I must confess I was not exactly comfortable when I first heard the proposed name to our election campaign: “Vote God.” It sounded so out of this world and maybe even escapist. Yet, as the communication expert on the other side of the table handed over a piece of paper with these two words inscribed in it, I saw a man saw serenely convinced about the campaign name.
Then it slowly dawned on me. If Philippine elections and politics, as the Catholic bishops had written in 1997, “systematically exclude” our Christian values, then we indeed need to choose God and the way of God during elections. So: “Vote God.”
My appreciation for this choice has since deepened. These two words capture succinctly where we presently stand as a movement by mirroring where we have been and where we are moving. “Vote God” is about an election initiative with God as choice.
God, for sure, is not running for office and no single individual or even group can claim monopoly of God. But God is in all of us, through an embedded voice in the depths of human hearts. To obey this voice is to choose God and the way of God. The challenge is the many voices competing with this voice. It takes moral and spiritual discernment to sift through these voices; also moral, even spiritual, courage to choose good and reject evil.
“Vote God” takes its cue from the remarks of a woman who had attended the first CiDE (circles of discernment for elections) seminar in a Cebu parish last year. Earlier during the day, she expressed despondency over politicians and elections. Yet, at the end of the day she reversed her view: “We can still do something about elections. Next year, I will ask all the local candidates: ‘Do you have God fearing?’”
Wrong grammar, but correct hope!
*Fr Melo Diola
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