Separation of Church and Workplace

Mulling over the truth behind current and hottest issues reflected in news headlines, does anyone notice the cause-and-effect connection between religious beliefs and work ethics?  The two cannot and must not be separated if we hope to live a life God has meant us to live.  Why have we been inundated for months now with “Napoles headlines” to the extent that people—nearly lost in a profusion of side issues like her health condition and details about a private surgery performed on her—no longer know whom or what to believe?

We are where we are, a perennially poor nation becoming even poorer despite the government’s claims of economic growth.  Much of it is because, bottom line, certain people create their own moral standards when it comes to work.  For these “newsmakers”, getting their way takes precedence over obedience to God’s laws in their manner of “earning a living”.  If some people believe in the separation of Church and State, there are also those who insist, unfortunately, on the separation of Church and Workplace.  Our religious beliefs to a great extent determine the quality of our work performance.  You can be sure that anybody who leaves his religion behind in the church on Sundays will be susceptible to corruption at work from Mondays through Saturdays.  

Even if we are not typically pious, religious, or “saradong Katoliko”, we can find sustenance of spirit from day to day in Jesus’ words in His priestly prayer in Chapter 17 of St. John’s Gospel.  A moving prayer where Jesus talks to the Father and intercedes for His disciples who were with Him, it has the power to lodge itself like a seed in the darkness of our heart.  It is not something reason can grasp but if we just allow Jesus’ words to play over and over again like background music inside our head, it will change many things about ourselves.

Allow me to dare ask people whose reputations have been tarnished by news involving them in corruption and public scandal: Are you brave?  Then I invite you to a “seeding experiment”.  Today, set aside your daily woes, “waste” some time, take a bible, and read John 17 over and over again.  Don’t try to understand it; just go on reading until your eyes get tired you’ll want to close them.  With eyes shut, let the words carry you afloat.  Keep the “experiment” a secret, and repeat it any day, any time, as often as you possibly can or want.  This private exercise is not seen by others but will make the “seed” in your heart germinate and in God’s time bear fruit, affecting all aspects of your being.

Things done in secret, good or bad, do not remain a secret for long.  They mold our being and deeply influence our attitudes and way of relating to others.  Just like harmful bacteria that hide in our blood stream, work secretly, and manifest themselves in bodily illness in due time, your hidden “seeding experiment” with our Lord Jesus’ words in John 17 (done in a spirit of surrender to His will) can result in good works that will benefit yourself and all others in God’s time.  Your co-workers, superiors, clients, customers, constituents, people who are with you most of the day—may notice changes in you even before you even do.  All because in pondering His words in your heart you have been guided in conversation with Him, and have been moved to want to belong to Him alone!  Then you will realize that you have gone further out in the background, removed from common things, and finding yourself in God’s plan for us have learned to intercede for others as well.  What a glorious realization this is, to recognize that it is the Holy Spirit working in you from the Father through the Son who was sent to live among us to reveal this truth!  What a turnaround from selfishness to selflessness!

       Imagine how this kind of conversion in those accused of corruption can affect the future of this impoverished nation!  We who take pride in being the “first and biggest Christian nation in Asia” can still count on a “leader”—Jesus, our true shepherd who will never abandon us.  It’s about time we dumped our “public servants” who have one set of rules for worship and another for the workplace, whether that workplace be a legislative building or a palace.  And that’s the truth. 

Three boys, tomorrow's fathers

Photo courtesy of The Mindanao Examiner

--> To sort of keep in touch with the masses I like to take the public transport on occasion.  Contact with the common tao both grounds and energizes me.  Thus, on a solo pilgrimage to Our Lady of Antipolo shrine last May 13, I took a jeepney from EDSA Central, choosing the front seat.  Between the driver and myself sat a frail-looking boy of about 14 or 15 who fell asleep and leaned against me for the most part of the trip.  Out of discomfort, I would shift in my seat now and then, hoping he would awaken, but he wouldn’t, so conscience compelled me to hold him instead lest he topple over to the driver’s side as the jeepney twisted and turned its way uphill.

            I wondered why he wouldn’t be roused, and suspected he might be on drugs, so I (finally) asked the driver if he knew the boy.  “No, he’s just a passenger.”  At this point the boy woke up, looking refreshed, so I asked him point blank:  “Bakit tulog na tulog ka?  Bangag ka ba?”  (Why were you in such deep sleep?  Are you high on drugs?)  He replied, “Nag sidecar po ako.”  Long story short, I learned that he was up the previous night pedaling a “trisikad” (a foot-propelled bicycle with a sidecar) in Baclaran to raise enough money for the trip to Antipolo.

            His uncle with whom he lives employs him on a “per need” basis; he’s on stand by 24/7 with no fixed hours for mealtimes or sleep.  I was aghast when he said he is paid 60 pesos per day.  He’s 15 years old, quit high school on his second year, has no driver’s license and is completely ignorant of the Labor Code or of his rights as a child.  Unable to see beyond his daily existence he was mum when asked what he wanted to be in the future.  Even returning to school seemed impossible because “we have no money.” 

            I asked what his favorite subject in school was.  “Math po,” he said.  Getting to our destination I simply encouraged him to pursue his studies even as a working student.  “Meddler” that I am, I suggested he ask his uncle to enroll him in TESDA as his Math skills could make him a good automotive mechanic, refrigeration technician, or even a mechanical engineer later on.  I just wanted him to have a dream.

Photo: Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency

            Reaching Antipolo, I went straight to the church for the Mass.  During the homily, I was reminded of “sidecar boy” when the priest spoke about how shocked he was to find out that a 12-year old boy in his parish was discovered to be a drug pusher.  “Actually, his parents are the pushers,” said the priest, “but they use the boy to deliver the drugs because he’s just a child, and who would suspect a child to be involved in such deals?”  So, here again it’s the elders who take advantage of the child—just like those who engage teenage girls and boys to make money lending their bodies to online pornography, or those who train and utilize their young sons in war strategies, etc.  I wondered how many of the parents in our country actually are already of this mentality, and how through the years Filipinos have changed in the way we regard our children.

            In the Adoration Chapel, as I was preparing to leave, two boys walked in, rosary in hand.  I was curious as they were not accompanied by an adult, so I stayed a bit to observe.  Apparently a well-fed 10-year-old, the older one seemed to pray his rosary in earnest, kneeling still the whole time while the younger one (around 6, perhaps), was quite a wiggler, trying but failing to distract the older one who only budged to kneel on the floor and kiss it!  I must admit the sight delighted me as I thought, “Could this be the bud of a priestly vocation?”

            This boy is quite a different image from the first two I had encountered, but having come one after the other, all in one morning—the first one I touched and conversed with; the second, I heard about; the third, I saw—all three vignettes came as one to stir my imagination.  How many more years before advocates of “social behavior change” can get hold of these boys and remold their minds into the “new normal”? 

As things are in our country right now, government authorities (purveyors of the contraceptive mentality) are already blindly luring our young slowly but systematically into a world where one’s pleasure, needs, and desires matter most.  Top that with the popular media offerings that aim to brainwash audiences into embracing a “new” meaning of marriage, family, and parenthood, et al.   Shows both foreign and locally produced teach viewers it’s not only passé but even cruel to have moral values, particularly if such moral values stand in the way of one’s “right to happiness.”

            Where will those three boys be 10 years from today? I dread to think that poverty might turn the “sidecar boy” and the “child drug pusher” into child abusers themselves, or that with the onset of puberty the “rosary boy” will drop his devotion in favor of worldlier gains.  What will they believe in?  What causes will they be fighting for?  Will they clamor for divorce or same sex marriage?  Will they approve of abortion, or themselves assist the suicide of their elders?  What stories will they tell children?

            The forces of darkness disguised as light bearers are working double-time to ensnare our young, but I believe that God will not allow them to succeed.  And that’s the truth.