The Preacher and The Skeptic

I arrived a half and an hour early for Sir Rob’s Philosophy class at UP Diliman. The day was still young and the temperature was still forgiving so I decided to review my notes at the stairs near the entrance of Palma Hall. As I’ve said in one of my previous blog posts, I am enticed to the UP culture where individuality and freedom of expression is highly upheld and respected. From my point of view, overlooking the Academic Oval, I can see a variety of characters. I see an artsy fartsy girl who wears a shirt that I guess she painted herself, a guy who wears a pure black ensemble with matching headphones which I guess he uses to isolate himself from the world, two guys at my right who I overheard to be talking about articles about physics research, and a girl who I can seem to fathom who she is trying to imitate by resting a flower on her left ear, Jasmine Trias or Rosalinda?

I love seeing oddity around me. It’s just refreshing to see someone doing something out of the norms. Plus it takes a lot of character to pull off something odd to make it look cool. I just have to salute people who defy society’s expectations on them.

***

Back to the story. An hour had already passed by and I was still fixed to the spot where I was earlier. I was already boring myself out when a student from UP approached me.

“Hi I’m Kevin, from _________, a student organization here in UP. We engage students into conversation regarding certain topics that we might find useful in your life.”


(Useful in my life? Tell me about it)

“What’s your name?” 

“RJ”, I said as I extended my hand. 

“From what college are you and what year?” 

“Secret. Haha. Basta, I’m not from here.” 

“Where do you stay?”, he said as he positioned himself beside me. 

“Somewhere in Manila…” 

“Oh… Do you believe in God? Do you think there is only one God for all religions?”

"Oh my gad. Anong sinasabi ng lalakeng to?", I thought. I found the question to absurd to answer yet I still replied, “Yes, I would like to believe that.”

“By the way, what’s your religion?”, he asked again.

(Ano ba ito? Irerecruit ba nya ako sa kulto nila or something?) 

“I’m Catholic by baptism, though I consider the concept of God as something that should transcend religion. You know John Locke’s Religious pluralism theory? I have a similar stand.” 

I forgot the details on how our conversation went but it lead to a part when he started talking about “The Most High God”

“The Most High God created man and woman. He put them in a garden of abundance told them not to eat the forbidden fruit.” 

“Isn’t this the story of Adam and Eve?”, I interrupted


“Yes, but not quite.” 

He proceeded,“ There was this angel was so proud that he wanted to be like the Most High God, so he tricked Eve into picking the forbidden fruit and that’s when God decided to punish them. This is why we die and are not granted eternal life.” 

“That must be one cruel God if he allows his beloved creations to perish, isn’t it?”

“This is the reason why he gave us the 10 Commandments or the rules to follow if we want to be forgiven and granted eternal life with him in heaven” 

“So are you telling me that God’s love is conditional? That if we want to be with him, we must follow his rules? Can we now say that a parent’s love may be greater than God’s love since a parent accepts a child even if he made a mistake? Remember the parable of the prodigal son?” 

“The 10 Commandments is like the ideal rules to be lived by and not necessarily have to be followed every time. They aren’t perfect.” 

“How do we then achieve salvation since you said that following the rules is needed to be with God? Plus, you said that the commandments are imperfect. How can something imperfect come from something perfect like God? Why did he set these commandments in the first place when he knows we won’t be able to meet them?”

“You see it’s more of the people’s fault since that we cannot follow the 10 Commandments”

“If that is the case, why would God, who knows all our flaws, give something that he knows we can’t keep? That is quite tantamount to saying that God singles out people from eternal life with him since people cannot perfectly live by his rules, humans as we are” 

“Probably, he wants to glorify himself.” 

“So now God is egocentric and self absorbed?” 

“Exactly”, he said.

***

Okay, I’m not sure if I persuaded him to contradict his previous stand or he just had to agree to disagree since I am the unbelieving type. After having to sit through  8 units of Theology at school, I cannot assert that my faith grew into having a richer and more meaningful relationship with God but I can definitely say that it taught me how to reason in line with the Catholic principles and break the arguments that contradict it, as those that I stated above. The fellow’s intention may be really divine, but if he cannot defend what he says with accurate explanation then I hardly doubt that he would get his message across skeptical people.

*** 

“Seriously, taga saan ka?” he said as we ended our conversation.

“Secret.haha” 

“Ano ba course mo?” 

“Nursing” 

“Taga UP Manila ka no?” 

“Hinde, basta secret na lang.HAHA” 

I bet he would be dumbfounded if he knew I was from a the Pontifical and Catholic University of the Philippines.