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.
