It happened in remarkable lightning speed. President Arroyo has extended an ‘executive clemency’ (a fancy legalese for pardon) to former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada, who was convicted of plunder by a Philippine court. This seeming regular exercise of Presidential prerogative provides a peek into a strange dance, called Philippine politics.
Erap was convicted on September 12, 2007. He ‘languished’ in detention during his trial on a hillside rest house outside Manila enjoying exceptional privileges, like occasional furloughs. After withdrawing the legal pleadings to have his conviction overturned, Erap decided to request for pardon on October 22, 2005. Within three short days President Arroyo signed Erap’s pardon, a jaw-dropping feat unheard of in Philippine bureaucracy.
The story had some curious twists. Erap requested the pardon after publicly decrying the lack of justice in the court system. It is as strange as asking for my love after calling my mother a tramp! But despite Erap's dim view of the justice system the government had gone heads over heels to offer him pardon even before he decided to ask for mercy.
Recognizing his leverage, Erap made clear that he would only accept “full and unconditional pardon”. Beggars are choosers in the world of Philippine politics. The pardon without conditions was extended even if Erap never owned up to his crime or begged for forgiveness for his misdeed. The episode once again polarized the Filipino people.
Understanding that quid pro quo was involved in the pardon transaction, which could or could not have been politically advantageous for the collective interest of the country, the extension of the Presidential clemency to Erap hardly passed the smell test. It could have been a shrewd political move by the administration to save a sinking ship. But however one comes out in viewing the administration it is a legitimate concern that the pardon may have caused tremors far beyond the immediate effects of the political bargains involved. The perception, if not the reality, of a two-tier justice system has further wobbled the rule of law in the country. When impunity is seen to have been glossed over in the name of political accommodation the fabric of society is weakened. I am not surprised that many are deeply concerned over the incident. But how should the church react to the Erap pardon?
Perhaps the knee-jerk reaction is to be quickly involved in the game of looking for political explanation and finding political solution to the disarray, real or imagined, stirred up by this latest saga. However, I think that such course of action is the least strategic and may even be counter-productive in achieving the spread of God’s kingdom.
It does feel good to have a say-so in the political direction of the country. I think, too, that Christians should join the public square as responsible citizens of the country. But care must be taken not to label the espousal of any political views as “Christian” no matter how one is fully convinced of the correctness of her view.
Politics is the art of compromise. Expediency is its virtue. Power and control are its goals. The church, as Christ’s body, does not employ politics or political power as strategy to pursue its mission. Its goal to spread God’s rule, where God is truly recognized as sovereign, is not achieved by political or legal fiat but by a real change of heart. God's rule is reached inch-by-inch when people abandon self-centeredness and decide to make God the center of their lives. Let the church not get distracted with the roller-coaster of Philippine politics. It has a serious business to do. It has been too wrapped up, it seems to me as shown by the epidemic of Christian leaders running for public office, in the notion that somehow the salvation of the country lies in getting a ‘godly’ government by the assumption of godly officials, or at least by the latter following the godly tutelage of the church.
I have no doubt that a good and moral government is possible, and even desirable. The Bible is clear that the government is a godly instrument for promoting good and suppressing evil. But it has never been God’s instrument in spreading his rule. Although Satan tried in various ways to suck Jesus into assuming temporal power, Jesus never once was tempted to take the reins of government to institute his new kingdom. The church is the only instrument for Jesus to spread his rule on earth.
When politicians grieve us because of their actions, let’s pray for them. When asked for opinion, let’s speak. But we must speak in humility and with the understanding that political issues are oftentimes morally ambiguous and do not lend for a clear ethical verdict from a Biblical perspective. We can never have (and must never attempt to have) the church to speak with one voice in political terms. (The discordant views of the Catholic prelates on this issue are truly instructive.) But our unity is sealed in the goal of changing hearts through cross-bearing and self-denying love.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Money in Brown Bags
Scandal racks the Philippines anew. For a poor country, it seems awash in cash for dole out to legislators and local government officials, who have fortuitously trooped to Malacanang (presidential palace) one fluky day. The amount involved is estimated in the hundreds of millions of pesos. But tracing the genesis of the scandalously huge amount is as challenging as explaining the origins of the Big Bang. No paper trails are available as to where it came from or to whom it was given. No one has denied the incident. But justifications run galore to smoothen the rough moral edges of money being dispensed that way without any intelligible explanation. Piled on top of other tantalizing on-going, previous and recent scandals, this incident has seared the Philippine government as ‘morally bankrupt’ among the religious class. Their reaction is quick and expected, almost cynically routine. First condemnation and then the familiar call for resignation of the President of the Philippines whose own perennial call for investigation has, in turn, become lame and untrustworthy in the eyes of the public.
To be honest, I am embarrassed as a Christian to be inured to such going-ons in the Philippines. I have seen the cycle of scandal-indignation-call-for-resignation so many times in the past that I have become as jaded as anyone else to hope for the moral redemption of the country. Have I lost my moral compass? Or worse, have I abandoned my assumed duty as a follower of Christ to provide moral influence in society?
I don’t think I have been co-opted by the moral decay in society. (At least, I hope not.) I am as repulsed as I have ever been about corruption in government. But I have also felt empty about the moral indignation that has often been displayed by the religious class on the present and other similar scandals of equal or greater magnitude in the past. Mostly such display takes the form of an issuance of manifestos or political statements or holding political rallies cloaked as ‘prayer rallies’, where the least amount of praying is actually done. In this recent incident, certain Catholic and Protestant bishops, who have demanded the President’s resignation have also now called for the nation ‘to get back to God’ in prayer. One Protestant leader even cited prayer as the fail-safe, last resort weapon “when all else fails”. First, shouldn’t Christians be praying always? Shouldn’t prayer, at the very least, precede any call for the President’s resignation? I am a bit disconcerted when religious leaders invoke prayer merely as a fall back position after everything else fails.
Second, when has the Philippine nation ever been ‘with God’ that what we merely need to do to solve all its present difficulties is to 'take it back to God'? Perhaps the nation can’t find its way back to God because it has never been in that place before? But this is not my main concern today.
My focus is the stance that the church has been taking amidst the morass of corruption and greed in government. I refer to the church here as those who call themselves followers of Christ without distinction as to their denominational or sectarian affiliation.
Outside of calling for change through violence, it seems to me that the church in the Philippines has done two things to respond to corruption in government. (Although I know that some think revolution is a real Christian option, this issue does not concern me now because no one, aside from the really radical fringe, has presented this as a viable option to tamp the present problems in the government. There may also be other approaches but these two are dominant today.) The church has laudably engaged the government in dialogue (in a broad sense) to express its opposition to and condemnation of corruption. Dialogue takes many forms the recent and most public example of which is the call issued for the President to resign from office. Perhaps due to frustration for lack of results, the church has also sought to place its hand more directly on the levers of political power by encouraging, endorsing or employing its adherents to take the reins of government through elections to impose a righteous rule from ‘within’. Some in the church are more subtle about the electoral process not wanting to be tainted with partisanship. Others are more overt in their actions with a prominent Protestant bishop even running for President himself. Overall, the church has not hesitated to utilize the electoral process as a legitimate avenue to provide temporal effect to God’s rule through laws and policies of the government.
It has been generally taken for granted that these approaches are the expression of the ‘Christian prophetic’ role in society. The subtle mistake for me regarding these approaches lies in their tendency to conflate the kingdom of God with the kingdom of the world. This mistake, I believe, has produced disastrous results for both the church and the government. The mixing of the two kingdoms has produced, on the one hand, a compromised church and, on the other, a government that is not served well by the convoluted message that emanates from a compromised church.
Surely Jesus taught Christians to pray for his kingdom to come and for his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But my concern is not about the idea of having God’s rule of righteousness (e.g. eradication of corruption in government) realized here and now. What bothers me is how the church has pursued the spread of the kingdom through non-kingdom means. The church has become too enamored with non-kingdom political power and means to pursue a kingdom goal of changing the government for the better. A more moral and just society under the dome of a moral and just government is a kingdom goal. But the question is how does the church achieve that?
It’s clear from the life and death of Jesus Christ that he has never intended for Kingdom goals on earth to be attained through political or military means. His Messianic model was opposed at every level from the political and militaristic Davidic Messiah that the Jews were expecting to see. Jesus was tempted on all fronts to establish his Messianic kingdom through political power but he refused. The devil could not tempt him with the easy path of governmental control to impose his will on earth. Jesus could have easily taken the zealot option to fight Rome but did not do so. Once he was asked his opinion about Pilate’s dastardly act of mixing the blood of certain Galilean rebels with their altar sacrifice. He did not engage the political aspects of the issue but instead directed his questioners to the true non-political nature of the kingdom. In response to Pilate, Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world although if he wished he could have called thousands of angels to impose his kingdom on earth. When Peter struck the ear of a man in Jesus’ arresting party he rebuked Peter with a reminder that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Jesus’ way has not been the way of political power. He did not come to overpower people or to take the reins of the kingdom of the world. His way is not the power of the sword, but the humility of the cross. As Greg Boyd describes it (The Myth of a Christian Nation, Zondervan 2005), Jesus does not seek to transform society and people by overpowering them but through “under powering” them with love. The ultimate demonstration of such love is the cross where Jesus died to offer salvation even to those who put him to death.
As followers of Christ our mandate is to follow his example (Ephesians 5:1-2). The blandness and dimness of the church’s ‘salt and light’ in the Philippine society come from the abandonment of Christ’s kingdom approach to transforming the hearts of people. The church has become too allured with temporal power that it has forgotten the power of love, humility and service that Christ lived. The church has clung too tightly on the sword that it has dropped its hold on the cross.
This is not to say that Christians should not enter politics or government service. We should have kingdom people living kingdom lives in every sphere of society. Christians have to speak out against any forms of oppression. They have to do all they can to align every sphere of society with the will of God. This is beyond question. But to believe that God’s righteousness will reign on earth with Christians taking over the government or by electing godly people in office and calling for the resignation of ungodly people from office is to buy into the allure of political power. Christians are not called to transform society by conquering it. Their only relationship with the corrupt world is to love it, serve it, and, if necessary, bleed for it, just like what their Master has done. In the same way that Christ was sent on earth to die on the cross, so in the same manner he is sending his own followers. For Christ there is only one approach for Christians to be effective in spreading God’s rule on earth, that is for them to take up their cross and deny themselves daily.
Run for office if they must. Endorse candidates if they must. Engage in the public square if they must. Even call for the President’s resignation if they must. These are legitimate forms of expression in a democratic society even for Christians. These forms of expression must be upheld and protected as political rights of everyone, including Christians. These, if you will, are regular rights or even duties of any citizens. They do not get endowed with special religious or spiritual value just because they are performed by Christians.
Here is my problem when Christians parlay their political views in the name of their faith. The stance itself oozes of religious elitism and triumphalism from self-proclaimed moral guardians of society. Even granting the ‘higher’ loyalties of Christians, they are not the exclusive font of what is good and even moral in society. Christians are not the repository of good laws and governmental policies. In the realm of governance and policies the track record of the church in history has been spotty at best. (The church can lay claim, even if disputed, for the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the Red Cross and other charitable causes. But the matrix also includes pogroms and violence against other faiths, such as the crusades, and intra-Christian persecution and violence: Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics, Protestants against Protestants.) Christians are no better leaders and politicians than non-believers. If they turn out good, there’s no legitimate reason to believe that it's because of their faith or that no non-believers can do an even better job. Faith, after all, is irrelevant to competency and no guarantee to moral uprightness.
But Christians offer a distinctive mode of transforming society and the world, which is the way of Christ. The world, and in this instance even the purportedly 'morally banckrupt' Philippine government, is in desperate need for Christians to live out the example of their Lord and Master to love, serve and bleed for it. People are never changed by imposing external pressures on them through laws and policies. If they ever exhibit external change and compliance to rules, the change is fragile and temporary. The real eternal change happens in the heart, which, in God’s wisdom, is attained by the church imitating the way of its Lord. The church doesn’t need political ascendancy and control to be Christ’s instruments of moral transformation. It needs humility and love. In other words, it just needs to be the church.
To be honest, I am embarrassed as a Christian to be inured to such going-ons in the Philippines. I have seen the cycle of scandal-indignation-call-for-resignation so many times in the past that I have become as jaded as anyone else to hope for the moral redemption of the country. Have I lost my moral compass? Or worse, have I abandoned my assumed duty as a follower of Christ to provide moral influence in society?
I don’t think I have been co-opted by the moral decay in society. (At least, I hope not.) I am as repulsed as I have ever been about corruption in government. But I have also felt empty about the moral indignation that has often been displayed by the religious class on the present and other similar scandals of equal or greater magnitude in the past. Mostly such display takes the form of an issuance of manifestos or political statements or holding political rallies cloaked as ‘prayer rallies’, where the least amount of praying is actually done. In this recent incident, certain Catholic and Protestant bishops, who have demanded the President’s resignation have also now called for the nation ‘to get back to God’ in prayer. One Protestant leader even cited prayer as the fail-safe, last resort weapon “when all else fails”. First, shouldn’t Christians be praying always? Shouldn’t prayer, at the very least, precede any call for the President’s resignation? I am a bit disconcerted when religious leaders invoke prayer merely as a fall back position after everything else fails.
Second, when has the Philippine nation ever been ‘with God’ that what we merely need to do to solve all its present difficulties is to 'take it back to God'? Perhaps the nation can’t find its way back to God because it has never been in that place before? But this is not my main concern today.
My focus is the stance that the church has been taking amidst the morass of corruption and greed in government. I refer to the church here as those who call themselves followers of Christ without distinction as to their denominational or sectarian affiliation.
Outside of calling for change through violence, it seems to me that the church in the Philippines has done two things to respond to corruption in government. (Although I know that some think revolution is a real Christian option, this issue does not concern me now because no one, aside from the really radical fringe, has presented this as a viable option to tamp the present problems in the government. There may also be other approaches but these two are dominant today.) The church has laudably engaged the government in dialogue (in a broad sense) to express its opposition to and condemnation of corruption. Dialogue takes many forms the recent and most public example of which is the call issued for the President to resign from office. Perhaps due to frustration for lack of results, the church has also sought to place its hand more directly on the levers of political power by encouraging, endorsing or employing its adherents to take the reins of government through elections to impose a righteous rule from ‘within’. Some in the church are more subtle about the electoral process not wanting to be tainted with partisanship. Others are more overt in their actions with a prominent Protestant bishop even running for President himself. Overall, the church has not hesitated to utilize the electoral process as a legitimate avenue to provide temporal effect to God’s rule through laws and policies of the government.
It has been generally taken for granted that these approaches are the expression of the ‘Christian prophetic’ role in society. The subtle mistake for me regarding these approaches lies in their tendency to conflate the kingdom of God with the kingdom of the world. This mistake, I believe, has produced disastrous results for both the church and the government. The mixing of the two kingdoms has produced, on the one hand, a compromised church and, on the other, a government that is not served well by the convoluted message that emanates from a compromised church.
Surely Jesus taught Christians to pray for his kingdom to come and for his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But my concern is not about the idea of having God’s rule of righteousness (e.g. eradication of corruption in government) realized here and now. What bothers me is how the church has pursued the spread of the kingdom through non-kingdom means. The church has become too enamored with non-kingdom political power and means to pursue a kingdom goal of changing the government for the better. A more moral and just society under the dome of a moral and just government is a kingdom goal. But the question is how does the church achieve that?
It’s clear from the life and death of Jesus Christ that he has never intended for Kingdom goals on earth to be attained through political or military means. His Messianic model was opposed at every level from the political and militaristic Davidic Messiah that the Jews were expecting to see. Jesus was tempted on all fronts to establish his Messianic kingdom through political power but he refused. The devil could not tempt him with the easy path of governmental control to impose his will on earth. Jesus could have easily taken the zealot option to fight Rome but did not do so. Once he was asked his opinion about Pilate’s dastardly act of mixing the blood of certain Galilean rebels with their altar sacrifice. He did not engage the political aspects of the issue but instead directed his questioners to the true non-political nature of the kingdom. In response to Pilate, Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world although if he wished he could have called thousands of angels to impose his kingdom on earth. When Peter struck the ear of a man in Jesus’ arresting party he rebuked Peter with a reminder that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Jesus’ way has not been the way of political power. He did not come to overpower people or to take the reins of the kingdom of the world. His way is not the power of the sword, but the humility of the cross. As Greg Boyd describes it (The Myth of a Christian Nation, Zondervan 2005), Jesus does not seek to transform society and people by overpowering them but through “under powering” them with love. The ultimate demonstration of such love is the cross where Jesus died to offer salvation even to those who put him to death.
As followers of Christ our mandate is to follow his example (Ephesians 5:1-2). The blandness and dimness of the church’s ‘salt and light’ in the Philippine society come from the abandonment of Christ’s kingdom approach to transforming the hearts of people. The church has become too allured with temporal power that it has forgotten the power of love, humility and service that Christ lived. The church has clung too tightly on the sword that it has dropped its hold on the cross.
This is not to say that Christians should not enter politics or government service. We should have kingdom people living kingdom lives in every sphere of society. Christians have to speak out against any forms of oppression. They have to do all they can to align every sphere of society with the will of God. This is beyond question. But to believe that God’s righteousness will reign on earth with Christians taking over the government or by electing godly people in office and calling for the resignation of ungodly people from office is to buy into the allure of political power. Christians are not called to transform society by conquering it. Their only relationship with the corrupt world is to love it, serve it, and, if necessary, bleed for it, just like what their Master has done. In the same way that Christ was sent on earth to die on the cross, so in the same manner he is sending his own followers. For Christ there is only one approach for Christians to be effective in spreading God’s rule on earth, that is for them to take up their cross and deny themselves daily.
Run for office if they must. Endorse candidates if they must. Engage in the public square if they must. Even call for the President’s resignation if they must. These are legitimate forms of expression in a democratic society even for Christians. These forms of expression must be upheld and protected as political rights of everyone, including Christians. These, if you will, are regular rights or even duties of any citizens. They do not get endowed with special religious or spiritual value just because they are performed by Christians.
Here is my problem when Christians parlay their political views in the name of their faith. The stance itself oozes of religious elitism and triumphalism from self-proclaimed moral guardians of society. Even granting the ‘higher’ loyalties of Christians, they are not the exclusive font of what is good and even moral in society. Christians are not the repository of good laws and governmental policies. In the realm of governance and policies the track record of the church in history has been spotty at best. (The church can lay claim, even if disputed, for the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the Red Cross and other charitable causes. But the matrix also includes pogroms and violence against other faiths, such as the crusades, and intra-Christian persecution and violence: Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics, Protestants against Protestants.) Christians are no better leaders and politicians than non-believers. If they turn out good, there’s no legitimate reason to believe that it's because of their faith or that no non-believers can do an even better job. Faith, after all, is irrelevant to competency and no guarantee to moral uprightness.
But Christians offer a distinctive mode of transforming society and the world, which is the way of Christ. The world, and in this instance even the purportedly 'morally banckrupt' Philippine government, is in desperate need for Christians to live out the example of their Lord and Master to love, serve and bleed for it. People are never changed by imposing external pressures on them through laws and policies. If they ever exhibit external change and compliance to rules, the change is fragile and temporary. The real eternal change happens in the heart, which, in God’s wisdom, is attained by the church imitating the way of its Lord. The church doesn’t need political ascendancy and control to be Christ’s instruments of moral transformation. It needs humility and love. In other words, it just needs to be the church.
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