We know when Duterte is wrong

NOBODY took Rodrigo Duterte seriously when he announced his resignation from the presidency if a dead Christian could come down from heaven and show him a “selfie” with God.

He also made no sense when he revealed that he had stopped being a Roman Catholic after suffering abuse at the hands of a priest while in high school at the Ateneo de Davao University.

Of course we don’t have to verbally debunk that claim. The social media pages show pictures of the old Digong kneeling in Catholic churches. Anyway, this column is not really about Duterte but about tolerating people like him and the improbability of winning an argument – religious or otherwise.

Christianity believes in monotheism but with diverse and irreconcilable interpretations. And so one group interprets monotheism as praying to only one God; the other group prays to “One in three persons.”  A third group merely “venerates” Mama Mary and Church-canonized saints in answer to charges of idolatry.

As a child in the 1950s, I enjoyed seeing religious “debates” at the plaza between ministers of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) and those of other Christian sects. I vividly remember that one where an INC minister and an Aglipayan (layman of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) debated over the “true Church”, which could have segued into a fight had they not agreed to agree that Felix Manalo and Gregorio Aglipay – founders of INC and IFI, respectively – were both right in abandoning the “wrong” Roman Catholic sect.

I also enjoyed hearing my late father argue with his friend, INC lay leader Gerardo, over the godhood of Jesus Christ.  My dad, a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, could not agree with his friend’s logic that Jesus, though “the son of God,” was not God.

“That’s like saying that an animal born to a dog is not a dog,” Tatay debunked him but Gerardo remained adamant on his belief.

To quote inspirational author Dale Carnegie, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Simply put, what’s right to one person is wrong to another. This is a lesson that has served me well.

While I was falling in line at a grocery store’s senior citizens’ lane, an old woman suddenly walked over from behind and beat me to the cashier, announcing, “Let me pay first.”

I could have protested but kept my cool, nodding at the cashier to attend to her first. It felt good pretending that I was no senior citizen yet.

In a way, I benefited by patiently accommodating the woman’s wrong move. Since I am hypertensive, keeping cool all the time is preventive medicine. Giving in to anger or stress could be fatal.

We all have heard of enraged men languishing in jail for killing another man over trivial traffic problems.

As in basketball, the broader game of life is ideally played by obedience to rules and regulations. Unfortunately, these rules and regulations are often bent to suit the “mightier.”

Millions of Germans hailed Adolf Hitler for killing six million Jews as the “right” way to propagate Nazism.

Alas, there are now Filipinos cheering over summary killings of suspected drug pushers, forgetting that the latter are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

In the words of the Dalai Lama, “People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.”

Only the “laws of nature” like gravitation, heredity and chemistry are right all the time. Whereas, we all fall some of the time, and that includes falling in love. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)

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