G. K. Chesterton once wrote this of the English society of his day, something which I dare say is as true of we Kiwis as it was of them, "Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it."
God is generally not a hot topic today, except in perhaps one arena. I've been intrigued by the number of acts of God turning up in our part of the world recently. It would seem that God is behind most of the bad things that happen and none of the good.
From earthquakes to inexplicable car accidents, to floods. God, so it seems, makes His appearance plain and simple.
Not only does this leave God holding the proverbial baby in the event of many of the major tragedies which mark our lives, but it also means that, quite obviously, in all other matters, God is either not present or, at least, not required. This is, to say the least, rather tragic theology.
God becomes the person behind all things accidental and fatal that cannot be directly traced to human intervention.
Of course this accusation is usually based on the slimmest of analyses. Floods may well be regular and on a dependable 80 or 100-year cycle but no-one thinks to take such evidence into account when blaming God for them.
Earthquakes may well be a fact of life in a geologically young country such as ours, but they are always God's fault when they happen because, well, because they're so inconvenient! Couldn't God have waited another few years till we were somewhere else?
And this is to say nothing of all the good things that may well have been attributed to God because they, much like the bad things, happened unexpectedly and without warning.
A near miss in the car, a sudden promotion at work, a clean bill of health from the doctor, a win at Lotto is God ever blamed for any of these? Perhaps under our breath, but we seldom have it printed in the papers. No, God ends up largely with the bad stuff.
In some ways this is no surprise. A god whose main task is to soak up the darker side of life is somewhat useful, even understandable. We get a god who zaps a few people now and then to express anger and frustration at a world that has largely consigned him to the margins.
We, perhaps, understand a god who is so righteous that his only reaction to we who live otherwise is to kill a few of us in random acts of violence occasionally.
But let's be clear, if this is really how we imagine God to be, then we fall so far outside of the Christian understanding of God that we may as well be speaking, in these terms at least, about the Devil.
God's great act is not so much to judge as to become the judged, and this act begins at Christmas with the coming of Christ and ends at Easter with his death on a cross and resurrection.
And this is no shadowy act hidden behind some major catastrophe, but a bone fide, historical actual life. Contrary to much that is written in newspaper columns, the life of Christ is among the most well-attested historical facts of ancient history.
Perhaps the resurrection falls outside of this domain, but at least 10 of those original 12 disciples went to their graves continuing to testify to the rising of Christ and without a hint of conspiracy over their word as did many other eye-witnesses who were martyred. If this doesn't constitute strong evidence, I'm not sure what does.
The "act of God" is to become the judged in our place, so that we might find peace in and with God today.
It is the Church's main task to witness to this peace; a peace that begins with a personal acceptance of Christ but which goes beyond to bring peace to one's closest relationships, work and to society in general.
There is nothing that can compare to being at peace with God, if only because God brings us to peace with ourselves.
The great yawning gap which we in the West can still fill with "stuff", is a place which needs peace more than anything else and until we, who refuse to worship anything but our appetites realise this, we will be as lost and as restless as the pagan who continues to worship a little wooden god.
We who can control so much with our technology and our wealth, have still not worked out how to control the one thing which most needs controlling - ourselves.
Again to quote Chesterton, "There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."
God is not to be discovered in the tragedies we cannot explain, but in the life that brings peace to all our questioning - Jesus Christ.
• The Rev Richard Dawson is minister of St Stephen's in Leith Valley.
