond and/or deal with them, if we are striving to apply the teachings of The Urantia Book to our own lives.
This leads me to one of the motas: The act is ours; the consequences God’s. (48:7.13). We can only react/respond to these situations in the most spiritual way we know, and hope that we will be judged by our intent.
Marion Steward,
Auckland, New Zealand