Patricia Rae A.

Endaya Section: 2HPH

PK Movie: Reflection Paper
To get to the very point of the discussion: Yes, I believe that there is a God or a divine
being watching over us. From my younger years, I had been taught by my parents and taken
under the wing of Catholicism. Since the fourth grade of elementary school, I had already
been enrolled in a catechism. I took classes at our local catholic church and had a routine of
attending mass after every session. This lasted up to my second year of high school. In that
sense, I’ve learned a lot from what has been taught and read to me, so much that I can
confidently say that I do believe in God. However, I am not a religious person.
I believe in God, but I do not believe in religion. My belief in God might as well be a
manifestation of the religious environment I had been raised within, but I think the reason I
believe in God was well quoted by PK near the end of the movie–“...believing in God gives
us hope, and to deal with suffering, gives us courage, gives us strength”. I believe in God
likely because it’s become a way of coping that I’ve picked up from the teachings of my
church, but not exactly. As I’ve said, I am far from a religious person. I love my religion and
God, but I am not someone who will unconditionally bow my head down to the church. For a
very long time now, I have been a believer of God, not the people who claim to represent His
Holiness.
After watching the movie, I would claim myself to be more spiritual than religious.
The concept of an alien arriving on Earth and learning about religion was a wonderful way of
critique because PK essentially possessed something that we humans of the modern day have
already lost a long time ago, and that is the innocence, the lack of knowledge, the unbiased
objective reasoning, and the inability to tell lies. As a child, I was also the same. Growing up
as a Catholic guided me into my first impressions of right and wrong; what is good and what
is bad. While I had been conforming to the rules and beliefs of my religion for most of my
childhood, I had gradually adjusted the lenses of my morality to come to the realisation that I
could not bring myself to keep agreeing with some questionable teachings of my church. As
such, I’d like to thank my teachers from the catechism, and our priest from our local church
because even though I cannot say we share the same linkage as it was before, they did
contribute to becoming a stepping stone for me to go on a moral self-journey.
I won’t deny it, because my religion played a big role and some of it did shape my
way of thinking now. It is akin to your parents being your first teachers, so you follow them
blindly because you know nothing of the world, and to some extent their teachings and
beliefs are well-ingrained.

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 In relation, I also happened to remember a topic discussed in our Understanding the
Self class from the second term of the last school year. We talked about the spiritual self and
discussed Fowler’s Stages of Faith Development for Adolescence, which discussed the
“Synthetic Conventional stage”. The Synthetic Conventional stage usually starts at the age of
12, and simply put, it is a phase where we follow the practices of our family, and our church
without question and conform to authority motivated by fear. This fear usually arises due to
an inner conflict and self-doubt that we choose to ignore because we’re still so heavily reliant
on the guidance of authority on our spiritual identity. Similarly, the film demonstrated how
many people are driven by fear to believe in, to follow, and to practice religion. Many people
simply accept religion as it is, without question or reflection. My faith during this stage
cannot be deemed to be genuine just yet.
In the movie PK, they showcased a number of different religions such as Hinduism
being the main focus, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, and Islam. With my rough knowledge, I
would say that a common denominator between them is that there is always a medium, a
spokesperson, a religious leader, a prophet or messenger, a clergy, or any figure of authority.
Moreover, they also all establish the belief that we should all strive for “perfection” and life
fulfilment by abiding by a certain set of rules, guides and practices. One of the notable
differences is that Christianity, Islam and Sikhism promote the belief of one God, while
Hinduism worships multiple gods known as deities, and Jainism on the other hand does not
believe in any divine figure, and therefore is atheistic.
Religion is a great foundation to learn about your own moral values, however if
someone were to ask if I’d let my morality be dictated solely by religion for life, I would
have to say no. Many of the religious people I know are people I believe to be stuck in the
Synthetic Conventional stage of faith development. They not once questioned religion, and
never tried to doubt God nor the teachings of the church built, on the fear of not being
welcomed into heaven during the time of judgement and landing a fate that rests peacefully in
hell. I think it’s better to explain why I would not let morality be guided by religion through a
case example.
The 2022 Philippine Elections had to be the most aggravating highlight of my entire
year because I did not think that my little faith in humanity was about to become much more
little–perhaps the very size of an atom. For me, it was absolutely unbelievable seeing the
people you love, whom you cherish and know as kind gentle souls with unconditional love
for the religion and its preachings…to see them actively support a dictator, a thief, and a liar.
How contradictory.

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 I even more so loathed that during the time, many were being warned that they’d rot
in hell for going against the church, or should I quote, for “threatening the will of God”. Utter
disappointment and regret were the only feelings that I had for the people whom I thought I
knew well, but I also understand that they may choose not to speak up out of fear.Another
friend of mine, let’s call her Nielle, is a diligent believer in Christianity, so much that she is
even a bible varsity at my previous school. She’s the sweetest person I know, and she wasn’t
like many of my religious blood-relatives who were willing to twist stories and turn a blind
eye to facts for their faith. She, however, wasn’t any better for she said, and I quote, “If the
Rose loses, and the Big Bad Man wins…we may have to end up accepting whatever may
happen as God’s will”. She wasn’t a supporter of the Big Bad Man, but to say that she’d
support the Philippines’ greatest loss as a part of God’s plan with no question, no doubt, nor
even a nanoparticle of grief or upset was baffling to me. “It is part of God’s will, so it must be
good” sounded distressingly ridiculous to me at the time. I couldn’t help but reminisce to
these memories when Jaggu made a certain point in the movie: If God didn’t want us to
question, He wouldn’t have given us the faculty of reason.
So, who exactly is it making us believe that God is a force not to be reckoned with,
never to be disobeyed, or absolute authority? What kind of love does God have for us in such
a one-sided relationship, where one is in full control and one is helpless to the other? How
can you call our relationship with God akin to that of a Father and His children, as PK
questions Tapasvi ji in the movie, when we have to rely on mediums or managers for our
voices to reach Him? Why are our calls directed to the receptionist, and not directly to God?
As PK says in the movie, what kind of Father figure is God that when you turn to him for
help, he tells you to go to meet him at his other house 2000km away and explain the problem
again before coming up with a solution?
As for the case of the 2022 Philippine Elections, in what kind of sick love language
does God speak in that he chooses to include being oppressed and suffering under the rule of
the Marcoses for the next 6 years as a part of His oh so brilliant plan that’s supposedly for our
own good?

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 I can never entrust my morality to religion because morality has never been a case of
black and white and therefore should never be chained or defined by such parameters like the
Decalogue, the Sharia, et cetera. Good and bad has never been a simple matter of doing and
not doing. I’ve mentioned this in my previous post-discussion activity and I’ll say it again:
we cannot jump to conclusions when love and justice fluctuate based on the circumstances of
the person being judged, and the adjudicator is not any unknown entity but we humans
ourselves. These rules defining what you should do and shouldn’t do may be complete
fabrications made up by man himself, and therefore can be manipulated to one’s own benefit
just as how it was clearly portrayed in PK, how religion is the best business investment–all
you need is to exploit the fear of those who believe. In fact, it’s like those Facebook posts that
tell you to like, share, and comment “Amen” with a heart emoji if you love Jesus and ignore
if you love Satan. It’s so full of guilt-tripping. It’s all a farce.
After all that I’ve ranted, one would undoubtedly point out and try to argue “It’s not
religion that’s bad, people are bad”. To that, I may have emphasised human corruption and
blind worship but what it all really boils down to is not because it’s the the humans’ or our
fault, and nor does it imply that everything will be resolved if we all were genuine in our faith
in God and therefore become better persons should we all believe in and follow Him. That is
not the point. Rather, I don’t think that the world will become a better place if we all believed
in a Supreme Being, because who else is there to act if not ourselves? So then, what would
we do without God or religion? From the film, PK explains that while the network line to
reach God is out of reach, we should try to resolve our own problems by helping each other.
Jaggu then adds, when God is nowhere to be found, we should not seek their aid but simply
help each other. At this point in the movie, I remembered a story that I’d learned during an
anthropology class I had in high school. Anthropologist Margaret Mead, was asked what first
indicated civilised behaviour, and she answered: a broken leg that had just healed. She
explained that having a broken leg would’ve been the end of it because you were incapable of
gathering food and unable to fend yourself off predators. A healed bone shows that someone
had looked after them and stayed by their side to protect them until they got better. Thus, in
the earliest ages of civilization, when survival mattered most and where the comprehension of
religion had likely not been found yet, it is clear that humans did not need a God nor a
religion to teach them to care for each other.
Maybe it is bold of me to say now after proclaiming to believe in God, but the film
PK actually made me think that perhaps we don’t actually need a God to help us when we can
simply choose to help ourselves.

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References:

Blumenfeld, R. (2020, March 21). How A 15,000-Year-Old Human Bone Could Help You

Through The Coronacrisis. Forbes. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-hu

man-bone-could-help-you-through-the--coronavirus/#3c31db237e9b

Hinduism And Sikhism. (2022, August 12). The Spiritual Life. Retrieved October 2, 2022,

from https://slife.org/hinduism-and-sikhism/

Hirani, R. (2014). PK. Rajkumar Hirani Films & Vinod Chopra Productions.

Understanding the Trinity: How Can God Be Three Persons in One? | Cru. (n.d.). Cru.org.

Retrieved October 2, 2022, from

https://www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/core-christian-beliefs/unde

rstanding-the-trinity.html

Who Is Allah to Muslims? (2017, October 13). Learn Religions. Retrieved October 2, 2022,

from

https://www.learnreligions.com/allah-god-in-islam-2004296#:%7E:text=Allah%20is

%20the%20proper%20name%20of%20the%20One,deserves%20worship%20except

%20Allah%2C%20the%20One%20True%20Creator.