English writer John Ruskin once quipped that “The best things in life are not things.” They are people or more specifically the love, justice and peace that reign in human relationships and, as climate change starkly reminds us today, in our relationship with earth’s creatures.
That gem of human wisdom has led me to believe that the most sacred place on earth is not a place. It is a person… male, female or anybody in between, brown, yellow, black or white, atheist or believer, young or old, rich or poor. Why do you think we are asked to love the neighbor as we love ourselves and to do unto others only those that we would like them to do unto us?
A temple is sacred as it is where we commune with God. But God is spirit and dwells in every man, woman or child. It follows that a person is where we encounter God on a daily basis. The person is God’s most sacred temple. In John 4:23-24 Christ tells us “But the time is coming – indeed it’s here now – when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” In spirit, that is in the heart of every man, woman or child.
A person is a sacred temple that we desecrate when we discriminate against anybody because of skin color, religion, sexual orientation or financial situation. We also desecrate this sacred person when we violate people’s equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
These desecrations are happening in a flagrant manner in the Philippines today. (To be fair, they are happening in perhaps worse ways in other parts of the world.) Informal settlers are ejected from their homes and small vendors from their stalls without relocation, all in the name of (whose?) progress. Workers are not given living wages and not allowed to organize as are their rights. In our two-tiered justice system a poor man who steals a kilo of mangoes instantly goes to jail while a high government official who steals millions roams free to steal some more. Indigenous peoples are cheated of their ancestral lands by supposedly Christian businesspersons.
It is election time and Church-going politicians are desecrating the sacred persons of voters by buying their votes. The philosopher Immanuel Kant tells us that a person has “infinite value” and cannot be bought or used like things. Yet Kant was anything but religious. He was an agnostic and least like our Church-going political leaders who egregiously use people to suit their ambitions of wealth and power.
We are quick to rain fire and brimstone on those who desecrate a sacred place with indecent dress or behavior. I understand one has to dress and behave decently in sacred places; but where is the outcry when persons, who have more value and are more sacred, are unjustly treated, are not given equal access to livelihood, wellness and educational opportunities?
We are missing the mark badly when we frown on people who enter sacred places indecently attired yet are not disturbed by the desecration of sacred humans that is happening around us.