To those who serve tyrants,
discipleship is seditious and a product, not of faith, but of brainwashing.
Discipleship in the eyes of the devil is sedition and persecution is his most
devilish way.
In Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Nazism,
which was a state ideology, could not accept an autonomous establishment whose
legitimacy did not spring from the government so they desired the subordination
of the church to the state and they were persecuted. An estimated
one third of German priests faced some form of reprisal in Nazi Germany and 400 of them were sent to concentration camps and was tortured. The Gestapo,
abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei (German: “Secret State Police”), the
political police of Nazi Germany, is the state’s main implementor in such an
oppression. This reminds us of the PNP-CIDG’s cases against some disciples of
Christ, priests and bishops, filed recently. The police officials believed more
on the statement of a hooded swindler named Bikoy than their pastors who are
just inclined to do their prophetic roles totally discerning as witnesses in
the senseless killings around them.
Hitler, according to author Richard
Weikart, is, “a religious chameleon, a
quintessential religious hypocrite,” by the way. Not unlike someone you
know well.
If we have “War on Drugs” in the
Philippines today, Hitler had “War on the Church” in Germany then. The fate of
the Catholic bishops accused of plotting to oust Duterte been in the headlines
recently, as I have said. Let me repeat, discipleship in the eyes of the devil
is sedition and persecution is his most devilish way. Their accusations are mostly baseless.
Taking your cross could mean that the
police officers for instance, can carry their cross by defying the unjust and
persecuting orders from their superiors, a thing that Hitler’s police didn't do. Taking our cross could also mean resisting the evils of totalitarianism.
Carrying our cross is also a way of saying “no” to those who make the legal
processes weapons against their rivals. Lifting our cross may be a
staunch adherence to law of men and of God, to humanity versus barbarism.
But that is not enough. Such
discipleship is focused only on performance. A true disciple aims how to reform and
not much how to perform. This is the most “seditious” discipleship
Jesus has taught us. Prophets and Christian witnesses do pray and reflect before
the judge and act. Just like in Germany during Hitler.
This discipleship is genuine for it is about spiritual
discernment and only through these we can be a self-denying, cross-carrying
Christ follower…
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Photo: global-politics.eu
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