God is not a Good Excuse

I’m a Buddhist, and many people know this. Even my father knows this. He seems to have a habit of making arguments that just sound really stupid. I’ll talk about that soon, and I promise to keep this post on topic as much as I possibly can, since I have a tendency to deviate.

A few days ago, I had a talk with my tall-hairy-Italian friend (you know who you are) about my father. And I shall now tell you what I told my friend. As I said from the start, I am a Buddhist, and I have a very open mind to many things (as should everybody else). I have no qualms about any religion. Although, when the people who practice it step over the line, well…

I’m not sure if I wrote this in my blog; my father is now a Born Again Christian. He told me this when I had to pay my respects to a relative who passed away this year. So, anyway. For some reason, he is now much more eager to convert me back to Christianity. Oh, the things we discussed that day. He was so silly and fallacious, quite funny even when you dissect the structures of his arguments. Oops, off topic again.

It’s just so depressing to think that I can be related to him. Yet again, the only reason why I’m probably doing so well in school is because of the genes I got from my father and grandfather. So what has he said that’s gotten me so infuriated that I had to share it with you lot? It’s his feeble attempt to mask his incapability. I can’t say what he exactly said to me, because it’s quite confidential. But I can make some examples that have the same structure as his “arguments”.

Let’s take a look at me as the first example. When I failed to get into Ateneo de Manila University, my mother would sometimes say, “maybe it wasn’t what God had planned for you.” Now I’m okay with her saying that, because I got accepted to De La Salle University – Manila (awesome university by the way). However, it left a bit of a sting within me, not because I didn’t make it into Ateneo, but because God had nothing to do with my failure of getting into Ateneo. The reason why I failed was because I wasn’t good enough, not because God didn’t want me to get into Ateneo. I mean, who doesn’t like to get into Ateneo? Have you seen the campus? It’s amazing!

Let’s make another example. Imagine you have a job in some company. You work your ass off everyday, you’re excellent at what you do, and you try your very best to get a promotion. Six months pass and your boss announces that there’s going to be someone who would get promoted, but he still can’t decide between his top two choices.

Knowing that one of his choices is you, you do your very best to impress your boss. You’re confident that you will get the promotion. D-day comes, and you hear that the other guy got the promotion. So, what do your co-workers say to cheer you up? “Maybe God has better plans for you.”

From the way I see, that explanation just doesn’t cut it. Your competition could’ve been better than you, or worse, you just weren’t good enough. There are other countless more factors that can be observed, so why conclude it with something supernatural?

That’s how my father is now. When something should go to plan, when something needed should be done, when something favorable should be grasped and yet not, my father says, “it’s because it’s not what God wanted.”

I tell my tall-hairy-Italian friend, “that’s just bullshit.” And he agrees–he’s Catholic by the way. You cannot “blame” the supernatural for your own deficiencies. Just because you can’t get what you worked for doesn’t mean that your skills were planned to be used for “the greater good”. It just means that you sucked at it and you’re not good enough.

The way I see it, my father is in a stage of denial. He can’t admit that his shortcomings are his own faults and no other. He tells me that I have such a big ego, and yet he can’t even admit that he’s not good enough. He has to say, “God has other plans for me, that’s why this-and-that didn’t happen.” Because if he seriously does not see that the problem is himself, then I think he’s screwed. Part of fixing a problem IS ADMITTING YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. It’s not God; it’s YOU.

This blog entry goes out to all the people who’ve thought this way. Hopefully I’ve shed some light, and I hope I helped. You can do great things with yourself.