PATRIOTISM AND RELIGIOUS FILIPINO STYLE

I have come up in an observation that there is an unflattering feature that I would say very Filipino – our disobedient.   We want to do things in our own way, especially in political, social and spiritual issues.  We have this character of insisting what we want to understand.  We know it is wrong in the first place but we still do, we know it can’t be but we still insist – not determination and confidence but merely stubbornness, that if it cannot suit in the norms, then we’ll have our own individual’s stand.  We lack in discipline.  In the modern days of Filipino, there is this patriotism and religious in Filipino style.  I cannot speak for other religion instead, being a Catholic is the illustration I will use.  We always feel the pride of being the only predominantly Christian country in Asia.  We believe it makes us strong, saved and blessed.  But the problem with most of us is that our faith to our religion is not really that strong.  Filipinos nowadays are not good Catholic (categorically speaking). We have this Catholic ala Filipino style.  We choose which teachings we’ll follow.  Many of us believe whatever we want to believe in only. 

Christianity in us is soft, lenient, lame and watered down.  The Head of the church cannot force its flock to read the Bible by heart and follow the commandments religiously.   In simple dress code in attending mass, you will see men wearing basketball shorts and women wearing sleeveless shirts and mini-skirt like displaying fashion in the runway.  We cannot attend the mass on time.  We follow the command if it favors us like following procreation because of our own pleasure but to attend the masses we react and we’ll say what more important is the personal conversation with God thru solemn prayer than attending these one hour Sunday masses every week.  And we have our own interpretation of scriptures based on our understanding.  The self-explanatory “Thou shall not kill” has different versions and you hear how they contradict it.  Our faith is weak.  We say we pray solemnly or go to the church regularly but sinful still. We say we recite the litany or pray the rosary but these are the same pious men who have the nerve to curse the head of the church and the priesthood.   These differences in interpretation resulted us to give way the coming of different sect of our religion.  Despite our self-assured sense of belonging to Christendom, many are still weak.

We scream the overused phrase “Proud to be Pinoy” but we do not patronize our own.  Filipinos just love imported products.  We cannot live in a situation that everything we use and everything surround us, even the smallest thing like toothpick, is Filipino product.  How can our local products and services stay in the market if the roll of capital is not sustained with the return of investment because we do not patronize them?  Even our family and friends prefer international tourism rather than visiting our own.  If we demand or choose the local tour, most likely local tourism will be less costly than international tours, which often is merely a show of status symbol rather than learning.  We want to play the role of patriot (actually we’re claiming it) for uplifting our country but the determination is not enough and only few really do the share.  It is always self first before the country. Among many of us, who will look after the wellbeing of the country first before our self, our family, work, security, future and personal interests?  We cannot make sacrifice ourselves for the country.  Our disobedience hampers us in moving forward like those informal settlers constructing houses in creeks despite the government order not to squat there.  We dump garbage anywhere, we complaint when the new traffic scheme for improvement is imposed, opposing smoking ban, curfew and still jaywalked despite the warning “No Pedestrian Crossing: Deadly”.  Government calls save the water and electricity but we do not care.  We fight for democracy but we are abusing it.  We keep on complaining but hesitate to lead an example to start the changes in our self.  For our country let us support our government.  Definitely it can be opposing to some of our views but it cannot be an all-negative.  Many are still the plague, these are Filipinos nowadays.

We have so much beautiful characters but these undisciplined and irresponsibility ruins us.  It is said that Filipinos are one of the happiest people in this earth and also known in best hospitality – very Filipino so to speak.  By just having this idea, let us add more positive adjectives that will describe us very Filipino.  In a new platform, we stand straight, chin up and say “ this is Philippines and this are Filipinos”.