Choose your own god (part I)

Punto Central Luzon

HARD TO GET
By Joey Aguilar

Choose your own god (part I)

One of the extravagances I would willfully commit without feeling guilty is taking a cup of hot cappuccino at Starbucks. Not only for its “expensive” ambiance as what Erap complained before (eraption joke), but because news sources and friends often visit the place.

As expected, I was fortunate to see my co-athletes at Angeles University Foundation whom I haven’t seen for almost 7 years. They left the country a few years after graduating in college to seek for “greener Pasteur” abroad.

Over a cup of coffee, we talked about corruption, cheating, infidelity, politics, population and god, the same topics that we were discussing in 1995.

“Why do you think we have corrupt officials in government?” they asked. They expect me to answer them specific questions from a journalist’s point of view.

“I’m not a preacher or a prophet sent by God, but believe me, it happens to be like that because people have different gods, they chose to believe a god of their own,” I told them.

Well, they wouldn’t want to believe it since each of them believes there is only one God. “So why and how?” the curious Fernan asks.

I’m not an atheist trying to persuade them to believe that there is no god at all and probably, as a journalist, I was just skeptical [without being a confirmed cynic].

The most worrisome situation is not that we are perceived to be the most corrupt country in East Asia, I continued, but because Filipinos prefer to have gods who tolerate corruption and infidelity.

In fact, screwing someone’s wife is forgivable as long as you go to mass on a Sunday or Saturday, or a preferred day of “worship” and make a simple whisper of “sorry patawarin niyo po ako” to a kunsintidor god. After going out of the church, believe it or not, that man had been forgiven by his god.

I don’t know how corrupt politicians pray, but they also have their own gods who allow them to use people’s money for their own personal interests.

Those people who asked for forgiveness will do it again, and will pray the same prayer and kneel in front of their gods. And again believe me, without any doubt, his god will forgive him. They chose for themselves a very very merciful and forgiving god to suit their caprices and vices.

Thus, for the two, to be corrupt and to be a womanizer is anyway forgivable. Hell is only an imagination, an illusion thought only for children.

On the other hand, there are people who chose to have no gods at all. They preferred to live without a supreme being for them to have excuses for doing the same things that pleases them.
Now, there’s a God that most people do not like to have. He is strict and jealous. (to be continued)