Academia & Ecclesia

Last Sunday, a preacher asked the congregation to recite the “Pledge of Allegiance” in church. I find such a practice idolatrous. My allegiance to my country is not a part of my Christian obligation. As a Christian, my ultimate allegiance belongs to God alone. My allegiance to my country is part of my obligation as a citizen or resident of my country. My allegiance to my country is primarily motivated by my willingness to contractually participate in social cooperation for the establishment of peace, security, social stability, and justice for all members of the citizenry. A country is temporarily and contingently established for the organization and management of the contractual participations of the citizenry in social cooperation. Of course, I am willing to die for my country, when the values (such as peace, security, social stability, and justice) that are essential for the social cooperation of the citizenry are unjustifiably threatened. But that’s not a Christian obligation. That...

After the death of Jerry Falwell and the declining popularity of Pat Robertson, surprisingly the legacy of the evangelical right persists in politically conservative media (like Fox News) and conservative evangelical churches (like some Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God churches). Equipped with sensationalistic jesters and political preachers, bearers of such legacy can pester the current administration. No wonder Obama and his advisers are launching an attack on Fox News, the main source of information for the evangelical right. Since the presidential campaign season for the 2008 election, I heard numerous anti-Obama sermons in a large congregation with a devoutly Republican pastor. A devoutly Republican pastor is one who cleverly subsumes the Christian message under the Republican agendas. Many conservative evangelical churches have devoutly Republican pastors, who regularly politicize the pulpit by unnecessarily turning congregants against Obama. In a subtle way, this is danger...

From the perspective of Jesus, what makes an act wrong is the lack of love that ought to motivate one’s treatment of another. All humans (including fetuses, mentally disabled people, and terminally ill patients) and animals who can obviously relate with humans ought to be treated with love. So, Christians are not really expected to treat humans morally as an expression of respect for human rights. Jesus does not use “rights” as the bases for establishing good human relationships. Rather, he uses love as the basis for establishing good human relationships. Most cases of abortion are not acts that are motivated by love. Rather, they are motivated by selfishness or unwillingness to take responsibility for voluntary engagements in sexual affairs. So, most cases of abortion, from a Christian perspective, are wrong or immoral. However, it is impractical and unrealistic for a state to legislate love as the motivating factor for the voluntary actions of the citizenry. Rather, such actions, fro...

A secularized law is a law that is devoid of any inherent influences, grounds, or justifications from any religion. It has a neutral position in matters of religious convictions. In a religiously pluralistic society, like the U.S., any of its laws must have secularized bases or foundations. Religiously grounded values cannot be universally, objectively, or conclusively validated. Such values can only be validated relative to the religious framework that one uses. For example, as Christians, we value marriage as a sacred union between a man and a woman. We justify its sacredness within our religious framework, namely a framework that is informed by the Bible. However, it is obviously the case that there are many non-Christian Americans, who do not use the same framework in justifying their beliefs. The imposition of such a view of marriage on non-Christians infringes on the rights and liberties of non-Christian Americans to choose their own religious or philosophical stances on the stat...

I am annoyed by the recent town hall meetings with some U.S. senators and representatives. With angry citizens who are clearly misinformed by the conservative media and conservative politicians, rational discourses regarding Obama’s health care reform bill seem impossible. How can one have a rational discourse with anyone who is overwhelmed by his or her irrational impulses, in addition to deeply held false beliefs? They are misinformed considering that their claims are drawn from fallacious inferences (e.g. slippery slope, red herring, straw man, ad hominem, etc.). They are moved by their fears, prejudices, paranoia, insecurities, false assumptions, etc. Of course, conservative media (like Fox News) and conservative politicians (like Sarah Palin) are responsible for fanning the flame with fallacious, sensationalist, exaggerated, and caricatured claims about the proposed health care reform bill. Loud mouths with messages lacking in substance usually work in inspiring the masses. Substa...

The rights that the law protects are the ones that can be imposed on the citizens who are within the jurisdictions of such law. The determinations of what rights citizens must possess must not be guided by some religious or metaphysical principles, since such principles are usually difficult to conclusively, universally or objectively justify. Rights must be determined as byproducts of social contracts that are eventually established in a community that promotes the sustainability of individual lives, fairly distributed individual liberties, and the common happiness of the general population. Generally, a citizen must have the right to do whatever he wants to do as long as he or she does not cause direct physical harm on another citizen or direct damages to privately or publicly owned properties. Considering that fetuses are not technically citizens (unless we arbitrarily include them), the mother’s right to have an abortion must qualify within the scope of the legally protectable righ...

Human sinfulness inhibits our abilities to enjoy the things that are designed to make deeply relational creatures, like us, genuinely happy. The genuine happiness that I have in mind involves a feeling of deep satisfaction that evokes awe in response to the beauty of a relationship that is inspired by love. For example, our tendency to be greedy inhibits our ability to enjoy the act of giving that is motivated by love. Extramarital affairs inhibit a person’s ability to enjoy the depth of a loving relationship with his or her spouse. Pride inhibits our ability to enjoy a loving relationship with other people. The act of lying inhibits our ability to enjoy the beauty of a relationship that is based on honesty. Worldly pleasures inhibit our ability to enjoy the beauty of a life that is lived in peace and tranquility. The loving God designed humans for genuine happiness. However, human sinfulness inhibits our progress to genuine happiness. So, a loving God ought to be deeply bothered by hu...

I’m not really a political junky, although I like watching shows and reading news articles on politics. With the current budget crisis in the U.S., in particular California (where I live and work), and the corruption problems with the main leaders of the Philippines (where I was born and raised), I have a pessimistic outlook on the capacities of the citizenry to immediately cause significant changes in a nation. We have conflicting expert opinions about extremely important matters that can supposedly be addressed objectively. We have politicians with selfish personal agendas. Most voters are pretty much ill-informed about what’s really up with the political world. We have business-minded popular media. We have speculations and suspicions about people in power, which are entertaining enough to be manipulated by the popular media for monetary gains. All forms of government somehow encountered failures. Political theories often have significant limitations. Look at the results of the so-c...

I am concerned with personal knowledge of God. It is a kind of knowledge that is based on acquaintance. In a sense, acquaintance knowledge generally has perceptual element. However, God, as invisible, is not perceptually accessible. So, if the invisible God, who exists, tries to reveal himself, either we do not understand what he tries to reveal or there is a way to somehow understand what he tries to reveal. Of course, it is possible that there is a God who tries to reveal himself and we do not understand what he tries to reveal. If such possibility is in actuality the case, then reflections on God are pretty much useless. It means that this God is unaware of the fact that he is doomed to fail in his attempts to reveal. Christianity is a religion that assumes that the invisible God tries to reveal himself and there is a way to somehow understand what he tries to reveal. Although God is invisible, God’s revelatory acts in human history are visible. So, his revelatory acts in human hist...

Since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, let me briefly reflect about love. What is the nature of God’s love for humanity? What is the nature of that love that has God as its object or the kind of love (directed to God) that the Bible demands from humans? God’s love and the love that is demanded from us are both intense and radical. God’s love for humanity is both intense and radical. Based on the theological narrative that developed through the spiritual insights of the early followers of Jesus (like Peter, John, and Paul), Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s love for humanity. What does it mean? According to their theological narrative, Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. God sent his only begotten Son to serve as the sacrifice for the sins of the world. The religious frameworks of the ancient world, of course, shaped the formation of this narrative. In the ancient world, human actions that offend the deities require sacrifices that sufficiently appease the offended...

Political liberalism, as the ideology that shapes the values of our society, demands various practices, such as the recognition of various individualistic rights (e.g. reproductive rights, legalized same-sex marriage, etc.) and the glorification of pluralism, that are opposed to some of our religious convictions. Political liberalism can easily accommodate the secularization of the society, since both of them attempt to have religiously neutral stances from which to view the world. Liberal Christian groups, in some sense, uncritically embrace political liberalism, in a sense that they even equate the values of political liberalism with the values of Christianity (as if they are inherently the same). However, conservative Christian groups criticize the values of political liberalism, without recognizing the indispensability of such values in the formation of the society that we try to build and without providing any workable alternative values that will create the same kind of society t...