MAY I begin this column with a confession that, while I believe in God, I no longer belong to any religion?
That frees me from swallowing religious beliefs that organized religion foists on faithful followers in the guise of “spirit of obedience” nurtured by 499 years of Spanish occupation – counting from 1521 when Magellan planted a cross in Cebu.
Most Filipinos practice Christianity – whether Catholic, Aglipayan, Protestant or what-have-you – because of foreign influence handed down from one generation to the next.
The Jews, the Buddhists, the Muslims and the Hindus also dominate “territories” that have been receptive to their sets of beliefs. Their adherents who come to places where they are strangers tend to defend their faith.
There was a time in the 1980s 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!”
I agreed with him that while it has evolved from Judaism, Christianity itself has divided into a thousand and one sects and subsects with conflicting teaching.
The Latin saying, “Vox populi, vox Dei” could not be right. If the voice of the majority of Filipinos were the voice of God, then Roman Catholicism would be “it” in the Philippines.
However, imagine a situation where the Spanish conquistadors had not come to colonize us in the 16th century. Then this nation could have gone as Islam as Indonesia and Malaysia. In fact, many of our southern natives in Mindanao have turned Muslims.
Conversely, let us imagine ourselves born in Saudi Arabia where the Bible is banned. Would we not condemn the “evil Christians”?
A big Christian organization wields a “treat or threat” for being the only true Church of Christ; only its members would be “saved.”
Everybody now knows Pastor Apollo Quiboloy who calls himself “the appointed son of God.” With tithe money pouring in from convinced followers who believe they would go to heaven, he has built himself a “paradise” on a mountain top.
There are non-priests who advertise themselves as Roman Catholic servant-leaders, thus attracting gullible Catholics to their prayer rallies. This is how El Shaddai and collects sacks of tax-free “love offerings.”
Methinks that while the goal of the religious follower is to gain eternal life, 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.
One thing is therefore indisputable: The flood of money cascading from millions of followers has fueled the rise of many religious 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 disbelieve religious dogmas. For example, the Bible does not echo the popular notion that when a man dies, his soul zooms up to meet Saint Peter, who gives him the key to any of three destinations: heaven, purgatory or hell.
If I occasionally listen to TV or radio evangelists hitting each other, it’s often for just entertainment. I hate to be fooled.
To quote Henry David Thoreau: “Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
