‘…I don’t care if Peter betrayed the Lord (or Lord for that matter). All I care about is that the budget is passed and passed quickly. Anyway, God the Tatay is watching over us.’
ANO ba naman ‘yang kaibigan natin (What’s the matter with our friend?),” a texter messaged me. “Huh? Sinong kaibigan (Which friend)?” I asked back. “Sino pa eh di si Peter. Napaka-Biblical talaga (Who else but Peter, really very Biblical),” he said. “He has betrayed the Lord again.”
I smiled to myself. Anyone who knows Speaker Alan calls him by his first and not his second given name, so clearly the texter was not a longtime friend to Alan Peter. Also, he didn’t know me well enough because he raised Biblical matters with me when I am not much of a Bible reader but, yes, I’ve encountered the story of St. Peter and his three denials a couple of times in conversions during my current lifetime. But he also didn’t show a keen grasp of the specific Bible story he was trying to relate to some contemporary events, so I said in my response.
“St. Peter to my understanding DENIED he knew the Lord. He didn’t BETRAY the Lord; it was Judas who did that and that’s a different thing.
“Also the Bible story is about St. Peter and the Lord; the political story you are equating it to is about Peter who is not a saint and a Lord who is not The Lord.”
“Also,” I added, “you must remember that in the Bible story God the Father was watching because nothing happens without his knowledge or even his blessing. In the political case, God the Tatay is watching and I also suspect that nothing happens without his knowledge or his blessing.”
The guy didn’t text back.
Someone else asked me what I thought about the drama in the House and I said I didn’t care much as to the leadership squabble. It was a mess from the time a power sharing agreement was made and it still is a mess today. As to judging the players involved, I think we all would have lower blood pressures if we agreed to use a different morality standard on our political types as we do in ourselves as ordinary citizens. Because they ARE different; they operate in a different world, occupy a different sense of space and time and right and wrong and all that. And, as Trump would say, “it is what it is.”
That’s why they even have to call each other Honorable. Because otherwise we’d call them something else.
Politics in the pejorative sense (which is oftentimes how we see it thanks to our political players) is about interests. Everything, including loyalties and agreements and alliances, are secondary to that. When a politician acts honorably, well and good. Bring out the champagne. It’s something to be celebrated. But when interests override what to us are the norms of good conduct, then remember that theirs is a different world altogether. And that we put them there and enable them and even cheer them on — because it suits OUR interests!
Again I don’t care if Peter betrayed the Lord (or Lord for that matter). All I care about is that the budget is passed and passed quickly. Anyway, God the Tatay is watching over us.
