An American reacts

Thanks to the Internet, you don't only get to read and react to articles in papers abroad, you also get to be read and reacted on. Recently, an American reader emailed me his commentary on my article on the religious views of Obama.

I'd like to share his views with my readers, since I think they poignantly illustrate the situation of those now living in the Ground Zero of this religious anomaly, of which Obama is now the icon. What I say more out of philosophy and theology, he says them with the warm blood of experience. Here it goes:

"Kumusta ka, Father Cimagala,

"I read your opinion piece entitled 'Obama's views on religion.' I would like to make the following comments:

First, my name is Tom Diebold and I live in Shelby, Michigan in the United States. Many Americans have been aware of Mr. Obama's personal views of religion, with the emphasis on the word 'personal.' Attempts were made during the recent presidential campaign to publicly discuss Mr. Obama's approach to religion, but the mainstream media in the US cut-off any discussion, in effect protecting Mr. Obama from any detailed scrutiny by the electorate. It worked.

"Mr. Obama's approach to religious faith and belief is a very common situation in the Western World today, particularly in Europe and the United States. I believe that it is not a favorable situation for the future of the Western World.

"You are right, Man has an inherent pull toward religious belief. In his heart, Man knows that God exists, that there is a transcendent explanation for existence. But modern Man has been taught, and has convinced himself for many complex reasons, that the ultimate understanding, the source of "enlightenment" is internal to Man's rational mind. So God, the eternal presence, becomes an internal manifestation of Man's rational thought. This is quite convenient, as the views, beliefs and acceptable practices around religion are then open to Man's imagination. This is one reason for this phenomenon. Man does not want to be restricted by an external, absolute, transcendent source of morality; he wants the ability, the power, to make up the rules for himself. Internalizing God is the sure way to do this.

"It is the Garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge passage from Genesis, in a modern context.

"Obama's beliefs manifest this tendency with remarkable clarity. Every belief is tailored to the personal, the preferential, very little to personal sacrifice or anything that is personally difficult to accept according to each individual. There is no community of believers, everyone makes it up for themselves, to suit their own needs. 'Whatever feels good, do it,' that old mantra from the 1960s, has become the prominent cultural attitude, with disastrous consequences.

"It is a testament to his popularity that he can so openly display this tendency and be so widely applauded. To hold orthodox religious views today in the US is seen as quite backward, even dangerous -- close-minded and unintelligent. You get called a 'fundamentalist' and the discussion is over. The current belief is that only the weak-minded would rely on an external, absolute belief system. You would be amazed at the number of times, in discussions with friends and acquaintances, that I have been told, 'Anyone who believes in an external, absolute morality is not in touch with their own feelings or emotionally developed as an autonomous, independent person,' or words to that effect. It is as if having a traditional view of morality makes you some kind of mindless robot. People actually believe this.

"What this means is that people make up their own moral system for themselves. Whatever is personally comfortable is therefore moral. Whatever is personally uncomfortable is immoral. This may or may not comply with traditional views of morality. This is why Western culture has grown so decadent. It is as if an immature, adolescent view of reality has become dominant among the Western adult population."

Succeeding emails revealed this American knew more Visayan words, so I asked him how he learned these words. He said that he was in Davao for three weeks last year to meet a girl he got to know through the Internet.

He has very nice words for the Filipino people, without ignoring what he thought were also our cultural weaknesses.

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