Lies and lies: Pacquiao vs Lascañas
You no longer call a liar a man who confesses to recanting his lie for the same reason that a sinner who repents could become a saint.
Sad to say that Sen. Manny Pacquiao looked more like a Pharisee than a senator when he interrogated the self-confessed spiritually renewed Arthur Lascañas, a retired police officer, during the reopened Senate hearing on the existence and crimes of the Davao Death Squad. My dear Brother Pacquiao explained his understanding of spiritual renewal—and it was flawed.
It would do well for the “born-again” senator to remember that, not too long ago, his lie about the condition of his health—his keeping secret of his shoulder injury in particular, prior and during the Floyd Mayweather fight—was an international disgrace that triggered an outrage among the boxing aficionados and casual fans. Good for self-righteous Pacquiao that the millions of people worldwide whom he deceived as an already spiritually renewed man are no Pacquiao in mindset.
No person can claim that he never lied again after his spiritual conversion to Christianity or any religion. A holy life isn’t equal to absolute perfection. You succumbed to human nature and fall down once in a while, but you get up every time, and every time it is by God’s grace. Life for a saved soul is all about mercy from start to finish, and it is called sanctification, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Lascañas was compelled to recant a lie purportedly to save the truth, while Pacquiao was compelled to tell the truth after his loss to Mayweather—to save face.
RENI M. VALENZUELA, [email protected]
