A Morning Reflection

A student asked me me whether I hate Moslems or not. I did not answer her question directly. Not pausing, I immediately said that encountering one bad Moslem doesn’t mean that all followers of Islam are evil. That’s all I said. 

It’s like a paraphrase of a quote from Gandhi about contaminated water. But when I answered, I was actually recalling the dialogue of the Queen of Fishman Island when she said about humans not being totally evil. Sometimes, I see good values being taught by anime. I think that’s what Lumen Gentium 7 was talking about when it mentioned about the Truth contained on other religions. Something like that. I need to go now, I’m a substitute teacher for my Department Head in Values Education. She’s now confined in the hospital because of her polio. Please do pray for her.

To be a Christian means to have the heart and mind of Jesus.

How Augustine’s doctrine of original sin made more sense to me

Just need to write this down before I forget this. Yesterday morning before I attended my first subject, I picked up a book Fire on the Earth by Kevin J Barr MSC. It is about religious life and its prophetic role in the 21^st century. This is timely since it is the Year of Consecrated Life. Later, during our Moral Theology class, we talked about the Church History in relation to moral thinking. Whenever I encounter St. Augustine, his doctrine on original sin is always bloody. Our professor mentioned something about human sinfulness and the reason why priests wear white soutanes. One perspective is that priests wear white soutanes to cover the darkness of human flesh. Because deep inside is a sinful nature. And how do we explain those black, brown habits?

That moment, the original sin doctrine made sense to me. Why did St. Augustine come up with that doctrine?  Aside from his own life experience as his inspiration, he was fighting heresies particularly the Pelagian heresy which says that Jesus was a very good model for living that people can imitate to live a good life and attain salvation for oneself. There’s a lot of problem with that. This heresy is saying that even without grace, one can work for his/her own salvation. And Augustine said no you cannot do that. The Pelagians are again thinking of turning themselves as “gods” like what Adam and Eve did. It is through the grace of God that we attain salvation. A modern understand of original sin is this: we are born with original grace; however, we again commit what Adam and Eve did whenever we turn away from God, refusing God’s grace. And this makes more sense to me.

P.S.: I’m still thinking whether to attend review classes tomorrow or not. Tomorrow is my brother’s wedding and I don’t want to be late. I don’t even know yet what to wear. Of course one thing’s for sure: I’ll be there.