Seeing Freedom as a Gift from God
Revolutionary leaders like Andres Bonifacio laid down rules of discipline to be followed by the KKK members.
Love God with all your heart … Bear always in mind that the love of God is also the love of Country, and this too, is love of one’s fellow men … Punish any scoundrel and traitor and praise all good work. Believe, likewise, that the aims of the KKK are God-given for the will of the people is also the will of God.[i]
We don’t know where the invaders got the notion of “inequality of humans.” Seemingly these revolutionary people were more human in the way they understood life by this time. In some of Bonifacio’s work, we read, “Rely in God and don’t be taken in by our enemy who has the ways of an animal … Ah, give us your love, Heaven that looks upon us, God, my Lord, don’t deny to your children the protection they ask for.”[ii] He was confident that the desires of revolutionary hearts were not offensive to the purpose of God, but to change the evil realities that time shaped by “the ways of an animal.”
Emilio Jacinto is like American Thomas Jefferson in the Philippines. He acted as the “the brain of revolutionary Katipunan,” authored its rules, and talked about the equality of all men.
God is the father of humanity, and what the father requires of his children is not constant protestations of respect, fear and love for him, but the performance of his mandates, which are the mandates of reason, hence the true respect and obedience to the dictates of reason, and to them we must adjust all our acts, words, and movement, because reason originates with God himself …[iii]
We know that, in the spirit of struggle, Jacinto gave reason to the revolution to fight for the created notion of human inequality. The slavers were offensive to God’s purpose and must be broken. Respect and love must be restored; by nature or human design, all must find the way to sustain and celebrate it.
Apolinario Mabini was the “brain of first Philippine government.” Facing the war against Americans, we read his thoughts with godly tone.
But no matter. Let us fight to our last breath in order to defend our sovereignty, our independence. If the North American nation is great and powerful, greater and more powerful still is Providence who watched over the unfortunate and who punishes and humbles the haughty.[iv]
He got the message of Jesus in beatitude when Jesus stood as “teacher/preacher” and gave hope to the poor of the kingdom of Roman Caesar. Mabini also wrote a Decalogue.
Thou shalt love thy country after God and honor more than thyself; for she the only Paradise which God has given thee in this life, the only patrimony of thy race, the only inheritance of thine ancestors, and the only hope of thy posterity. Because of her thou hast life, love, and interests, happiness, honor and God … Thou shalt strive for the independence of thy country for only thou canst have any real interest in her advancement and exaltation; and her exaltation thine own glory and immortality.[v]
Mabini believed that God loved all people, provided all things for all humanity, and that the nation is the sanctuary of one particular people or race that must be preserved and must be free to grow into its full potential and not be hindered by the one who empowered the notion of inequality.
Emilio Aguinaldo may have had wishful thoughts about the U.S. as the revolution continued in the American era:
And earnestly entreat them to proceed to the formal recognition of our struggle for Philippine Independence; certainly they are the forces designated by Divine Providence to maintain equilibrium among the people by sustaining the cause of those who are weak.[vi]
The spirit of how the United States of America became a nation should be stated and not forgotten as a reason for its relationship to the Philippines. Filipinos must remind them—as anti-imperialists did—that freedom should be the reason and not a bait to go against it.
Generally, the Filipino revolutionaries believed that God was in their side too, because God gave everyone the ability to see His truths and absolute good for life. Those that acted the opposite must be using lies and deceptions to be successful against others. With that, such actions must point the sacred design of human feeling and the designer of human’s ability to stand what is right.
Freedom as the Reason for Struggle
There is a need to point out the very issue of human history into clarity; it was not for the sake of killing the “giant” or to prove something like revolutionary bravery, that in spite of their inferior weapons, they stood fought for freedom against superpower.
In 1896, the Philippine National Revolution for Freedom and Independence took place. Writings in these years were instruments of telling and introducing the revolution. Andres Bonifacio wrote, “Bear in mind that the cause of our sacrifices is the realization of the dreamed liberty of our native land that will give us freedom and will vindicate the honor that, through slavery, was interred in the grave of incomparable oppression.”[vii]
Bonifacio dreamed about liberty of the land as home of the beauty of Filipino humanity, as opposed to oppressor’s slavery of which the full nature to be human in their land is suppressed. God gave the ability and faculties to grasp the wisdom of who their Creator was. True as it was, the oppressor is to be seen as maker of “human anger,” creator of human’s discontent in the environment with bullying machine of the “winner,” trapped to keep the notion of life as “competition” in the darkness of inequality —as opposed to “for God so loved the world” (John 3:16).
Bonifacio said, “In order that the sacredness and honor of our country be made complete, in order that the whole world might witness the nobility of our character, let us not emulate our enemy in this detestable conduct of the war, let us not go to battle merely in the interest of killing, but rather in defense of the liberty of our country, and thus fighting cry out at the top of our voices: Mabuhay! Long live the sovereign people of the Philippines!”[viii]
He saw the reaction to the injustice done to sovereign people as an opportunity for the world to see and understand. It is in defense against the enemy that is already inside their homeland—for freedom—not naïve enough to see themselves as good only to be oppressed. Human as they were, they can understand the meaning of freedom, like a mission to be fulfilled announcing that Filipino knew what is “worth dying for.” To feel for freedom and sanctity of life is itself a reflection of the designer of man’s heart. History is a vehicle for actual events to be mirrored and truth displayed.
In “Light and Darkness,” Emilio Jacinto said:
Liberty is the attribute of man from the moment he is born; thanks to it, he thinks and does as he pleases, provided he does no harm to another. Liberty comes from Heaven and no power on earth is entitled to appropriate it, nor have we a right to consent its being done … There are instances when Liberty is smothered by error, by the blind worship of ancient bad practices and laws suggested by crafty henchmen. If there is right, it is because there is liberty; liberty is the column that sustains the edifice and the audacious one who tears it down in order to bring down the building must be annihilated.[ix]
Freedom sometimes is used to do harm or violence against those who wronged us, but basically freedom is not to smother or to suppress or to destroy our own freedom, but to celebrate our humanness with it—the nature of our being. If not suppressed and pushed to do the opposite of it by human nature, our joy, security, and complete exercise of our being can be done only with other humans. Knowing that we cannot live alone and “no man is an island,” only those who pretended to be in the jungle of the beast cannot see the sacredness of freedom. From birth, the seed to value freedom is already planted. It is part of every human being (everybody knows that); one is willing to be alone or die alone for it. It is a built-in moral sense. Liberty comes from heaven—so in man, we see God. With my Christian persuasion, I should say “God put it there,” except that others denied it for themselves.
In writing “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” Emilio Aguinaldo said, “People of the Philippines, the hour has come to shed our blood to conquer our right liberty. Let us band ourselves about the flag of the revolution, whose motto is Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”[x]
Romanist Catholic’s friars were the first target to eliminate by revolutionaries as the community’s “very cornerstone of scandal,” dragging and indentifying God to their selfish immoralities. The Filipino intellectuals understood the evils, abuses, violations, and immoralities (political and social) done to them, but the ordinary masses also felt the actuality and truth of it. Here, religious title or name is identified as not necessarily the same with the spirit of Christianity or the very purpose of God in the function of the Church that blesses life. Filipino revolutionaries may have hated the system and men in the Romanist religious structures or institutions, but not the Christianity of Christ.
[i] T. Agoncillo, History of Filipino People, 162.
[ii] Epifanio do los Santos; The Revolutionist, 182.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] T. Agoncillo; Filipino Nationalism, 237.
[v] J. Herbert Kane, Understanding Christian Mission, 257.
[vi] De los Santos, The Revolutionist, 23.
[vii] T. Agoncillo, Filipino Nationalism, 207.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Ibid., 215.
[x] Ibid., 225.
