Measures of judgment

Since it seems that everyone in this country has made it a lifetime career to judge the Marcoses, perhaps it might serve the career well if we ask ourselves whether we are doing it properly. For I don’t think judging the Marcoses is as simple and as easy as just calling them killers, thieves, or tyrants. If that be so, then we are all angels by comparison.

But you and I know that is not the case. The measure by which we judge the Marcoses, or other people for that matter, is not the same measure by which we are judged, by other people and by God. If the Marcoses stole, the fact that you never did is not the measure by which you can proclaim yourself the better person.

On the contrary, you will be judged by the opposite measure of how you judge the Marcoses or others. If the Marcosos stole and are therefore bad, it does not make you good just because you never stole. Because the Marcoses have taken away, you will be judged by the measure of how much you have given, to the Marcoses and to others.

So go ahead, look at yourself in the mirror and ask how much and how consistently you have given. Judging a person as a thief is a very heavy burden to foist upon his person, his name, his honor, his dignity, and that of his family and their families after them. How about you, what act of kindness have you shown your brethren? What act of charity? What mercy?

When you give, is it measured by how much you have left in excess or do you give even if you end up with nothing left. In the small Catholic church where me and my wife go to hear Mass, I am always struck by the sight of this little old woman who never fails to fish for something from her tattered purse to give to collection.

Every time I see her do that I would always swear that she could not have put in more than a five-peso coin. And when I think that, I cannot help but feel my heart squeezed by the realization that what she gave was more pleasing to God than what I have put into collection. For I knew that little old woman gave everything she had.

I am not trying to wax religious or philosophical here. It is just that I am tired of this Marcos game by which we have measured our own worth as people. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to make a clean breast of why my columns have of late been pro-Marcos. It was not always that way. Believe it or not, I started, and became quite popular, writing anti-Marcos columns in the early 1980s.

Martial law had just been lifted but Marcos was to stay on until his ouster in 1986. Since then we have had six succeeding presidents, including two Aquinos with 12 years between them to put to rest what needed to be put to rest about the Marcoses. This country and its 110 million citizens cannot be forever held hostage to one political issue just because some people find it politically expedient to keep reviving for use as political capital.

I cannot be a party to this charade, hence I began writing what may now seem pro-Marcos columns. But if you read closely, they are pro only because they tend to benefit the Marcoses. Not once is there a profession of a liking for them. It is just that I want to move on secure in my belief of what I know to be true from actual experience. Enough is enough. By God's only true measure, we are always no better than the other guy.