Truth and Leadership

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Church Calendar ends with the Solemnity of Christ the King. The end of the year reminds us of the end of time. Yes, everything comes to an end. For us Christians the end is something that we look forward to because in the end, things will turn out well. The plan of God, which is salvation, will be fully manifest. Good will triumph. Justice will come. Truth will shine forth. So at the end of time, the triumph of Christ will be fully manifest. When the end comes, “Christ will hand over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power.” (1 Cor 15:24) This is our reason for celebrating Christ as king.

At this stage of history though, the full manifestation of his victory is not yet that clear. Many people voice out the perplexity of Pontius Pilate: “Are you the king of the Jews?” (John 18:33) When Jesus answered him that his kingdom is not of this world, he became more forceful in his question: “Then you are a king?” (John 18:37) Jesus answered him: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37) Jesus connects his kingship, not only, even the very reason of his coming into the world, with the truth. His kingship, that is, his leadership, is very intimately connected with the truth.

This is a very big crisis nowadays. Many leaders do not care about the truth, just like Pilate who dismissively retorted: “What is truth?” (John 18:38) In fact many leaders hide the truth, and even use their position and their resources to distort the truth and spread lies. This tendency is magnified with the use of the means of mass communication and now with the social media. But no society can stand without the truth. Trust among peoples can only be achieved when there is truth that we all seek to understand and to reach, not “truth” that each one creates.

The leadership of Christ, and his final triumph, is intimately bound with truth. His kingdom is a kingdom of truth, peace, justice and love. These are all connected to each other. There is no justice without truth, there is no peace without justice, and love reigns only when there is truth, justice and peace. Truth is so vital for Christ that he was killed for speaking out the truth. The scribes, the high priests, and the pharisees could not stand him because he was exposing their falsities. He called them hypocrites to their faces.

Following the lead of Jesus, we should gauge our leaders by their commitment to the truth. When they mouth claims which later they could easily dismiss as “jokes”, when they hurl accusations without any basis, when they make tall promises which they never keep, we Christians cannot believe that they are good leaders. Oh, how the false leaders fear the truth! They silence the media that they cannot control. They disparage and accuse people who do not sing their tune and show a different picture of reality that they promote. They cannot stand opposition! These are not good leaders! This is a good reminder that now we are again entering the election mode and will soon choose leaders who will represent us. May we look up to Christ the King as our measure of true leadership.

URGENT

There are many urgent issues in our country these days. The high inflation is urgent. Prices of food and transportation are going beyond the reach of millions. Joblessness is urgent. While organized labor groups rightly ask for increase of their wages, millions of people are still without work or are only casual workers with no security of tenure. The resumption of the peace process between the government and the CPP-NDF-NPA is urgent, with many poor farmers and lumads killed, tagged by one or the other as enemies or aiding their enemies. The call to end the unjust war on drugs is urgent, with the increasing killings with impunity happening in poor communities while those responsible for the coming in of tons of shabu are free and enjoying the trust of the government. So many things need to be urgently addressed.

But we should not forget one really urgent matter that fly below the radar screens of the media and the attention of the people—the continued destruction of our environment and the resulting climate change. In this regard the attitude of most is business as usual. But precisely this business as usual is the cause of climate change. Scientists are frantically telling us that we will hit the 1.5 degrees of global warming already in 2030—well within our lifetime—with dire consequences for all of us. No one is immune from the effects of global warming. And we have nowhere else to go. We have just one earth!

And in the matter of environmental care, each of us can do something! Maybe some us can still claim that I cannot do anything about the peace process with the NPA, nor with the rise of the prices of goods, nor with the unjust war on drugs. We absolutely cannot offer the same excuse with global warming because we contribute to it by our buying habits, by the food that we eat, by the way we dispose of our wastes, by our use of water and electricity, by the choice of our mode of transportation. It should not be business as usual! It is good to honestly ask ourselves: what change in my lifestyle have I consciously adopted to avert global warming and as a sign of my care for Mother Earth? In this matter, each of us is called to be involved because it surely affects each one of us. The news of the floods in Italy, the fires in California, the strong typhoon that hit Hong Kong, the draught in Australia, should wake us up. It should not be business as usual!

We also need to raise our voices against policies and projects that destroy the environment. The BUILD, BUILD, BUILD program of the present administration needs to be scrutinized especially from the lens of the care for the environment. One is urgently to be opposed—the Kaliwa Dam project in Quezon province which President Duterte is set to sign with the Chinese President Xi when he comes to visit the country in a few days. This dam is presented as needed for the water supply of Metro Manila. But it is not true that this is the only, nor the best solution, for the water problem of the metropolis. About a half of the water is lost because of the leaks. The present Angat dam can be dredged with lower cost. The big Laguna lake can be rehabilitated and its water treated, again at lesser cost, and with added benefit of averting the constant flooding in the areas around the lake, including Metro Manila.

On the other hand, with the Kaliwa Dam project, hundreds of hectares of our prime forests in Quezon will be submerged in water. Thousands of our Dumagat indigenous peoples will lose their ancestral land, hundreds of thousands of farmers in Quezon province will be affected and put in danger, since the area of the dam is on the fault lines of earthquakes. While the earth is reeling from global warming, here we are, still doing business as usual projects when international studies have shown that big dams are not advisable for they are not reliable. We need to raise our voices in protest! This is a VERY VERY URGENT matter!!!

Broderick Pabillo

November 15, 2018