SANCTITY OF LIFE

Can one support the death penalty and in the same breath claim to preserve the sanctity of life?

I don’t expect any disagreement if I say, humans are different from animals in that we possess an ‘awareness’ (‘sentient’ is the term often used to describe this sense of awareness, many refer to it as ‘reason’) that places us at a higher plane of existence than animals. As much as Trooper, my French Bulldog, is as smart a dog as he can be and is an enjoyable company because of his affinity and loyalty to me, he would not have the level of ‘awareness’ that a fellow human being would have no matter how dumb that individual may be.

The sense of awareness that we all have as human beings, which I wouldn’t hesitate to call, Soul, is what endows us with the sanctity of life. Being human has the benefit of the sanctity of life. Reading this, if you’re a Christian, may cause you to reel in your pants right now because you would say that the image of God and the fact that we’re created by God, and nothing else, give life the character of holiness or sanctity! You may even be starting to cite Bible verses here. Relax! I’m talking of the same thing. I was trying to simplify it, but now you have made we write more sentences just to assuage your religious sensitivities. Jeesh!

Where was I before I was rudely interrupted?

The soul is what marks us out from animals. And it is important for us to see every human being as having the sanctity of life to avoid treating others or being treated ourselves like animals.

Killing another human being (without valid reason, like self-defense) is beyond the pale as it violates the sanctity of life that we all want to preserve. But does killing another human being make the killer lose his own (let’s just say the bad guy is male) sanctity of life?

According to supporters of the death penalty, when somebody kills another human being the killer, in turn, needs to be killed as punishment to preserve the sanctity of life. They would say, too, that punishment of the killer and compensation to the victim must be in kind. It would seem that anything short would not be enough recompense for the life taken away.

For the supporters of the death penalty sanctity of life is only good until one person takes the life of another human being. Killers can be killed because they have, presumably, lost all claims to being human by taking away the life of another person.

Here are my problems with this thinking:

How is the sanctity of life preserved when another human life is taken by the death penalty? It is totally absurd to say that killing the killer preserves the human need to promote and preserve the sanctity of life. Let’s grant that the killing of the original victim violates his sanctity of life. But if we’re going to be consistent about it, doesn’t the killing of the killer also violate the sanctity of life of the killer as a human being?

The death penalty does one thing. It accepts the notion that some of us who have taken the life of another have become sub-humans and thus have lost any claim to the sanctity of life and can now, in turn, be killed without consequences. This is the only way that the death penalty can be meted out without decimating the sanctity of life, that is, killers need to be turned into sub-humans to remove their right to life.

Supporters of the death penalty would like society to have the prerogative to be able to reclassify killers from human beings to animals, which is the only way the death penalty can be justified without conceding that such punishment also violates the sanctity of life.

But nobody can really turn off the humanity of a person, no matter how heinous his action has been. A mango will always be a mango even if turns rotten. You may not want to eat a rotten mango, but, sorry, it remains a mango despite your feelings about it.

Holding on to the sanctity of life and at the same time supporting the death penalty doesn’t make sense, unless we make some arbitrary decision that those who have killed another human being have descended, by some dint of fiction, into a sub-human state. And who is to make this decision that a guilty person has passed into an animal state? The justice system that everybody concedes is flawed? Imposing the death penalty is humans playing God, and flawed humans at that!

There is danger in accepting the idea that we can arbitrarily switch off a man’s (let’s just stick with males this time) innate nature, or, as I described it, soul, and turn him into an animal because he has killed another person.

This is a slippery slope because if we give in to our penchant to dehumanize others who we feel are undeserving, where do we stop?

Many supporters of the death penalty would also take away the sanctity of life of, aside from killers, rapists, drug pushers, plunderers, even if there are no lives lost in these crimes no matter how dastardly they may be. This is not a hypothetical situation because we have seen this before in Europe, Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere where genocide was committed against millions of people just because they belong to a certain race.

We don’t even have to wander far in geography and history. In this country, the Philippines, we are being told that people connected with illegal drugs are not humans and can be disposed of at will if they resist arrest or by vigilante groups, who are, as reports would have it, also run by the police.

The death penalty is also a final act where no rehabilitation or redemption is even allowed for those who have committed a grievous mistake against the society but have seen the errors of their ways. Everybody should be given a chance at rehabilitation and redemption even if they need to be incarcerated for the rest of their productive lives. Further, because of the imperfect justice system the death penalty doesn’t allow mistakes in the system to be rectified. That many innocent people have died by capital punishment because of the flawed system should give us a pause about imposing the death penalty.

Why do we lust for blood when we can punish killers and others in a manner that would preserve our humanity? The death penalty is a serious threat to the sanctity of life of us all.

Even assuming that we can re-classify killers as animals, sub-humans are not necessarily less deserving of life. We just don’t kill animals even for food. We treat them humanely providing them legal protection against cruelty. Under the law, the animals we eat are limited to certain species. Eating animals outside of the list is liable for the crime of cruelty to animals. Vegans would even assert that all killings of animals are cruel. Our societies acknowledge now that sub-human species also deserve to live.

The elephant in the room is in everybody’s mind that may be familiar with the violent story of the God of the Old Testament. If the death penalty is so bad, why would God impose it? And he imposed it on the most trivial of offenses, like violating the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) or children dishonoring their parents (Exodus 21:17).

This is a good question and would require a full treatment elsewhere. But suffice it to say that God in the Old Testament is intent in preserving a nation to accomplish his plan of redeeming and claiming back his creation that has gone astray. There are plenty of sick things that happened in the Old Testament in the process of God going about his plan that are hard to explain, and his seeming penchant for violence is one of them.

Here is another one. Jesus came from the family of David who came through the lineage of Perez (Matthew 1) who, in turn, was born from the incestuous relationship via prostitution between Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar (Genesis 28). The Savior of the world was born from a scandalous situation in the Old Testament. Does that mean that incest and prostitution are not really evil because God seemed to have employed them in bringing forth the Messiah through the nation of Israel? You can make your own conclusions.

The point, however, is that the violence of God, including his seeming penchant for killing people (remember the genocide and infanticide he ordered in Deuteronomy 7) in the Old Testament is hard to explain. There are books that have attempted to do so. But one cannot champion the death penalty “because God has done so” but gloss over the other violent things that God has also done in the Old Testament. Those who support the death penalty on the basis of God’s explicit commands to his chosen people in the Old Testament cannot also be selective on the crimes that they think deserve the death penalty. God has commanded capital punishment on many offenses and supporters of the death penalty on the basis of the Old Testament cannot just pick and choose from the offenses that God said the death penalty should be imposed. If you propose that God is pro-death penalty, then you should stand with him all the way!

The Old Testament and its literal reading can easily turn our brains into a pretzel. But the good thing is that Jesus has clarified all this in his life, death and resurrection. He is the full manifestation of God and God’s mouthpiece in our time (Hebrews 1:1-3).

Jesus has raised love as the foundation of the Christian faith. He told Christians to imitate him and love their enemies even to the point of death (Ephesians 5:1-2)! It is hard to say we’re following Jesus if we agree to kill anyone, even if they have made grievous mistakes, including the killing of another human being. Jesus must filter everything we read in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. Not all that we read in the Bible has equal value. This is a mouthful to say, but it is true. Jesus should be the final filter of our reading of the Bible. It would be hard to operationalize what Jesus said and how he lived and treated others, like his lesson on loving enemies, by supporting the death penalty. There is no clearer definition of an enemy than somebody who has disrupted our society by killing another person and from whom we all have to be protected, and who we can easily dismiss as an animal. Jesus enjoins us to love that dastardly fellow, not kill him!

Jesus is the ultimate champion for the sanctity of life of all human beings even if society feels like treating some of us as less than humans and would deserve the death penalty.

We need to support Human Rights for all!

A child cries beside the coffin of her father,
who is alleged victim of drug-related killing.
Photo by Daniel Berehulak/NYTimes

I heard it again the other day. 

Someone pointedly asked somebody, who has expressed disgust over extra judicial killings, “Why are you more concerned about the human rights of addicts and pushers than the human rights of their victims?”

If you’re concerned over EJKs and have expressed misgivings about how the government of Mr. Duterte is conducting the War on Drugs, you might have been asked this question or have seen it posted on Facebook and the question could have, for a minute, stopped you on your tracks.

Well, don’t be!

First of all, this question assumes a false dichotomy making us choose between two perfectly valid and congruent propositions: on the one hand, the human rights of the EJK victims, and on the other, the human rights of victims of crimes committed by drug addicts and pushers.

Don’t accept the dichotomy! None exists because these two propositions are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. We should all be concerned about the human rights of all people. So, don’t let that question trap you, just reject it as a fallacy!

Reject also the false assumption that by speaking against EJKs you are less concerned about the human rights of victims. That shouldn’t be necessarily true as I’m sure all of us would like the justice system to work for all crime victims. Who wouldn’t want police officers, prosecutors and judges to do their job and rid our communities of crimes and criminals? We all do and those who would say otherwise are making an unwarranted presumption against us.

“If what you say is true,” you might ask, “why do many people speak of human rights only of EJK victims and remain silent on the human rights of crime victims?”

This question is a close cousin of the first question we discussed above. This second question represents a technique, called ‘red herring,’ which tries to divert attention from the issue at hand by bringing up a totally different matter that may not have real connection to the original issue. The idea is to create diversion and confusion and avoid tackling head on the matter at hand.

This diversionary technique is often used in detective stories to create suspense and excitement on the final outcome of the story. If you’re married or have ever been in a relationship, I’m sure that you’ve employed this technique at least once to divert the discussion from a topic where you are losing to your partner by raising a different issue. Come on, admit it!

If the issue at hand is EJKs, why bring up the matter of the purported rights of the victims of druggies? Justice for crime victims is an important issue, but it shouldn’t deflect attention from the discussions on EJKs. In other words, even if druggies commit heinous crimes, and only some and not all of them have done so, the question of attaining justice for their victims is not a valid justification for the violation of the human rights of the suspects or accused. Offenders are entitled to due process as much as their victims are entitled to justice and compensation for the damages inflicted on them. Each issue occupies a side of the same coin.

Secondly, it would be an unwarranted generalization to speak of “victims of drug addicts and pushers” because not all of them have committed heinous crimes or have victimized others to support, or as a result of, their involvement in illegal drugs.

For sure, some drug addicts and pushers have committed grave atrocities. But there is no data to show that ALL 6,000 plus killed over the last six months on drug-related cases have actually committed heinous crimes.

How many among the EJK victims were also wanted by the police for murder, rape, robbery, or other atrocities? Many of these victims did not have any standing warrants for any heinous crime.

Many people applaud the death of every EJK victim falsely equating each death as the demise of a murderer, rapist, robber or other type of criminals. Not all EJK victims were heinous criminals, and it is absurd to lump them all up under this category.

In fact, the vast majority of EJK victims appeared to be poor. They might have been involved in illegal drugs but they were not heinous criminals. And this War on Drugs so far has been directed at poor communities. Have you heard of EJKs in posh villages where many big drug laboratories had been discovered in the past and many prominent residents had been arrested as drug pushers? None!

But, again, you might ask, “Shouldn’t we be concerned about the victims of crimes committed by druggies even if not all EJK deaths represent the demise of heinous criminals?”

For sure, we should be concerned about victims of heinous crimes whether or not committed by drug addicts or pushers!

We will not and cannot abandon the human rights of victims. This is beyond question!

But here is what we should keep in mind when this subject comes up.

The entire justice system (law enforcement, prosecution, judicial trial and appeals, correction and penalties) is geared towards the protection of the rights of victims, to compensate their loss and redress grievances, and to penalize offenders.

We call this the Rule of Law, which is to say that there is due process in getting criminals off the streets, making them pay for the damages they have caused, and ensuring that convicted criminals serve appropriate jail time and/or pay fines. This can be complicated at times. But all this legal rigmarole is intended to achieve justice for crime victims. Justice for crime victims is non-negotiable if we are to ensure quality of life and peace and progress in our communities.

Justice for victims also arrests impunity. We want all criminals brought to justice so that none of us is ever victimized by them again. This is the ideal we pursue even if it is unrealistic to fully obtain.

But we want to make certain in rounding up criminals who are causing harm in our neighborhoods that we do so with appropriate legal safeguards against would-be despots, who would abuse power in their hands by oppressing the weak and vulnerable. We also cannot allow mob rule and street justice as we want to protect the rights of the poor and the powerless. The manner by which we defend the rights of those in the margins of our communities is the standard by which we measure our flourishing as society. The Rule of Law and due process shield against the depredation of the weak by the powerful among us.

While the Rule of Law seeks justice for crime victims, such “justice” would be hollow if we don’t include under such rules the fair treatment of suspects and accused by requiring proof of their guilt beyond reasonable doubt by a corrupt-free justice system. The basic demand of fairness is that not one party should act as the prosecutor, judge and executioner. The convergence of these three different functions into one party embodies what is so detestable about EJKs.

Unless we carefully adhere to the demand of fairness, the law of the jungle would take over where the most powerful rules without restraint and the rest carries the weight of oppression.

“Our justice system is broken,” you might say, “impunity happens, and criminals get away with murder! Why don’t we just employ the law of the jungle and kill all the druggies?”

If the justice system is broken, the solution is to fix it and not to ditch the Rule of Law and due process. If our front door is broken the correct solution is to fix it and not get rid of the door altogether leaving the occupants more vulnerable and exposed.

The same is true if we applaud the killing of suspected criminals without due process of law. The evil that we think we prevent by killing criminals outside of the Rule of Law is merely replaced by the evil we perpetuate in killing them. Such “justice” is a mirage and will not quench our thirst for peace and safety.

The Rule of Law stops the cycle of violence that threatens the existence of our society. And punctiliously adhering to it despite the temptation to short-cut the process assures us of a more secure, just and peaceful future. Without the Rule of Law, predators win hands down all the time! When you’re tempted to ditch the Rule of Law, think again, as you might need its protection someday.

The rights of victims and the rights of suspects and accused from unjust punishment, including those that we consider the scum of society, are like two legs that help us tread the path of a just and progressive society. When anybody foolishly tries to cut-off one leg in favor of the other, it cripples justice and no one can be really safe anymore.

FORGIVE

That word punctuates the vocabulary of many today who believe that the atrocities during the Marcos dictatorship should just be forgotten.

“Move on!” is the twin partner of the hideous advice for Martial Law victims to suck it up and live with the traumas of the past.

“Forgive” and “Move on” are words used now as a blunt instrument to suppress protests against the burial as national hero of Marcos, the ousted dictator, offender to Martial Law victims, head honcho of global-scale cronyism, ignominious despot, and disgraced liar!

It would be disingenuous to say that Marcos was buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani merely as former President and soldier, two lofty positions that he dishonored with abuse and corruption.

Libingan is symbolic of honor and highest esteem for those who valiantly and selflessly served country and people ahead of oneself, the definition of heroism.

Marcos’s burial at Libingan is no ordinary event that merely inters a former President and solider. It was meant to make him a hero and thus rehabilitate his place in history by its blatant revisionism.

Marcos doesn’t deserve this honor. It is vainglorious for his family to believe that history would be kind in judging their discredited kin.

But they get help from those (especially Christians) that now demand forgiveness, in the name of healing and reconciliation, from Martial Law victims and the nation as a whole that the dictatorship also victimized.

They take inspiration from many admonitions in the Bible to forgive.

If Christ forgave those who killed him, how can we not do the same to a despicable despot, like Marcos?

Not mentioned in this counsel is the wile and scheme that while we are busy forgiving they will also bury him as a hero!

It is true that Jesus called on his followers to forgive. It is a radical demand with which we cannot trifle.

It would be important to see its application for Christ’s followers amid the chaos of the country we are in.

Forgiveness is to take upon our own account the wrong committed by others against us. We don’t retaliate against an offender. We offer the other cheek, if we get slapped on the other. We don’t return the pain inflicted on us by our enemies.

The biblical admonition to forgive allows for the highest expression of love.

We love others to the point of death in imitation of Christ’s ultimate show of love by accepting the violence of the cross. His death took upon his own account the sins of others.

The admonition to forgive is addressed to us to extend grace to those who have offended us. It’s a call for us to wrestle with the demand of love through forgiveness when we are the victims.

And this is key: the admonition is directed to us. We cannot pontificate on forgiveness by demanding others to forgive and avoid directing the admonition to ourselves.

Even if we have extended forgiveness already, we avoid pouncing on the heads of those who haven’t. To do so would be arrogant, sanctimonious, and judgmental of those whose shoes we don’t walk on.

We should not use the call to forgive as a political instrument to silence the expression of pain, and even of protest, of those that have been victimized and whose grievances have yet to be redressed.

Society cannot moralize on forgiveness and at the same time countenance victimhood without paying a price.

Injustice must be redressed that’s why we have structures like Rule of Law to prevent abuse and impunity.

Without justice and accountability for the victims, our society will not be aright and we will all be losers for it.

Righteousness (or, justice, if you will) is the end goal. Our collective pursuit of that goal is declaration that despots would never ever be welcomed in our midst—much more be treated as hero—to again inflict harm on the country.

To attain righteousness, forgiveness is merely one side of the equation. Righteousness requires not only forgiveness from the victims. Its other pillar is contrition by the offender.

Forgiveness and contrition lead to justice. Without one or the other, healing and restoration will not occur.

Restorative justice requires both elements. Much like in case of marital abuse, healing and restoration will elude a marriage if the abuse remains even if the victim forgives the abuser.

Those who call on the victims to forgive the atrocities of the Marcos dictatorship should equally demand contrition from the offender.

While he is already dead, his family and heirs can do much to amend the wrongs he committed. (By the way, his minions should also be made to account.) They can start by returning his loot and redressing the grievances of the disappeared and tortured during Martial Law.

For our society to flourish, righteousness should reign.

To achieve righteousness, we should call on all sides to do what is required of them: for the victims to forgive, and for the offenders to show contrition and offer reparation for the damages they have caused.

To call on the victims to forgive but allow offenders to go scot free, and even to be buried as hero, is to perpetuate evil and promote impunity and injustice.

When we have achieved both forgiveness and contrition, then we move on.

SICK CHRISTIANITY

Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed on August 9, 2014, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. It set off weeks of protestagainst policing that easily targets black men.

Willie James Jennings, writing in Religion Dispatches in December 2014, after a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer, expressed disgust over Christianity he called “sick” that is at ease with violence in the name of law and order. He said, “Too often, Christians…have given sanctuary to the spirit of fear, commending a form of policing that makes violence a surgeon’s scalpel, imagining our safety in the illusion of its measured use.” He warned that, “Violence knows no measure.”

The Philippine National Police has recently released the number of killed in the Philippine government’s war on drugs from July 1 until December 1, 2016. The number of deaths has totaled to 5,845. Of this number, 2,004 were killed during police operations, and 3,841 are victims of extrajudicial vigilante-style killing. An average of 39 people are killed EVERY DAY over the last five months in drug-related incidents.

These numbers are staggering and have reached the levels we have seen of deaths during the whole duration of martial law. And they are increasing by the day! If the trend continues, at the same time next year we will see about 20,000 people killed in the government’s war on drugs.

The government has hidden behind the “presumption of regularity” in the performance of duties in the police operations that resulted in 2,004 deaths. This has stopped police investigation except for the most egregious cases, like the Espinosa killing inside Leyte’s sub-provincial jail in Baybay. (Even in this case, the President quickly absolved the police officers involved and even admitted having a hand in keeping them in position despite their previous connections to the drug trade.) The rest of the victims in the incidents where the police are not purportedly involved are filed as “Deaths Under Investigation.” Few, if any, have been arrested or indicted in any DUI cases.

If this is not a situation of impunity in our country, I don’t know what is!

As Jennings would say, it would be a sick Christianity if it remains at ease with violence and killings in the name of war on drugs.

Killing is never a Christian value. Violence in the Old Testament (genocide, infanticide, capital punishment, you name it) is turned over by the gospel of love that Jesus propagated and lived by, modeling what it should be like for followers in his Kingdom. Jesus did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it, which found its achievement by his sacrifice on the cross. The Messiah who died to offer salvation even for his enemies cannot be at ease with the rate of killings we’re seeing today in our country.

Everyone deserves salvation and enjoys equal value in God’s sight no matter how atrocious their life choices have been. We are all created as image bearers of God and object of his eternal love. Because of Christ, we cannot align with any government that diminishes human life, even in the name of law and order.

To kill is not part of the Christian arsenal in our mission to transform communities. We should be in the forefront of defending everyone’s right to live and be changed by God’s love. We should reject the idea that someone has passed the line of incorrigibility and deserves to die. Remember that with God nothing is impossible! The gospel is not meant to condemn and punish, but to restore and heal.

Sick Christianity would gloss over the tough demands of love and would lamely acquiesce to killings in the name of tough law enforcement to lick society’s drug problem even in the absence of credible evidence that such strategy has ever worked anywhere in the world. And at the rate it is bungling its job so far there is no indication at all that the Philippine Government could be the shining exception to the global record of failure of the war on drugs.

Sick Christianity hides behind a (too) narrow reading of Scriptures that purports to mandate that the only form of political engagement available to Christians is, one, ‘to pray’ for the government, and, two, ‘to submit’ (sometimes misread as ‘to obey’) to authorities, based on two or three proof texts written in eras so unlike ours.

Such a reading totally misses the message of the Gospels and Acts, whose core message is a protest to Caesar’s claim that he is king, because he is not. The good news is that Jesus is the true King!

No one is King today, other than Jesus. Our elected government has not attained perfection and will never do so to be spared from criticism and even protest if they do stray and pursue policies and actions opposed to the values of the Kingdom. God’s instituting of governments is meant to preserve the good and curtail evil for the benefit of the people. God’s imprimatur of governments to be instrument of order and the flourishing of humanity does not provide governments and its officials with immunity from being called out for their failures in governance and weakness in character.

Indeed, we should fervently pray for and wisely submit to government. But these critical activities cannot be made to justify our lack of action in allowing evil to continue.

Every killing bleeds the heart of God. Be it committed in Mendiola, Mamasapano, Hacienda Luisita and the war on drugs. If it bleeds the heart of God, it should also bleed ours. Sick Christianity prevents us from such lament. 

TRAUMA

When we see duct-taped corpses thrown in the streets of our neighborhoods almost on a daily basis, its repulsiveness wears off at some point in our consciousness.

These killings everyday have inured us all to its unpleasantness. “It happens!”

Then off we go to where we can nurse our traumas from this violence in our midst.

EJKs or not, the fact is thousands have been killed over the last four months. Even the number of killings that are not reportedly part of police operations still tallies in the thousands.

Indeed, we are in a state of lawlessness!

How are we supposed to deal with all this?

Apparently, with a new category upon which to hook our suspended outrage: “Death Under Investigation.”

DUI—didn’t this use to refer to Driving Under the Influence?

A clear case of oblique deflection, if I see one, to our fears that our country has not yet really attained Singapore-like zone of safety.

It’s like numbing our brains by drinking our problems away. “Don’t worry, these killings are DUI!” 

In our justice system the police would generally wait first for complainants to materialize before doing anything about the crime.

The reality is most aggrieved parties and survivors of the victims in these killings don’t approach the police for various reasons, including the fear that the precinct itself had something to do with the murder. To expect them to go to the police is like asking the rape victim to go back to her rapist for protection. And that would just turn out really well!

“Death Under Investigation” is another way of saying that the crime will never be solved. The police know a murder has been committed but they have no idea how to solve it yet.

This state of affairs is nothing less than a state-sanctioned national trauma. There will be no closure to these killings and we just have to deal with it!

The President has threatened that if things don’t go his way, expect 20 to 30 thousand more killed as a result.

Not sure whether he means the government will do the extra killings, or the killing spree will continue by whoever is committing them now. I’m trying to kick into my creative imagination mode to figure this one out.

The only way I can divine the President’s logic is this: he is threatening that if the killings don’t stop (presumably what he wants), the killings will go on. Brilliant!

Meanwhile, off we go to where we can nurse our traumas from this violence in our midst.

NOW

I still remember when I began to daydream. I was adolescent and starting to get bored with my humdrum high school life. I recall unashamedly that I enjoyed levitating my mind to project myself as somebody I fancied—normally the hero or the prince charming of the drama I would play in my head. (Of course, I wouldn’t give up the lead role in my own mental production.)

Recalling this got me thinking how important it is to be fully rooted in the present.

We humans live in segments of space and time. Life is temporal with past, present and future. If we are to learn contentment and to experience joy we need to fully live in the present. We cannot change the past. It is there—an unchangeable reality. The past is not going to happen again. We cannot linger there. We can only gain wisdom from the lessons it teaches.

Among the three facets of time, the future is the most temporal of all. Unlike the past, from our perspective (not God’s) the future is not even a reality. Living in the future is worse than living in the past. It is with respect to the future that the devil’s deception is most strongly directed against us. He wants to snuff contentment in our life and rob us of our joy. And there is no better way of doing that than by pushing us to live in our dreams. He doesn’t want us to relish life that God has given us now. He makes us focus on the future, which leaves our hearts discontented and makes us long to escape the present.

Many of us are camping in our dreams and so miss the blessings of the present. We have succumbed to excessive ambition and drive to succeed and have made the present a springboard to some future dream instead of a stage for enjoying what God has given us. In so doing we allow the present to fly quickly by and thereby miss much of life with our spouse, children, friends, work and, more importantly, God. We are so focused on where we want to end up that we gloss over where we are. The irony is that we never get to where we want to be because there is always somewhere else to go.

I submit that it is in the present where God meets us. It is now that the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts to transform us. It is only in the present where we can experience the joy, peace and love that God offers. God is eternity. The nearest that we could sample eternity in this life is to consider the present. God is in the eternal present. There is no past or future in Him. He deals with us today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. To the extent that we escape the present by either living in the past or, worse, escaping to the future, we will live a shallow and unfulfilled life. There’s nothing wrong with planning for the future, but we must stay rooted in the present. Being faithful and grateful here and now is what it means to forget what is behind and strain toward the goal to which God has called us heavenward.

We know that we’re living in the future when we worry too much about it. Jesus said let tomorrow worry about itself. He said this while pointing to the birds and the flowers. Clearly, as busy as Jesus was he spent time enjoying their beauty. We need to do the same.

Go and smell the followers and watch the birds. And don’t forget to bring your loved ones along. Time flies.

THE GLORIOUS MARGINS

It's an unpleasant truth to face: the Philippines is a weak state. In fact, the head of a local foreign business chamber, whom I was in conversation recently, has a more brutal outlook. He is convinced that our country is a failed state! It is easy to think that foreigners have nothing but disdain in a culture that they don’t understand. But I must say that hearing this foreigner, who has been a long-time Philippine resident, I am not sure that I could disagree with him.

Failure of Politics
It’s a slight exaggeration, I must admit, but there are glimpses of the country that at times look like Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes (“the war of all against all”). We see this everyday. Criminal justice totters as crime runs rampant. Corruption is endemic both in the public and private sectors. The country’s insurgency runs longest in Asia. Mindanao remains in violent fractiousness despite decades of efforts at peace.

And then there is poverty and the sense of hopelessness among the poor. Government statistics says that twenty-five percent of Filipinos live in poverty. (The situation may be actually bleaker. Some UN data indicate that 46 percent of Filipinos earned less than $2 a day in 2001. It could only be worse today.) But the irony is that we manage every year to include several multi-billionaires (in US dollars terms) in the ranks of richest people in Asia. We are a poor country with scandalously uber-rich people.

The Philippine ship sputters in fulfilling its role as God’s servant to promote good and to punish wrongdoers (Romans 13:4). Our brand of politics has failed the country. The system has not worked and no one seems to know how to right our listing state.

In the midst of darkness and messiness we experience in this country, it is time to call out the church to be faithful to our calling to pray and work for Christ’s Kingdom to come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Our mission is to spread God’s rule, where God is recognized as truly sovereign not by political or legal imposition but by a real change of heart. This goal is achieved when people decide that they have had enough of self and would now make God the center of their lives.

Politics is not going to do that, particularly partisan politics. The primordial business for the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom depends not in finding right leaders with right policies and right character to lead this country. Our business is not to improve kingdoms of the world but to make the Kingdom of God ever so real, visible and concrete in our spheres of influence individually and collectively as church. Kingdoms of the world will always remain under the devil’s realm no matter how they do and whoever leads them (1 John 5:19).

Therefore, in pursuing our calling as church we should first avoid—and this is dissonant note in the atmosphere of the electoral season—placing too much hope and faith in the election of leaders of our country to improve this specific kingdom of the world we temporarily occupy.

Don’t get me wrong. As Filipinos we must strive to have good and effective government. Christians should join the public square as responsible citizens of the country. But as believers belonging to Christ’s body, the church, we cannot employ politics as strategy nor adopt political power as goal to achieve the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom in our midst.

The church cannot get distracted with the roller-coaster ride of Philippine politics. We have serious business to do. The church has been too wrapped up in the notion that somehow the country’s salvation lies in installing a “godly” government by electing to office “godly” officials.

Satan tried in various ways to suck Jesus into assuming temporal power. But Jesus never once was tempted to take the reins of government to establish His new Kingdom. That’s why He never became embroiled with the politics of first century Palestine, which was worse than what we have in this country now. Christ’s Kingdom, and therefore ours, is not of this world. Christ rises above politics and provides an eternal solution.

If the church is to follow its Master, we should not try to find solution to the problems of our country through the power of the sword but through the glory of the cross. The Kingdom’s transforming power is distinctly tied to the exemplified love in the death of Christ, which is foolish talk to the world, as Paul says, but wise in the eyes of God. Sadly, the church has pursued the way of the world more than the wisdom of God.

Life in the Margins
The church is not called to dominate the world. Sure, we should leave a godly imprint in every sphere of life and show the world how it would look like when God is actually ruling His domain. But the danger especially within the context of a faltering state, like the Philippines, is to think that Christianity should become the dominant force in politics, culture and society and be in charge of cleaning up the mess. This kind of Constantinian mindset is inimical to the church and the world.

For its first 300 years the church lived in the margins. In fact, it was persecuted. The early church did not dominate society and culture although it stood distinct and counter to the culture at large and, by the lifestyle of believers, it rebelled against the sinfulness of the world.

Jesus was a marginal figure in the national life of the Jews even though he stirred strong passions among the elite and captured the imagination of the masses. He was a carpenter with a core following of twelve ragtag nobodies. His Messianic claim was largely ignored by his countrymen (John 1:11). Jesus never sought to dominate the culture and society. But His Kingdom slowly crept in outside of the limelight not through politics but through love.

The 21st century Philippine church has lost the quality and beauty of the margins. We have sought to mainstream the Kingdom of God within the kingdom of the world we are living in.

The mainstream is intoxicating and comforting. It dictates the direction of culture and provides a sense of power and control. But it succumbs to pride and the temptation to dominate. The worst pivot the church ever made was when it assumed the role of official religion of the Roman Empire. From being persecuted, it became the persecutor. As the dominant institution of society it even unleashed violence on other believers, who decided to pursue the holy life in the margins.

Some would argue that the church wasn’t dominant because it couldn’t be at that time. Christ did not participate in mainstream culture because He was still in the throes of establishing His ministry. He simply couldn’t be dominant given His circumstances. I don’t buy that.

Christ said to Pilate that He could have called thousands of angels to fight if He wished. He did not do so precisely because His modus was to stay in the margins, quietly but powerfully changing hearts to love God.

The Kingdom of God is not about political power but about the practice of authentic love by Christ’s followers. Such love is internally generated, not imposed as a duty from the outside. A Christianized culture, one that is dominated by Christian mores and ethos, is not necessarily the end we want. What we want are for people to voluntarily live godly lives because their hearts have been transformed and not because a slew of laws and a set of ethos hung over their heads ready to pounce in case of deviant behavior.

A dominant church loses its vitality. It blurs its distinctiveness from what is the sphere of the kingdom of the world from the Kingdom of God. It hurts the church, but, more grievously, it also hurts the world. True Christianity loses its punch when it is co-mingled with the culture at large. When it does the world suffers.

Participate in elections. Do everything to make them clean and honest. Choose government leaders wisely.

But our hope and joy as Kingdom people must never be too wrapped up in this process. Our mission is more encompassing because it is eternal.

Let’s get to work.