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Friday, May 19, 2006
Confronting evil the right way
By Rene Lizada
Papa's Table
ABOUT a year ago, my wife and I attended this mass where the priest told us a story. He said in his parish, there was this woman who would daily clean the statue of the Blessed Virgin. She would carefully and perhaps even lovingly wipe the dust and the grime that were attached to the image of Mama Mary. But she would never wipe the snake that the feet of Mary crushed (if you are Catholic you know that the serpent is Satan).
This woman kept coming back and that was the only thing she did. She would wipe the statue but she would never clean the snake. This was what the priest observed. Then one day the priest related that he was quite surprised when the woman wiped the serpent.
Curious as to why she did that, the priest approached the woman and asked why she cleaned the snake. In her innocence she said, "Father kahibalu man ko na ang bitin ang yawa, pero usahay malu-oy man ko sa yawa."
When I heard that story I smiled.
That story reminds me of how we confront evil. A lot of us would be repelled by evil. We would cringe in the face of what is bad and cruel. We avoid those who are "bad" and we do not like to clean them. The varieties are aplenty. The arrogant, the manipulator, the backbiter, the corrupt, the cruel, the condescending, the self-righteous, the hypocrite, and the list goes on. Our normal reaction to these types of people would range from disgust to ridicule.
Others will not tolerate them, while some would just spit on them. We only have to look closely into ourselves and find out how we react when we meet people like that.
And more often than not, our reaction to them would be negative. And I would not blame you. It is very difficult to deal with people who are like that. The human side in us tells us to be disgusted about the person. The aversion that we might feel is totally normal, totally human. And just like that woman, we would not want to clean it up.
But just like that woman also, we need to realize that "kahibalu man ko na ang bitin ang yawa, pero usahay malu-oy man ko sa yawa."
When we think about it really, people who are hypocrites, arrogant, condescending, cruel are people who should be pitied. It is easier said than done though because when we are confronted with people like that our tendency is to lash back and fight the person. But if you try for a moment to look beyond the anger, the hurtful words and the violence, you will see a person who is in pain. A person who is mangled up inside that he or she needs to vent these feelings out. What you will see is a tortured soul who cannot control what he or she feels. Most people who are like these lash out and say whatever they need to say and that after awhile they apologize and say that they just could not control themselves. When you try to look at that excuse, you will see that our sympathy should be given. After all a person who does not have control over his or her feelings must have a lot of issues.
People who are arrogant are crying out for help. The humble need not prove anything. People who are condescending are so desperate to show that they are right perhaps because everything is wrong in their lives. People who find meaning in their material are people with empty shells. They have everything and yet they have nothing. There is nothing in their souls except money. People who are cruel spit out violent words because of the violence in their hearts. People
who always have the answers have no answers for themselves. People become criminals because they cannot control themselves. They rape, steal and kill and their excuse is I could not control myself. Our jails are filled with people who were either too arrogant, too smug and too weak.
And when you look at these, and when you look beyond these, it is not anger or disgust that we should feel although it normally is. It should be compassion, mercy and perhaps even love. Mahirap maging mabait pero mahirap din maging masama. And these people are trapped. These souls are crying for help and the irony is they cannot see they need help.
They think they are always right, they can justify their actions. If you try to help them they will think you are intruding. If you try to reach out to them they crawl back to the darkness they come from. The very people who need help are the ones who shun it.
And these people are everywhere. Even closer than we think. Because these people are us.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (May 19, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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