Do we love our rivers and lakes and beaches? Do we love our flowers, plants, and trees? Do we love our birds, butterflies, and other living creatures of the forest? Do we love law and order? Do we love our policemen in the streets and our lawyers and prosecutors and judges in the courts? Do we love our mayors, governors, congressmen, and senators? Is ours a lovable government of the lovable people, by the lovable people, and for the lovable people?
Developing countries in Asia today are the results of, if not due to, developed minds and cultivated hearts. Thanks to the power of education based upon science and technology. Thanks also to that simple yet powerful human sentiment that has always been a traditional reality: love of country and love of fellow-citizens. Among Filipinos, however, -- love of country is as yet a traditional fantasy.
In Asian countries developing today, teamwork means dividing the effort and multiplying the effects. With us Filipinos, however, it is the exact opposite: teamwork means praying to God for miracles and to forgive us of our historical defects.
But then again, in this only Christian country in Asia, if we are not praying to God to lead us not into temptation, our high government officials too are praying to the same God to lead us not into deeper economic degradation. The results thus far: graft and corruption, political confusion, social dislocation, and especially pollution and population explosion.
Are we ever going to wake up in this country? When are we going to stop kidding ourselves enjoying the sacred lies we tell each other each day of every year? Are we ever going to solve, intelligently, our problems as a people and our troubles as a nation? Must we continue with our stunted sense of humanity as inspired by our love for incomprehensible divinity?
There was a time when every single man, woman, and child believed in a loving God. It was a time when no one dared to question anything. It was a time of spiritual poverty and moral bankruptcy. Everybody also believed the world was not round, but flat. It was a time of fear and mental paralysis. Everybody held on to faith not in the human capacity but faith only in human stupidity. It lasted for a thousand years( 5th to the 15th century ). Historians refer to those centuries as the Dark Ages.
We Filipinos are still living in the Dark Ages. We carry superstition on our backs and we are crippled by its weight. We make no bones about God being a panacea – that all our social troubles and economical and political problems will vanish into thin air if only each and every one of us will kneel down and once more have deep faith in God.
The holy bible is found in almost every Filipino home today. It is a book written not by Filipinos, but by foreigners. If, however, we wish to understand why love of country does not exist in the Philippines, please read the bible. It clearly states what we adhere to faithfully: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not with him. “ John 2:15. Indeed, why should we love our country when the bible clearly tells us that if we do so, the love of God is not with us?
Now if we wish to understand why we do not love each other as a people please read again carefully what Jesus admonished in the bible: “If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26. Is it any wonder why we all love God up there by hating one another down here?
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of abandoned and hungry Filipino children struggle to exist in the streets of our major cities. Their bodies are rotting with malnourishment as they live off garbage and trash.
Well, millions of children too exist inside our school buildings. Their minds and hearts are rotting too. They are taught to believe that this world is depraved and sinful and corrupt and that this life is nothing but a transition to a better world to come after death with God in heaven. Indeed, these are the same millions of children who will become parents themselves one day. And like all of us parents and grandparents of today, they too will be the stupid victims of our so-called “ social, moral and religious values.”
We are born ignorant, not mindless. In the Philippines, we are made mindless with the power of education. Poch Suzara
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