Liberating the Will of Australia. Geoffrey Burn
will be brought together in the Finale, which includes a personal story of my own, where I was addressed by a very different land, when I first understood the nature of the new beginning that could come out the mess of the past.
This book is not about blame. Blame puts the focus in the wrong place, trying to find people at fault and then punishing them in some way because of their fault. Blame takes the focus away from looking carefully at the problem and what needs to be done to fix it. Blame also assumes that the problem is in the past, rather than being continually reproduced in the present. Instead, we need to allow ourselves to be challenged by the reality of the situation and then act courageously to do what needs to be done to put it right. There is a will in Australia to do good for the First Peoples in Australia. This book is about liberating that will, so that all the peoples of The Land, and The Land itself, can flourish. I hope that you will find that this book is ultimately a message of hope, that there is a way out so that the all peoples who dwell in The Land can coexist for the welfare of all.
Before embarking on the First Movement, there are two final things that need to be said at this point, concerning the scope of this work and the level of this book.
Concerning the scope of this work, whilst it is focused on Australia, and all the examples are drawn from Australia, the theological development is applicable to all colonized peoples. I hope that the insights contained here will be developed by others to help them understand their own contexts.
Any book must have a particular audience in mind. I am hoping that this is accessible to all the peoples in Australia. I have tried to walk the narrow way between having an academically rigorous and theologically sound narrative whilst also keeping it accessible to all who may wish to read it. Sometimes this means that the book progresses by means of assertion rather than engagement with the views of others. Those who wish to also see the arguments behind some of my assertions are referred to my thesis,15 but must be aware that my thinking has progressed in the ten years since I completed my thesis, and what is presented here is somewhat more nuanced. Moreover, my earlier work developed the theology of reconciliation and considered what the reconciliation might look like in Australia, where the purpose of this book is much narrower, focusing on the Root Sin and what must be done about it, for it still has not been addressed in Australia. With this in mind, I have made extensive use of endnotes. Some of the endnotes are simply an acknowledgement of my sources, but others are notes for further reflection by those who wish to take the ideas further. It should be possible to grasp the central ideas of this book without referring to the endnotes at all, but the endnotes are an important resource for deeper reflection on what is being raised in body of the book.
I hope that you will take the time to consider old things and new as they are presented in this book: time to listen, reflect, deliberate and act.
First Movement
Binding
The past is not dead and gone; it isn’t even past.16
White man, hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is, and formed one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, thereafter, one enters into battle with that historical creation, Oneself, and attempts to re-create oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating: one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history.17
Today, we recognize that the ways in which our forebears treated the First Peoples was abhorrent, but we see ourselves as different. We see differently now and we think that we can draw a line under the past and proceed into the future with different practices that arise from our new understanding. It is certainly true that the culture is changing in Australia, but it is also true that policies and practices today continue to cause damage. Some problems are so complex that there seems to be no good option.18 To think that we can just draw a line under the past is a fatal mistake, because the ways of the past continue to shape us in the present and we are not always able to see clearly nor to know what is good. The result is that sometimes harm is done even when good is intended.
This First Movement, Binding, will introduce the theological concept of bound willing, which shows how our wills are shaped by our history, so that we cannot always choose what is good, even when we wish to do it. The will is bound because it is limited in its ability to respond more fully to the love of God, who is the source of all that is good, and to act from that place. This is true not only of individuals, but also of groups, societies and nations. The Second Movement, Loosing, will look at concrete practices which enable us to receive the liberating love of God, so allowing our wills to be set free from those things which bind them.
This use of Christian theology brings both explanatory and hortatory power: it both helps the situation to be understood and also shows what needs to be done in order to put it right. More than that, it is deeply hopeful, because, in God, there is external help to redeem the situation. This book is therefore not about apportioning blame but about being able to acknowledge the full depth of the pathology in the presence of God, which is liberating because God is always moving to towards the world in order to bring life; the movement of God is not towards blame and punishment but towards restoration.
The first section of this movement will introduce the concept of bound willing. Alistair McFadyen gives the best contemporary exploration of bound willing that I have come across, and I recommend reading his book for those who wish to explore these concepts in more detail.19 In his book, he uses two case studies—child sexual abuse and the Nazi holocaust—to explain, develop, and test the doctrine of bound willing and the nature of salvation, the liberating work of God to release us from all that binds us. These case studies, of traumatic and incomprehensible events, show both how theology gives both a deeper understanding of the dynamics of complex problems and also how release from these problems can come about. It is important to understand that I am not suggesting that the situation in Australia is like either of these case studies. Rather, understanding the underlying dynamics of these examples gives a new way of looking at what has happened in Australia since the coming of the first Europeans, which is key to understanding why harm continues to be done to the First Peoples in Australia, even when good is intended, as well as showing the way out of this continuing problem. The second case study is important because it helps us to shift our perspective from individualism to see the dynamics of how whole nations can become gripped and driven by forces of which they are not fully aware, where the individual is caught up in systems from which there seems to be no escape.
In the second section, these theological tools are used to read the biblical book of Ezekiel. It is a case study of how bound willing has been working itself out in a nation over many generations.
The final section in this movement will briefly look at the situation in Australia, giving further definition of what we have been calling the Root Sin, and also giving three simple case studies of how bound willing can help us to understand why things went wrong when good was intended.
The Intermezzo will give a much larger case study of the dynamics of bound willing, being an examination of The Land in court cases and legislation over a period of half a century.
I
Bound Willing and True Freedom
We are used to thinking of society as a collection of individuals who have the free will to choose how they will act. When looking at a wrong action, moral reasoning traces back from the action to the thing that caused it. Moral judgment requires the relationship between the act and the individual to be personal, a person acting freely, and we escape responsibility if the act can be shown to be compelled, determined, or otherwise unavoidable. In this system, we cannot be morally praised or blamed for that which we have not freely chosen or could not avoid.