Saturday, December 2, 2017

The Dangers Of Teen Dating

Today, we hear a lot of noise about sexually transmitted diseases, particularly the ever-dreaded HIV. Almost all governments worldwide, if not all, are working around the clock to inform everybody, especially the youth, that this disease can be prevented by practicing safe sex. Thus, they provide everyone with sex protection products like condoms and pills. 


I agree that we can prevent this disease, and, unlike in the past, once infected by HIV, you are dead; now, we can control it. Thanks to the relentless effort of science to help find solutions to at least prevent this disease from killing people infected by it. But then again, you still wouldn't want to acquire this disease; heed the warnings that sounded everywhere. 

It is indeed the youth who need this information campaign against unprotected sex because it is they who are vulnerable to irresponsible relationships. 

Looking into the truths about relationships, I like the idea of some parents now and many in the past that would not allow their children to get involved in a girl-boy relationship not until they graduated from college because they know for a fact that having a relationship would divert their attention and may lose their focus from their studies, and fail miserably in the academics and probably worse fail in their lives as a whole.

While it may be true that they could lose focus in their studies, it sometimes means they would be a partial failure. However, they shouldn't get involved in a relationship just yet. 

If you agree that the Bible is the source of truth, let me take you to the story of Joseph and Mary. Mary was yet a teenager during that time, and Joseph was already a responsible man. Teenagers before were not as naive as our teenagers are today. They are already as accountable as our working class of today. Thus, Joseph betrothed Mary. They did not get into a relationship for the heck of it, but they intended to create a family.

Allowing teenagers to go out on a date exposes them to the dangers of unwanted fleshly acts. It doesn't always happen that they would already get sexually intimate when they date. Still, the opportunity to be lascivious is always there; when that happens, no one can tell what will happen next. And besides, thinking about lust is already considered a sin even if it is still in mind; how much more if you start to caress and more? The possibilities are endless.


These relationships are the drive that this article is pointing out to prevent the youth from getting involved in unwanted pregnancy and, worse would be to acquire HIV; courtship and dating should only be allowed to those who are already responsible enough and those who intend to get married.






Monday, November 27, 2017

Commentary Christians

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful; We refer to Joshua 1; 8 in the Bible. Many of us love this verse not only because it is the word of God but because it has a lot of beautiful promises. Who would not like to receive these blessings if God would give them to you outright?

I, for one, am fond of this verse. I encourage every one of you reading this article to make it a habit to live your life always in the light of God’s word so that you will be guided in every way, leading you away from all untoward circumstances, doing everything right, and you will certainly achieve a good life.

Delving into the prosperity and success aspect is not what this article would focus on, although abused by various contemporary Bible-believing Christians. What we will be looking into right now is how the meditation aspect became so deteriorated. Understandably, reading and meditating on the Bible is paramount to Christian living. Thus, we see a lot of them reading their Bibles every day.

Reading the Bible and doing what it says is what the verse is talking about, and carefully contemplating everything written in it day and night so that you are careful to follow everything written there. The problem arises when the reader finds the reading material so difficult to understand, especially when we look into the laws and chapters explicitly written for a particular group or people at a specific time in the past and associate them with the present time and circumstance the reader is in. 

Bible Interpretation is so complex that most of the time, you would require the assistance of a Bible commentary from a bible scholar or those with doctorate degrees in biblical interpretations to know the meaning of what you are reading. It is not harmful to refer your understanding of the Bible to these scholars and doctors in theology because they are God-given resource people so that we understand how God would want it.

Commentaries are there for reference and guidance only. These are not the replacement for the word of God. We see people nowadays who have totally disregarded the original texts in the Bible and have settled entirely on the commentaries and reversely made the Bible their reference instead. They take the true spiritual enlightenment from the comments, making them appear to be bible truths.


Thursday, November 23, 2017

Duterte War



Filipinos have probably become so tired of being manipulated by many leaders in the past that they have turned to be hostile at anyone or group that they find has the tendency to be lording over their lives one more time.  We had our dark experience during the Marcos era when for two decades the Filipinos have been subjected to tyranny.  Worse is when we recall that over four centuries, our forefathers were enslaved by the Spanish colonizers, and we can continue to count in our historical timeline the times when we have become subjects by other nationality or group of people and individuals.

The coming of Rodrigo Duterte, the current president of the Philippines, is something that is surprising and shocking to others, and hopes for some.  We cannot quantify exactly the number of those who are happy and dissatisfied with his presence because we can only see surveys that present a high degree of satisfaction in favor of the president.  But during the election where Duterte was catapulted to the office of the president from just a Mayor of Davao, a city so far away from the capital, he garnered a total of more than 16 million votes, a win that could only be beaten if we combine the votes of the second and third contenders.

Despite this gigantic win and an epic high satisfaction rating, there is a quite a number of organizations who are ganging up on the president to find faults on almost anything that he does.  There are the mainstream media that we watch and read every day for which we no longer are able to determine which among them is telling the truth.  The social media, on the other hand, are so actively involved in informing the public which somehow adds up to the pressure of determining the truth from the fake one.  There is really an information warfare going on between some mainstream media organizations and social media practitioners with regard to who is in favor of and are against the president.

This is not new to a democratic system anyway, and the Philippines is so used to over politicizing all issues surrounding the government.   What worries me most is the involvement of the people.  The people are the main victims of the so-called truths they announce on media every day, and because these people have no way of verifying the facts except in browsing and searching on the internet of which many of the things they see are from those social media practitioners who are in the same way as guilty as the mainstream media, thus, the truth they get is diluted with another truth resulting to confusion.

The big question now is who to follow in situations like this.  My answer to that is simple question is to follow the president because he was not placed there by mere magic.  The people voted for him no matter how much others would claim that they did not, still, he was chosen by a great majority.  It is like joining a basketball team; you have to submit yourself to your coach in order for the team to run smoothly.  The coach has to be firm in his decisions and actions otherwise the team would crumble.  If you are in a team and all you contribute is complain, then you are not a help but a liability.  There is always room to voice your dissatisfaction, but it has to be limited with your group because if you go beyond the bounds of civility like declaring war, rebelling on a rally, or going out on international media just to discredit your country, then that is a different story.  In some nations, in fact, they regard their president in the same way as they would respect or give honor to their flag. 

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Manipulative Ideology

Ideology is commonly used by many organizations where all their actions are patterned from, whether it is a bad ideology or a good one.  As seen in the dictionary, ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.


All of us have an ideology in us which oftentimes we are unaware that they exist. Our religion is one good example of an ideology that we treasure so much  Our views of life today often emanated from our own set of beliefs that have been instilled in us since our childhood days, thus, those who have better ideological foundation often grow up to be better citizens of any nation.


Ideologies are supposed to start with good intentions.  We can take for example communism, a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.  If we look at this ideology, it looks good had all the people all around the world embraced the idea of equality at the onset, but look at how this turned out? Communism has obviously failed because an opposing ideology is more popular or more acceptable to the majority which is democracy.


We live in a democratic society in the Philippines, and we enjoy the privileges that democracy provides.  In the areas where some people are deprived of opportunities and are exposed to the notion that there are other societies that provide equality, then this is where the conflict arises.


I will not elaborate more on the pros and cons of these two ideologies, the intention of these article revolves around how these ideologies affected our lives, our decisions and actions and goals in the future.  Little do we know that the ideology we know and follow through today are still controlled by few individuals in the society who patterns their policies toward the common sentiments of the people, or commonly known to be the trend today, disregarding the basic requirement from which the ideology was originally formulated. Ideologies are derived from the needs of the people and if these are not addressed accordingly, then this is where the problem arises. Worse is when our leaders use our ideology to achieve their personal agenda which how this article is aptly titled – manipulated ideology.