Some thoughts on seeing a prevailing feature during a trip to the Philippines.
Walls. Everywhere in
Manila walls rise up, cinder blocks or concrete slabs topped with spikes,
barbs, or broken glass. Manila is a walled city, the thick mossy wall of
Intramuros that can no longer protect against invaders represented for me all
the walls seen and unseen. Built by Spaniards, the wall protected for a time,
but progress soon overtook it. The wall became a way to keep people in since it
could not keep invaders out. At Fort Santiago, the Spaniards kept Dr. Jose
Rizal until his execution, and the Japanese kept prisoners there during World
War II.
The walls I saw in
Manila work the same way, the most noticeable function being to demarcate the
gated communities and businesses. I also saw human walls, the omnipresent
white-shirted security force controlling entry into beautiful buildings and the
green-uniformed police controlling movement along the busy streets. Diverse and
competing interests can form walls blocking fruitful collaboration as we heard
time again. Lazarus outside the rich man's gate (Luke 16:19-20) seems so
obvious and easy as a comparison. If so, it's probably because it comes to mind
so quickly and easily, just as easily as condemnation for the rich man comes to
mind. Like the rich man's walls and the walls in Manila, however, Jesus does
not seek to condemn but to enter.
So what should we do
about walls so Jesus can enter through us? Here are some thoughts.
- Walls could never keep ideas out, bearing out Lowell Bakke's argument that society doesn't change through government action but through cultural transformation. Rizal's writings against Spanish occupation continued to fire Filipino imaginations, and General Douglas MacArthur's promise to return to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation sustained Filipinos and the Americans left there in World War II. We can get past walls with the idea of the Gospel.
- Walls could never keep people in or out. We're living in an era of great migrations, and even if governments don't allow it, people still find a way to get through walls. We can think of ways to make the most of the movement of people.
- We can break through walls through partnership by becoming of one mind, love, spirit, and purpose (Ph 2:2).
Can we be that force
that shifts the ground and breaks walls that the American poet, Robert Frost,
spoke of when he said in his poem, Mending Fences:
Something
there is that doesn't love a wall,
That
sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And
spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And
makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
Like the Holy
Spirit, the force Robert Frost spoke of is unseen but it's effects are seen.
Will God make the ground shift through us? Maybe we can be wall-breakers like
that, the unseen Holy Spirit energizing us in a servant role, which, by
definition, is an unseen role that has visible effects. Melba Maggay made
reference to such invisible activity, saying Christians work in the informal
domain versus the technical and formal. It may not be seen by the world, but it
will follow us in eternity.
