Guilt for the unsaved, Sunday meanderings

I have seen people cry because their relatives and close friends do not belong to the same denomination or religion they belong to. 

They feel guilty because they have genuine love for their loved ones and it's really unthinkable to live in paradise while your children, or spouse , or friends are in hell in eternal torture from burning and swimming in sulfuric lava.

There also those who are concerned about their accountability because in the end, when things have come to its realization, they could be held liable for not sharing or convincing people around them to convert to their religion. Of course, the guilt is based on the premise that the only true religion, the only true church is the one that they belong to. 

It's futile to argue about the validity of this claim to exclusivity because almost all of the religion have an exclusivity clause. I am not thinking about Christianity and its thousand of sub-denominations that have their own exclusivity clauses, I'm talking about religions in general. I respect Holy Books but to talk about things, argues, explore reality, within the confine of the pages of these Holy Books is very restrictive and problematic, for me.  There will be no conversation but a one way spoon feeding of doctrines and dogmas.

Think about circumstances, forget yourself for once and pretend that you're someone else who is born in another country, grew up in another culture and belongs to another religion. Let's pretend that you're an average Filipino citizen, born in a Christian culture. You go to church regularly, you work honestly, and you live an average life like an average Filipino. 

Then a Muslim missionary knocked at your door and offered you Islam as the way to your soul's salvation and that Christianity is a false religion, Satan's creation to challenge the real and true religion. (Islam is the fastest growing religion today.) He is offering you a new way of life of devotion to Allah. You may raise your eyebrow because you grew up in a Christian community and is a practicing Christian and your perspective of things is very Christian. 

Christianity (and the church you belong to) is the only true church or true path to salvation because that's what is inculcated in you by your culture, your community, your family, your government and by social genetics. Your whole being is immersed in Christianity and to think apart from this perspective is (almost) incomprehensible, even unthinkable.

And you may be surprised that there are Islamic missionaries because you think Muslims proselytize by the sword or violence.  Your first reaction is hostile. You're instinct is to run or to pray out loud to invoke the power of the Holy Spirit to repel these enemies of the church. But then common sense and education got the better of you and you declined politely.

Of course chances are you will not take  these Muslim missionaries seriously and may even look at the them with suspicion and disdain. But when these missionaries start to open up with their goods and aids, doors would open.

Anyway, this is hypothetical but these missionary thing happen all the time. i think it's only the Buddhist who give shelp without attaching their religion to their charitable works. 

Millions of people who are born in different country, in different cultural setting, in different religious traditions, and in different circumstances in life. To think that God revealed himself to a particular race and that this particular revelation is the only true revelation and is the only true way to salvation (whatever that may mean but I am not inclined to think that souls are meant to walk on gold pavements and sing praises to God in eternity), I think misses the goodness in other people. (the inclusive may say, "Hey we see truth in their beliefs, it's juts that their's is not good enough, they fall short!"

I was reminded of a scene from the novel "To kill a mocking bird" where a white american drunk bum beleived himself to superior to a hard working black american because of his skin color. 

Meanderings on Religious Exclusivity

Put plainly, religious exclusivity is the belief that my religion is the only true religion and the others are bullshits. (Bullshit is a PC word compared to what preachers say about people who do not belong to their religions and the traditional nomenclatures they use ranges from infidels, condemned, pagan, unsaved, children of Satan, demons, witches, etc. :Bullshit" is way, way kinder than these terms and to think that some religions even behead people who do not subscribe to their beliefs. Definitely, bullshit is much better) . 

Another dogma of religious exclusivity is the conviction that only those who belong to my religion would go to paradise. Well, to tell the truth, not even all those who are in my religion would go to paradise because there's a selection process that the believers must go through like indoctrination, infant circumcision, prayers, pilgrimage, holy wars, etc. Even those who have participated and met these requisites do not automatically become saved, there is the other part, the inner conversion, the miraculous transformation of the believer, the spiritual thingy.

Now, if one sits down and give enough time and coffee  to think about it, it is obvious that religious exclusivity is one of the the roots of all evil. I would not even dare say it is religion because there are religions that would not even hurt an insect! 

Open your history books and you'll read that most of the man-made miseries in the world is caused by the idea of religious exclusivity. Even today, watching the current event in the Middles East I am inclined to think that this area of the world is in the dark age because the region is divided into religious factions each killing one another primarily because of the differences in the interpretation of their holy book and secondly because the schisms are being taken advantaged of by the Western primarily Christian part of the world to advance their interests. 

These fanatics that came from the same religious gene cannot coexist with one another because of the effing idea that heaven is reserved to the few. Pity the innocent and the decent people who simply want to live in peace but no, they must be converted.

The idea of exclusivity goes back to the primordial soup and the microbes. Microbes based their survival in one scientific principle of physics and that is "no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time". 

So, what the microbes do is multiply fast and produce enzyme or whatever you call these stuff they produce to displace another group of microbes. they congregate and those who are not within their congregation are displaced and then exterminated.

Exclusivity is a survival mechanism. It is built in to every living things' DNA from the microbes to Bill Gates. Animals form packs, herds, schools etc, to protect themselves from their predators and also these animal group protects themselves from their own kind in their struggle for food and territory. People are not that different, though we have evolved and transcended the animals' feral struggle for survival, yet exclusivity is still humanity's primary motivation for the struggle against each other though unlike the animals, people tend to cling to exclusivity more out of greed and not of need.

Socially, for us exclusivity is primarily genetics. We form group from families, to clans, to tribes, to nation from which sprung up belief system. Religion is nothing but an extension of the clan, the social family. 

One current proof of exclusivity  is what Trump is doing now.

It is understandable now why this idea is easily translatable into the beliefs or faiths. Religious exclusivity especially among the Abrahamic religion is primarily a survival mechanism which in the process of historical evolution has become the mechanism for oppression and control especially among its fundamentalist and fanatical adherents.

Figuring out Duterte's theology (or the lack of it)

I love our president for his candor. In fact, his seemingly disorganized meandering speeches, though at times excessive (I hated his Hitler comparison, but the guy apologized), shows a man of very practical thinking, a man who absconds abstractions. Of course, this does not mean he does not possess the faculty for abstract thinking. The guy is a lawyer and lawyering is one job that requires a very meticulous and logical intellect, but it just seemed that he avoided the rigorous scrutiny of details which leads to, as former VP Binay accused Mar Roxas and Pnoy of,  "analysis paralysis." 

But what I find most interesting about the man is how he disarmed the meddling clerics of different churches and how he virtually shut the door of Malacanang to their faces.

Presidents, because they fear the religious unthinking (not all of them, just the unthinking) mob, have this tendency to listen to theological but highly impractical suggestion of the clerics. 

No go, appointed son of God.

But not Duterte...

It is well known that Duterte is a friend of Pastor Quiboloy, the self proclaimed "appointed son of God" (BTW, I'd love to see his appointment papers) of the Davao based Kingdom of Jesus Christ church. During the campaign period, Quiboloy gave his church's resources to support Duterte's candidacy including his private jets. 

There's no such thing as free lunch, Quiboloy was not doing this for his love of Duterte or to bring glory and praises to his appointed father in heaven, God.  He was expecting to be appointed as a spiritual adviser to Duterte like what the past presidents had done with church and cult leaders who has financed and supported their elections. I don't know if there's even a law that say's a president could have a spiritual adviser, but I guess the position was invented to appease these bloodsucking clerics. Though the title does not mean anything, it does give the holder of the title influence in the government; the card could open doors.

I suppose Quiboloy was after the appointment to give a sense of legitimacy to the outlandish cult he leads. 

Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Quiboloy's hope was quashed when Duterte didn't even mention his name to thank for during his inaugural speech. Quiboloy was hurt but the elected president stood his ground and rejected any spiritual position for the alleged "appointed son of God."

But Quiboloy and his cult is provincial compared to the Roman Catholic Church. The Church has exerted great influence in government and even played king maker in Philippine politics. The church, because of its antiquated dogmas, has stymied a lot of government programs especially the reproductive health law which after fourteen years of stonewalling, the government finally won under Pnoy's term.

Duterte has made known his contempt of religion from the beginning. The church has always used morality as its primary weapon in criticizing what it perceives to be morally questionable government activities and programs. When it attacked Duterte for his alleged sexual immorality and murders, the president did not flinch instead it engaged the church in mudslinging to the chagrin of many religious Filipinos.

Awkward, Pope!

His blasphemous (to the Catholics) cursing of Pope Francis and his attacks on the church's child sexual molestation cases and how the church has protected its ranks from accountability showed a deep  Nietzschean contempt for organized religion. A contempt rooted from experience.

What does this make of Duterte? Is he an atheist or an anti-theist?

A couple of days ago I saw a video of the president asking where is God? He was talking about the death and the justice. Pain and suffering in the world is one 

question where the Christian religion have difficulty reconciling with God because in the Christian faith God is the absolute. This means that evil, the root of suffering, cannot be given a separate and independent personality which equals God. Though common Christians believe that evil is the enemy of God, the anti-thesis of God, and there's idea that God is in constant battle with Satan, this idea or picture is actually blasphemous because God is the absolute, the ground of being, and there is no other like him or equal to him. 

Photo from ABS CBN.  I hope you guys don't take this
photo down.

This doctrine makes the problem of evil problematic for the Christian faith because the only possible explanation for evil and suffering is that God made it to be. The toned down idea that God allowed suffering just doesn't hold water because it makes God a cruel sadist. 

Anyway, though the president's question seemed impertinent, it does touched real issues. It also show his religious and human side. I could only surmise that he does not accept the mythologies and the bibilicism spewed by the pulpit to bring comfort to the suffering. He is not counting on divine justice for the victims of heinous crime, instead he is offering something concrete for the victims by instituting the death penalty.