ONE OF the reasons why I no longer belong to any of the many Christian sects is because they preach contradictory doctrines – say, as to what happens to us human beings after death. As this corner discussed last Tuesday, Jesus Christ taught that he would come again to resurrect the dead, which is contrary to the popular perception that the conscious soul of the dead leaves the body.
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!”
There was a time when three nubile ladies asked me to accompany them to church.
I did. But the moment we entered their church, two pastors were quarrelling over who would preach the sermon. One of them was “outgoing”; the other “incoming.” Cooler heads had to intervene to subdue the two.
Christianity 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.
It is a paradox that Filipinos embrace the religion foisted on us by the oppressive Spanish conquistadors. If Ferdinand Magellan had not landed in the Philippines, this nation might have turned as Muslim as Indonesia and Malaysia.
If we were born in a Muslim theocracy where the Bible is banned – as in Saudi Arabia – no doubt we would also have condemned the “evil Christians.”
But we don’t even have to move out of Christianity to discover how convoluted religion is. Each Christian sect has different beliefs. 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 in Davao City. 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 followers wait for the fulfillment of the promised eternal life, the leader has already reaped his material reward.
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.”
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.
Today being All Saints Day, I remember my boyhood when I asked a catechist to show me a Bible verse proving that the dead meets Saint Peter up above clouds for a key to any of three destinations: heaven, purgatory or hell.
Not she, nor anybody else, has so far given me the answer. (hvego31@gmail.com /PN)
