Albert Ngene“Some people think of prayer as the means by which we get God to do things for us.That is not the primary purpose of prayer. The primary purpose is to bring the whole of life into the presence of God for cleansing and decision-making.” – Selwyn Hughes
We form our conscience by instruction, learning, scholarship, and interpreting the challenges of our lives under the shadow of the Crucifix.
The Crucifix has a man on it alive and in torment and he seeks disciples to come and remove the nails on his feet and hands in order to bring him down.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelFor he cannot do it himself.
The cross on the other hand has become a statement of fashion, from the great jewellers of Milan and Paris, to be worn as an adornment on the indifferent necks of Nigeria’s irreligious.
Somewhere in Lagos a church holds a Fruits of the Womb vigil every last Friday of the month. It’s a main event and cars are parked in all the adjoining streets: for the turnout from far and near is high.
The man of God is powerful, flamboyant, and a spell-binding teacher of the scriptures and the multitudes have gathered to hear his prophetic utterances.
On the last Friday of the month, the neighbourhood chemist does not close until midnight. He must await the visit of his most important customer. Just before midnight the pastor in golden chains and crosses and expensive scents, flowing white silk garments – sweeping the floor like a bridal gown – and no shoes, breezes into the chemist: with his large entourage.
He asks for assorted imported snacks to break his fast later. As these items are packed the chemist includes a number of items which had been pre-ordered and sourced. A figure is announced and the purser, of the entourage, pays and the man of God and his entourage head back to church.
He carries his own purchase. It is the only chore he does not delegate, for the pre-ordered items were Pasuma Strong and other bootleg wetin call: guaranteed to recreate the cataracts of Niagara Falls for its user at dawn
By and by a woman in the neighborhood comes to pick up new baby stuff. And as the exchange is taking place, and change is being counted, the chemist congratulates the woman on her new baby.
In response she says:
“To God be the glory. But that prophet is powerful. He is a real man of God. Na since I begin attend him vigil na him I get this fruit of the womb. Abeg, follow me thank God o!”
Social media has allowed us to see and hear more of the goings on in our churches. It is not a pretty sight. The young lady vlogger who spoke to our religiosity and spiritual famine two years ago put it like this –
“Heaven may be scanty!”
How can our churches be filled to the brim but the harvest fit for heaven so scanty?
Can it be that we do not challenge the excesses of our men of God?
I have had my share of pilgrimages in search of the good life and to catch up with the Jideofors. From one exorcizer of ancestral curses to another; then onward to all manner of Tithes-for-Prosperity Daddy and Mummy General Overseers.
I finally stopped when I discovered that the mission of Jesus was not to give me a better job than my peers; a better car than my neighbour; or, a more beautiful wife than my brother. If my discipleship is dependent on those then I am remiss.
Thus must we all journey to the Mount of The Beatitudes on our own:
It is figuratively where we have to go to overcome our intuitive expectations of Jesus and pick up his counter-intuitive teachings’ core and value system, and the example of His life!
But it is a struggle. For what Jesus asks of us is essentially against our human nature. Sometimes we fall but we must stand up again.
Sometimes we turn away like Peter turned away from talk of crucifixion, and got called, “Satan” for his troubles. But we must turn back and follow again like Peter did. For, if we let it, his grace is sufficient for us.
But do we ever let his grace suffice us? For from our pastors and priests and men of God we demand Signs and Wonders, and displays of Power.
In the court of public opinion and merry jesters where Jesus was first summoned that night, in a time out of mind, Herod Antipas asked Jesus for signs and wonders,
“Perform for my court”, he announced between gulping and belching.
But Jesus minded him not and would not work a miracle for the amusement of Herod Antipas and his court jesters.
But if Herod Antipas visits Nigeria today he has many spiritual tourist attractions to chose from:
In Onitsha, he will be welcomed to a church with Naira rain with the chalk-white-faced pastor stepping on money like so much trash.
“Oh”, Herod Antipas moaned. “That time that I needed money to pay the wicked tax quota imposed by Imperial Rome.”
In Enugu, he will find Jesus in Residence, in Monstrance, on the Altar as a priest, makes partisan prophetic declarations: in the name of the Holy Spirit.
Herod Antipas is bound to ask, “Fada, where were you when our father, King Herod the Great, died, and my brothers stole properties and prime estate from me?”
At the camp on the Road to Damascus in Ibadan, Herod Antipas will hear the man of God preach to the people of God about their duties to them who intercede on their behalf before God – Men of God a.k.a., the God Whisperers.
He will not, however, preach of the responsibility of those men of God to speak truth to power (the government) on behalf of the poor.
Again, Herod Antipas will ask, “Did I not need you then to preach to my stiff-necked people to pay up their taxes and what they owed the government?”
At the next stop Herod Antipas will listen as the GO prophesied that a time will come when only his annointed will ever achieve capture of state power.
At that comment, Herod Antipas was uncomfortable but his fears were unfounded for the GO meant something else. His church had an ambitious PEP* Apprentice at the corridors of power at the centre.
Somewhere else, Herod Antipas will hear the God Whisperer announce, at offering time, that the eminent citizens cloistered in the front pews will make their offerings first.
In other words, the widow with her mite can come last.
In a psychedelic and fashionable and modern church in Badagry, Herod Antipas will hear singing and see dancing in church that will bring back memories of the Imperishable Dance of Salome, his stepdaughter, that made juices flow again in the loins of an aging man.
Now as he watched the dance of barefoot worshippers in that Africn church, he remembered what his father had said so long ago,
“Not until you see a woman from Ifriqya dance and gyrate!”
In Nigeria we have created God in our own image and that is what we worship. We mistake religiosity for religion and need for want; and the God who calls us to friendship with His Son, we mistake for Father Christmas.
But we must seek proper disciples for the task at hand: to extract the nails on the feet and hands of Jesus hanging still on the Cross.
That task can only be done by a community of saints: Yes, five persons will be enough.
If we can find five righteous persons in Nigeria.
Ngene lives in Atlanta
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