Reclaim the Primacy of God's Reign in Our Lives: Reject Imperialist

Reclaim the Primacy of God's Reign in Our Lives: Reject Imperialist

Globalization and Join the Struggle of the Poor for Human Dignity and

Rights!

by Benjamin Alforque, MSC

It is so good to be back in Bacolod, to hold our PCPR National Council

Meeting in the place where the historic expose' of the miserable lot of the

sacadas at the hands of despotic and oppressive landlords and comprador-

bourgeois shocked the conscience of

the leaders of the Church. In a sense the Philippine Church in our modern

Philippine

History was never the same again after that. She began to take her education

from the poor once again, especially from the poor who struggle here, in

your very own province.

Today, we are tasked to do once again a biblico-theological reflection on

our own life- situation, focusing on the state of human rights of the

Filipino people. It is very important for us, Christians and believers,

never to lose this task and to waver in our biblico-theological reflection.

This task will help us deepen our Christian conviction of the seriousness of

God's Reign before the triviality of the worship of Mammon. This will help

us recognize the primacy of the people's praxis of liberation over the

forces that seek to destroy it, to neutralize it or to co-opt it in favor of

an advocacy without pain within the framework of the status quo. Biblico-

theological reflection will hopefully lead us to our roots, and radicalize

our sense of being human for the event of God's Reign.

Because this is a biblico-theological reflection, therefore, it shall be

concerned with the Primacy of Experience of Material Reality:

In the first place, what we now read as the texts of the bible are actually

the fruits of theological reflections that have undergone three moments in a

single process. The process of self-understanding on the one hand, and of

discerning God's will (divine revelation) on the other - and both

essentially and organically linked to one another

- did progressively develop from the first stage of experience of material

reality, to the second stage of secular celebration and finally to the third

stage of liturgical ceremonies (Stuhlmuller and Senior, Biblical Foundations

for Mission, p. 13-ff).

The experience of material reality always pointed out to moments of

liberation, no matter how insignificant, in a situation of oppression, no

matter how little and private; this basic

experience was then committed to memory and celebrated as a secular

occurrence in the life of the people. Remembering, either done by an

individual who articulates the experience with which the community as a

whole can resonate or as a collective effort of bringing back a moment of

liberation shared by all, contains an explosive power of its own: it can

galvanize the people into one community that possesses one common history,

asserts one common identity and struggles for one common destiny. That is

why memory can be a dangerously subversive activity.

This secular event now repeatedly experienced through a secular celebration

is now raised to the level of liturgical ceremony: when people find in it

meaning and depth, then a whole new interpretation is given to that primary

secular experience. The profane takes on a sacred character; the materiality

of experience a religious-spiritual dimension and what has been a secular

celebration is now turned into a liturgical ceremony: a worshipping ritual

and a celebration of life with the divine. At this level of discourse, at

the third moment of reflection, one wrestles with the questions of the

ultimate and

understands life as basically an experience with the Author of all Creation

in the midst of evil and human weakness.

It is awareness to an invitation to liberation, beyond death, in the

fullness of life with the Giver of Life. It is on this level that we accept

the biblical text: "its confessional not its critical history, which gives

us the teaching of the Bible" (George H. Soares-Prabhu, The

Bible as Magna Carta of Movements for Liberation and Human Rights in

Concilium, 1995/1, p. 89).

Our biblico-theological reflection shall also be concerned with Conflictive

History and the Integration of Opposites:

Our biblico-theological task today also fundamentally includes going into

the heart of the matter, to go beyond the propaganda line that the communist

insurgency, the people's armed struggle, constitute the fundamental source

of evil in our time. For in our national historical experience, the

assertions of the poor to live were always from the beginning movements of

liberation from certain oppressive conditions of, either, radical earthly

finiteness or of some historical injustice or of the radical essential

interconnectedness of both. In this light, what constitutes evil is not so

much the conflict that these movements for liberation generate, but the

hardness of heart and the violence that this hardness of heart creates from

among those who block the movement for change and untenably cling

on to the interests and structures of oppression and injustice.

Therefore, our biblico-theological reflection will also mirror the

geo-political class struggle as the material setting of our experience of

conflict and struggle.

This primacy of experience of material reality and of conflict is seen

through the optic of the poor.

It is our hope that, in the heart of the matter, we shall discover the

gospel imperative of redeeming love, made real by the struggle of men and

women to proclaim the Reign of God even at the cost of their freedom and of

their very own lives. It is our final task to discover in this heart of the

matter the giftedness of the Resurrection, and creation's glorious share in

this great victory of life over death, of love's triumph over every form of

hatred.

1. After listening to an analysis of our contemporary human situation, we go

now to the heart of the matter: this globalization, this imperialist

globalization, is fundamentally truly an anti-thesis of God's Reign.

Globalization is technically and basically the plot of the rich nations, and

the clique that rule over them, to "integrate all national economies into

one global economy within the neo-liberal capitalist framework, under one

superpower, the USA." As such, it has no respect whatsoever for nations and

national boundaries, for national freedom and cultural identities, for

constitutions, laws and traditions, for peoples and nations. Its god is the

dollar; it follows the law of the market, and it has no qualms of conscience

to sacrifice and kill life and to destroy creation at the altar of global

competitiveness, by acts of war and terror. Therefore, we must reject it at

its roots. "As for you: do not set your heart on what you are to eat and

drink; stop worrying. Let all the nations of the world run after these

things; your Father/Parent knows that you need them. Seek rather the Kingdom

and these things will be given

to you as well" (Luke 12, 29-31).

There is a distinction between earning a living, on the one hand, and

accumulation of wealth and capital on the other. The former predisposes us

to love, service, sharing and

solidarity; the latter feeds insatiable greed and unbridles irrational

appetite. For "the

Kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink; it lies in justice, peace

and joy in the Holy Spirit, and if you serve Christ in this way, you will

please God and be praised by people" (Rom 14, 17-18).

2. Our experience of imperialist globalization has shown to us that its

social base in our country is domestic feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.

The harshness of the

conspiracy of the landlords, the bureaucrats in government and foreign

monopoly capital

can be seen in the undernourished lives of landless peasants and the

famished existence of impoverished farmers. It is evident in the muscular

yet tubercular muscles of the unschooled workers, whose brute force

exploited by capital cannot even buy that which it produces. It is in this

sense that we must reject, together with imperialist globalization, this

domestic feudalism and bureaucrat- capitalism because they intrinsically

violate the dignity of the human person and trample on the rights of the

people, especially the poor.

In fact this system of domination that we now experience is actually what is

called the dictatorship of the ruling class. It is a dictatorship that not

only preys upon the labor

of the poor and the gifts of creation but also thrives as parasites and

leeches of that

very society within which it lives. It is a system that feeds on the blood

of the innocent and flaunts on the oppression of the people.

This is the reason why the present ruling class led by the US-GMA regime

cannot do anything right, or if it ever does, it hits it so with evil

intentions.

Its shameless puppetry to the US imperialist policy and its war on terror

has opened our land and nation to direct foreign intervention, smiling as it

does while our sovereignty and national patrimony are raped by foreign

hegemonic capital and pretending at the same time to be a strong republic by

the sheer force of its military arm, bereft of

the deepest respect and recognition of the people. It is precisely for this

reason that it wants to change the constitution of the land.

It promotes human rights violators and criminals in government service even

as it allows the imprisonment, abduction and killings of human rights

advocates go unpunished and with impunity.

It promotes the violence of war and the culture of silence and death, rather

than seek the ways to peace that are the works of justice.

In the face of economic crisis brought about by globalization policies and

extravagant spending to win an election at all cost, it is now bent on

exacting heavy levies and taxes from the people instead of cleansing

government of grafters and corruptors, of repudiating unjust debt and of

putting into prison well-known cheats and tax-evaders.

But it is impotent to do so for they are its own benefactors.

It protects hegemonic capital in its self-accumulation through profits but

leaves the eople underpaid, underemployed and unemployed and with least

social services.

It would now scare the people by the increasing number of its population,

rather than distribute the wealth and resources of the nation to its very

own people. It would rather produce more goods for the market, than lives

and people who will produce and benefit from the fruits of their labor.

And the officialdom of the churches is silent, because it wants to give this

GMA regime a chance. Actually it has its own men and women in the echelons

of this administration making ready the largesse of the system for the needs

of its churches. And more, this officialdom has great stakes in the system,

for they too have large investments in conspiracy with hegemonic foreign

capital.

There lies the greatest evil - the structures of sin - for it commits all of

us to the deceptive largesse of the system, without our knowing it, and

makes all of us participants in the

structures of the violence of injustice and exploitation. It is the whole

structure of Baalism that teaches us to sin; a structure built on money,

power and prestige and soaked by the sweat and blood of the poor and

oppressed.

In this sense, there is really no place for the dignity of the human person

and rights of the people in this system. It is an evil system. It opposes

violently the values of God's Reign.

Therefore, it must go!

Already the prophets have counseled us so.

Is. 6, 10: This is the resounding condemnation of Yahweh upon the structures

of the violence of injustice and, therefore, of sin in a period of

Israelites history when the State and the Temple conspired to dispossess the

people: because of the taste of comfort, power and fame and because of the

pervading influence of the system of greed and abuse, therefore, no one

heard of the Justice of Yahweh anymore for no one spoke ever again about it.

Hence, everyone's heart became wrapped with fats, and, therefore, bound to

complete heart failure by cardiac arrest! In the same manner must Jerusalem

fall, barren, exiled and forsaken!

Jer. 6, 13-15: In another yet stirring prophetic exposé of the structures of

the violence of injustice and exploitation, here comes Jeremiah now

proclaiming the total bankruptcy of

a system that pretends to proclaim the peace of silence and quietude in the

midst of

wanton loot, lies and deprivation perpetrated and led by the ruling class

through the Temple and the State that it uses against the people. The fakery

of this peace lies fundamentally not in the absence of war but in the

presence of infidelity, thievery, deception and all kinds of abominable

wickedness that permeated the whole social order.

The prophets Amos and Hosea and all the other minor prophets have described

this situation of landlessness, homelessness and uncare for the poor, the

widow and the orphan as precipitated primarily by the blood-thirsty upper

class, in their thirst for money, power and prestige through deception and

corruption. Generally then, the whole social order - the structure of the

violence of injustice and sin - has fallen into the morass of moral decay.

It is interesting to note that the biblical author pictured this sinfulness

and violent society as unfaithful, likened to a person not contented with

just one paramour, from the highest level of officialdom to the lowest level

of the ordinary hoi polloi. For the cultural apparatuses of the rich have so

shaped and engulfed the consciousness of the poor. Thus, Israel ceased to be

a people with a backbone on behalf of justice. Therefore, it was bound to be

further exploited by the imperialist powers that were then emerging:

Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece and, finally, Rome, in the name of some

god, including the emperor-god, against the God of justice, peace and

integrity of creation.

3. The hope is in our hands, the hope for a better tomorrow is in the hands

of the people who struggle, and who remain to be the sacraments of God's

loving presence among our people in our time.

This is a profound biblical conviction already introduced to us in the story

of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4, 1-16). The first time that sin entered into the

picture of biblical history is found in the conflict between Cain and Abel,

which was resolve by Cain through violence defined as an act of shedding

innocent blood. With Abel's death, the tradition of the good would have

ended, and the mark of wandering sin as slayer of innocent life would have

gone roaming around the earth, a fugitive but nevertheless free. This

explains the historical phenomenon of the seeming triumph of evil and of its

capacity to socially reproduce with power and impunity. And we wonder: why

would the good and the innocent die so young; while sin and violence thrive?

But the conflictivity was not, and cannot be resolved by the shedding of

innocent blood. That is why the biblical author picked up again the theme of

the good with the birth of Seth who shall from then on take

up the innocent cause of Abel. From this primordial history, an intuitive

insight into the integration of opposites is laid down: good and evil do co-

exist; but the good will always rise over evil. For such was the promise

that originated from the struggle between the woman and the serpent, between

her seed and its seed, and its resolution in the crushing of the serpent's

head by the bruised feet of her offspring (Gen 3, 15).

Gen. 14, 11-24: On the other hand, in the social scale, this struggle of

opposites and the violence that it generates in human history is taken up

again in Abram's violent act of

liberating his nephew Lot from his kidnappers, without ransom. It must be

said that the cause of these tribal violent wars which finally reached Sodom

and Gomorrah was no other than the capture of wealth at the expense of

innocent lives. "The booty belongs to the victor" became a law that put

prizes to economic wars of aggression. And Abram, whose act of liberation

was considered an act of justice that led to peace (Heb. 7,1-2; cf. Also

Benjamin E. Alforque, MSC, Freedom from Feudal Bondage, Land Abuse and

Economic Exploitation, in ECJN 2000), overturned this ungodly practice by

refusing the riches offered to him as prize of victory (Gen. 14,22). It is

never a case of justice to obtain

wealth by violence, especially that wealth that comes at the cost of

innocent lives, yes,

and even those innocent lives of the foot soldiers. For accepting the bounty

and the loot is an act of violence, mercenary violence itself!

But we must ask: is our God a god of violence or a god of tenderness and