If we are to believe that his will be done in the supposedly mysterious ways that he works, there is a reason why God unleashed an earthquake in Nepal and, before that, Haiyan upon the Philippines. Unlike Adolf Hitler who, himself, had what he believed to be a perfectly rational reason behind his project to exterminate every Jew he could get his hands on, God wins whatever argument you throw at him simply because he has sole claim to being the “creator” of “everything”. So, by that logic, everything is pretty much his to destroy on a whim. His “will” be done, see. And because the “way” of his “will” is infinitely mysterious to us mortal scum, it is never our place to question it.
The fact of the unfathomable mystery in God’s ways, of course, does not stop us for praying for stuff. We prayed that Manny Pacquiao would win against Floyd Mayweather. That prayer seemingly was not answered. Perhaps Floyd prayed a lot harder. But it’s all a mystery. There must be a deeper reason why Pacquiao lost despite the thundering calls to the heavens of a 100-million-strong nation.
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There is also the peace initiative currently being mounted on behalf of the Philippines’ Muslim minority in its southern islands. We pray for peace and leave it up to God to sort out the details — which is why an entire administration and its crooked henchmen got this far dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s in an agreement signed by men of dubious citizenship using fake names representing the interests of a terrorist group of questionable sincerity. Filipinos were simply too enthralled by the prospect of God’s mysterious will being conscripted to the cause of “peace” in Mindanao to notice the scam unfolding under their noses.
It is funny that Filipino activists would, on one hand, raise big stinks about the opaqueness of their government and call for “greater transparency” with fists raised and champion the much-anticipated Freedom of Information (FOI) bill yet, on the other, submit themselves, their lives, and their destinies to a belief system which is, by clerical edict, absolutely inaccessible to critical inquiry.
Nonetheless, it is fortunate enough that the Philippines is, on paper at least, a secular state that upholds separation of Church and state. At least, Filipinos can be assured that application of the law to the running of society and resolution of conflict amongst its citizens follows the rigour of scientific method, in principle. As it is, otherwise sensible initiatives to uplift social justice, like the newly-minted Reproductive Health Law, struggled mightily to find a footing in Philippines society. Many others, one of which is a decent divorce law, continue to languish thanks to deeply-ingrained religious views. You’d think we’d by now be fiercely protective of the small wins racked up for the cause of secularism.
Of course not.
The initiative to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) and establish an “autonomous” Muslim state over a big chunk of Mindanao promises to plunge millions of Filipinos into the dark abyss of life under a medieval theocracy. Filipino activists and their kin in the Philippines’ fledgling freethinking movement may have won a few in the name of modern secularism but the passage of a law that will cede vast portions of the country’s breadbasket to hardcore Islamic jihadists will all but bury those achievements.
So why then did God flatten Nepal with an earthquake and level the central islands of the Philippines with history’s most powerful typhoon? Why did Manny Pacquiao lose to alleged wife-beater Floyd Mayweather? Why does world hunger persist?
It’s all God’s will, see. And that will is impenetrably mysterious. So don’t bother trying to analyse something that is immune to analysis. As to why Filipinos are standing by while their elected leaders serve up Mindanao to an armed band of Islamic militants who stand for everything that a modern Philippines is not? That too is God’s will. Let us pray.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
No Benign0, not the 100 M Filipinos prayed for Pacquiao to win. It was a major media network that says they prayed for a Pacquiao win, may be a majority of them, because I myself didn’t care if he wins or lose. The public were duped of the fight of the century which should earned a more appropriate sobriquet, “the dupe of the century.” I was glad I wasn’t duped. But you were correct on the BBL. The present leadership is offering MILF a chunk of Mindanao to appease religious zealots at the expense of genuine secularism mandated in the constitution.
Very likely indeed. Another instance of media conditioning vacuous minds to lap up BS — both in the Pacquiao case and the Bangsamoro circus.
The key point surrounding Islamic “autonomy” in Mindanao should have been to challenge them to prove what is it exactly in the current national system they are subject to that prevents them from seeking and exploiting the same opportunities to prosper that the majority of Filipinos already have access to.
It’s just like the Marcos years. Everyone was conditioned to believe that things don’t get better because of “a lack of freedom”. Now that there is an abundance of “freedom”, by all accounts the Philippines continues to be a failure by most international standards of modernity. Goes to show the original hypothesis was flawed and, as such, the wrong solution was applied to said ill-defined problem.
Same thing with the BBL. It is likely to be the wrong solution formulated on the basis of a problem concocted by the inbred minds of so-called “experts”.
Pacquiao losing…Nepal leveled…Islamic Jihadists getting a territory in the Philippines. I don’t believe these are God’s will.
There are still many things we do not know in this world. Life, natural occurances, the fuctions of our bodies, mind/consciousness, etc…
I don’t believe that God is involved in these things. There are Natural Laws in our Universe. If we violate them, there are consequences. We still don’t know much.
We overwork our mind…we attribute everything to God…because of our Fear of the Unknown…
To know what is not yet known; to go where no one has gone before; and to walk boldly to the unknown; are the true characters of being a true human being…
I like your sarcasm !
09Hyden007Toro,
we do know a lot. It is expected that the next big earthquake must take place in Istanbul, Turkey.
@Robert Haighten:
Did you invent some sort of Earthquake detection equipment? Let us patent it. I’ll do the marketing…
As a matter of fact: NO. But there are (professional) people that do keep track of movements in seismic vaults. And they foresee the upcoming next big earthquale to take place in Instanbul, Turkey.
They are called :Seismologists. Seismology Science/Technology is still in its “infancy”…They can detect thru the patterns of the movement of the Earth Fault, by Computer Graphs, from time to time. It is a “Crude Science”…
Animals/Insects have senses that can detect Earthquakes and Tsunsmis that are coming. There must be a way by which we can do these predictions, electronically, thru the :Radio Waves, Ultra Violet Ray Waves, Light Waves, etc…any inquiring mind to invent this equipment?
Maybe a few stages beyond infancy.
What I want to say is that earthqquakes do not happen because its god’s will. If that is what he really wanted to do then he is a bastard (wow, I am assigning him a human feature). Planet earth is just not in a perfect shape. So we have to accept earthquakes. To make consequences less for the people who live in such a zone, its evident that houses and buildings should be build earthquake proof. If governments and house owners/renters refuse to build such houses then it becomes their problem.
@HT: Crude method? the triagulation of ‘S’ and ‘P’ waves is not rocket science but it is a highly evolved science, and a very accurate one at that. It has not figured out a way to predict the future yet though. Is that what you are looking for? I have a crystal ball for sale.
I’m a Roman Catholic. But seeing Manny Pacquiao lost despite the intensive praying the 100 Million Filipinos, I can’t help but wonder if they thought the same thing I did.
“Where is your God now?”
Why, as a Roman Catholic, do you have other God different from our God?
yeah. money, it turns out
because if you thought, as boy abunda famously says, ‘collective prayer’, somehow had a bearing whether pacquiao will win or not, that’s the beginning of a major problem
The ‘evil’ USSR ‘outlawed’ all religions. Most people were raised to believe that was a bad thing(why did the framers of the USA constitution separate church from state then?). Even in the Filippines,a supposedly secular nation state decries that ‘Commie bastards’. BUT WHY DID LENIN DO IT? Was it because he realized that the religions of the world were being used as a weapon to keep the worker/peasants in total servitude to ‘God’s Will’ ? Lenin was a working class guy who disliked the term ‘Divine Right of Kings’ and all it stood for.The Romanov family ran Russia for centuries and that family prospered but not a single peasant did.
The article mentions Hitler.OH YES, HITLER, the creation of the Industrialists that feared the ‘worker’s revolt’ in the USSR would somehow engulf Europe and then spread across the Atlantic to the USA,then what? Workers running the factories? Oh no, the means of production must be held at all costs.Enter Adolph Hitler, your new friend ! ‘Ya Vol !Ya Vol…its off to the Gestapo !””Achtung Achtung… get to the interrogation room.”…HHMMM……
GET A CLUE, THEY ARE FREE !!!!!
Part of the ‘Art of Wordly Wisdom’ is: KNOWING WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE,yes? Not believing someone is your friend because someone else told you who that friend is, despite not knowing the friend personally.
When all else fails………
@Bing Bong:
It is still a Crude method…advances in seismic researches are done in advanced countries…more advanced that we have known…
I was not referring to the Philippines, OMG !!!
If your post wanted to explain Why God flatten Nepal with an earthquake with an answer that it is God’s will, it really does remain mysterious to us “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9″For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.( Isaiah 55:8-9)
Aside from that “it’s God’s will” statement, I can’t help but cringe at another overused (by Filipinos, at least) statement to explain why unfortunate things happen:
“God has better plans.”
He must have a really busy call centre somewhere in India. 😀 Maybe that’s why they haven’t been having earthquakes there lately…
I don’t think it is “all a mystery” (the way most of us use the term, as “unfathomable”). It may be a reflection of our unexamined approach to faith in general. We Filipinos need more education in these areas too and I think it’s because also generally, we are also mostly less analytical culturally. I am not a fatalist, and so I believe there is a robust case for our prayers really affecting the so-called “will of God”, I do think He takes these into account. Also, as Cromwell said once, “Trust in God and keep your [gun]powder dry”, I think it’s pretty commonsense that God isn’t anyone’s personal butler genie.
In sports, Peyton Manning said “I pray to keep both teams injury free, and personally, that I use whatever talent I have to the best of my ability.” I don’t think it’s wrong to pray for favorable outcomes too, but of course, know that the other team is also earnestly praying. Ultimately, a person who prays is “submitting herself to God’s providence”. It is also appropriate to thank God for winning or being able to do well, but flaunting it in front of others might leave a bad taste. Obviously, there are far more appropriate things that an athlete ought to be praying for. He should be praying for his own character and development, to be a person of integrity, fair play, good sportsmanship, self-discipline, civility toward the opponent, and so on. Those are the really important moral qualities that I think God wants to develop in a Christian athlete in particular.
Nothing wrong or ridiculous about praying for peace either, because pragmatically, when people actually pray for peace (not just typing empty hashtags), it enables a starting perspective of working towards it, you know, “blessed are the peacemakers”, loving your neighbor and all that. Spiritually, it is communicating with God, as in any relationship, it is developing oneness of mind, and as Phillips Brooks said it “is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but taking hold of His willingness.” The Prince of Peace is of course interested in, uh, peace, but we have to learn to mature to be able to live well with our neighbors and build our collective character to acheive a peaceful state that lasts. Maybe it’s actually impossible and that’s what heaven is for, or inner peace, but we can certainly bring a piece of heaven on earth if we really desire to, while continuously praying “Thy will be done on earth”.
I also disagree that Chritsianity is “a belief system which is, by clerical edict, ABSOLUTELY inaccessible to critical inquiry.” Or were you referring to Roman Catholicism in particular, which I also do not think such is the case. Perhaps you are right if what you are saying is that this is how we, Filipinos, view Christianity and that having a “deeply-ingrained [I add misguided and unexamined] religious views” is bound to be a disaster. If so, I share your frustration, man. That is why generally we need to be more educated about it. This requires a big cultural paradigm shift to personal responsibility reinforced by institutions such as family, mass media, church and schools.
I sincerely think, modern secularism is devoid of much actual substance required of a stable sustainable worldview, it just does not have sufficient justification for morality, meaning, rights and justice, to name a few categories. I think we are better off with celebrating our freedom and plurality, something, I think, only a Christian foundation can accomplish as it has in most developed nations.
The BBL could be a good step towards federalism despite the , the economic provisions look interesting to me (Sections 3, 6, 10, 13, 15), which will enable a better realization of the LGU code, though, I share your criticisms of the BBL (the parties involved) and some of your points against Islam too.
So finally, regarding earthquakes in Nepal or elsewhere, and typhoons in the Philippines, world hunger these are all dealt with centuries of response to the “Problem of (Natural and Human) Evil”. I do agree that in this case, it may be “mysterious” to us. I think it is a reasonable reaction simply because we are of limited perception and understanding. It would certainly be arrogant to claim to know why but equally so, with, in effect saying that if it is “impenetrably mysterious”, it’s ridiculous and so we just “don’t bother”. It’s no different from Dr Dawkins saying we “won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice… if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference”, all this suffering we experience has no value and so it shouldn’t concern us.
It is definitely, a difficult question. The point, I think, is not that things always turn out for the best in this life, but rather much more modest — that given the complexity of life and our finite understanding, we are in no position to judge that God has no good reason for permitting some instance of suffering to afflict our lives.
What goes around comes around.
—-
This thought just occurred to me. Hehe. When Pinoys prayed for Pacman to win, God already know he will lose and that’s that, there’ll be no divine intervention to change the result because the Filipinos must realize that he has no time for prayers like that, that that kind of prayer simply doesn’t work. A prayer should not be about how things should be on the outside but how it has to be in the inside.
I hope I do not sound too pompous, but I would like to know the answer that question as well, so I plan on asking it to God if and when I get to heaven. In the meantime here on earth, let my try my best by doing good and by praying for his guidance.
Although getting in heaven is not my soul reason for doing good, I believe that by doing good significantly lessens the probability of dying an early death. Also, by doing good, I am shaping this world for my children and generations to come.
I do not claim to have the answer to your question, I am sharing how I intend to find the truth.
God is Good, God is fair, believers, non believers, criminals, any religions, even illuminati… we are all his SON and treat us ” EQUAL “.. typhoon, flood, earthquake, tsunami’s, Calamity? that was our home or the earth’s natural behavior science can explain that -, not the Will of your/our GOD.. Nepal strike earthquake not once but twice.. same time we all got this thoughts in mind that for very sure, every buried people alive was once crying for God’s HELP and forgiveness for their live’s but they fail..
not to mention for the survivor’s… they survive because they manage and lucky enough and got the courage to survive .. with guidance of God, not the willingness of God. and for the people who died.. at the moment of their last breath, still God seeking for their forgiveness .. coz real Faith is only tested when death comes.. if you believe in things like Heaven… dying with that kind of scenario would be grateful isn’t it ?.. then why Cry for help to live again? … my very first point is that everything happens in our home,or this we so could earth is not in God’s will! its Because the HUMANITY !
nonsense/baloney/rubbish
God’s will. How many times have I heard someone declare their understanding of this thing I find so indefinable?
funny how pacquiao was all ‘god this, god that’ during the weigh-in, then after the loss, didn’t thank ‘gahd’ and offered excuse after excuse