What is your priority: faith or people

If Cardinal Tagle’s Oratio Imperata for Deliverance from Calamities is to be believed, collective prayer can stop a typhoon. Consider the below lines:

We pray to you for protection from calamities,

from the floods and raging waters brought by storms,

from howling winds that destroy our homes,

from the loosening of earth that brings landslides.

Calm the storm and keep us all safe and far from harm

these perilous days and always.

Who would have thought that talking to an imaginary being in droves can change the course and outcome of a typhoon. Not only is this impossible, it is also inconsistent. If we assume an omniscient God, a Being who knows everything that is to happen every minute and every second, and an omnipotent God, a Being that is so powerful that he can stop all calamities just by thinking it, the need for prayer dissipates. Prayer goes against the will of God. Prayer is telling God what to do. With prayer, you assume that you know better than God, pretend to know the mind of God. What if God wills that Filipinos suffer through these yearly typhoons? Who are we to deny this God?

After the devastation of Typhoon Yolanda; a friend, Ruben Mendoza, an associate professor at Ateneo de Manila University wrote a piece in The New York Times last November 18, 2013 titled See God in the Response, Not the Disaster. Although he didn’t mention if prayer could stop a typhoon, he offered something simpler: in case a typhoon strikes, don’t despair, just look around you and see God.  A thing I learned about this essay: confirmation bias, as Ruben tried to interpret human suffering as proof of God.  So God sent a killer typhoon because he could not think of a better way to show proof of himself.

If the destruction brought about by typhoons can turn people to God, then Filipinos should welcome typhoons every year with open arms, not pray them away to go somewhere else, say Japan. Ok, I should not make fun of calamities. Natural calamities really do bring enormous and cruel suffering and tears to people. But to tell people that they can find God in their suffering, I think, is more cruel and insensitive. It’s one thing to sympathize with suffering Filipinos and another to suggest they can find God in disasters. It demeans humanity by substituting human solidarity, hope and charity, which is a real thing, with a vain attempt to demonstrate God, who abandoned them in the first place.

Religious people are free to take comfort in God when they suffer of course, yet even if we are able to justify the existence of God through natural calamities, why would you excuse this same God as the source? A God who is incapable of evil? So, don’t blame God, but blame minorities? Yes, that’s a great idea! A Muslim cleric Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan blamed gays for the Boxing Day Tsunami in Indonesia. And in the Philippines, two bishops in fact, Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles (famous for the Team Patay - Team Buhay slogan) blamed the RH Law for the destruction of Typhoon Yolanda; and Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said,

“I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or it’s because the Lord is trying to tell us that if you talk about that [the then RH bill] seriously it’s like there’s a message saying that many difficulties happen to us… especially since we [the Catholic Church] don’t want the bill deliberated hurriedly and secretly so that it is passed.”

Religion has distorted our view of natural calamities. I remember Iglesia Ni Cristo officials refused to help Yolanda victims because they were not members of their church. A humanist and atheist group, PATAS, was turned away from a medical mission because a barangay official thought a bunch of non-believers would corrupt the faith of the people.

When religion trumps human well-being and welfare, it is time to re-think your priorities: faith or people. 

Dividing Mindanao by faith

The spate of bombings in the cities of Cotabato and Cagayan de Oro late July and early August had some local and national officials worried. A city administrator described the bombing as “un-Islamic” as it happened in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan. Many columnists instinctively framed these incidents of bombings as attempts to rile the Muslim community in Mindanao and unsettle the ongoing Philippine government-Moro Islamic Liberation Front peace talks. Culprits were identified: Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). Both groups have explicitly religious agenda. So the question: Is the problem of peace in Mindanao religious in origin?

My answer: No, it is not; though BIFF and JI would gleefully jump at any opportunity to turn this into a religious conflict. If religion is involved, then a corollary question arises: Does it need a religious solution? Conflicts in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Rwanda remind us why religious solutions are convincingly unreliable. I did, however, come across one Catholic priest, Fr. Eliseo Mercado, who ridiculously promoted the idea that Nelson Mandela, a Christian, peddled religious solutions in South Africa. His article, titled “Searching for Mandela in the Bangsamoro,” entertained the idea that a Filipino version of Mandela is conceivable in our lifetime. While I appreciate his sentiment to bring lasting peace in Mindanao, Father Mercado is wrong in his assessment.

First, Mandela recognized that religion is a divider of nations: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

Mandela’s concerns are definitely secular in nature. He envisioned his country where races and religions were equal and free. Mandela became the president of South Africa because he upheld democracy and freedom, not religious laws and edicts, as the ideals for his nation. Those who wish that only through a religious discourse between Christians, Muslims and lumad is the only way to forge peace in Mindanao is laboring under an illusion. Unless the Bangsamoro leaders start using secular language and stop prioritizing religion and religious solutions, there won’t be any semblance of Mandela. Only in secular society can we create a Mandela.

Second, the problems in Mindanao are ultimately about improving the economic and political situation of the people in Mindanao. I recoil when someone says, “Catholic country” or “Muslim Mindanao.” This “religious partitioning” of the Philippines often harbors antipathy between different faiths. Mandela made sure that during his watch, the minority Afrikaans would be integrated into the majority black population. Any form of separation would lead to fragmentation of his country.

Anyone who says that only through a religious solution can Mindanao move on has already lost the argument. Our growing and maturing secular society mandates that we foster a pluralistic society. Christians, Muslims, lumad, and I dare say, nonbelievers, are here to stay. There is a better chance if we learn to live with one another. Those who pretend otherwise are leading us into a troubled present and immediate future.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/60665/dividing-mdnao-by-faith#ixzz3ASqc838x