Christian Jihad

“JIHAD” is an Arabic word which refers to a personal struggle against threats to the security of one’s inner self. These threats are temptations to violate divine law. Devout Muslims say fasting and prayer during Ramadhan helps in this inner personal struggle. It’s a divine mandate. Later jihad understood as Allah’s command is used to justify an obligation to engage defensive and offensive battle against enemies of the Islamic faith and practice, a controversial issue.

Here I use the expression “Christian jihad” in its original meaning only and to simply emphasize something we have in common with Muslims.

In this regard, I would like to invite Christians and Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, as we have done in the past activities of the Bishops-Ulama Conference, to make this personal warfare against sinfulness as topic in our intrafaith dialogues. This kind of dialogue will facilitate faith sharing which is the highest form of interfaith dialogue. This dialogue of religious experiences will ultimately bring about peace which must “begin with me” as the song says.

“Christian jihad” then, if we can use the term, is a personal struggle against temptations of the seven capital sins. In our Christian tradition these are: anger, envy, pride, gluttony, sloth, lust and greed. There is a tradition in our Church that dates back to the time of St. John Cassian and St. Gregory the Great (1831-1846) where vices are classified according to the virtues they oppose. To these saints the sins are called “capital” because they engender other sins, other vices (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n 1866).

Personal sin is a moral disorder, a wrong-doing contrary to God’s commandments. It gives rise to social situations and institutions that are opposed to divine mandate. “Structures of sin” are the expressions and effect of personal sins.

They lead their victims to do evil. In an analogous sense, they constitute a “social sin” according to St. John Paul II in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (Reconciliation and Penance, 16) cited in CCC n. 1868-1869.

Sadly, for many of us Catholics and Protestants, there is nothing to struggle against because there is no sin. Why? Because conscience does not anymore accuse one of violating God’s moral law or offending Him. Conscience has become callused (gikobalan in Cebuano). Hence the inner voice of God’s Spirit is hardly or not heard at all. So there is nothing to confess! This is a very serious moral problem for the Church and society.

Sharpening one’s conscience by prayer, fasting, sacramental confession and Holy Mass constitute a Christian jihad in an offensive mode. It is then that one hears the inner voice of conscience.