Let’s stop lying to ourselves.
Responsibility isn’t the elephant in the room — it’s the stampede flattening our nation while we stand around pretending, we don’t hear the thunder. We’ve built a culture where responsibility is treated like toxic waste: everyone wants it gone, no one wants to touch it, and everyone hopes someone else will deal with the fallout.
Look at Tauranga City Council. Twenty‑seven years of warnings about the Mount Maunganui slip. Twenty‑seven years of reports, red flags, expert advice, and “urgent concerns.” And what did our leaders do?
They ignored it. They shelved it. They passed it around. They buried it so deep that even the worms got tired.
Then six innocent holidaymakers died.
And suddenly the same people who ignored the warnings want to play the blame game — passing responsibility faster than an All-Black backline on a good day. The current CEO is being lined up as the sacrificial lamb, because nothing says “leadership” like throwing one man under the bus to protect decades of institutional cowardice.
Let’s be brutally honest: This wasn’t one man’s failure. This was a 27‑year rebellion against responsibility.
Responsibility, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “something that it is your job or duty to deal with.”
So whose job was it?
The council? Yes. The landowner? Yes. The iwi with guardianship? Yes. The people who saw the warnings and shrugged? Absolutely. The ones who said “someone should do something” and then went home? Without question.
Everyone had responsibility. Everyone dropped it. And six people died because adults refused to act like adults.
This is the rot in our culture: We want authority without accountability. We want leadership without sacrifice. We want influence without duty. We want the crown without the cross.
And into this moral wasteland Jesus speaks a command that should shake every reader to their core: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Not a suggestion. Not a slogan. A command.
A divine expectation. A line drawn by God Himself.
It means you don’t get to look away when harm is happening. It means you don’t get to pretend ignorance when you know the truth. It means you don’t get to hide behind “not my role,” “not my department,” or “not my responsibility.”
Take the debate about banning social media for under‑16s. Teenagers argue passionately for keeping it because it “helps their education.” Admirable, but irrelevant. Responsibility doesn’t rest with them. It rests with parents.
It is a parent’s God‑given duty to protect their children — not hand them over to the digital wolves and hope for the best. (Deuteronomy 11:18–20)
We all know how dark social media has become. We all know what it’s doing to young minds. We all know the harm. Yet from adults? Silence. Crickets. More dodging of responsibility.
Christopher Luxon noted that playgrounds have become louder since phones were banned in schools — and yes, a few windows have been broken by misdirected balls. Good. That’s childhood. That’s life. That’s responsibility in action.
But nostalgia won’t save us. Responsibility will.
And now we come to the part that should make every reader tremble: God does not accept excuses.
He didn’t accept them in Eden. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. God ignored the lot of it.
Each person was held accountable for their own actions.
That principle hasn’t changed. It won’t change on Judgement Day. And it certainly doesn’t change just because a council wants to protect its reputation.
Six people died because responsibility was dodged for 27 years.
If that doesn’t shake us awake, nothing will.
Responsibility isn’t optional. Responsibility isn’t negotiable. Responsibility isn’t someone else’s job.
Our future — our families, our communities, our nation — will rise or fall on whether we finally stop running from responsibility and start living like people who understand that God Himself will hold us accountable.
No excuses. No blame‑shifting. No passing the buck. No pretending.
Responsibility is ours. And God is watching.