At the Luneta Grandstand Saturday, members of the Jesus is Lord Church Worldwide marked the 47th year of their founding with the theme “Holy Spirit Breakthrough.”
According to the church group, they have had “five decades of divine encounters with the Holy Spirit, miraculous manifestations of God’s power seen in healings, transformations, and answered prayers.”
Leading the celebration was JIL’s president and spiritual director, brother Eddie Villanueva. At some point, he introduced his son, Senator Joel Villanueva, as the “real main guest speaker” of the event, supposedly as intimated to him by God through the Holy Spirit.
The JIL movement remains popular with many Filipinos, not only those residing in the Philippines but among migrant communities in at least 75 countries. Many of its members are God-fearing, upright, and law-abiding citizens who love their families and their country, and try to live honest and dignified lives from day to day. They appear to be level headed, rational individuals who do not immediately believe anything they hear, or parrot anything they are told.
But how is it possible to completely divorce spirituality and private living from the larger political issues that have hounded the leaders of this organization?
The elder Villanueva is in his third term as first nominee of Citizens Battle Against Corruption, a party-list group at the House of Representatives. This is the same post his son held, also for three terms, in earlier years, before the latter became so visible and earned a Senate seat.
Alas, at the Senate, the younger church leader has been at the center of a corruption scandal, having been named by different sources pertaining to the flood-control projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways. He has vehemently and passionately denied any involvement.
During the Luneta event, three colleagues – Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Ronald dela Rosa, and Robinhood Padilla – showed up in support of their friend, who announced he could look anybody straight in the eye as he insisted on his innocence.
No mudslinging, he said, can distract him from his mission of building this nation, transforming this nation for the glory of God.
Here, anybody saying that religious matters should be divorced from politics would be mistaken – and delusional. After all, the Villanuevas rode on their crowd-drawing power, anchored supposedly on their godly virtues, to project themselves as viable and virtuous political choices, as well.
We can only hope that the members of JIL, at least the newer generation of followers, are able to distinguish the good that comes from their membership in an organization that is imbued with a noble mission from the need to regard their leaders as infallible.
May they be enlightened that no one person or family is so immune from the trappings of power, and may they avoid the trap of giving anyone unconditional adulation – without at least questioning them or challenging their tired narratives of persecution.
The ability to think carefully and independently is, after all, a great blessing for the mind and spirit.
