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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Thursday, October 26, 2017
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MAY I begin this column with the confession that I am not a churchgoer?
Why be so religious when most Filipinos– whether Catholic, Aglipayan, Protestant or what-have-you – go to church simply by either circumstance of birth or peer pressure? The Jews, the Buddhists, the Muslims and the Hindus are as sure as Christians of their “true faith.”
There was a time in the 1980s, for example, when I asked a visiting American Jew why he was asking us Christians to convert to Judaism.
His blunt answer: “Why? It’s to follow Jesus Christ, who was a Jew!”
At that time, I had already “mellowed” after a youthful decade of searching for “true religion.” Born to an Aglipayan mother and a Seventh-Day Adventist father, I had repeatedly allowed myself to be “towed” to various sanctums of worship, only to shake my head.
There was a time when three nubile ladies asked them to accompany me to church. How could a gentleman say no?
Alas, however, the moment we entered their church, two pastors were quarrelling over who would preach the sermon. Bad ah! One of them was “outgoing”; the other “incoming.” Cooler heads had to intervene to subdue the outgoing pastor.
I gave up my search for “true religion” then and there, seeing its futility. Christianity alone has a thousand and one denominations to choose from. A lifetime would not suffice to study each.
The Latin saying Vox populi, vox Dei could not be right. It was the “majority” that shouted “Crucify him” while Jesus Christ was being presented to Pilate.
Most Filipinos embrace Roman Catholicism simply because it was foisted on us by the oppressive Spanish conquistadors. If Ferdinand Magellan had not landed in the Philippines on March 16, 1521, this nation could have remained pro-anito or could have turned predominantly Muslim like Indonesia and Malaysia because, by then, our southern natives had already known Allah.
If we were born in a Muslim theocracy where the Bible is banned – as in Saudi Arabia – no doubt we would also condemn the “evil Christians.”
But we don’t even have to move out of Christianity to discover how convoluted religion could be. Each Christian sect has a different set of believes. One calls Jesus “God in the flesh”; another says he’s “Son of God” but still human being. A pastor calls himself “appointed son of God.” With tithe money pouring in from convinced followers who would like to go to heaven, the pastor has built for himself a “paradise” on a mountain top. The unconvinced, of course, think of his organization as just another cult.
There are non-priests who advertise themselves as Roman Catholic servant-leaders and establish so-called “fellowship” organizations. Naturally, they draw gullible Catholics to their prayer rallies and collect from them sacks of tax-free “love offerings.”
The goal of the religious follower is to gain eternal life while that of the cult leader is to gain money. While the follower waits for the fulfillment of his elusive goal, the leader has already achieved his.
There’s a popular joke on three lords who make fast and tax-free money: the drug lord, the gambling lord and the “praise the lord.”
One thing is therefore indisputable: The flood of money cascading from millions of followers has fueled the rise of many religion founders. You must have read that when the Korean founder of the Unification Church (since 1954), Reverend Sun Myung Moon, died in September 2012, he had amassed billions of US dollars from five million adherents worldwide.
Locally, religious organizations also make money from politicians, mostly crooked, who generously “donate” – or “invest” – in exchange for their blocked votes.
The more I read the Bible, the more I discover contradictions. For example, the Bible does not echo the popular notion that a dead man meets Saint Peter up above clouds for a key to any of three destinations: heaven, purgatory or hell. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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