In sharp and distinct contrast to Lisa Owen - especially of late - I'd like to heartily commend a much-overlooked and often underrated tele-broadcaster, as it so transpires another TV3, now Newshub Nation, political commentator/correspondent: the redoubtable Paddy Gower.
Admittedly often mistaken for ye proverbial cheshire cat for his inimitable grin - or a budding child chess champion for his sheer inability not to insert a know-it-all smirk into any and every story he's involved with, or in which he feels he has the 'special goods', the inside scoop on secret proceedings - Gower's special Newshub Nation 6 p.m. report the other night (Tuesday, May 6th, I believe) was in verity 'one out of the box'.
In what was an extensive piece of investigative journalism - which had obviously taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to produce - upon the now infamous *Gloriavale Christian community on New Zealand's West Coast, Gower made it clear that these days he is well and truly the adult journalist in the room amidst a vast field - a veritable school - of rank amateurs. At least on television.
In complete contradistinction to the extensive coverage previously given during the days of Campbell Live - especially from, I would argue (and any fellow Christians I've discussed the matter with have concurred), a somewhat jaded, cynical, inherently anti-Christian bias - Gower provides a very fair and balanced approach. (Here I will limit myself to canvassing his treatment of the head honcho and the community as a whole.)
As far as the overall community is concerned, Gower readily and generously conceded that the vast majority of residents - especially (apparently) beautifully innocent children looking as if they've come out of a reworked version of Sound of Music or a Dutch tale - were eminently good and decent folk.
As for the community's 'main man', their leader, **'Hopeful Christian', despite giving yet another unvarnished account of this man's dealings not only with the visiting media but moreover and far more concerningly with those residents who from time to time have actively dissented from the basic narrative that the community reverberates to (and lives according to), Gower yet gave a certain measure of respect, or let's just say due deference, to 'Hopeful' on account of the sheer position he holds within Gloriavale; and thus is 'endowed with' by its 550-some residents.
Though utterly undeserving, in the quite understandable view of ye average NZ citizen looking on, and rather askance, of any commendation whatsoever - in light of his heavy-handed approach to all manner of dissent and dissenters in said community over any number of years apparently - Paddy Gower makes a nuanced tweak to this general narrative (which no doubt he otherwise fully subscribes to). And the reason I'm singling this out is due to its relevance to all manner of other situations in especially modern Western society.
It is essentially the difference between the particular office-holder (at any one moment in history) and the actual institution s/he happens to lead. And thus between the honour and esteem rightly and properly accruing - hopefully! - to the institution itself, even when that organization, which may well be political or governmental in nature, is headed by a complete buffoon or imbecile. Yes, no great imagination is required as to at least one pertinent application in our current geo-political world!
It is interestingly a quality that the man who was reputably the greatest and most respected (not to mention popular) of the pre-Christian era kingdoms of Israel and Judah had in literal spades. (Perhaps one of the many reasons he was considered a wonderful type of Jesus Christ, being given that rarest of commendations: 'a man after God's own heart'.) Of course I refer to the great King David (who naturally I've a certain degree of partiality to, if regrettably lacking in the personal warmth (and hence popularity) and charisma/personal magnetism which made him so beloved to his own countrymen and women - if not to his envious first wife Michal!
To what in David's life here do I allude, and how does Paddy Gower exemplify that in regards to Hopeful Christian? Twice David, ever on the run (for 13 years all up) from the murderous hatred of the intensely envious symbolically deposed (yet still reigning) then King Saul, had Saul right in his power: once when Saul was relieving himself, supposedly privately, in a cave wherein David and his men were holed up!, David's men urged him to get the job over and done with once and for all and finish Saul off for good now he was finally in his grip, and a second time when David and his men encountered Saul asleep around a campfire.
And both times David responded to his bloodthirsty loyalists in this way: "The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the LORD's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD." And once he adds: "For who can stretch out his hand against the LORD's anointed, and be guiltless?"
*Coincidentally (though my life's ever been full of them), I picked up a tome at a favourite second-hand shop just two days later, Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult (by Lilia Tarawa); and almost purchased another, Trust No One, about abuse (of all sorts, especially sexual and physical, but also psychological) in state-run institutions, I believe in the United Kingdom.
**A misnomer is ever there were one! Though I'm quite familiar with the classic tale by John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, and moreover the character therein from whom he takes his name, Gloriavale's head honcho appears anything but a bringer of hope much less the love Jesus often denoted would be the hallmark, the lingua franca, of His earthly disciples.
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