Faith and politics

DOES faith play a role in politics? The answer is a big yes. Faith should always be at work in us whatever activity we may be doing. It’s not like an attire that we can wear on certain occasions and take off at other moments.

And so in business, politics, entertainment, sports, education, while we are at work or resting, in public or in private, faith has to be with us because that is what it is meant to be. We actually cannot be without faith.

Our reasoning, our judgments, our understanding of things would be severely handicapped if faith is missing. In fact, if we take a close look at how these human operations work, we can get convinced that faith is needed.

Without faith, these activities will miss not only a crucial thing, but also an essential one. Without faith, our activities, no matter how brilliant, will fail to reach their ultimate end, which is not merely human and natural, but supernatural. That is, to bring us and our activities to God.

Without faith, we will be at the mercy of a purely human world, which is a nonsense, since man without God has no meaning. We are always in need of God. We just cannot be left on our own. It’s in our nature to refer ourselves to something else or to someone else, and ultimately to God, the Ultimate Other.

Without faith, our reasoning and thinking would just go in circles, if not stray into dangerous territories. It’s like we would be drifting aimlessly in an empty space, hoping to discover something along the way. We would have no sure guidance, no clear port to go to.

Faith is the final arbiter for defining what is natural to us, what is good and bad, what is true or false in nature. It just cannot be our reasoning alone, our cleverness and whatever that is purely human and natural.

Unless we don’t believe that we are creatures and that therefore there is a Creator, or unless we just believe that we are our own creatures and our own Creator, we need to refer to someone outside ourselves to determine who and what we really are, what is good for us, etc.

It’s actually an anomaly to disrupt our natural tendency to look for God, and just be contented at a certain point with what we already gain or possess. Our life is a journey into infinity, since there is something in us that will never get satisfied with an earthly or temporal good, as long as it is not deliberately thwarted.

When someone says he does not have faith, he actually means he refuses to have it. Or he rejects it at a certain point. Because faith is a free gift from God, readily and abundantly available if sought.

When someone says he does not have faith, he actually means he puts his faith more in himself, in what he already has, rather than in God who always beckons on us, though wrapped in mystery.

This is a truth about faith that we need to clarify these days. What is prevalent is the thinking that faith is not necessary. We need faith, like we need air to breathe, a home to stay and live.

It’s not a biological need, though, or a purely human and natural need, that can automatically be felt. It’s a spiritual and supernatural need that we in our human condition have to cultivate and nurture.

In this current RH bill controversy, it’s painful to hear Catholic leaders not only suspending their faith but also going against it with the excuse that with purely practical reasons they have to set aside their faith because they are leaders not only of Catholics but of everyone, including those without faith.

Worse is to hear Catholic citizens who make their own personal brand of Catholicism, alleging that they have their rights and freedom, and yet going against the doctrine of their faith. They make themselves their own Catholics, not realizing that to be Catholic means to adhere to its faith, and not to make one’s own.

They empty their Catholicism and Christianity. They are the cafeteria Catholics who choose only those parts of the faith convenient to them. They can be called Catholics In Name Only (CINO).

Living one’s faith, being consistent to it, does not mean one is rigid or is a bigot. If lived properly, faith makes one always charitable, open to a variety of options, patient with defects and mistakes, but always upholding the truth, never denying it.