n Nigeria, men of God come in a particular mould. They are usually believers, who know that the Bible or the Quran is the 'word of God'. They claim to hear directly from God. They believe in prayer as a means to persuade God to hear pleas and grant blessings. They believe in dichotomous dualism of God and the devil.
They believe that God blesses the people, when they do good and give generously to the church. They believe in miracles and perform them. They engage in Biblical literalism, which is the departure point from most European clergies, who understand the origin and motive for the scripture and how it should be interpreted as dated work of literature. If you doubt this, just listen to a white pastor pray and compare it with the prayer of a Nigerian 'man of God'
What we see consistently in many self-styled Nigerian pastors are superficial manipulative skills, a psychopathy, seen in some personality disorders, which though makes them appealing to people, is a form of evil.
It is the same evil which is seen in demagogues. Charisma, ability to persuade and eloquence to deceive. The ability to move people and make them to share beliefs and convictions and accept them by faith.
They preach salvation by faith and live by realism. They often urge people to pray to God for solutions to problems they themselves solve with donations they get from the people. What they urge the congregation to solve by prayer, they solve with money.
They persuade the people to believe that God can be bribed to bless them by making donations to pastors and churches. They urge the people to sow seed by donating their earnings to them and believe that there is a relationship between giving their money to the church and their fortunes in life and by so going induce and sustain magical thinking.
They present their exegesis on the Bible as truth, which the people accept as the only way to understand and view the topic under discussion.
One cannot, but conclude that their victims have to be either adamant or ignorant to be taken in. Sadly, many Nigerians have fallen victim to their hypnotic and bewitching hold in the name of believing in God, which makes you wonder.
They fail to tell their congregation the truth that salvation is found by facing life as it is, imperfect, full of good and bad, mindful of ones own weakness and vulnerability, and using all available evidence to make sense of it.
They tell people faith can move mountain, when the only thing we know, which can move mountain are bulldozers. By the use of selective abstraction and arbitrary inference, they establish relationship between behaviours and actions, which are not related and are purely by chance.
These self styled men of God, who keep the people ignorant and unable to think for themselves are the last pests and charlatans, many Nigerians will have to overcome on the road to enlightenment.
They fail to inform the people that God does not answer selfish prayers. That faith does not make an evil man good and that each human being has both the power to do good and evil and has to constantly choose, which is in his best interest, and that goodness resides in doing what is just at all times, irrespective of the cost, and wisdom, in finding the right balance between evil and good or right and wrong.
They are oblivious that the first step towards evil is to narrowly define one's identity and assume that there is nothing more to learn about anything one believes one understand and, that evil is simply to restrict one's goodness.
They reenforce beliefs, instead of deepening understanding. They tell the people faith is everything, when even the Bible says understanding is the principle thing and urges people to get knowledge. They urge people to believe, when Paul commends people who examine.
They tell people about resurrection without teaching them it is not a fact and that Judaism is divided on it. They talk about miracles, which are things they cannot explain and urge people to invest in magical thinking and metaphysics in the name of faith.
Until we learn that there are a thousand ways to seek God and only those that are honest and sincere are right, that there are twenty-one ways to pray and God approves of only those, who say prayers with pure hearts , that there are one hundred names for God and He answers to those who seek him with all their heart , that there are one hundred and forty four routes to heaven and each and every one of them passes through the bridge of love on the road of kindness and leads to the city of four square on the mountain of humility with streets of gold and sea of glass in the valley of tolerance, that there is one broad way to hell and it is lined by faith, deceit, greed, pride, hate, adamancy, prejudice and intolerance and anyone can find it, and that until we accept that all men and women are brothers and sisters, we will not stop disparaging, hating, squabbling and killing one another.
If religion is the means to God and we have each chosen a different route, and heading to the same destination, why are we so intolerant and hateful of each other? Why are some of us so prejudiced against people of different ethnicity and or religion and , justify violence and discrimination against them in the name of God or ethnicity?
If, when our loved ones die, they go to heaven, why do we mourn them?
If we eat the body of Christ and drink his blood at holy communions, why do we condemn cannibalism?
If we honestly believe that grape juice turns into blood and wafers into flesh of Christ because a priest has uttered some mubo jumbo, why do they still taste like wafers and grape juice?
Why do we squabble and worry, if we are all children of God? Why are we so particular about our ethnicity, if we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve?
Indeed, religious ignorance, intolerance and prejudice must count among the seven stupidities of mankind.
A man who will see in belief and belief alone, the eternal truth of God, is not only wilfully ignorant and infected with prejudice, pride and greed, but very dangerous because he can justify anything, including murder in the name of God.
It is not surprising that evil men are almost always religious, because only religion can give the best cover for evil intentions.
To know God is to be honest in our innermost thoughts, just in our actions, love our neighbour as ourselves and do unto others as we would like other to do unto us. There is no God beyond goodness and come to think of it, Good is God with extra o. The o is others. When we add others to our God we become good. This is of course, if you are thinking in English. Think, reason, learn, understand, master, ponder, and examine. This is the only way.
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