I am about to tread into some unchartered
waters that I never really wanted to but good golly I sure cant help myself.
I start off by saying that I am no expert
in this field just a mere observer. For as long as I have lived I have seen
beauty in this world. Nature, childbirth how everything works, how through no
real doing of my own, my life is as it is, and in my heart I believe that there
is a ‘being’ higher than myself that makes all this so and I give thanks to ‘It’.
My ‘being’ manifests itself in the form of a Christian God, because it was how
I was raised and in my 40th year I still give glory to ‘It’, if for
nothing at all it keeps me humble. That being said, I do struggle a lot with
the Holy Trinity which is pretty wack because that is the cornerstone of this
religion of ours, but I never said I was perfect, and every day I ask for help
to be drawn closer to my maker. Sometimes I fail… sometimes I succeed, and as
long as I breathe I keep striving. I differ with many of my Christian brothers
and sisters in that I believe that the declaration is that I accept Jesus as my
PERSONAL Lord and Saviour, therefore in my naivety, I guess, I also believe
that all faiths have their place under the sun, because the crux of most
religions, when stripped down bare, is about being good to each other and
living in harmony with the world in which we live. Along came humans and they
decided they were God and tried to make everyone believe what they believe. My
thinking is if I live what I believe, those who see my light will be drawn to
my light. Beheading, shooting, maiming, in the name of a religion will push me
darn far from you.
Now I get to the latest bane of my
existence. What is it about Africans and these Pentecostal/Evangelical churches
that are springing up everywhere preying on the desperation of the congregation?
Yeah there are some that do good but there are plenty that are giving the whole
lot a horrible name. Last year, we heard about this ‘prophet’ TB Joshua, how he
is a prophet, I know not and no disrespect to him/anyone who swears by him, I
am making a mere observation from my standpoint blissful ignorance. He makes
gazillions, one of his churches fell down, many perished and from what I read he blames the
hand of the devil even though reports state that some simple building
regulations weren’t adhered to. His congregation still stands by him. Earlier
this week I read about a pastor that makes people eat snake meat, last year another
that makes his congregation eat grass. Another who asks his congregation to
strip naked and he stamps on them and some even worse stories.
Now I am not sure which is worse, those who
in the name of religion prey on the hopes or fears of a seemingly ‘hopeless’, malleable congregation or those
desperate enough to believe that healing and prosperity could be gained from
some man who professes to be a man of God, yet rapes their congregation who are
already at their wits end in respect of funds and hope? Religion and
spirituality have been part of African culture from time immemorial. And like
my pops always says, I always look at things simplistically, but I guess that’s
the only way I can understand and make sense of it. So I ask, what is it about
us that makes us give our wealth (personal or mineral), sell our kin, our souls
in the hope of prosperity? How do we allow ‘fake prophets’ to take advantage of
us like that? I might be taking it too far, but it seems to spill over into
general life outside of sheer religion. We let a handful of troops with guns,
mirrors, sugar and bibles, come to our shores and colonise us, we allow them to
make us believe that as brothers and sisters of the same soil, one tribe is
better than the other based on looks. We let a minority render us animals, here
on our own land and we accept it? What is it about us that firstly, people
think they can do this to us (well because they can I guess) and why do we let
it be so?
