Good evening Bro. Eli,
I have read this blog and is consistently watching your “Ang Dating Daan” (The Old Path) program. I am a Protestant and is currently a member of the opposition in the Philippines (in 2007), “Bayan Muna” (County First). I am an activist studying in University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman (in 2007).
I believe in God. However, when a person gets so much involved with activism, they believe in Marxism (Karl Marx) which then believes in materialism and that there is no God.
I am confused. I would like to continue being a leader of mass organization which caters for the poor. I would like to deliver the wrongdoings of this administration in rallies. I would like to help the workers attain their P125 increase in salary and to defend the farmers from the greed landlords in our country. I know you share the same loving mercy for the poor. But I don’t want to give up my faith in Christ. I know there is God, but I don’t want to stop myself from shouting for justice and peace in our country.
I want to ask you Bro Eli, what is your stand regarding New People’s Army? I know it’s wrong to kill, but if they kill because of their belief, would it be right? What does your religion say about rallies and demonstrations? If I join your religion, can I still fight for these people’s right: An advocate of God and yet in a leftist group? What is your stand regarding opposition and their programs for the poor.
Please help me Bro Eli, I am confused. My pastor tells me my question is hard and he can’t answer me. I don’t want to trust that pastor anymore, if he can’t answer a simple question, how can I trust him my very own salvation! I trust you Bro. Eli to answer my question. And if I have follow up question, how can we reach you?
Thanks be to God.
Pamela
Dear Pamela,
I respect the idea of the name of your group “Bayan Muna” (Country First). For me, it sounds very patriotic, compassionate, and caring. How I wish someday I will know your organization not just by name, but by principles.
I admire your frankness and appreciate the doubts that spring within you; being caught between two conflicting ideologies. I also respect the rights and freedom of those people who believe in Marxism because my Bible tells me so.
1 Peter 2:17 (NIV)
Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
I am happy to hear from you that, in spite of your leaning to the ideas of Karl Marx, you said you believe in God.
In this life, we have to believe in things beyond the material reality that our material eyes can see. As the saying goes, “there is more than meets the eye”. The material universe is up to now unfathomable and beyond human understanding. There are scientific guesses which are still to be investigated and proven; but humanity, in its long history of existence, even the most intelligent persons who ever lived on earth failed to understand the totality of existing realities.
ECCLESIASTES 8:17
Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.
If you have noticed the verse, it speaks of the work of God, which can not be totally understood by man. Our failure to discern and to discover every reality that exists proves the existence of God that Marxism denies. God has a signature authenticating His words in the Bible.
ISAIAH 55:8-9
8 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
If the preceding statement came from an ordinary human being that was said and written almost three millennia ago, it should have been proven false by the advancement of human knowledge in every field of science. But advancement in science, like the putting up of the Hubble telescope in space, proves further the vastness of the universe and the heavens confirming what God has said, that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth. This is God’s authenticating signature over His words in the Bible.
If we can find wisdom in simple and small realities in life, and at the same instance there are small things we can not comprehend, everything unexplained by human mind and understanding, confirms the existence of that Someone who created such things and made them existing realities.
ROMANS 1:19-20 (NIV)
19 Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
There is no excuse for those who will not acknowledge the existence of a Creator or God. If you are certain that there really is a God who created everything and every human person, you must consult Him if, within you, there is a desire to care for the humblest and the poorest of His creations. The Creator is the absolute authority over His creation. He knows the capabilities and the infirmities of every created being just like the manufacturer of a diesel engine that knows the powers and the limitations of their product. Nobody that exists can be more compassionate and caring for humans than the Creator Himself.
PSALMS 103:14
For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
If your organization really cares for the poor and the less fortunate, it is not God’s will to be an activist —which sometimes indulges in violent actions — that sometimes harm the poor policemen whose only perceived fault is to maintain peace and order in society.
I will not argue with you if you believe that there are corruptions in the government. Although being denied, irrefutable informations like, news of journalists disappearing without traces, a host of political detainees, and news about innumerable human rights violations (of which I am also a victim) clearly testify to the fact that there are corruptions and misdeeds in the government; but I have to emphasize that if we believe in God, violence and activism are not the solution to this social ill in our country. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. Unrighteousness can be conquered by righteousness. Evil can be conquered by good — and not by another evil. If the efforts and the money being spent by activists to voice out their grievances that will only fall on deaf ears, were used to feed the hungry, at least their grief was alleviated for a given hour. Whatever you do, and whatever you say will not be heard by those who are hungry and greedy for power and money; and on situations like these, God, the Creator of the poor, can make an intervention if we trust in what He can peacefully do — sparing the lives of innocent people.
DANIEL 2:21
And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding…
PROVERBS 8:14-16
14 Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength.
15 By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.
16 By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.
If any ruler or government does not rule with sound wisdom and understanding, God, by the strike of a virus or bacteria, freed His people from the hands of the cruel pharaoh in Egypt — by the death of the king’s first born son: successor to his throne… meaning, the fall of his government. There is time for every purpose. God is never late. If He allows iniquity and evil to be perpetuated by the evildoers, it does not mean that He is pleased in tolerating them, but is giving them ample time to repent or, if they will not, to satisfy the justice and punishment reserved for them.
ECCLESIASTES 3:1
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…
ECCLESIASTES 8:11
Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
2 PETER 3:9 (NIV)
The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Karl Marx’s belief about God and religion is not even fit to sound materialism. Sound and sane materialism do not require total equity in volume on everything or on every individual. A ‘material fly’ feeds and enjoys filth, but is hated by a ‘material mosquito’. Mosquitoes sip the priceless blood of a monarch or a royalty; but the bees are content in collecting very small amount of sweet available in every small flower, but they all survive equally. If Marxism is sane materialism, leaders of communist countries should not enjoy the luxuries which their subjects or the common people are deprived of. Thus, a Christian leader said:
2 CORINTHIANS 12:14-15
14 Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.
15 And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.
1 CORINTHIANS 4:8, 11-13
8 Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you…
11 …Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place;
12 And labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:
13 Being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.
If you have noticed in the verses above, the leaders of the Christian faith experienced hunger, while the members are full — the latter are rich, but the former were filth and were like garbage; while in Marxism, leaders enjoy all the luxuries in life at the sufferings of their subjects.
Karl Marx’s definition of religion is unwise and uncalled for; although in some aspects, I do not fully blame him because, maybe, the religions that he has known in his lifetime are false religions and not true Christianity.
Many pretending religions and monstrous religious leaders really take advantage of the ignorance of their subjects. This was prophesied in the Bible.
MICAH 3:11
The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? None evil can come upon us.
No wonder, these are the kind of religious leaders that he observed which made him conclude “that religion is an expression of material realities and economic injustice”. I am very much sorry for him — and his believers. If he said “that religion was used by oppressors to make people feel better the distress they experience due to being poor and exploited”, and concluded “that religion is the opium of the people”, I sympathize with him and with you, because I know that this was due to his ignorance of true religion in the Bible.
True religion cares — especially for the less fortunate.
JAMES 1:27
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
In the practice of true religion, nobody will die of hunger and disease being left uncared for.
1 JOHN 3:17
But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
True Christians do not kill — even the most bitter of their enemies.
MATTHEW 5:44-45
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Christians feed and not kill their enemies.
ROMANS 12:20
Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
Karl Marx said that, “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature” — to this, I vehemently disagree!
I am not oppressed when I embraced Christianity. It is not because of hunger that I believed in God. I am not exploited when I joined the Church of God. I am in control of all my faculties when I received the Christian doctrine. Christianity is the religion of my choice. It is the wisest thing I believe I have ever done. And for these things, I praise and thank God. In my religion, I have learned to care for others — whether rich or poor. I have learned the virtue of self-sacrifice and control. I have learned compassion and pity; and I have accepted to be defrauded and deceived by the opportunistic people of society. Belief in God and His doctrines made me a better person than I was before.
I will suggest something which I think sounds better, “Dios muna bago ang lahat” (God first before everything).
May my God bless you.