Back in the days when I briefly served the Christchurch Reformed Church as interim pastor, Australia was going through a spate of trans-Tasman sporting wins. We beat our New Zealand cousins in just about everything from basketball to cricket… I’m not sure, but we may even have beaten them at rugby…! At the time there was a New Zealand election taking place and at church the following morning someone asked, “Who won the elections yesterday?” Quick as a flash someone retorted, “The Aussies.” Well, just recently the Kiwis beat the Aussies at something far more important than sport – and (I might add) well-and-truly beat the Aussies.
A news item on the ABC last week indicated that the “Corruption Perceptions Index” figures had just come through for last year. These figures have been published by ‘Transparency International’ since 1995. More than 170 countries are ranked on a scale from 100 (very clean) to 0 (very corrupt). Corruption is generally defined by them as the misuse of public power for private benefit.
Okay… our Kiwi cousins didn’t come first. That privilege belonged to Denmark. But… New Zealand came SECOND! Congratulations to you people from Aotearoa…! We here in Oz came THIRTEENTH. And the really sad news for us is that we Aussies have been moving down the ladder in recent years. We scored 79 for last year but four years ago our score was 85. New Zealand scored 90 in last year’s figures and that was up two points from the year before.
I guess we Aussies could console ourselves by looking at some other figures. India came seventy-ninth. And North Korea came in at number 174. But that doesn’t solve our problems. Why aren’t we up there with our Kiwi cousins?
I found myself wondering if there is a connection between a society’s low corruption score and Christianity. It seems significant to me that Scandinavian countries, with their very strong Lutheran heritage, generally did very well. Five of them appeared in the top twenty. I also noticed that apart from Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong, all other countries in the top twenty least corrupt countries are nations with a strong Christian heritage. Interestingly, no Muslim country made it into the top twenty countries.
Is it true that the Christian faith acts as a deterrent to corruption? It should. Jesus told His followers that they are the salt of the earth. On the physical level salt certainly acts as a preservative against corruption. Jesus implied that the faith of the Bible acts as a preservative against moral decay when it is embraced and lived out by His followers.
But if that is the case why has Australia been moving down the corruption ladder instead of upwards? To me the answer seems obvious. We live in a culture where the Biblical religion is increasingly being removed from the public square. And it appears that we may be paying the penalty for it in producing a more corrupt society.
Some years ago I was speaking with a relative who claimed that you could be an agnostic or even an atheist and still be a very moral kind of person. He personally did not believe but told me that he insisted on a high moral standard from his employees. I suggested that this was like trying to hold up a house that had no foundation. He wanted the fruit of Christianity without the grounding of a religious faith in the God of the Bible. That may work for a time but it will be difficult to maintain. Ultimately morality is based on the will of God who has given us his commandments as a guide for life. And to really keep those commandments we need the changed heart that comes through faith in Jesus.
I’m not big on advocating Christianity on the basis that it benefits a society. We should embrace Biblical faith, not first of all on the basis that it works, but on the basis that it is true. Yet, having said that, it’s worth asking ourselves if we want Australia to be an increasingly corrupt nation. If not then we need to halt the drift away from our Judaeo-Christian roots.
John Westendorp