Monday, January 23, 2006
Gulle: How far is right from wrong?
By Inocentes Gulle
Your Business Is Our Business
IT SEEMS the world cannot determine right from wrong. What is right for a certain group may be wrong from the point of view of another. One person may consider a thing right yet another would insist it's wrong. So, how can we tell right from wrong? We can't, can we? There's no way we can tell relying on this crazy world's standards.
Take the question of the custody of the American troopers accused of raping a Filipina bar-hopper. The American government says the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) provides that they have the right to refuse to hand over their people to the Philippines' custody while the case is being tried.
The Philippine government says otherwise, based on the same VFA. Now, who will determine the right and the wrong of it? The US Supreme Court? The Philippine Supreme Court? "I do not no for you!?!.", as my tuba-drinking friend would say. Wrong grammar!? Who sez?
Now take the case of an Oregon, USA, Supreme Court decision that it is right for an entertainment establishment to produce and show sex (even forthright sex) inside the premises of that joint. Now, aren't that crazy? Let's face, the world has gone crazy and will go even crazier as evidence you can see all around would suggest.
After all our parents started on a confused proposition right from the beginning--wrong and right (truth and lie) proposition. Didn't the Creator tell Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden for "they will surely die", if they would? They were about to obey that admonition too. But here comes this arch-cheat and tells our mother that "you will not surely die".
She believed him and even gave some to her husband. Well, she did not die (not right then, anyway) and instead, learned good from evil, or had she? And, don't we all die, after all?
Well, we all know that the world has never been rid of the evils that man has to contend with and suffer its fruits to the end of his days. Now, you beat that, the more we have studied, the higher our learning, the more we do not know. We never learned to delineate evil from good, wrong from right, even love and hate.
For if we had, how come everybody is obsessed of self-protection, personal, economic or political. Why are we so preoccupied with protecting ourselves from terrorists such that we have to go to all lengths to join alliances, etc, as if these things can protect us.
Oh, but there's a source of knowledge, a Divinely written code of conduct for man. It's the only source of true knowledge of how to have a peaceful, prosperous, happy world. Yet almost no one believes it. Mark Twain, the world famous storyteller even said, "It's a book of a thousand lies." We all idolize Mark Twain, but what of the Bible?
The Bible says (written almost three thousand years ago) that in the last days Iran (ancient Persia) will push at resurrected Holy Roman Empire (European Union) led by Germany (ancient Assyria) and start World War iii. Then China and Russia would come up and try to fight the victor (EU)--a war that would annihilate all life on earth. And then Jesus Christ will intervene before they kill everybody and set us a Kingdom where He will rule in true justice and love.
Maybe you, who are now reading this, would probably chuckle in derision. But watch out, you might just find the world exploding around you! And it won't be long too! For any discerning one can see that "the fig tree is growing tender shoots, indicating that summer is nigh."
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(January 23, 2006 issue)
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