Jose Rizal and Jesus Christ

I dedicate this piece to the millions of college-educated Pinoys and Pinays still frightened of the Catholic authority that had our Jose Rizal arrested, incarcerated, and executed. I have every respect and admiration for Jose Rizal. His dream, he wrote to a Spanish governor-general was “my country’s prosperity. . . “I would like the Filipino people to become worthy, noble, and honorable.” Rizal was executed to death for writing the exact opposite of what Christianity was teaching the Filipino people to believe and to have faith in. Here’s what the Founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ and his teachings as written in the holy 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. Here’s more from Jesus Christ, the Prince of peace, the Savior of the world: “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them for me.” Luke 19:27 In the meantime, as the only Christian country in Asia since the 16th century, look how we are neither worthy nor noble or honorable as a people. In fact, for the love of Jesus Christ up there, we do not love our own country down here. We are, indeed, the Sick Man of Asia. It has been more than a hundred years ago, but we continue to abet, tolerate, and applaud the arrest and incarceration and death of our own Jose Rizal by firing squad as authorized and approved by the followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. For my part, as an atheist and a proud Filipino, I consider Rizal’s message to the Filipino far more sane than all the insane message derived from the silly bible. Jose Rizal tried to make us feel that we belong to each other; that we are all related; and that we have a country to love; and that we Filipinos must look into our own welfare by having our own government of the Filipino, by the Filipino, and for the Filipino. As it is and as it has been, the killers of our Jose Rizal are still here pretty much in full control of our system of education, still manipulating our system of government, still dictating values and beliefs for us to cherish. Therefore, for the glory of God in heaven, we must only carry on with our sick and destructive way of life in this only Christian country in Asia since the 16th century. For the sake of social and political sanity, I say it is time that the historical religious malarkey be dumped out of our senses, our of our community, indeedm out of our country. Poch Suzara