IN a few days the deadline for paying one’s income tax looms. And not a few of us think, there go the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) examiners making hay again. For indeed have some of us not have had the misfortune of harassment by some examiner or at least heard of horror stories of being assessed twice what he had paid, and being told it could be “fixed” for an understood amount.
Tax collectors as a generic group are often tainted with the same sinners’ brush that they were in the time of Jesus. At the time they were considered as publicans or sinners who were collaborators of the Romans, and therefore, corrupt people who took advantage of the rest of the Jews, and therefore, to be despised. Today, mention that someone is working for the BIR or the Bureau of Customs, and the immediate reaction is that he must be a crook, a corrupt official.
The Gospel of Saint Luke (Chapter 5, verses 27-28) recounts the call of Levi, whom we know as Matthew, sitting at the tax booth, and how he left everything to follow the Lord. It goes on to recount how Levi gave a banquet for Him and that there was a large crowd of tax collectors sitting with them, scandalizing the Pharisees who were shocked at His consorting with publicans and sinners.
We all demand reform and good governance of our public officials. And we realize that without high ethical standards and a deep sense of responsibility to society and the nation as a whole, any governance reform would not go beyond mere platitudes.
What are the changes needed—a society that is free from corruption, responsible, equitable peaceful and moral. This is what we must bequeath to our children and children’s children. To keep track of the performance of government, a template or scorecard must be developed for each level of government, including local government, which deals directly with the people.
If today we seem to find a need to develop guidelines and scorecards, it is because we have gotten used to fudging right and wrong. Taxpayers and their examiners have found ways and rationalizations to evade paying the right amount due the government. We dichotomize between “religion,” “business,” and “government,” and have actually invented that gray area encompassed by “what is practical.”
When Matthew heard the call, he immediately got up and left his old ways, presumably reorienting his work ethic to the service of others, rather than for his own aggrandizement. And if he continued to entertain his friends, Jesus did not seem to find that contrary to being His follower. The lesson that this gives us is that one can follow the Word and still be in the world. This can be achieved by doing one’s work in unity with the precepts of faith and morals.
I think this is the lesson of the call of Matthew. I doubt if he went around simply preaching to his fellow tax collectors to change their ways. He began by changing himself. And so, those of us whom our children look up to must lead change by beginning with ourselves, and helping others make that same commitment. Only then can we bring about a just, humane and ethical society that heeds the call of our Lord as wholeheartedly as Matthew did.
merci.suleik@gmail.com
1 comment
as the saying goes, the only sure thing is taxes and death, with taxes , we learned to live and accept it.