Love one another as I have loved you

Many adults feel quite disheartened by the immature behaviour of our politicians. They certainly disappoint me at times - and this week has been one of those times. Parents and teachers work hard to encourage good behaviour and strong values in our children: it might be time for our politicians to go back to school!

Throughout the democratic world we have come to expect childish one upmanship as our elected representatives forget their roles as our servants and standard-setters, and do all they can to demean, undermine and sabotage their opponents - and groups they have decided they cannot tolerate.

Adversarial governance always ends up with immature name-calling, treating people as objects, winners and losers. And too often it seems to draw us in as we find ourselves supporting the ideas and behaviour of our favourites (who we do support - but for other reasons).

In Australasia at the moment we have added what seems to be a new dimension in our part of the world. We are fighting about how badly we can treat groups of people we have decided we don't like: people who are mothers, fathers, children. But we don't see that; all we see are the group, the gang, the different-from-us.

I understand that Australia is afraid of strangers coming to their country. I understand that they want to get rid of the sorts of people-different-from-them they have decided they don't like. But, although it is shockingly new for us in 2015, both countries have incidents from our not too distant past that we don't like to remember - incidents that we should never have allowed ourselves to forget! 

There are better ways to deal with people we disagree with or fear. Just last week on 5 November we celebrated the rebellion of Te Whiti o Rongomai of Parihaka - a nineteenth century Maori New Zealand Christian pacifist who seems to have influenced the thinking and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. He was a man who understood, and acted on that.

Politicians yelling at each other can be seen as mostly harmless posturing, albeit disappointing and setting a poor example of behaviour. But always, real individual people are being hurt. Real mothers and fathers, real children and friends and families are affected. 

All of us - you and me, as well as our leaders - need to stop thinking in stereotypes and "getting one over" the other. We are all created one-by-one by the same God, who knows and loves each of us. Wherever we are, we all need to see people as they are. I recall a memorial in Rwanda where they know what this hatred can lead to ...

“If you knew me,
and if you really knew yourself, 

then you would not have killed me.”

Felicien Ntagengwa

... and there's another Rwandan memorial that's always affected me, this one from a survivor of the sort of stereotyping we are flirting with ...