Friday, March 10, 2017

Bertrand Russell - my Kind of God

As a little boy in school, my priest-confessor often told me that I am not a perfect being. I should therefore always kneel down and ask God for the forgiveness of my defects. Indeed, that eventual obliteration will be a better way to achieve my salvation than my need to seek reconstruction.

Bertrand Russell arrived into my life after I was lucky enough to have been expelled out of La Salle high school. He said: “No one is perfect and we should never be bothered by the fact that we are not perfect.”

Russell also taught me to question everything including his own ideas and values. He wrote: "It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly." These words have not ceased to stir my mind and heart to this day. If there were ever a thinker I have learned to love and respect – such a thinker was Bertrand Russell. Indeed, Russell saved not my silly soul; he saved, instead, something far more precious - my intelligent and lively mind.

Much to my joys and pleasures and happiness in life, it was Bertrand Russell who introduced me to love and respect as well our own great thinker - Jose Rizal. None of my teachers in school taught me to see just how great a Filipino humanist/scientists was our own Dr. Jose Rizal.

Oh, Bertrand Russell, whenever you are - thank you for teaching me intellectual courage to face the horrors in nature. And thank you as well for making me realize that
our world is infested with religious insanity as always in cahoots with political stupidity; and that life is not worth living unless we struggle to wage war to defeat such horrors - horrors that's keeping our world misguided spiritually, misdirected morally, and sick economically. - Poch Suzara

                                                            

No comments: