Phobic Scenarios

Phobic Scenarios

(BY: DENNIS V. SALAMANES)

Lately, various countries around the world have been bombarded with various catastrophes that brought casualties to the people and to the society. Nowadays, it is usual for our ears to hear some news about earthquakes, global warming, flood, fires, volcanic eruption, terrorist attacks, killings and many other tragic events that are happening in every corner of the world. In international setting, we have a lot of tragic events such as the earthquake that happened in Haiti and in Chili that caused several citizens of the mentioned countries to suffer and die in a very unfortunate way.  Moreover, in the local setting specifically in the Philippines, we Filipinos cannot really forget the super-typhoon Ondoy that created several damages to human and to the society and the so called “Maguindanao massacre” that brought the life of more than fifty media men into the historical massacre that took away the life of innocent media-men in a single blink of an eye.

Some of the abovementioned tragic events are products of God’s will but the other remaining tragic events are actually manmade in which an intervention of unrighteous human became apparent in one way or another. The earthquakes in Haiti and in Chili are without a doubt considered as forms of natural calamities in which believable to have the absence of human intervention. However, the calamities that happened in the Philippines such as the super-typhoon “Ondoy” and the “Maguindanao Massacre” can never have a colossal destruction to both lives and properties if not because of human lapses, human wickedness, and human unrighteous intervention towards destroying the nature, the society and the righteously living citizens in the Phippines. It is an undeniable truth that people sometimes made actions that put their life and the life of others into risks. God’s will is out of the issue in all of the catastrophes we are facing nowadays since according to the scriptures written in the bible, there would be no tragic events if there were no sin in this world. Romans 8:20-22 says that tragic events like earthquakes and floods are also the result of sin. There is no doubt that God can use tragic events to judge the wicked and discipline his people. On the other side of the coin, we cannot discount the fact that even if we experienced a lot of catastrophes, a lot problems, a lot of struggles of life and survival and struggles out of choosing whether to do good or to do evil, still it is natural to the people that in times of struggles, the value of sacrifice and extension of help toward others have always been the primary concern of the majority of people.