Called Home

Dr Joe Williams Dies

Covid 19 Coronavirus: NZ's 24th death

Emma Russell
NZ Herald

[Some years back our extended family was confronted with a near-new born unable to feed well.  We received advice and diagnoses from several doctors and health experts.  Nothing worked.  A friend who worked in the medical area took us aside and quietly suggested that we might seek a consultation with a doctor, whom she knew, who specialised in such cases.  After securing an appointment, the doctor  recommended a strict, particular diet for the new-born's mother.  The change and effect upon our new born was virtually palpable before our eyes.  That doctor was Dr Joe Williams. Ever since that day, we have held him in the highest regard.  Our family owes him a great deal.  Editor.]

Dr Joe Williams, former Prime Minister of the Cook Islands and a much-respected GP, has died after contracting Covid-19 in Auckland.  The widely-respected medical professional died in Auckland City Hospital last night.  He becomes the 24th person in New Zealand to die from Covid-19 and the second in less than 24 hours related to the current Auckland cluster.

The Ministry of Health said Williams was a "widely regarded member of health services in both New Zealand and the Cook Islands".

Director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said Williams was a well-known politician, physician and author.  "Dr Williams was seen as a leading figure in the Cook Islands medical community and he will be sadly missed," he said.  Williams was admitted to Auckland City Hospital on August 13.  "Our thoughts are with his family and community at this time of loss and grief.

Williams, 82, was admitted to hospital after he became sick when it is thought he might have come in close contact to someone connected to the initial Auckland cluster. His Mt Wellington practice is not far from the Americold coolstore.  Williams served as the Cook Islands Prime Minister for four months in 1999. He earlier served as the country's Health Minister.

NZ's Disproportionate Response

The Value of a Life

[A guest post by Alwyn Poole.  This was reprinted in Kiwiblog.  We reproduce it below:]

It is astonishing how quickly key foundations of education and society can become twisted or subverted. A genuine proponent of education advocates important foundations; question everything, critique everything, suggest and evaluate counter scenarios (and other “experts”), ask who gains and who loses from particular actions, attack the argument and not the person. Children, youth and indeed all citizens need to apply these principles to current events and what appears to be deep moral confusion.

Everyone dies. It is maybe the least digestible fact of life but the rate of death in every generation is 100%. I complained about this to my mother once and she placated me by saying that it wouldn’t happen to me. I was 8 years old and, at that stage accepted my immortality. In NZ in 2018 33,225 human-beings died. That is a little over 91 people per day. Apart from reporting on road deaths and murders these deaths, by and large, pass unnoticed except for those close enough to attend the funeral.

In 2020 we have suddenly decided, as a society taking part in a global emergency, that these lives are more important than ever before. We have decided this to the extent that we have destroyed significant sections of the economy, drastically restricted human rights, and allowed a very small sector of government to create edicts without due process or challenge.

Dying Alone

No Children Should Be Dying Alone, Virus or Not: 


Amanda Platell
Daily Mail

Just over one week ago, 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab was at home with his mum, six brothers and sisters, doing what we’re all doing, watching TV, warding off boredom, isolating at home.

The healthy lad described by his family as ‘a bubble of life’ then started showing coronavirus symptoms. Soon he had difficulty breathing and was raced to King’s College Hospital.

He told ambulance paramedics that when he grew up he wanted to be a vet, as he loved animals. These were Ismail’s last words. The boy with no known health issues was put on a ventilator, induced into a coma, then suffered a cardiac arrest.  He became the youngest fatality of Covid-19 in the UK.

Ismail died at 3am last Monday —without his mum, without his brothers and sisters, without anyone apart from the medical team who, we can be sure, tended him as lovingly as any strangers could.  How unimaginably heartbreaking — for him in his last hours, as well as for his family who desperately wanted to be with him but couldn’t be because of the virus. 

No child should die alone. It is alien to all our instincts.

The Pike River Mine Divide

Facing Up To A Fool's Errand

What do we want?  JUSTICE!  When do we want it? NOW.

Such has been the litany of  some people who have suffered as a result of miners being killed in the Pike River catastrophe on the west of the South Island.  They want the remains of their loved ones disinterred and given back to them.  The previous government took advice and decided not to attempt to re-enter the (now sealed) mine because the risks were too great.  Most accepted that reality.

But some of those who were connected by blood and/or marriage to the dead miners have been pushing ever since to get the mine re-opened.  They appear to have two objectives.  The first was to be able to re-claim the earthly remains of the dead miners, still entombed within the sealed mine.  They say they have wanted a place to bury their dead, so that they could pay their respects as and when they wanted.

We should say at this point that not all the families of the dead miners have agreed with this view.  They have quietly accepted the death of their loved ones, grieved, and moved on.  But others have not.  They have made lack of funereal rites a cause, claiming permanent long-term residual affliction because they have been unable to hold a funeral for their dead family member.  They also feel aggrieved because they have been prevented from having a grave site at which they could mourn for as long as they wanted.

The second objective of the re-openers is to gather forensic evidence of the cause of the deadly mine explosion and, therefore, be able to identify a soul to damn and a butt to kick.

We are told that the return of the bodies of the dead would likely be a misplaced pipe dream.

Vast Death Cult

A Civilisation of Orcs

It is apparent that the waning of  Western cultural influence is linked to a rejection of growth and expansion.  There are many evidences of a "love of death" in the Western mindset.  The forms it takes are varied--yet consistent.  Abortion, euthanasia, suicide, volitionally childless couples, falling populations,aging populations, and families limiting children to one are all celebrations of a culture of death.  Couple this with violent crime, and a culture of death seems to stalks the West.

It is apparent that European countries, the UK, the US, New Zealand and Australia cannot now arrest the downward spiral of declining populations, without making up the numbers by migration.  Our secularist culture which long ago threw off the Christ as its king is bearing a fruit consistent with a love of death.  As the Proverbs point out, "but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”  [Proverbs 8:36]

The Bible, however, proclaims that growth and development of God's Kingdom.  "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it", is the first command God gave to Adam and Eve.  [Genesis 1:28].  The prevailing view in the West has reached the point where it openly declaims this command as itself wicked and evil.  As Douglas Kelly observes:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Helen Green, R.I.P.

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

In one of the last conversations I had with Helen, one of the things that came out was her concerns over all her sewing. She couldn’t sew anymore. Would she be able to sew in Heaven? It would be easy to dismiss this kind of concern as a frailty, as the kind of whimsical thing that might occur to someone on their deathbed.

But there is something much deeper here. This is nobility; this is not frailty. God created us with hands, and He gave us hearts that want to be useful.

The first time the Bible mentions the Spirit of God filling someone in Scripture is in the book of Exodus. “And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship” (Ex. 31:3). In other words, a craftsman, an artisan, a person who worked with his hands, is described here as filled with the Spirit. He does not preach a sermon, he does not write a book of theology, he does not write a devotional poem. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but that is not where God starts.

And the women. “And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen” (Ex. 35:25).

Spirit of God. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge. Wise-hearted. Handiwork.

The Next Domino to Fall? Part II

The Deaths of Two Fathers

Guest Post by Alwyn Poole
The Care Alliance

I had two fathers who died two quite different deaths. One, my birth father (who I never met), chose suicide assisted by a shotgun in his back shed. The other, the one who adopted me and brought me up, died of natural causes in his lounge – at home with his wife – in 2006.

Strangely enough, re the debate on euthanasia, it is the death of the second one I want to address. This should not be a nice trendy issue for someone to try and gain electoral support. It has stunning potential to become a slippery slope for a range of groups in society. It also has the potential to confer power to a group of people (doctors) who are highly fallible in a range of ways.

As I said – my adoptive father died naturally at home. His life almost did not end that way. A few months prior to his death I received a phone call at work that my father was “dying that day”. It was a Tuesday and he was in intensive care in a hospital in a small city in NZ. I had spent time there with him on the Sunday and had left him on the improve and​, apparently, ​ in good spirits.

Ray Poole was 67 years old at the time and had a terminal illness, emphysema, that had progressed.

We Did Not See This Coming

Unexpected Mercies

Whilst this has not got great press, it remains an outstanding, unexpected event.  The British Parliament voted overwhelmingly not to "legalise" euthanasia.   We congratulate the United Kingdom.  Regrettably such an outcome is not likely in New Zealand when it finally gets to be debated in our parliament.

Assisted dying bill overwhelmingly rejected by MPs

After a passionate debate, MPs vote 330 to 118 against changing law, in first Commons vote on assisted dying for 20 years

MPs have voted overwhelmingly against changing the law to allow doctors to help terminally ill people end their lives.  In their first vote on the issue for about 20 years, the Commons rejected the assisted dying bill introduced by Rob Marris, a Labour MP who had argued that it was about ensuring peaceful deaths rather than euthanasia.  The debate was heated on both sides, with many MPs drawing on their personal experiences of dying relatives to give weight to their arguments. However, opponents outnumbered supporters by 212, with 330 voting against and 118 in favour. [The Guardian]

The outlook was not good.  Hence our joyous surprise.

Master and Commander of My Soul

Defiant Narcissism 

A member in high standing within the Commentariat has written the following:

If you believe life is sacred as long as you have breath in your body, I accept that. But as far as I'm concerned, my life is over when I no longer have the ability to appreciate life around me.  Once I've lost joy and wonder in the world, then I want to be able to quit my place and make room for someone else. And surely that's my right to decide. [NZ Herald]

Kerre McIvor bats for Unbelief.  Her statement above effectively uncloaks what Unbelief is all about.  It is about Me.  "As far as I'm concerned . . . "; "Once I've lost joy . . . then I want to be able to quit my place . . . "

Remember the lines of Invictus:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

This poem represents the nearest our modern apostasy will get to a confession of faith.  Kerre McIvor is a true believer in Unbelief.  Its essence is to hold the ultimate decisions in one's hands, for Oneself, and Oneself alone.

There is nothing remarkable in this.  It is the new normal.

The Control-Freak Culture

"I Did It My Way"

Charles Moore has written an insightful piece in The Telegraph.  It concerns "assisted" dying. He argues that so-called "dignitas dying" represents an ultimate attempt to be in control of oneself.  The irony is lost only on the purblind.

Daily Devotional

The Separation

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

There’s a limit to the ‘one flesh.’ You can’t really share someone else’s weakness, or fear or pain. What you feel may be bad. It might conceivably be as bad as what the other felt, though I should distrust anyone who claimed that it was. But it would still be quite different. When I speak of fear, I mean the merely animal fear, the recoil of the organism from its destruction; the smothery feeling; the sense of being a rat in a trap. It can’t be transferred. The mind can sympathize; the body, less. In one way the bodies of lovers can do it least. All their love passages have trained them to have, not identical, but complementary, correlative, even opposite, feelings about one another.

We both knew this. I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. The end of hers would be the coming-of-age of mine. We were setting out on different roads. This cold truth, this terrible traffic- regulation (‘You, Madam, to the right—you, Sir, to the left’) is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.
And this separation, I suppose, waits for all. I have been thinking of H. and myself as peculiarly unfortunate in being torn apart. But presumably all lovers are. She once said to me, ‘Even if we both died at exactly the same moment, as we lie here side by side, it would be just as much a separation as the one you’re so afraid of.’ Of course she didn’t know, any more than I do. But she was near death; near enough to make a good shot. She used to quote ‘Alone into the Alone.’ She said it felt like that. And how immensely improbable that it should be otherwise! Time and space and body were the very things that brought us together; the telephone wires by which we communicated. Cut one off, or cut both off simultaneously. Either way, mustn’t the conversation stop?

From A Grief Observed
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed. Copyright © 1961 by N. W. Clerk, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Preface by Douglas H. Gresham copyright © 1994 by Douglas H. Gresham. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.  Sourced from BibleGateway.

Proving Too Much

Man Up, Everybody

A euthanasia case is currently being argued before NZ courts.  One blogger reviews the case, making reference to an article published in the NZ Law Journal which gives the case a strong chance of success.  Amidst the review, we find the following:

. . . . This alternative meaning would distinguish between the sorts of intentional self-inflicted deaths we ordinarily think of as being “suicide” (the lovesick teen, the family breadwinner facing financial crisis, etc.) and the act of a competent, terminally ill person who is seeking (as in Ms Seales’ case) to choose a more peaceful death when brought to death’s door by the advance of disease and enduring unbearable suffering. Are these scenarios distinguishable from each other, and can that distinction be given effect under the specific wording of the Crimes Act?

I think that the two situations are very different. Not helping a depressed teenager kill themselves is very different to not helping someone who is facing an agonising death, from avoiding some suffering.

The situations referred to have differing accidents to be sure.  But what is common to both is the alleged sovereign will of an individual human being to take his or her own life.  One cannot have a sovereign will at 65, and not at 16.

The Growing Love of Death

The Satan's Final Work

We were struck recently by the declaration attributed to British author, Terry Pratchett in one of the many tributes after his death.  Pratchett had been suffering from early onset Alzheimers.

He also explored the case for assisted suicide in an acclaimed TV documentary. "Either we have control of our lives, or we do not," he said. [NZ Herald]

Herein lies the philosophical and ethical rationale for suicide.

The Chebar River Beckons

Those Who Hate God, End Up Loving Death

Some slopes truly are slippery.  Not necessarily slippery by force of reason or logic (which depend upon assumptions underpinning premises).  But spiritual forces and sociological trends are what make a slope slippery.  When no-fault divorce was introduced in New Zealand in the 1980 some people argued that it would lead to a dissolution of marriage as an institution.  They were mocked as extremists and idiots--as tawdry scaremongerers.  Not only was the slope not slippery, there was not slope to be seen or had anywhere--the mockers said.

When Christians point out the likely end results of radical changes to law--particularly laws structuring society according to the biblical blueprints--they face a double jeopardy.  When they warn of the slippery slope and what is likely to happen, they are mocked as being cheap alarmists.  When the slippery slope actually emerges, they are then mocked for being  judgemental and harsh.  Rarely are they credited with being right in the first place.  For example, when no-fault divorce was introduced, some people argued that it would lead to an inflation of  the meaning of marriage.  If the union were so tenuous and ephemeral that anyone could just walk away for any reason, then anyone could enter the union.  Including homosexuals.  Nah.  Don't be so idiotic, you ignorant Christian scaremonger!  

Now, within 30 short years, homosexual "marriages" have been recognised in law in New Zealand.  Today, when Christians protest against that monstrosity, they are not acknowledged as being right all those years ago, they are pilloried as being bigoted, enemies of the human race, unfeeling, human-rights deniers, etc. "Have you no love or feeling or compassion or respect for "gay" people?"  

It's the zeitgeist of the times.  What humans will to do eventually becomes a human right promoted, sanctioned, and protected by the brute force of an unholy state. 

The Contrarian Mind

. . . Achievable with Love, Morphine, and Whisky

There is a lot to be said for a contrarian mind.  In fact, as Douglas Wilson has observed, in a prevailing secular humanist clime, having a contrarian mind is arguably a basic requirement for Christian living.

Urbane contrarians, particularly those with a merry impishness, are national treasures.  He is an example:

Dying of cancer is the "best death" and we should "stop wasting billions trying to cure" it, a leading doctor has said.  Dr Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, said that cancer allowed people to say goodbye and prepare for death and was therefore preferable to sudden death, death from organ failure or "the long, slow death from dementia". . . .

"You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion," Dr Smith wrote in a blog published for the BMJ, a journal he edited until 2004.  "This is, I recognise, a romantic view of dying, but it is achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from overambitious oncologists, and let's stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death," he wrote.

One up for contrarians!

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Natural Evil and the Classical Christian School

Blog and Mablog

Douglas Wilson

December 17, 2014

One of the central arguments that materialistic atheism offers against the Christian faith is that the reality and universality of suffering is inconsistent with the doctrine that we were created by, and are loved by, a gracious heavenly Father. If we intend to do our job in training our students to be able to defend their faith as they go out into the world, it seems to me that we ought not to begin by granting the foundational premise of unbelief.

Believe me, the pressing reality of natural evil is a major argument that the atheists use, and the theistic evolutionists will have to do a lot better than they have done thus far in mounting a reply.

If evolution was God’s means of creating, then this means that pain, struggle, suffering, agony, and torment were His means of creation, and He pronounced all of it “good.”

The Execration of All Things

A Meditation Upon Suicide

The chattering classes have been animated in recent days over a young female cancer sufferer who has made plans to kill herself.  She has been, and continues to be a "Right to Death" advocate.  The media have lionised her, lauded her, and praised her to the skies as a great example for us all.  What courage!  What dedication!

G.K. Chesterton wrote the following in his essay, "The Flag of the World". It will help us reflect more closely upon such things:

. . . an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's self.  Grave moderns told us that we must not even say "poor fellow," of a man who has blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence.  Mr William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny.  In all this I found myself utterly hostile to man who called themselves liberal and humane.

Unable to be Translated

Learning From Bodies

Nora Calhoun
First Things


The baby in my arms lacks the majority of his brain. He was born just fifteen minutes before this moment, and he is likely to die before another fifteen minutes pass. He has taken no first breath and will give no first cry. He cannot see. He cannot hear. He does not feel the warm weight of my hand as it rests on his chest and belly. I quietly weep and pray as the last gift of oxygen his mother’s body gave him dwindles and his rosy newborn glow fades to gray. His soul gently slips out of his body, and his life ends.

Ability is not what makes death significant. At birth this baby had capacities below that of a healthy fetus at ten weeks. Holding his body, living and then dead, proves to me that it doesn’t matter how early the human heart beats, how early it is possible to feel pain, or when the senses develop. No ability or strength confers human status—not being viable or sentient or undamaged or wanted. Being of human descent is enough; you cannot earn or forfeit your humanity. If this baby’s death does not matter, no death matters.

But bodies speak a different language; they teach in different terms. The images and touch memories of the small body of that severely damaged baby boy whom I held as he died only minutes after being born could not be explained away, caricatured, ignored, or debated.

I have not always seen this so clearly. A gut repugnance and horror of abortion, which I felt from the time I first heard of it as a nine-year-old, kept me from ever being fully pro-choice. But even after my conversion to Christianity at eighteen, I didn’t want to express full opposition to the opinions of almost everyone I knew, my family, teachers, and friends. I wanted to avoid the taboo of “judgmentalism,” widely imputed to those who oppose abortion, and to maintain credibility among the feminist friends I cherished.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Seven Theses on the Age of the Earth

Blog and Mablog

Posted on Friday, March 7, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

I recently came to the conclusion that it was time to set down in one place my reasons for approaching Genesis the way I do. I have noticed that the topic has become a matter of increased debate in classical Christian circles — and because schools cannot honestly stay out of it — it matters a great deal what we teach and why. So here are seven theses on the age of the earth.

1. First, the age of the earth, considered in isolation, is neither here nor there. The issue is always what God said, and not how old something is. If the earth is six thousand years old now, it will eventually be one hundred thousand years old at some point, about ninety-four thousand years from now. Will theologians at that time still be required to hold to a “young earth” view? So the issue is not age, or day, or young, or old, but rather the substance of what God actually said. Whatever He actually revealed should be what we use as the foundation for all our subsequent thought. After we have our foundation, we may incorporate truth from other sources — natural revelation included — but we must take care that we never privilege what we think we know over what God actually told us.

2. Therefore, the debate — which is most necessary — should be conducted primarily between Christians who accept the Scriptures as the absolute Word of God, perfect and infallible in all that they affirm.

Seeing Things Clearly

No Pleasure But Meanness

In Flannery O'Connor's short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find a murderous thug recites some sound theology.  Misfit (the thug's name) has ordered the shooting of a family of parents and two children; he is about to murder the grandmother.  The acts are senseless and nihilistic.

Before Misfit shoots the grandmother, he reflects on the Christ.

"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn't have done it.  He thrown everything off balance.  If he did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can--by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.  No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. [Flannery O'Connor, Collected Works (New York: The Library of America, 1988), p.152.]

There are only two alternatives: either Jesus did rise from the dead and all must follow him, or He did not in which case living hellishly all one's few days is the only "meaningful" option.