The End of the Struggle

By Stanley Voke

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress.

A small boy came home one day from Sunday school and said, “Mum, we had a new hymn today. It said that Jesus knows all about our struggles.” Then pensively he added, “You know, that isn’t right. We don’t struggle. Only snails struggle.” This reminds me of a caption I once saw in a missionary magazine. It showed a snail crawling and a bird flying, under which were the words, “What are you—snail or bird?” Some African Christians, blessed at a convention, were seen going home singing, their faces shining with joy. Others said, “Look at those Christians—they are like birds flying.” But they themselves knew how different it could be when their hearts were not right with Jesus. Then they could be like snails, earthbound, selfbound, struggling instead of soaring.

If we see only the plumbline putting us in the sinner’s place so that we remain in the state of feeling sinful, we shall be like snails—struggling. Seeing sin does not set us free—we need Jesus. For every one look at sin, said Murray McCheyne, take ten looks at Christ. Then indeed we are like birds that fly.

The struggle for righteousness

J.B. Philips translates the fourth verse of Romans 10 by saying, ‘Christ means the end of the struggle for righteousness,’ thus throwing light on the Authorized Version: ‘Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.’ There is in all of us a struggle to get and keep our own righteousness, which is why it is so hard to come to the sinner’s place.

This struggle is as old as Adam and Eve who, when charged with sin in Eden, at once put the blame on one another and finally on the serpent, while at the same time they made garments of fig leaves to give themselves some sort of covering from the holy eyes of God. By the time of the New Testament, the struggle was well under way, for the whole Jewish religion was a developed attempt to achieve righteousness by works. Of the Jews of his day, Paul said, they were ever ‘going about to establish their own righteousness,’ rather than submit themselves to the righteousness of God.

We are all the same. Have you ever watched children build a sand castle on the beach before an incoming tide? Frantically they heap up their walls, patting the soft sand into solidity and reinforcing it with sticks and stones only to see it washed away at the last. So we go round and round to establish our defences against the waves of other people’s criticisms. For some of us life becomes one long struggle to be what we know all too well we are not.

The struggle for attainment

One phase of this battle for own righteousness is the struggle to reach a standard of perfection. We have seen how the plumbline of God holds us to a perfect standard and the danger is that life may become a prolonged attempt to reach it. We become Christians under law instead of grace, so that instead of living in peace, we are torn with tension. Sometimes we set the standard ourselves by picturing the kind of Christian we ought to be. We follow an ideal image in our minds. It is as though we see the man we ought to be standing on some lofty height calling us on as we struggle vainly up the slopes, yet he never lends us a helping hand.

Of course other people set the standard for us too. Everyone can tell us what we ought to be. We hear sermons and read books showing us the kind of Christians we should be, which only makes us feel guilty if we are sensitive, and self-satisfied if we are not. People put us on pedestals expecting this and that of us until life becomes one long struggle to be what others demand. So we live on under law trying to keep up to the standards, while behind us is God’s relentless law never letting us off; never lifting us up.

Are you a Christian living under law? Living under continual condemnation because you feel all the time you ought to be a better Christian, who prays more, does more, gives more? You are chained to a moral yardstick. You live under a yoke and a burden when all the while Jesus wants to give you rest.

The struggle to keep our reputation

Another aspect of this struggle for righteousness is the fight for reputation. We are all reputation-conscious. Some of us have a reputation--it may be for piety, efficiency, leadership, preaching, housekeeping, anything! Others of us wish we had a reputation. Once acquired, or assumed, it can haunt us, dog us, browbeat us, wear us to shreds. Bondage to reputation can be sheer slavery, and yet did we but know, it is only a form of struggle for our own righteousness. We are unwilling to be known as failures along any line.

The struggle for appearance

The struggle for righteousness consequently becomes a struggle for appearance which simply means that somewhere we end up with being dishonest about ourselves. I once a heard a man speak to children about eggs. He had three of them with labels attached. One egg was stale and it told us it was not what it used to be. The second was half-hatched and it announced it was not what it hoped to be. But the third was rotten and although it looked good, was honest enough to tell us it was not what it seemed to be.

It is not true that we seem to be what we are not, like the Jews whose struggle for righteousness led them inevitably into hypocrisy. The trouble with success is that we dare not be failures for if we are to keep our reputation we cannot admit ignorance or sin. That would be to collapse the sand castle before the tide had even come in. It is better to struggle on even to breaking point than admit some need that would mean others knowing us as we really are.

The tragedy of all this is the idea that we find favour with God by reaching standards. This is precisely where we are wrong. Again Phillips’ translation helps us in Romans 10, verse 5: ‘The man who perfectly obeys the law shall find life in it’—which is theoretically right but impossible in practice. If we could attain God’s standard we should be blessed. But we cannot, so wend by being cursed. The very law that was designed to give us life has become the means of death, not because there is anything wrong with the standard itself, but because we sinners are unable to reach it.

Christ the end of the struggle

What a relief it is when we see Christ as the end of all this. He is the end of the struggle for righteousness since He not only fulfilled the law for us, but was cursed for us as well. He has not only attained our perfection but atoned for our imperfection. There is nothing more to struggle about, for He has done all for us and God asks nothing now but our repentance and faith.

All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.

How beautifully Joy Davidman puts it: “The only way to get rid of sin is to admit it, for without honesty, repentance, forgiveness and grace are impossible. The Christian does not go around all the time feeling guilty. It is the unfortunate creature who denies the existence of sin in general and his own in particular who must go on carrying it. The way to freedom consists in honest confession and repentance that can open our hearts to the Comforter.” To open our souls to God’s grace means He not only saves us from being the people we are, but changes us into those we ought to be.

How easy it is! The only way to get rid of sin is to admit it! Why is this so hard? Surely because it means letting go our own righteousness which is the very thing we do not like doing. Yet how can we have Christ’s perfect robe of righteousness if we insist on keeping our own? It is impossible.

Jesus is our perfect righteousness. When we come to Him we need no other. The struggle for righteousness is over and He becomes our reputation and glory. We need not fear to come to the sinner’s place, for when we don, it is to cease from our own works, to stop trying to what we are not and admit instead what we are. At that point we accept Christ’s own righteousness, we are justified before God and enter into peace. This is God’s basic blessing for us, and the only true way to peace and joy.

Cast your deadly doing down,
Down at Jesus’ feet.
Stand in Him, in Him alone,
Gloriously complete.

(Friends, I find this a good read. I found it in a Gospel Transformation series from World Harvest Mission. It is a good read when trying to understand the Doctrine of Justification, which as the lesson posits is really not just relevant in the beginning of Christian life, but is also something we need to believe everyday of our Christian lives.)

Rice self-sufficiency: the elusive dream (Part 1)

Before I entered PhilRice in 1993, I really didn’t care whether my country was self-sufficient in rice or not, as I only know about raising strawberries and knew rice only as food on the table with or without viand (there was milk or sugar to eat it with anytime, anyway, as my Ibaloi husband would recount always of his foreigner cousin’s line: “In Bodihew, I ate dabay!” , but that is another story). When I entered PhilRice, I sort of just embraced the policy of rice self-sufficiency which I read was PhilRice’s ultimate mission. I even brought this optimism to graduate school so that in one of our courses in Macroeconomics, when our professor asked about the policy direction of PhilRice, I proudly and nonchalantly answered “rice self-sufficiency”. The reaction of my Professor which I so remember to this date was a dismissing “God bless PhilRice.” The comment kind of breached my optimism and made me wary about every news of a projected target year when rice self-sufficiency will be achieved. True enough, every change of administration, every change of Agriculture secretary brought a new target year. Yet there never was a target year met.

Ten years after, I got a chance to work with a Harvard-graduate, former Department of Agriculture policy analyst, then IRRI economist who opined, complete with facts and figures, about the ‘difficulties’ of the Philippines’ short-run self-sufficiency policy and the wisdom of probably following the Malaysian rice policy path still not forgetting to work for self-sufficiency in the long run. This time in my mind, “Well maybe, it’s really not too bad if we are a little less than self-sufficient, we can always import from our neighbors and it is even cheaper.” I actually felt better knowing that our being not self-sufficient was not really because our farmers are lazier or our technologies cruder but that really, we are just less endowed with land and rivers. It bred a new line of optimism in me: maybe, it’s not just about rice self-sufficiency at all costs; maybe it’s also about diversifying farmers’ income, diversifying crops, and improving the rural non-farm economy.

Bringing with me this new optimism, I left PhilRice again for graduate school only to witness from a distance the soaring rice prices in my beloved country, the seemingly lack of rice in the world market, the alleged hoarding of rice by rice-exporting countries, and the wild search of explanation for this ‘event’ by PhilRice and IRRI policy researchers. At one point, I personally witnessed how fishers’ wives scrambled to Gloria’s Bigasan ng Bayan every Tuesday mornings in Sagurong, San Miguel Island in Albay to get their P18 per kg-NFA rice because the markets were selling at P30 to P35. While the seller (the owner of the house where I stayed in the duration of my field work) was instructed to sell only to the poorest of the poor households, this policy led to conflicts over who is poor or not, so what she did was to defy the policy, make her own schedule, and ensure that all households get a share of the village allotment. The stark reality of the benefits of being rice self-sufficient once again dawned on me. (At that point, I was mighty glad I was working on a research subject related to marine resource conservation, not on rice socioeconomics or policy!)

Now I am back in the Philippines: new Philippine president, new Agriculture secretary, same policy direction: rice self-sufficiency at all costs; rice self-sufficiency to be achieved in 2013, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2025 (a.k.a in the secretary’s term of office). Now I am back at PhilRice: new director, seemingly new R&D programs, same policy direction: rice self-sufficiency at all costs. (Now I am back at PhilRice: a household of my own, P30 per kg rice, a son who eats ‘dabay’, a husband who eats 2 cups rice and now half, same policy direction: save on anything but not on food; rice self-sufficiency at all costs!)

So (after that long introduction), what is my “take” on rice self-sufficiency?

Policy direction: Sustainable rice self-sufficiency

Year it can be achieved (business as usual): unattainable

Year it can be achieved (with interventions): ~ 2040 onwards

How? (Old solutions, not short-term solutions): Water, water, water and seeds

Reliable, controllable and affordable irrigation water supply

Facts and Figures

- Average yield in irrigated ecosystem has more than one ton per hectare advantage over rainfed areas

- Around 600,000 hectares difference in area harvested during wet season and dry season

- Around 9% of the increase in yield from 1997 to 2007 period is owing to irrigation (Mataia, et al., 2009)

- Around one ton per hectare yield difference between irrigated wet season and rainfed wet season

- Around 1.5 ton per hectare yield difference between irrigated dry season and rainfed dry season

- Technology adoption is much higher in irrigated ecosystem (PhilRice-SED data)

- Reason for non-adoption of existing crop management technologies especially on land preparation, nutrient management, land preparation : unreliable, uncontrollable or unaffordable irrigation water supply

- The existing package of modern rice technologies works best with proper irrigation.

Pragmatic solutions (not short-term)

- Government must have the political will to rehabilitate existing irrigation systems and invest in new feasible large irrigation systems

- Encourage private investments in small-scale irrigation systems

- Gasoline/diesel price stabilization?

- Watershed improvement (forest watersheds and lowland watersheds)

- Call for applicable low-cost technologies for rain water harvesting (aside from dams)

- Explore pond system common in China?

- Drop seed and fertilizer subsidies, (price support might be better continued)

Better seeds

Facts and Figures

- Adoption of high quality seeds is the main driver of yield growth in recent years.

- Around 18% and 15% of the increase in yield from 1997 to 2007 period is owing to use of certified and hybrid seeds, respectively (Mataia, et al., 2009)

Pragmatic solutions (not short-term)

- Increase budget for R&D

- More proactive extension (allotment of funding) of high quality seeds by LGU

And now for some wild ideas (Facts and figures on the making):

-At least 1 single rice-farming household member to work as OCW for at least 5 years
- At least 1 household member of a rice farm household given scholarship for tertiary education
- Improving the rural non-farm economy

And some moves that just might contribute (Facts and figures on the making):

- Support RH bill!
- Privatize extension system for selected rice technologies

(Been wanting to blog about rice self-sufficiency for a long time, but was never able to do it. When I found out that the new Agriculture secretary was banking on upland rice for his quest of rice self-sufficiency in 2013, and the PhilRice budget for 2011 is cut from 400M+ to 90M+, it triggered anew my desire to blog about the topic. Can do much better with the facts and figures, but forgive my rush notes. I hope I am wrong, but I don't see us being sustainably rice self-sufficient from 2013. Much that I would like to pray that we can achieve the target, I find it an unrealistic target (even if by divine providence, the weather will permit it, it may not be sustainable). Please forgive the pessimism, and the 'disloyalty' to my institution at least in this area, but my faith fails me. For comments, try the facebook although I open it usually once a week).