After the Teacher from Galilee resurrected his beloved friend Lazarus — says the gospel according to John — Israel’s religious authorities got so alarmed they plotted to take Jesus’ life.
“It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish,” the high priest Caiaphas told his confreres as he strove to allay their fears of armed intervention by Caesar should the people rally around the Christ and revolt against the Roman Empire.
As we observe with Christians around the world the holiest of weeks on the liturgical calendar, we bemoan the continual cheapening of human life across our country.
The discourse of Cebu’s community leaders in the wake of the bloodbath in the metropolis does not go far in upholding the right to life upon which is hinged every other human rights.
Last Friday’s shootings in uptown Cebu City that killed security guard Wilson Bucag and injured his colleagues as well as Wellington Lim and two Germans who were caught in the crossfire.
Subsequently, a chorus of voices called on police to stop the violence for the sake of business, tourism, and the country’s reputation.
Our community leaders can do better than speak as if the killings were just domestic dirt to be swept under the carpet or a senile relative to lock up in a soundproof room for us to keep up appearances with our guests and spare ourselves from shame.
The continual killings are alarming — and we disagree with the police’s insistence on the lack of a pattern in them since they at the very least share the commonality of being perpetrated using guns, as we already noted in this space — not because they would turn off tourists and investors or make Cebu a spectacular embarrassment.
They are a cause of alarm because they rob persons of a divine gift that no creature has the authority to take; outrageous because they violate our common human will to survive and to flourish; reprehensible because they steal someone’s loved one and fear-inducing because no one knows who would fall next. The next victim could be any one of us.
When a man thinks only out of self-interest, no matter how enlightened to save his neighbor, he is only marginally different from the man, the member of the cheering squad to the bloody campaign against drugs, who supports out of self-interest the elimination of his neighbor.
Both men treat their fellow human beings as means to an end. Both men objectify and use people.
By all means, hasten the investigation of the killings and the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators. By all means, reconvene without putting on recess the peace and order councils. But do so with a deep rather than a utilitarian motivation.
Start with gestures that convey the community’s grief because someone died, the community’s intolerance for violence. One such sign would be a visit to the wake of a victim like Wilson Bucag. For survivors like Pauline Basbach and Manuel Georrings, start with signs of regret and human solidarity.
Long ago, rather than rejoice over Lazarus’ restoration to life, Caiaphas abetted the murder of the man Christians recognize as the Son of God because of his obsession with public order and the stability of the elite.
Let us not act like Caiaphases of the 21st century.
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