Or, why we escaped from New Zealand.

This post was written in August 2022, but backdated to mid-February 2022.

What happened to New Zealand is enough to fill the heart of a faithful citizen with grief. The land that was once called, “God’s own country,” (and so acquired the nickname, “Godzone”) has turned its back on God’s ways. Close to half, if not more than half, of the citizenry now reports, “No religion,” on the census. Christian morality is openly mocked at the highest levels; during COVID, while churches were shuttered, the Prime Minister was reported as saying an orgy was perfectly acceptable as long as the number of participants did not exceed 25. Political correctness has become absolutely stifling; and a peaceful gathering adjacent to Parliament to protest the vaccine mandate was, after a period of indecision, brutally suppressed by armed police, with a number of fatalities.

Private firearm ownership has been almost outlawed in the wake of the 2019 mosque shooting; and permission to own a firearm now comes with conditions that no free citizen should tolerate, namely a blanket permission to Police to search the premises where the firearms are supposed to be stored. On paper, this is to ensure that all the firearms, and only the firearms, that are supposed to be there are present and accounted for. Of course, if the Police discover (or plant) evidence of anything else while they’re there, or smash things up just because they feel like it, that’s just gravy.

All in all – appropriately for a place that was used for filming Jackson’s version of The Lord of the Rings – it is becoming decidedly like the landscape the remnants of the Fellowship returned to, in the Scouring of the Shire.

For these reasons, open resistance is not currently an option, even for those for whom that is a morally acceptable option. Even people questioning mask and vaccine mandates are being considered for sabotage charges, to the approval of the media and the apathy of the public.

On a more personal level, and even before COVID, we found out that New Zealand’s hospitals and health professionals are effectively unaccountable. The body that is tasked with investigating allegations of wrongdoing in the health sector is empowered to dismiss complaints entirely, for any reason or for no particular reason at all, and frequently does so. Lovers of socialised medicine would point to New Zealand as a system that works well; I would say instead that the Government is not interested in the embarrassing truth getting out, except to the extent that it wants to change things up, and can release information to sell the changes it wants to the public. Being a family on the receiving end of poor treatment several times – and I won’t go into detail here yet, since this blog is still pseudonymous – we needed to be elsewhere.

I still pray for New Zealand, that its people would repent (in my mind, a precondition to getting better government), and maybe someday we can return, for a visit or for something longer term.