THE arrest last week of a senior official of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and some agents allegedly behind the recycling of seized illegal drugs saddens me very much.
For those who have missed this piece of very depressing news, I’d like to provide a brief background.
The buy-bust was launched by the National Capital Region Police Office Regional Drug Enforcement Unit of the Philippine National Police following a tip that PDEA agents were selling seized narcotics right inside the PDEA Southern District Office (SDO) in Taguig City.
Posing as a buyer, a policeman bought P100,000 worth of “shabu” from one of the suspects, which led to the arrest of the PDEA SDO chief himself, Enrique Lucero, two more PDEA agents, and a driver. More than a kilo of shabu or crystal meth valued at P9.18 million was confiscated.
I can just imagine the transaction being done right inside their office. This is really a cause of concern not only for the PDEA, the PNP, and all the officials of the national government. This is a grave concern for all the more than 100 million Filipinos in this country.
What made them so bold and daring? What were they thinking? Were they assuming that since they are the ones who are viewed as the nation’s defenders against illegal drugs, nobody would suspect them? Or report them? Or arrest them?
Or it’s because the temptation is just too hard to resist? After all, volumes worth billions of seized contrabands are within their reach. They are holding the “cooky jar” after all, so maybe, it’s OK to open it and take out a few for themselves?
TEMPTATIONS
Each one of us has been tempted, has sinned, and continues to sin. The devil is very good at finding our weakest points and enticing us with them.
However, it is important to make a distinction between temptation and sin. Temptation can lead to sin. Jesus never sinned and yet experienced every temptation we have come across in this world (Heb. 4:15).
So, I was thinking, for us to fight sin, we need to know and be good at resisting temptation. Temptations that are just within our “backyards,” meaning, these are the ones that involve people who are close to us or involve things that we have access to (e.g., cash at hand for a municipal or city treasurer, priests who have access to parish cash collections, manager of a bank, molesting a daughter who sleeps in the same with the father because their house is too small).
How do we fight this type of temptation?
“Know thy self”
As the phrase from The Art of War states, “know your enemy.” Knowing the enemy is a decisive facet of any battle. In the Christian life, we have many enemies, one of which is our corrupt nature that loiters within us (Rom. 7:21-23).
We need to study ourselves. Our personality, the situation we’re in, our mindset, and the life experiences we’ve gone through are factors that make us susceptible to temptations.
Learn to recognize the “lure”
Temptation, in all its forms, is very enticing. It is presented to us as something pleasant, true, or both. We want to succumb to it precisely because it looks good. But in the end, naturally, is our downfall.
It takes so much discipline, much discernment, and courage to recognize that the one thing right in front of us is “sin.”
As they say, “if you don’t want to fall from a cliff, don’t go near the edge and don’t look how deep is the crevice, you might just fall.”
Preventive action
If you are aware that specific situations will bring you into temptation (e.g., going to a bar where there’s too much booze, being around a woman whom you know likes you even if she knows you’re married) take preventative action and avoid these situations. Like Joseph who fled from Potiphar’s wife when she tried to seduce him, we simply need to run away.
Physical and emotional rest
We are susceptible to temptation when we are exhausted, physically or emotionally. When we are tired, we are weakened and vulnerable to the deceptions of the devil. Rest is very important for our spirituality. We need to be vigilant when this is our condition and ask God for extra strength so that we can resist temptation.
A way of escape
God never allows us to be tempted beyond what we can take, He always provides us with a way out. Most of the times though, it is us who don’t want to make the “escape.”
God has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Josh. 1:5). He also gives us his church, a community of fellow fighters, to help us in our battles. We need to take full advantage of these resources that God has provided us with so that we can effectively turn away from temptation and from sinning.
Pray
Apart from God, we have no hope of resisting temptation. This is why humble prayer must be our constant companion. Praying as Jesus taught us in the Lord’s prayer that God would “lead us not into temptation” is praying for our deliverance from even facing temptation.
Temptations are not easy to fight, especially those that are already in front of us.
This is what happened to the PDEA people. The temptation is just too hot to handle and too hard to resist because there’s too much of it and it’s right in front of them.
