Maybe I am not religious enough, barely meeting the
requirement to even understand why, as Catholics, we had to believe in some
supreme being who is beyond human comprehension. I was very young when I was
told not to question God’s existence or his teachings. And, if I got into a
debate with a believer who was so convinced that there is something beyond his
comprehension, he’d always tell me to have faith when my reason fails to
understand.
Sorry, I just can’t understand that. In fact, I refuse to
give in to an argument that demands that I give up my human experience and
understanding, and to take a leap of faith. Leap to what? It’s not that I don’t
take risks or don’t understand what it means to take risks. When there are no
more option; or that other options are just as bad as not doing anything, then
risk maybe the only choice. However, in the case of leap of faith, there are options:
one of which is I choose not to give my thinking.
I also don’t understand what it means to worship. But, if
worshipping demands that I give up my thinking, then I don’t want to have
anything to do with worshipping. I refuse to give up my individuality. I could
be dead wrong about the true meaning of worship. But, for many years, I see
people give up their individuality when they worship some being that escapes
comprehension.
But, really, that’s all we know: what we experience, what
can be experienced, thinking, feeling – that is, all we know is what humans are
capable of; and they can be understood even if ‘mathematical’ or ‘logical’ reasoning
alone cannot comprehend. We have that human capacity to understand the
universal human conditions.
Yet, I have great respect Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu,
Confucius and other great moral teachers, for their teachings on how to live
and how to treat other human beings. In fact, I came to understand them more
deeply through the lessons I have learned from other human beings like my
father, my teachers, sometimes from complete strangers like Gandhi, Martin
Luther King, and the people in the streets who performed great service to their
fellow human beings. From them, I learned:
To think on my own
To be brave
To be responsibility for one’s actions
To respect the others and their opinions.
To believe that others have their own ways of thinking and
expressing themselves.
To let go of your loved ones for their sakes even though it
pains to do so.
As I spend more time reflecting on the teachings of these
religious figures, the more these teachings become familiar. I soon realized that
they were once taught to me: my father and other great human beings, through
their actions and words, lived by them. They had shown me that these moral teachings
found in religious texts were humanly attainable. But, for what purpose? To
serve the High Almighty? The God or some supreme being that is unattainable and
completely incomprehensible? No, It was the teaching of self empowerment.
Self empowerment is not and cannot be an act of a selfish
ego that craves everything for himself. He cares for no one but himself. The
selfish has not yet freed itself from the dictates of his basic instincts, from
greed. On the contrary, Self empowerment is about empowering the individual so
he may free himself from the outer and inner oppression that so weakens him
that he would easily surrender his self to an abstraction, an ideology, be it religious
or political.
The self empowered individual, through his words and actions,
teaches the others self empowerment. The self empowered individual has a
heightened his sense of individuality, not individualism. And, with a
heightened sense of individuality, he recognizes the importance of a community,
not anarchism or authoritarianism that demands blind faith, blind allegiance.
This teaching of self empowerment is, I believe, the true
teaching of the great religious figures.
