Children of a lesser god?
"Children of a Lesser God" is actually a movie about deaf-mute children where the main character was an actual deaf-mute actress. She becomes slightly famous after the movie and appeared in other films and TV series, but never really made it big because of her handicap, even if she learned to speak and was very adept at all the sign languages. The deaf are mute or cannot speak not because there is something wrong with their vocal chords but because they cannot hear and have not heard the spoken words. So, if they are taught how to form words, and especially if they can hear some sounds by amplifying them or through cochlear implants, they will be able to speak. I know all these because for the past 25 years I have been a director of the Gualandi Effata School of the Hearing Impaired and we have graduated students up to high school over the years.
When President Duterte called the Christian God stupid, he was actually saying that the Christians are children of a lesser God. In fact, he stated that his God is not stupid by explaining his interpretation of the Garden of Eden. At this time with two years of his presidency over, it is difficult to determine when he is joking and when he is serious. As president, the people take everything he says seriously and so do his advisers and spokespersons from the way they scramble to mitigate, soften, deflect, and do damage control for his controversial pronouncements. His recent statements about God, on top of his earlier attacks on the priests and the Catholic Church, was most damaging, that Malacañang had to arrange for a dialogue with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. For a while the president eased off from the issue until last week when he spoke in the 117th anniversary celebration of the Office of the Solicitor General. So some members of the CBCP are questioning the sincerity of his intention to dialogue with them.
Why would the president's views on matters of religion get so much flak, attention and concern when he is not a religious scholar and was just expressing his own personal opinion on religion and the Bible which many people have? In fact, his own daughter has asked people not to believe him when he talks about religion but believe him when he talks about governance. It is because one's religious beliefs and relationship with your God affects your ideas and actions as a person and president. People have a multiplicity of ideas about religious beliefs and religions, and generally it is not good to argue about them if you want to have a friendly conversation. The only time you can have a friendly conversation about religion is when you belong to the same religious community or the same prayer group.
The other thing that got my attention was the rejoinder of President Duterte on the reactions to his God statements, that he likes to test the limits of the people when he says these things. That, it is like shaking a tree and seeing what falls out. This is not a very appropriate analogy and raises more questions than answers. Tolerance for what? for his behavior, for electing him? Given the president's unrestrainable personality, you have to sympathize and commiserate with his advisers and spokespersons for the difficult job they have to do.
I did not take offense with the president's alluding to our stupid God because I do not believe it is true, and I do not believe we are children of a lesser God. We are all children of God.
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