Fred Laceda
Continue reading →They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.
They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.
Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”
He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”
Mark 9:30-37 NIV
What if all institutions we can identify that directly or indirectly impinging us are all colluding together to intentionally construct a particular human being? What if there is a grand conspiracy among these institutions, those that amount to what Judith Butler describes as “constituting relations,” that received us from birth, trained, shaped and designed us into something useful for particular end? Imposing its repressive power on us, monitoring every movement, controlling our gestures, manipulating our desires, dictate our behaviour, and govern the truth we dearly hold on. This is the angst of Michel Foucault, suspecting all institutions, from factories to psychiatry, to penitentiary, police, military, judiciary, education, including religions as mere state apparatuses that constitute its exercise of power over its citizens.
“Metho Andres, the police chaplain at Station 6 who prayed with the officers, told Reuters that the Bible justified the killing. Quoting Romans 13, he said Duterte was a God-appointed “agent of wrath” whom police should obey without question. He blamed drug users for their own deaths. “That’s a consequence of them disobeying,” said the pastor. “There is wrath coming for those who don’t obey.”
I shuddered at the very thought of elevating Manny Paquiao to power when he first ran to public office not so many years ago. I know for sure it will be a big mistake. It is putting a violent man, and his violent god, to power. I campaigned against his bid for senatorial seat not only to save Evangelical community from shame, but to spare Filipinos from the predilection to violence of this man.
Burn After Reading 