Monday, July 2, 2018
July 2, 2018 - Determined Discipleship
July 2, 2018 - Determined Discipleship
Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 8:18-22
When Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side. A scribe approached and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus answered him, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." Another of his disciples said to him, "Lord, let me go first and bury my father." But Jesus answered him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead."
Introductory Prayer: Lord, I come to you in this meditation ready to do whatever you ask. Left to myself I often take the easy and convenient path, yet I know the way of a Christian is through the narrow gate. In you I find the reason to abandon the easy path for a more perfect mission of love. I’m ready to learn the meaning of your command: “Follow me.”
Petition: Lord Jesus, help me to seek true holiness by following after you.
1. Follow His Footsteps: The transition to becoming a disciple is not an easy one. While a disciple generously hands over his own will to the Lord unconditionally, the scribe in today’s passage still seeks his own will, as noble as it may be. A disciple is born from an invitation: “Follow me.” This scribe does not yet have the total freedom of heart that life with Christ demands. Where do I stand? One becomes identified with Christ not through a mere accumulation of doctrine, principles and techniques, but by living a common life with Christ born from union with the Master’s will. May I hear Christ’s voice setting the pace of holiness in my life and inviting me to leave behind my own will for the new life he presents.
2. Choosing the Better Way: Christ does not coldly ignore the scribe but seeks to attract him to a different way of life, a life of simple poverty. Our Lord’s own self-emptying poverty goes beyond the lot of the poorest of men. What Christ’s poverty shows, however, is not misery. Rather, it compels and attracts, for it is an infallible sign of the richness of God from whom Christ lives and moves. Christ’s living example empowers men to leave their world for something better, nobler and worthier of the life they have been given. May my example also compel others to find a better way, a holier way.
3. Shunning Shoddy Sophisms: There is an almost ruthless quality to Christ’s response to the sophisms and excuses offered to avoid following him. Detachment from all personal wants and desires is the way to simplicity of heart. Simplicity of heart requires us to be brutally honest with ourselves. What comes first in our life? What is really moving our heart to make the choices we make? Is it God’s will? God’s will for us is never complicated; perhaps it may be difficult, but it is never complicated. Sometimes, under the pretext of doing good, we rationalize not doing what is better. We do not need sophisticated analyses assessing how many obstacles there are to doing God’s will. All we need to clear the path to its perfect fulfillment is a generous heart.
Conversation with Christ: Lord, I know you have called me; I ask for your strength to respond with simplicity and fortitude. I have heard your voice and I now answer.
Resolution: Today I will live better my vocation in life and, in particular, fulfill some obligation that I normally put off.
Rodrigo Duterte may inspire Filipinos, but he cannot change them
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is already two years into his term. While he is not the first presidential candidate to be elected on the promise of change, he is possibly one of the few under whom Filipinos feel that it is genuinely happening.
Duterte has done quite a few things differently from his predecessors. He has adopted a foreign policy that is not defined primarily by being Uncle Sam’s loyal terrier. As the first president from the Mindanao region, he gives more due attention, and not just lip service, to its development. The way he openly criticizes “untouchable” institutions like the Catholic church and the mainstream media is considered unheard of.
While Duterte may be indeed rocking the boat, so to speak, if there is any change that is occurring, it is relegated to the political and economic aspects of life in the Philippines. But how far can the momentum of president Duterte’s drive for change go?
For long-lasting change to take place, it must reach all the way to the root of Filipino dysfunction: the Filipino culture. The way things are going, Duterte’s “change”, while it may inspire Filipinos to think that a better tomorrow is possible (pwede naman pala), will ultimately fail to have any real effect on Filipinos.
He cannot unite them.
The greater good, all-encompassing concept of the Filipino does not exist, not in the way that, for example, America and Americans are defined beyond the fifty states that make up the Union. Instead, Filipinos have remained regionalist, tribal, and ultimately loyal only to their self-interests.
The current opposition to president Duterte’s administration is composed of people and groups who lost the previous presidential election (and still can’t get over it). Also added to the mix are communist/socialist groups who are interested only in the overthrow of those whom they don’t like. What further complicates things is that the opposition is more interested in ousting Duterte through whatever means possible, rather than presenting a clear, rational, and realistic alternative to the way he’s running the country now.
The underlying culprit, however, the reason there is inability to unite, is the way Filipinos approach unity. Most of them simply cannot put their egos aside; the way they regard unity is that others must submit to them. You will be hard-pressed to find the “win-win” mindset among Filipinos. Although there are Filipinos who can practice the delicate art of winning enemies over through gentle persuasion, a lot of others view engagement with non-allies as a zero-sum game – “only I must win; everyone else must lose.”
No matter how hard Duterte tries to reach out to all Filipinos, some of them (including he and his supporters) are just plain stubborn, insufferable, and incorrigible. And they would rather stay that way.
He cannot instill an appreciation for the rule of law.
As has been pointed out in Get Real Post many times before, Filipinos have this baseless sense of being more important than everyone else. The rule of law is as close to a logical, rational method of ensuring fairness among people as you can get. Unfortunately, this doesn’t sit well with many Filipinos because not having an undue advantage over others is simply unacceptable to them.
As it stands, Filipinos will not abide by the rule of law by themselves. Most of them will do so only under the threat of forces stronger than them. And even then, they will pull out the victim card, cry foul, and use their “pitiful” state to make excuses as to why they should be “special”.
He cannot wean them from their meek, deferential, subservient, and submissive collective character.
President Duterte recently made headlines when he criticized the Catholic Church in the Philippines. The church, and primarily the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), have widely been perceived to be meddlesome in political affairs, and to hold politicians by the neck with the prospect of “votes”. He has also made headlines for criticizing the West for the way developing countries are “shamed” for not towing the liberal/politically correct line.
It is fairly obvious that without a figurehead like Duterte at the helm, Filipinos would never have thought of criticizing the CBCP and the church for their hypocrisy. They would never have thought of revisiting just why religion has such a deep stranglehold on the Filipino psyche. And they would have never thought of criticizing the West for their hypocritical and lopsided regard towards developing countries who don’t tow liberal lines.
Filipinos are known for being an enduring people – “matiisin in the vernacular. Enduring doesn’t mean that it’s good that they can outlast discomfort; it means that they would rather bear the indignity of the problem, rather than confront it. It doesn’t help that Filipinos are an emotional people who easily capitulate to the loudest voice in the room.
While a powerful figurehead is a great help to any movement for change, it must not be dependent on that alone. The Filipino fixation on personalities, instead of ideas, is truly one of the biggest hindrances to deep-rooted change and enlightenment.
The challenge to Filipinos is simple: they need to show themselves that they can overcome their cultural inertia, and keep the momentum of change going, even after president Duterte’s term ends.
Love it or hate it: Duterte’s attack vs the Catholic Church is leading Filipinos down a DIFFERENT path
Scientific inquiry is advancing at an accelerated pace. Belief systems tend to be on a retreat in societies that are increasing in affluence. The latter way of life (living off beliefs) has been decisively beaten in much of the First World. But it remains entrenched in the Third World. The earlier (living off sound evidence- and logic-based thinking) is relatively normalised in modern societies but remains a curiosity in the Third World.
This is what makes Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent actions against the Catholic Church remarkable. Love it or hate it, he’s gone where no politician had gone before. In short, he’s done something different. How many Filipino politicians can one claim to have done something truly different? Filipinos like criticising them for being “traditional politicians” — in effect, highlighting their sameness and lack of originality as bad things. So along comes a politician — a sitting president, no less — who’s done something ground breaking which is to directly crticise the powerful Roman Catholic Church without mincing words.
Backdropped by this current battle between Malacanang and the Church is a unique opportunity to find out what really separates the men from the boys amongst the Philippines’ chattering classes. Faced with a leader who is anything but “traditional” — he is kicking Catholic ass, talking directly to the masses in language and manner they can relate with, and pivoting the Philippines away from Western European influence — it is now even more crystal clear who are defending the status quo and who are boldly facing a future, albeit uncertain, that is will likely be an outcome of things done differently.
After all, the modern-day philosopher Raquel Welch was once said to have said: Insanity is expecting different outcomes whilst continuing to do things the same way. That one is an easy concept to wrap one’s head around as anyone who’s tried arguing with a brick wall can explain. The more progressive cousin of this statement is the one tabled by the great Albert Einstein…
Problems cannot be solved using the same thinking that created them.
It is only within the context of this statement where we can begin to understand why the Philippine Condition cannot seem to be solved. Have there been enough politicians and leaders who have tried to do things differently? Have innovators and visionaries (rather than historical dogmatists and religious zealots) been commensurately rewarded for begging to differ to the status quo? Indeed, take those questions and apply them to an evaluation of the chops the current Philippine Opposition apply to trying to beat Duterte and the result will likely be confronting.
The Opposition has so far offered nothing different. The thinking of its “thought leadership” remains imprisoned by the Roman Catholic Church and its 2000-year-old belief system. That, by itself, is cause for second thought before one laps up the “ideas” they keep harping about and disseminating via their billion-peso corporate media lapdogs and the captured audiences in their Sunday masses.
So, yeah, Duterte offers something different — which is why people hate him, because different things have long known to strike fear and loathing in people made comfy by traditional beliefs. The response to Duterte’s difference is therefore understandable. It is a very human response. Presumably, however, we all aspire to be exceptional human beings. Therefore, to be exceptional, in this regard, is to be able to overcome a traditional human response to new, different, and confronting things. At the very least, if one disagrees with the new or different thing they are confronted with, perhaps propose an alternative.
This is the role one ought to reasonably expect an Opposition movement to step up to — the role of offering alternatives to how the incumbent is doing things. Can the Philippine Opposition under the leadership of the Liberal Party (a.k.a. the Yellowtards) meet this requirement? By all accounts, they haven’t. Can an Opposition led by minds imprisoned by Roman Catholic Church dogma offer truly ground breaking ideas and solutions? Very likely not. Can a person who approaches a problem using the same brain that created it solve said problem? Not a chance.
The Philippine Opposition therefore has a lot of work to do on itself. It cannot forever hide behind its lazy ruse of taking potshots at an incumbent while offering no alternative pathway. The real problem is the Opposition (as with most of those that came before it). There is no Laban, only a lot of thinking to do. The latter is the skill that the Opposition need to get up to scratch with. And that, ultimately, is really an easy challenge to face. All they need to do is consider the two biggest and most obvious solutions: (1) ditch the Yellowtards and (2) free themselves from the prison of Catholic dogma. It takes an exceptional breed of mind to come to terms with what is counter intuitive. And exceptional minds are what the Philippine Opposition badly needs today.
Why ousting Duterte will be disastrous for the Philippines
What’s up with all this talk about ousting sitting Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte? That’s a no-brainer. There are certain people and parties so hungry for power that the campaign to seize Malacanang had not ended in May 2016. So it is hardly surprising that, rather than work with the incumbent Duterte administration, the Opposition seek to destroy it.
I can’t speak for all Get Real Post writers who were critical of former President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III, but over the course of his six-year term, there was never a time that I wished Aquino to be deposed extra-constitutionally. I and many of my colleagues may have been the harshest critics of Aquino back then, but I cannot recall any suggestion that the solution to the problems besetting the Philippines under his rule was an ouster.
To end his term prematurely would have given him and his supporters the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not he would have ended his term being regarded a great leader. As it turns out, his failure as a president and the profound, broad-based disillusionment it created amongst Filipinos paved the way for Duterte’s win in 2016 on the back of a protest vote — and ended a 30-year era characterised by the domination of Filipinos’ minds by the Yellow “people power” ideology of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan.
Indeed, what happened to former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada is a case study of how ousted presidents could, enjoying that benefit of the doubt, mount a victorious comeback. Erap, despite having been ousted just three years into his term via a “people power” revolt in 2001, almost won the 2010 presidential election and then went on to become mayor of Manila following a successful bid in the 2013 election.
Today, we are, of course, talking about an Opposition camp famous for their addiction to “people power”-styled “revolutions”. So it is hardly surprising that talk of another one such is in the air this early. In fact, it is interesting that a key figure in the 1986 “revolution”, former President Fidel Ramos, is at the centre of speculation surrounding this possibility.
Credited for “handing” Duterte the presidency, Ramos has suddenly turned into a vocal critic of the Duterte government. Though his motives and timing for criticising Duterte are reportedly “unclear”, many agree that “he may be putting his foot down to salvage ties with Washington frayed by Duterte’s almost daily barrage of expletive-laced insults at Manila’s longtime ally.”
Suffice to say, a move to oust Duterte now will likely seriously backfire. Duterte remains a popular president with a following of fierce social media activists that one self-appointed “thought leader” suggests have “weaponised” the Internet. He is also the first president coming from the Philippines’ deep south in Mindanao, a region which holds a long-standing grudge with the Philippines’ northern tribes seen to be ruling the archipelago from the capital in its northern island of Luzon, now deridingly called “Imperial Manila”.
Politicians who traditionally hold court in Imperial Manila are now widely-seen to be in cahoots with the established order of oligarchs and big business taipans who benefit from the status quo that Duterte is seemingly dismantling. A move to oust Duterte now could foment a fatal divide in an already-polarised society like the Philippines that could be disastrous — even bloody.
The best recourse is to allow democracy to, well, be a democracy. The only thing certain today is that Duterte will either succeed or fail as president after six years. Cutting that term short will result in bets on either outcome left unresolved. It will not result in the same electoral closure that had decisively put up Aquino and his inner camp of Yellow supporters as abject failures and effectively closed a 30-year era of Yellow ascendancy.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
July 1, 2018 - Touching the Lord
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