Letter To The Editor: Our country's three temptations

In the midst of the intense RH Bill dialogue that has disturbed the sleep of our church, many of our country’s ordinary Catholics have kept their silence.

 This silence is nothing but precious, because it echoes the music of the valley of death – the desert – that threatens to entrap the poor in the Philippines. Trapped in this desert one cannot help but fall silent. Trapped in this desert, what can one say about the RH Bill indeed?

 The gospel on this 1st Sunday of Lent, however, helps us listen to God’s voice. The Holy Spirit, in this gospel, led Jesus into the desert; and in the desert, the devil tempted Jesus: (1) to turn stones into bread, (2) to throw himself down from the highest walls of the temple for God’s angels to save him, and (3) to kneel and worship before Satan in order to gain power over all the nations of the world.

 What is wrong, in fact, with being tempted to convert a valley of death into a garden filled with life? What is wrong with turning stone into bread?

 The devil in today’s Gospel, however, only reveals his utter cleverness. The devil did not tempt Jesus to perform outright crimes like murder or rape. The devil did not tempt Jesus to pander to his greed or lust. The devil merely saw that Jesus was in the desert, and that terrible hunger gripped him. The devil merely asked Jesus to first turn stones into bread: to appease his hunger.

 Today our country is also tempted to turn stone into bread: To turn public anxiety on the population issue into food for the needy. Only 3 days after the US and the Philippines signed a $434 Million financial compact to fight poverty and corruption, the government then publicly announced its intention to support Filipino couples who want contraceptives.

 The Philippines is undoubtedly an untapped market for contraceptives worth tens of billions of dollars. To tap into this market, a merchant is justified to spend much. But why should the strength of the entire government be used to sway the Filipinos into changing their attitudes towards contraceptives?

 For centuries the Filipino people did successfully protect itself from HIV and sexually transmissible diseases by avoiding pre-marital and extra-marital sex and by abstinence. For many years the sanctity by which we regarded marriage protected our bodies and our families from harm. Yes many times, we did encounter unplanned pregnancies; but we always shuddered at the thought of fixing this perceived problem with the death of another human being.

 What if the campaign to change our customary method of keeping our reproductive health would in fact destroy who we are as a people? What if it would destroy our capacity to respect marriage as a funnel of God’s grace where He courses His love, peace, and prosperity? What if the campaign to promote contraceptives – using our government’s resources – would eventually impair our capacity and our children’s capacity to abstain, when necessary, from sex?

 Our lives would, then, be in the hands of contraceptive merchants, not in God’s hands, not even in our hands. When tempted to turn stone into bread in the midst of 40 days of hunger, Jesus humbly answered Satan, “Scripture says: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

 Today our country is also tempted to throw itself down from the highest wall of the temple in order to allow God’s angels to come down and save the country.

 By allowing itself to systematically use its network and resources to promote artificial contraceptives and to weaken the customary ways by which the Filipinos coped with reproductive health issues, the country, in essence, would have agreed to deliberately throw itself down from the highest walls of the temple and to deliberately fall from grace.

 Today our country is also, finally, tempted to worship another god in exchange for the right to rule the nations.

 In response to this temptation, Jesus humbly answered, “Be off, Satan! Scripture says: Worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.”

 It does not matter indeed what the devil promises. No matter how beautiful none of it would come true. Our people must not, therefore, be tricked into worshipping the gods of milk and honey in exchange for the promise of the power to rule the nations, for, if we worshipped the wrong god, we would not have the power to rule a single nation. We would also have neither milk nor honey.

 In weighing the RH Bill, finally, we must rather remember who we are. We are disciples of Jesus. To face the perils of the desert, we will heed the word of God and not the words of contraceptive merchants.