In his image, what god!

WHO IS this stupid God? You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work…

…I didn’t say that my God is stupid. I said your God is not my God because your God is stupid. Mine has a lot of common sense. Then now, why do you have to talk about religion? If I choose not to believe in any God, what’s the [expletive] thing about it? It’s a freedom to choose.

So, he crafted his god, in his likeness. In his own image, Duterte framed him. Thereby spewing from his own mouth his Iglesia ni Duterte, eschewing all iconography but of his very own:

Dito na lang kayo. I’ll give you one pat… ah isang patron na ano para hindi na kayo mag-pasyal. (Switch to this one. I’ll give you one patron so you won’t go out anymore).

Get hold of a picture of mine. ‘Yan ang ilagay niyo sa altar — Santo Rodrigo. (This is the one you should put in your altars — Saint Rodrigo).

Sheer contempt of the saints who, as he himself spat, were but idiots and drunkards. That is, if they even really existed:

Hindi nga natin alam kung sino ‘yang mga santo na ‘yon. Sino ‘yung mga gago na ‘yon? Mga lasenggo. (We do not even know who these saints are. Who are those idiots? Drunkards)…

…Even itong (this) Last Supper, who are the idiots there? Basta ginawa na lang santo ang mga itong nasa painting (They just made the people in the painting saints), San Isidro, San Pablo, Saint Jude, Santo Rodrigo, kung sino na lang (whoever)…

…Who is this guy San Isidro that every town fiesta we kill our cows, carabaos? Just to spend because it is the fiesta of San Isidro. San Pablo who were they?...

…’Yong iba, ‘yong mga Santa Catalina, Santa Ana, Santo Tomas, San Sebastian, Santo Rodrigo, wala iyan… ‘Di ko nga kilala ‘yan. Look, those documents were written – if at all – 3,000 years ago. Anong pakialam nila sa buhay natin? 

Who is Saint Thomas? We do not know who he is. Perhaps it was just a name of a camel then.

Alas, his profanities against the saints, he himself negated with his All Saints’ Day message thus:

We Filipinos welcome the month of November with open hearts as we remember our saints and our dearly departed loved ones, whose lives have deeply inspired us to grow in faith, hope, and love.

Together, let us emulate our saints, pray for the eternal repose of the souls and deepen our engagement with our communities as we work for real and lasting change.

Pseudo

Deconstruction of his self-proclaimed doctrines inheres, most apparently, in Duterte’s pseudo-theology.   

No hell: My religion does not limit anything. All you can do is...Do not believe in hell. When you die you are just a piece of carcass and that's it. There's no more hell. Burning in hell? You cannot burn a soul.

When you use God to say that I'd go to hell, you know my God never created hell because if he created hell, he must be stupid God. My God is not stupid to create man just to burn him in hell. Hindi ako naniniwala ng ganon (I don't believe that).

No heaven too: I do not believe in heaven because if I do, only a fraction of you in this crowd will ever enter in heaven. All of us makita ko, lalo na 'yung mga may dalawang asawa dito, tig-tatlo dito, 'yung mga playboy, lahat tayo sa impyerno magkita. But that is fiction.
But then: Pero kung mapunta ako ng impyerno, hindi ako magpa-lugi. Hindi naman talaga ako ’yung – napasubo lang. Eh papuntahin mo ako impyerno. Unang sipain ko si Satanas, umalis ka diyan. May bagong tigas dito (If I go to hell, I will not let myself get pushed around; I just got into this. If I go to hell, I’ll kick Satan out and tell him, ‘go away I’m the new toughie here)’.

Evoked there the choice of Lucifer: “To reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.” Primping himself as out-devilling Satan himself, Duterte can only descend to graver blasphemies, to outright heterodoxy, aye, to heresy. That, deemed by not so few, as sheer lunacy.

Fallacy

There’s only one God, period. You cannot divide God into three, that’s silly.

His rejection of the Holy Trinity not only lapsing into the Arian heresy of the homoiousious Son – similar but neither identical nor consubstantial with the Father – but moreso hewing closely to the fallacy of his long-time Davao buddy, the self-proclaimed “Appointed Son of God” and “Owner of the Earth.”

So, is it to Duterte then, that there can be no Son of God other than his cohort Quiboloy? Hence, his disbelieving disparagement of the divinity of Jesus Christ:

‘Yung Diyos mo, pinako sa krus. ‘Tangina. Nakakawala ng bilib. Ako ang Diyos, tapos ipako mo ako? Putangina. Sabihin ko, ‘Lightning, ubusin mo ito. Sunugin mo lahat ng mga erehes. (Your God was nailed on the cross. Son of a bitch. How unimpressive. I’m God and you will crucify me? Son of a bitch. I’d tell them, ‘Lightning, finish all of them. Burn all the non-believers.')

God, in the image and likeness of Duterte, in all his haughtiness. But one more antithesis to – way too puny to be the anti – Christ. He of all humility, of total submission to the will of the Father.    

Ako ang Diyos, tapos ipako mo ako? Putangina. Redemption ridiculed. Salvation scorned.

How Catholics, indeed, all Christians take these blasphemies not so much with the proverbial grain of salt as with a grin-and-bear-it toleration, if not amusement, is beyond the pale of reason.

Intimidation? I look at it more as an act of faith, Rightly, and righteously, the Christian response prescribed in Luke 6:27-28: “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

And leave it to God. Ours. Not his, fabricated as it is in his own image and likeness.

So, what he denigrates as 3,000-year-old fiction, we believe as Gospel Truth.

Taking consolation – and hope – in Luke 1:52: Deposuit potentes de sede, exaltavit humiles (He hath put down the mighty from their seat, he hath exalted the humble). 

Keeping confidence with the injunction in Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Strengthened in our faith that they shall pass. As God – ours – promised.