To judge or not to judge: faith as loving, maturing and missionary

I MUST confess news accounts, both on television and on print media, aroused my curiosity into viewing the so-called “amalayer” video on youtube featuring a young Filipino lady’s unrelenting and loud verbal lashing of a seemingly more restrained lady security officer at a Manila LRT station. I have never been the same again. I went from amusement to disappointment to near trauma to pity to just profound sadness. And it wasn’t simply the video itself that proved riveting but also the comments and reactions by fellow Filipinos around the world that went viral: to the verbally lashing young lady, mostly condemnation, at times sympathy; to the lady security guard, compassion, even admiration.

I admit I came away chastened and saddened not only by what the video reveals about the state of our country’s public transport system (to think that Manila’s train systems are supposed to be better than what we have in the provinces) and the kind of people we can be to one another (both the persons in confrontation and the viral kibitzers) but also by a sense that I could have been either the challenged commuter or the abused security officer. It was sobering to realize how, as a people, we easily fall into the game of judging one another, unraveling our real and deep lack of pride in our identity and appreciation for another as Filipinos. That, to me, is at the heart of the so-called ‘crab mentality’ we often bemoan. That we sometimes appear to enjoy tearing one another apart privately, publicly or virally can only indicate our own lack of love for who we are.

The trouble with this attitude is that it makes us often prey to the near-autistic game of “we-Pinoys-are-awful-except-me-or-my-ilk”.  And since an autistic person (from ‘autism’, Greek for ‘auto’ or ‘self’) literally is someone who is not able to break out of ‘himself’ or ‘herself’, Pinoys with the crab mentality must be the most un-liberated persons in the world since Adam and Eve.

True, every person is born with some form of self-centeredness not unlike that of an autistic person. But psychologists as well as our common sense tell us that the maturity of a person is measured by his or her ability to go out of self and reach out to others. 

When Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel tells us, “Do not judge and you will not be judged” (in other versions, “Do not condemn and you will not be condemned” (Mt 7:1), he says a most-quoted statement whose implication we Pinoys easily miss: When we judge even fellow Pinoys, we only judge ourselves. People of faith that we are, it shouldn’t be too hard to see the disconnect between Pinoys who call themselves Catholic Christians and yet regularly engage in the national pastime of M.A.P. (Mutually Assured Putdowns). When our faith is genuine it will have to be mature and its maturity will be in evidence when we who believe are able to break out of our natural human self-centeredness and commit ourselves to a loving relationship with others, which, by the way, include fellow Filipinos, whoever they are, wherever they are.

John the Evangelist tells us that loving is not only the measure of the mature person but also of the Christian person. “Love is of God and anyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God” (1 Jn 4:7).  St. John defines, as it were, the Christian life as a life of loving because it comes from our having known God and being of God. That the Christian is someone who is of God and knows God is proven when he or she lives out authentic love which reaches out to God and neighbor.

But the more fundamental truth is really not that anyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. It is this: God is love and we know it not because we love him but because he has first loved us and this he has shown by sending us his Son so that through him our sins could be forgiven. “This is love: not that we loved God but that he first loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).  Jesus is our model of the loving person. The proof that he is of God and knows God is that he spent his life on earth loving others even to the point of giving his life for them on the Cross so that our sins might be forgiven. In the love of Jesus we see the nature of love as self-giving not self-keeping.

The supreme fruit of this love is that he shares his life as Son of God with us whom he made as sons and daughters in the Son through his suffering, death and resurrection. This love of Jesus, according to St. John, is actually the very love of God himself.

If sharing his life as Son of God is the apex of the love of God in Jesus Christ, it is small wonder that in the Gospel of St. Matthew he asks us his disciples to do the same by sharing our discipleship, our life of loving relationship with God and with one another, with all human beings. This is the missionary charge. The loving person who is a true disciple of Christ is essentially a missionary, someone who shares his discipleship, his life with Christ. “Go and make disciples of all nations (Mt 28:19).” The Filipino nation rose to life from its dark ages of rigor mortis because heroes like Rizal, Bonifacio or Ninoy Aquino gave up their lives out of love for the country. Would it be any less when it is God’s Son who gives us his life so that it may become ours too?  

“Beloved, if God has loved has so, then we must have the same love for one another”, says John the Evangelist (1 Jn 4:11). It is the love of God in Christ that we share as a missionary Church and we should never look too far to begin doing it. Here in our own backyard we can be missionaries to one another. That verbally bashing young lady shouldn’t miss what that other young lady security officer was preaching by her self-restraint and humble apology.

The bashing lady’s words: “Amalayer! Amalayer! (I’m a liar! I’m a liar!)  Our response: “I’m a lov-er! I’m a lov-er!”

Moral over merely legal

(“We are the State’s Good Servants but God’s First”)

THESE days most Filipinos are glued to the Corona impeachment trial in the Senate. Already the clearest realization that impacts us all is the priority of morality over civil law. In fact, civil lawyers, judges and people in the media, both those who favor either the Chief Justice or the prosecutors, talk of taking ‘the high moral ground’ in charting the direction of the trial. Problem is, morality for most of them is whatever serves the law or its enforcement best.

I have no quarrel at all with the civil law of the country. Like all Filipinos, I do recognize its necessity as an instrument of justice, peace and order among us. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum nor is it based solely on what most Filipinos agree on through their lawmakers. What most of us take for granted is that our civil law is itself ultimately based on another law, something more fundamental, more prior, more universally binding and more permanent—the moral law. It is this law that not only determines right (which we should pursue always) and wrong (which we should shun all the time) but also leads us in the direction of the real ‘daang matuwid (straight path), a road which is never ‘matuwid’ or right if it does not lead to God.

But the issue of moral law over civil law reminds me of a question we argued about in high school: “In any given town who has the higher position, the parish priest or the mayor?” I remember a fellow teener saying that it’s the mayor because he has under him not only Catholics but also non-Catholics. But there was a well-thought out answer from another teenager who said, “The parish priest is in a higher position because he represents the Lord and the Church while the mayor only represents the people in the town. That is why a priest can go any place and still be a priest but a mayor cannot go to another place and be a mayor there.”

We can also, at this point, ask: “Which is higher? Civil law or moral law.” But we have to define our terms first. Moral law is the law which tells us in our conscience what is right and to follow it as well as tell us what is wrong and to avoid it. Morality is something that comes from God and which we come to know through the Scriptures (the Bible) and Apostolic Tradition as taught by the Church. That’s the Catholic perspective. It may not, and this fact we accept, be positively received all Christians, let alone by all people. But we know we have solid bases for making such claims. On the other hand, civil law refers to a body of laws passed or written and decreed by a body of human lawmakers regulating human behavior or conduct in a certain place (whether town, province, state or country). For us Christians the answer to the question should be obvious and firm: The Moral Law being from God is higher than Civil Law. Civil Law can only be worthy of a believer’s obedience if it conforms to the Moral Law. When it violates the Moral Law believers have the right and the duty to oppose it and to campaign against it.

In the first book of Samuel we are told of how the vocation of Samuel as a prophet all started with a prayer of his own mother for a child (1 Sam 1:10-12). It was a prayer heard by God and of which the priest Eli had knowledge. Consequently, as a sign of gratitude and discernment of God’s higher purposes for her son, Anna the mother offers and consecrates her son back to the God who gave him to her. This action by Anna speaks volumes of her faith. But it also speaks of the reason why human beings must follow God and his ways. The human person comes from him and is bound to return to him. Therefore God and his ways must be the clear and constant source of guidance and direction in human living. The words of Anna are a code of conduct for all believers: “As long as he lives, he will follow the Lord” (1 Sam 1:28).

In her Magnificat (song of praise) in the gospel of Luke Mama Mary, in an eternal paean, teaches us not only the primacy of God and his ways but also how God favors the humble and the lowly instead of the powerful, the mighty and the wealthy (Lk 1:46-55). She reminds us how the things that God holds dear often run counter to ours. For instance, remember the three Gs of GUNS, GOONS, GOLD? Or, shall we say, ‘Violence, power and money’? These are the things that most people, not the least Filipinos, consider as means to reach the top as far as our society is concerned. But this is not so with God, not so in heaven, and ergo, not so in that society which is the “seed or beginning of the kingdom of heaven” on earth, namely, the Church. Mama Mary tells us that she who was lowly, powerless and money-less was showered by God with “great things”. What’s more, God does not only favor the humble and the lowly. He also shows his power over the powerful and, in God’s own time, deposes the abusive and arrogant power-wielders. “He has shown might with his arm; he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty kings from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52).

What does this tell us? First, that God and his ways must be prior in our minds and hearts because God is higher than any other authority in heaven and on earth. Pope John XXIII’s encyclical ‘Pacem in Terris’ (Peace in the World) he states that civil “authority is a postulate of the moral order and derives from God. Consequently, laws and decrees enacted in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience” (PT, II). St. Thomas Aquinas reaffirms this by saying that every “law made by man can be called a law insofar as it derives from the natural law. But if it is somehow opposed to the natural law, then it is not really a law but rather a corruption of the law” (I-II, q. 95, a. 2).

Why are these considerations important for you and me? Because in our present realities, the order is often reversed. Sadly, we Christians and people of faith do not even give this pass so much as a murmur. What is legal or secular is held dearer by the elite of Philippine and world society. Which is why it is entirely possible that our civil authorities may pass laws that oppose God’s law or the moral law as we know it, such as the RH Bill, or certain laws may be passed allowing divorce, euthanasia or homosexual unions as well as qualified abortions.

In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Blessed John Paul II, declares: “Christians, like all people of good will, are called upon under grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil” (EV 74). It is true, the Holy Father says, that in the NT Christians are “reminded” of “their duty to obey legitimately constituted public authorities (Rom 13:1-7; 1 Pt 2:13-14)” but they are also taught that “ ‘we must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29)” (EV 73).

When Henry VIII separated from Rome and founded the Church of England he decreed that all his subjects obey him. One of his most trusted aides, his Chancellor, a man named Thomas Moore, opposed the king because in conscience he felt the king was in the wrong. He was put in prison and eventually executed. When he was asked to explain his opposition to the king, he said: “We are the king’s good servants, but God’s first”. That is why, as Catholics, if and when our own civil laws are against the moral law, we can and must also say, “We are the state’s good servants, but God’s first.”

Seeing in the dark

I WAS driving about four meters away from the Loom Bridge in Borongan when I spotted a young boy of ten signaling all vehicles to stop. He was crossing the street with a man, obviously blind, holding on to his right hand and walking nervously behind him. I felt sorry for the blind man. Still, it occurred to me, “How lucky of him to have someone, maybe a son or a nephew, guide him, where he goes.”

But it also dawned on me: We are all really blind and walking in the dark. And every New Year provides proof for that.

We are all blind because nobody really knows what’s bound to happen tomorrow, the next day, the next week or the next few months. There are those who say the year 2012 will usher in the end of the world. But didn’t they say the same thing in 1999 about 2000? There are those who say, based on scientific prognostications, that we are in for unprecedented and more destructive weather patterns due to global warming, our wet seasons will become wetter (we already have the terrible floods in many parts of the country as advance warnings) and our dry seasons drier (we also had bitterly dry El Niño months in previous years to give us a prior idea of what to expect). Politically the impending impeachment trial at the Philippine Senate on eight articles against Chief Justice Corona of the Supreme Court could potentially further erode confidence in the Philippine judiciary, at the least, or fan political instability, at worst.

Because we are blind and walking in the dark, it is understandable why, at the start of every year, astrologers, experts or pseudo-experts in predicting future events, are the darlings of the media. That to me is our human psyche rebelling against the dark and rising, determined, to dispel it with whatever means available, valid or not, good or bad, scientific or fake. We simply do not want to walk in the dark or dread the idea of having to. With self-proclaimed experts of the future surrounding us, we feel we can now lick the darkness and begin to embark on a journey into the unknown.

But actually all we need to do is have a little child to guide us.

The Child Jesus.

This is the option of faith. It is to walk in the dark alleys and side-streets of life with Jesus, the new-born Babe, taking our right hand and leading us in the real “daang matuwid (straight path)”. The option is based on his own words, words worth relying on because he is of God, he is Son of God: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the dark. He will have light and life” (Jn 8:12). It is the option based on the experience of so many who have made it through the pitch black night by holding on to the Son of Man and, in the end, reaching the right destination—heaven. Church and even secular annals are replete with miraculous events attributed to the intercessions of saints, and are an indubitable proof of one thing: They have really arrived in heaven, their faith proven genuine and rewarded. As by-standers watch by the sidelines of life, another truth stares them full in the face: There is such a thing as heaven, then. If so, then that other place of eternal torment must also be real.

But first, we need the humility of the blind man behind the child guide. He wouldn’t have been where he is if he didn’t come to terms with his own blindness. That, I believe, is where most of our problem lies. We find it so many times too hard to accept our unseeing. We often think we can find our own way in the dark or even see through the dark. The wound of concupiscence (the tendency to opt for what is wrong or evil) born of original sin is nowhere more evident than in the pride we display as we come face to face with the dark. We sometimes call this self-reliance or freedom or independence. But call it by any name, it achieves the purposes of the prince of darkness—get us away from going to Jesus Christ and confessing, with the blind men who would receive healing: “Son of David, have mercy on us” (Mt 20:30-31).

With humility, we also need the courage to take the risk, nay, the gamble of holding on to someone else’s hand. The blind man by Loom Bridge had that courage because he knew his guide. Do we know our real Child Guide? How deeply? This determines our commitment to gamble our life on his kingdom, taking his right hand and never letting go of it. “Tenacious,” a wise old Boronganon once told me, “is what you see when a crab gets you by the hand and never lets you go even if you smash it to pieces against a rock.” This is what we see in martyrs. They hold on to Jesus Christ and will never ever let go of his hand even if the worst persecution or death runs against them like a berserk freight train. (Two of them were Pinoys: St. Lorenzo Ruiz and Blessed Pedro Calungsod. Which is proof enough we are very capable of world-class tenacity too) They have the courage to go with their humility.

With humility and courage, we also need docility and obedience. It’s astounding how, today, young people and even the not so young anymore could be so docile to yoga, sports or dance gurus. What is so difficult with being docile or obedient to the Savior of the world? The wisdom of docility and obedience was visible in the blind man I saw by Loom Bridge. He would not have crossed the street safely had he hesitated or refused to follow the boy’s lead. He could have been hit by a vehicle had he been on his own. When Jesus heard the two blind men calling him, the evangelist Matthew tells us that he stopped and called them over to him. Because they obeyed him, Jesus had a chance to ask the all-important question: “What do you want me to do for you?” and they had the chance to answer, “Lord, open our eyes” (Mt 20:32-33). Because they obeyed first, they were healed.

By faith they were enabled not only to see but also to conquer the darkness.