Persons of criteria

By Fr. ROY CIMAGALA, roycimagala@gmail.com
July 3, 2012

This is what we have to aim at – to be persons of criteria, based on truth and charity – so that whatever situation we may be in, we would always feel confident and certain that what we are thinking, saying and doing is right and good, is helping us and others to reach our common good, both temporal and eternal, material and spiritual.

To be persons of criteria is to be persons who know how to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, fair and unfair, the essential and the incidental, etc.  Criteria as a term comes from the Greek word “krineo” which means to sort out, to separate, to distinguish.

In short, to be persons of criteria is to be persons who affirm, strengthen and develop their being persons not things, able to think, judge and reason out properly, and not just doing things mechanically or following things blindly.

They know how to distinguish the many elements and possibilities that go into any situation, and more importantly, know how to judge, how to choose what is truly good and wise for themselves and for all. In this way, they enhance their own freedom and joy, even if they have to ride out temporary difficulties and pains.

Persons without criteria are those who just follow the law of the jungle, who drift to an anything-goes type of lifestyle, allowing themselves to be dominated by feelings and passions alone, or social trends and fashions, not by reason, and much less by faith.

They seem stuck in some invincibly subjective condition, in a gripping state of self-absorption, detached from the objective, universal law that comes from God, our Creator and Father.

We have to be wary of our tendency, due to our weaknesses and other consequences of sin, both personal and social, to abort our growth into a mature person by ceasing or restraining in our lifelong effort to be persons of criteria, of correct convictions.

Nowadays, we even have public figures who not only have wrong criteria, but also flaunt them. They are, in fact, making aggressive action to proselytize others to their mistaken values. Worse, there now are countries that legalize and institutionalize these anomalies.

The world is getting very exciting and challenging. That’s another way of saying, it is sinking into more complex and complicated situations, with deep and vast confusion if not error reigning supreme.

Sad to say, aside from not giving any serious effort to correct this problem by studying, there’s also the trend to come out with half-baked ideologies that precisely give inadequate if not erroneous criteria.

Among the many things thrown into confusion in our world today are the questions about the existence of God, his abiding providence, the essence and role of law in our life, the essence, origin and purpose of our freedom and its intrinsic relation to obedience to God’s will.

Also many things related to our human nature are getting distorted if not totally ignored. That we are spiritual beings with a supernatural end, and not just material and social beings, that our reason and will are in need of a firm foundation found only in faith and charity, that our emotions should not be on their own but need to be directed by our reason and faith – these are a few examples of what we are not clear about these days.

In the end, we have to realize that for us to be persons of criteria, we need to be vitally linked to the living God, making use of the many and more than abundant instrumentalities made available to us.

We have the faith, we have Christ and his doctrine and example, the Holy Spirit who continues to abide in us, making God alive in us here and now, the Church with her sacraments and the various charisms to address all types of needs we have, etc.

We should not just depend on our rudimentary sense of good and evil that comes when we reach the age of reason or which is mainly dependent on social and cultural trends. Our sense of good and evil that makes us persons of criteria should be based on our living relationship with God, or on our faith.

It is faith that widens and deepens our understanding of things. It brings us to higher levels and aspects of reality not usually accessible to our senses alone, or even to pure reason. It brings us the spiritual and supernatural realities of our life.