ONE of the most intriguing questions I’ve discussed with my journalism students at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila was avoiding the pitfalls of corruption later on when they pursue their professions.
There are, of course, prominent and award-winning names in the media who have violated the ethical standards of integrity, honesty and professionalism and are living unexplained lavish lifestyles.
How can anyone fully explain why they were unable to handle power, wealth and fortune and have become a disgrace to their profession? What would strengthen my students’ bright and young minds never to turn away from their idealism and to overcome the tempting wickedness around them? As they grow older, how should they deal with the irresistible lure of reputation, power and money?
‘How can anyone fully explain why they were unable to handle power, wealth and fortune
and have become a disgrace to their profession?’
Japan has revamped its school curriculum for primary education by introducing values and moral conduct as major courses, which today comprise the first three or four years of elementary education. To reverse the mounting social ills caused by delinquencies, drug addictions and other vices, drop-outs, parental defiance, sex and street violence among the youth, our government should seriously study this example set by Japan.
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The following is an extraordinary account by German Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer showing that the love of God should be over and above the love of the country before both great loves can be joined together.
From the book Words to Die For by Lawrence Kimbrough. “He had many influential friends and colleagues in church circles around the world. He had studied with distinction for a year in New York. He had pastored for two years at a German-speaking church in London after turning down a similar position in Berlin out of protest. He had spoken at international Christian gatherings, warning both the foreign preachers and the press that his homeland was in trouble — that the Nazis were depriving Jews of citizenship, repealing basic human rights and freedom, and hurtling pell-mell toward dictatorship with a madman at the helm.
By this time the German church had already demanded that he cut ties with his contacts overseas. The German Foreign Office had told him to keep his mouth shut if he knew what was good for him. And a high-level government decree had slammed the door on his little seminary, forcing him to travel in secret from town to town in order to supervise Confessing Church pastors serving illegally in small parishes.
In June 1939, despondent over his country’s condition, he took a safe teaching position at the Union Seminary in New York City. For he knew war was just a matter of time, he knew he could never fight in the German army, and he knew he would be killed for standing his ground. But almost immediately upon his arrival in the States, he realized his heart was an ocean away.
“I have made a mistake in coming to America. I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share the trials of this time with my people. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which alternative I must choose, but I cannot make this choice in security.’ After a month of unsettled freedom, Bonhoeffer resettled in Germany as a fugitive.
“Within a few years, he was collared into custody for acts of treason. He had been feeding incriminating information to his foreign sources, trying to help put together a multi-national effort against the Nazis, and spiriting Jews out of Germany into Switzerland. By Easter Sunday 1945, he and other select prisoners who had been loaded onto trucks and shipped to a more secure location could hear American guns booming in the distance. The Allies were advancing and the Germans were in retreat. Can freedom be just around the corner?
“But Bonhoeffer had once said it much better: ‘Long did we seek you —freedom—in discipline, action and suffering, now that we die, in the face of God himself, we behold you.’ He braced himself for the ultimate sacrifice. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something out of oneself… In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. At the place of execution the following Sunday, Bonhoeffer took off his prison garb and knelt on the floor praying fervently to his God. A doctor on duty was “most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and certain that God heard his prayer. He again said a short prayer before he climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. In the fifty years that I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
