FROM THE BARREL OF MY PEN
By Gonzalo “Jun” Policarpio


SAY A PRAYER TO GOD FOR THE FILIPINO PEOPLE


No one can doubt that the Filipino people are very religious, Godbelieving, and prayerful. Most of them expect miracles to happen in their lives as a solution to their problems. And so are the American people. And so are the Latin Americans, the Spaniards, the Italians, and other people who call themselves Christians or Catholics.

As children of God, Christians are supposed to be blessed and endowed with all the necessary things in life. As the Bible said, “there should be no poor among you.” But the said reality is that some of the poor peoples in the world are Christians or Catholics.

One thing that God hates, according to the Bible, is idolatry or worship of other beings or things. The Old Testament speaks of the severe punishment that idolaters deserve that is death by stoning.

A friend of mine once asked me to comment on Rev. Pat Robertson’s statement attributing the recent killer-earthquake to hit Haiti to a past historical episode where the Haitian people were said to have sought the help of the occult spirits in driving away the French colonizers. I refused to remark because I don’t know if it really happened. If it did, then there may be a correlation even to the killer-typhoon Katrina that destroyed New Orleans sometime ago.

We know of the killer floods that devastated lives and properties in the Philippines last year. Now, right now, a killer drought is destroying once productive land all over that country causing shortages of food, electricity, water, and other basic necessities of life. Worst of all, it also started epidemics of all kinds of diseases among the people.

Do you think there is a pervasive influence of idolatry in the Philippines today?

Idolatry is worship or excessive devotion to other beings or things other than God in Heaven. It is categorically written as the second commandment of God in the Bible and the punishment is death.

An episode in a running soap opera titled “Agua Bendita” shown at the Filipino Channel in New York caught my interest. It’s about a Filipino priest who chose to leave his flock and went to hide in the mountain instead of being worshipped other than God.

One Sunday as my wife tuned again at The Filipino Channel to watch some Filipino soap operas, I noticed a Filipino religious leader dressed in a flaming red blazer as he jokingly preached to his thousands of followers while walking to and fro on the stage. Do his followers worship God in Heaven or him as they raised their handkerchiefs and umbrellas for the religious leader’s blessing?

I love my country of birth, the Philippines proudly called “Pearl of the Orient” because of her beauty even surpassing Hawaii or any other Polynesian group of islands in the Pacific. I believe there are more than ten true believers of God living there and I hope God will not destroy her like what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.

End