Back to Australia.
You may remember that the new prime minister had promised to apologize for one particularly repugnant offense against the country's Aborigine people. Well, today they made good on that promise.
If you've been following the discussions on this blog about reconciliation, or if you happened to be there for the Reconciled seminar, you will recognize all to well the themes that come out in this CNN report on Australia.
This story has it all:
* Notice the affect the apology has on one of the offended. What are her words?
* What was the argument of the former prime minister for refusing to apologize?
* What is the fear of the conservative commentator. If we apologize, what's going to happen to us?
You can bet this clip will be studied in future seminars.
The more I watch these reports from all over the world the more predictable the arguments become. It really is like a textbook.
- Victims and their descendants need the past to be acknowledged in order to give their lives (and that of their ancestors) a sense of worth.
- The descendants of the perpetrators want to focus on the present and the future (which is convenient sense they are in a pretty good position based on what happened in the past).
- The descendants of the perpetrators fear losing something (status, wealth, self image) if they apologize for the past, so they resist doing so heartily. It is extremely distasteful to them.
- Everyone remains chained to a past that is unreconciled.
And in the end, the result is a continued focus on us versus them. Again, in the Kingdom, can this sort of thinking exist?
Hats off from this blogger to the Australian government for taking this step. Let's pray that it opens doors to continued understanding, forgiveness and reconciliation rather than resistance, rejection and enmity.
We are pulling for you, Australia. The rest of the world needs to see what is possible and how it's done. Perhaps America will someday apologize to its native peoples as well.
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