The Quest for Redemption

01 April 2010


The Holy Week is the most important period in the Christian liturgical calendar, the climax of the Lenten Season that starts with Ash Wednesday. On each day, Christians reenact the drama of Jesus’ last days starting with Palm Sunday or Jesus Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem then Maundy Thursday wherein Jesus held his last (Passover) supper with the twelve disciples and finally Good Friday which is Jesus’ crucifixion. It is central to belief of Christians that in this earthly drama of Jesus’ passion and death, God in heaven caused the redemption of the world from its captivity to sin. The Holy Week is the story of a redeemer and how he accomplished redemption.

The Christian story of redemption, however, is not unique. At the core of every religion, past or living, is the quest for redemption. Buddhism seeks redemption from the compulsion of human passions; Hinduism in its various forms seeks redemption from the endless cycle of reincarnation, Judaism from a state of guilt and condemnation before a righteous God; Islam seeks to redeem a world that is opposed to God’s holiness and justice. These great living religions of the world are able to draw the adherence and command the obedience of the peoples of the world across the ages because in the final analysis redemption is the quest that burns in the heart of every person. If it is not about redemption, then it is not religion.

But religions don’t have monopoly on the answers to the universal and endless quest for redemption. Ideologies, including those that militantly deny the reality of God, also offer paths of redemption. An ideology may offer redemption to a race of people, such as the Black Power in the civil rights movement in the U.S. Other ideologies may seek the redemption of the working class, such as communism, or the redemption of the female gender by the feminists. Whatever, people who feel oppressed, abused or whose survival is threatened embrace a religion or ideology in order to obtain redemption. Consequently, some individual personalities stand out as heroes or iconic figures owing to their total identification to people’s longing for redemption – Martin Luther King, Jr. for Americans, Steve Biko for South Africans, Simon Bolivar and Che Guevara among Latin Americans, Bonifacio and Ninoy Aquino for Filipinos.

It’s sad to say that the present crop of politicians who are running for national offices give us no inspiration to achieve national redemption for the Filipino people. Their propaganda messages over radio and TV are basically about themselves, nothing to do with the Filipino people’s quest for redemption. For example, Enrile’s ad, “Gusto ko happy ka” sung and danced by young pretty girls trivializes the whole electoral process. The others are not as outrageously insulting to our intelligence but they are all of the same genre. For all the hundreds of millions spent for their campaigns, not a single candidate is able to fire up our quest for redemption. For these candidates, it’s all a matter of packaging and campaign lines and strategies. It’s all personal ambitions or perhaps delusions but no passion. And for the people, it’s nothing more than a circus.

Is Philippine politics, that is, traditional electoral politics beyond redemption? In its present form, I’m inclined to believe so – as a vehicle for national liberation it’s beyond redemption. If there is no such thing as a liberating traditional politics, why participate in the process at all? I continue to ask this question to myself. But despite its seeming hopelessness there is something there in the arena and noise of the electoral campaign that seems struggling to break out in its own time, something that sooner or later will turn politics into an act of the people for redemption. It’s like being able to smell the coming of the rains even when treading on parched land.

Traditional politics is a desert land where hopes don’t grow wild. And yet, we dare to break the ground so that the earth would be ready when the rains come. We look at the dried up ground of summer and imagine green shoots coming out when a new season begins.

Happy Easter!