MABUHAY! Filipino Contextualization of Spirituality

We, Filipinos are widely known for hospitality and closed-family-ties. Our expression of love-one-another begins within the circle of our clan. We can hardly find one family that is totally detached from its relatives. We even value the family image in a community, thus we put our consciousness on how we act and react in public. Perhaps most of us will agree that it is embedded in our culture. And culture is carried from generation to generation. It has historical relevance but since history must have its origin, it would be a never ending pattern of questions. So this can be deduced into one question: where does a culture start?

Culture must be a reflection of beliefs which conveys the kind of humanity in a particular setting. We didn’t exist on our own, by our own, and for our own reason. God created us to live by godly standards and principles which can be expressed in variable ways. Biblical historical records show the different people group of variable beliefs, thus a culture! God even gave us a model culture, the Israelites. However, our fallen nature somehow reflects a distorted culture far from what was revealed in the Garden, including His chosen model culture.

Since Philippines is believed to be a Christian nation, our Filipino culture must have its roots in the biblical perspective. It is true that we have some correct beliefs, but there’s lot of which are yet to be refined. For example, our belief on closed-family-ties is a biblical perspective of community of faith or God’s family. Likewise, our negative label “crab mentality” is expressed in biblical perspective as envy. In our context, I believe we can retain and redeem our rich culture at the same time. We, as Filipino Christians must be the catalyst for this movement toward Filipino contextualization of spirituality. We can capitalize on our good values that express the best of Filipino humanity. Therefore, it is not enough to be known as Christian nation which apparently becomes a cliché, but a nation that has a culture which reflects the true Christian principles in every Filipino. Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!