The effect of this contrived partition is that not only is faith a personal privilege, but it is also private to the point that it is often considered to be superstitious.[2] For example, you can stick joss-sticks “anywhere you want” except that it should not be “public” because nobody needs to put up with your religious expression.[3] The result of this forced division is that our religious expression is not a right to be celebrated but rather a privilege to be endured, all in the name of “tolerance”.
This distinction between God and Caesar cannot be absolute in the sense that they have nothing to do with each other; that God is considered private whereas Caesar is public. As stated, the separation is unnatural by the very fact of who we are. We are other-worldly and not merely material beings. We are both spiritual and social and thus the Gospel highlights the fact that both God and neighbour or church and state are inextricably linked. This is not a pitch for a theocracy or a “theocraZy” like Isis or any forms of religious fanaticism. Instead, God plays an intricate role in our human well-being. In terms of God and Caesar, we cannot have one without the other. Without God, can we survive? Sacred Scripture, if it is still relevant, is proof. Israel floundered every time she forgot Her Lord and Saviour. In the same manner, are we forgetting Israel’s experience as we face the pandemic? It is true that we have a health issue at hand. Putting that aside, have we been that socialised into an idea that “health” is the only paramount concern we have? Whilst well-being is vital, it cannot be absolute to the point that God becomes marginal. People have been so excited by live-streaming forgetting that this medium is no substitute for what is real. What is central to human flourishing is God, not our electronic gods.
God is essential to our health, survival and our eternity. This sounds like a persuasion for God and it is. Watch a common reaction to renovating a church, specifically when beautifying it. “Why spend so much money on beautification when there are so many hungry mouths”? Everywhere we turn to, we are witnessing the ravaging effects of the pandemic. And now with our third wave raging uncontrollably out of hand, we will see even more people affected. Loving one’s neighbour cannot be more important now than before.
Sadly, the problem we have is not the human predicament no matter how pressing. It is rather the God-problem. We can be distracted by poverty, hunger, homelessness and the economic disparity in our social setting and we continue to be preoccupied by our social inequality. But our God-problem basically boils down to this[4]--our human plight is essentially a symptom or an indication that God has been absent in our lives. In Matthew 25, Jesus gave us not that much of a solution as a perspective on this human predicament. Precisely with God absent from our horizon that we are not able to see Him in our brothers and sisters. Material poverty is as much a spiritual privation—a proof of God’s absence.
We are not blind for we can see hunger and we want to cure the headache of inequality. We want to make the world so much better. For instance, Pope Francis recently waded into the question of civil unions for same-sex couples. Whether he was right or wrong is immaterial to this point which I am trying to make. The moral mess we are is evidence that we have kept God at the side, inviting Him in only when it is convenient for us. In other words, when God is rendered as an auxiliary incidental, He can easily be weaponised. In other we can effortlessly use Him for our purpose (God is loving, God is kind vs God punishes, God judges). What is relevant is not the weaponisation of God but an emphasis that the absence of God in the human equation has created the tricky situation which can be summed up in this confusion between possibility and permissibility.
Today, our world is constantly trying to enlarge the boundaries of permissibility because of the explosion of possibilities.[5] But God is found in the realm of what is permissible because it is in here that we enter into the arena of relationship. Relationships have moral implications and without God in the picture, we will always struggle to accommodate what is possible. For example, the experiences of the LGBT(?) community. These are descriptions of possibilities. I suppose initially, the experiences were limited to categories of L, G and B. But soon enough, LGB could not satisfactorily define the permutations of the possible. Hence, LGBT. And even then, these classifications are deemed too narrow for we are in the process of accommodating an ever-expanding repertoire of sexual practices.
With the conflation between possible and permissible and with a world organised according to victimhood status, who draws the lines? For instance, what about NAMBLA[6]? If any kind of possibility[7] should be included so as to avoid the label of being called a bigot, prejudiced, racist or sexist etc, then, logically one should include NAMBLA into the equation. Who is to say that paedophilia is wrong? The point here is not the legitimisation of any possible permutation but rather to point out how much God is missing in our possibilities. To ask questions only proves that conscience remains the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, the voice that God speaks to us and the authenticity of the voice is confirmed through the Church given to us by Christ Himself.
In the Gospel, the Pharisees asked about the love of God and neighbour hoping to trap Jesus yet again. But Jesus placed God and neighbour into a kind of relationship which shows that the priority of one makes it a possibility for the other. The love of God is the basis for the love of one’s neighbour. Or to put it in another way, with God at the centre of our lives and worship, we cannot but see with the eyes and feel with the heart of Jesus the diverse and at times extreme conditions of human existence. It will be inauthentic to love God without loving our neighbour.
In summary, we are still being tested on our Christian claim to love God and neighbour. Just like the Pharisees, it is a “sick” test in which the “authenticity” of our love is measured by our complicity in the amorality of our times. According to current wisdom, love means keeping silent because to speak up in the matters of morality will invite a judgement of being fanatics, freaks or fundamentalists. However, the authenticity of our love for our neighbours require that we do not dissolve the line between what is possible and what is permitted. For that, God has to be at the centre, for the love of neighbour requires that we draw lines; some lines that we do not cross and it is not just about murder or taking an innocent life. We need to remind ourselves that God is not here to confirm every choice we can make. He enters into a relationship in order to save us. Thus, making sure the poor have enough to eat is good but, the love for our neighbour must go beyond their material well-being to their spiritual well-being for that is the true meaning of loving God and neighbour.
[1] Much like our access to a passport in this country. It is a privilege and not a right due to a citizen.
[2] Old people more superstitious, younger people more scientific—follow the science
[3] It is a caricature because the reality is more subtle in societies still religiously constituted—like the Thaipusam or the St Anne’s processions.
[4] At best, we pay lip-service to God in terms of His presence. At worst, we have written Him out of our horizon. He useful when we need Him, in the sense of Deus ex machina. Otherwise, we keep Him at arm’s length.
[5] Simple illustration. 2G, 3G, 4G and now 5G. Before long 6G? An endless array of possibilities.
[6] North American Man-Boy Love Association. In ancient Greece and Rome, that was termed as pederasty.
[7] The word “perversion” cannot be used here because it is connotatively “judgemental”. But then, possibilities and perversions are worlds apart in terms of their moral contents.
