Thought Picnic: Being a real person and not a faux parson

Serve it cooked

As much as possible, I do not want to wear my religion on my sleeve, I do write a lot on spirituality and beliefs, but mostly to explore the depth of our humanity. I believe for myself that elements of my character, values, and outlook find their grounding in a broad and liberal Christian foundation.

I am fine with contextualised insight, but dislike being preached at. Some time ago, I was invited to a WhatsApp group of the Class of 91 of my secondary school. Considering I have maintained minimal social contact with my classmates and schoolmates apart from a few on Facebook, I allowed myself in to observe.

Sadly, there was no particularly productive discussion going on apart from people sharing snippets of pompous religiosity with no indication of what it meant to them or how it affected them. I do not think I lasted a week in the group before I extricated myself.

A respectful disposition

What irked me most was I was probably the most religious due to circumstances relayed in an earlier blog that my nickname was Pastor, and at no time did I thump the pulpit with my beliefs. I was left wondering where and when they suddenly took on a mantle of religious calling to pontificate amongst their peers.

In fact, the ones who did eventually go into ministry who I respect for taking on the challenge, do not exaggerate themselves upon me to suggest they have a revelation too new to be ignored. Probably, down in their hearts, they do recognise that a prophet is yet without honour amongst their own. For we of those times together know enough history even if their paths might have been obscured after we left school to the present. Each is still owed courtesy and respect.

The nuisance I was

I know I have made that mistake before when I wrote tracts of religious insights and sent to friends, before I started blogging in earnest. My best friend remonstrated responding to one of my emails, he was not interested in my religious musings, rather he was more interested in what I was up to, my life, my circumstances, and maybe some intimate things you will share with friends.

Taken aback, I went on the defensive retorting that what I was writing about was really about how things affected me. I remember it was soon after I had the HIV diagnosis and when I wrote about it, I was circumspect about the matter but resolute about the lessons and the future ahead of me. I did, however, reflect and abandoned the activity. I would think other recipients out of politeness simply passed my religious emails to the junk folder.

Affected to effect

My hope is that I have the best virtues of religious and Christian instruction imbued in me to reflect warm and kind humanity, able to sympathise and empathise, ready to listen and understand, willing to consider a broad view of things, believing the best of everyone and persuadable of different things by discussion, by debate, and by merit. Maybe there are ways to see the positive and the objective with the ability to help or give succour.

It is a progress of constant improvement with a willingness according to Peter Drucker, to “discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.” I am really working hard on that. I strive to be the warmth you feel rather than the fire that singes, the lamp that shows the way rather than the light that blinds the eyes.

This was not the blog I was planning to write when finished the first paragraph, but by the third, I realised I probably would be writing another blog on what was on my mind before I started writing this one.

Nigeria: A new horde of atheist super-zeroes

A new horde

It is amusing when you exercise a prerogative on Twitter and a certain lot believe that they have the inalienable right to override that prerogative having arrogated to themselves the entitlement to be engaged at all costs.

With time, it has become obvious that the opening line already shows the slippery slope to conflict, their feigned quest for understanding is never what it seems, they are perched ready to debunk, deride, excoriate and ridicule – they are the new atheist horde from Nigeria.

They believe that they are the bastions of logic, driven by scientific reasoning they have become completely unreasonable towards the reasons why others might believe quite differently from their apostate godless existence, they are right and you are wrong.

Seeking prey

If you have the smarts to refuse to engage them, they feign hurt, they demand a hearing, they flail and ache with shrill whimpers of an abused dog that you have had the temerity to deny them, but they must be denied.

For, they are the carrion seeking godless hyenas desperately seeking who to feast on, their forlorn existence given purpose by negating the beliefs of others. They are ready to deem you arrogant, condescending and disrespectful, but if you mount the rostrum they construct all in the ploy to wrong-foot you, they claim a form of superiority that appears to validate their existence.

Ostracised from their communities, they adopt multiple identities shape-shifting on the Twitter landscape hoping to find the luck of the draw, they are frustrated to distraction if you refuse to take their bait, if their persistence is rebuffed it is taken as rude.

Brusque, brash and brutish

They have no finery in language, no broad interest in the good things of life like fine wine or banter for all discussion must lead in one direction only, the purpose for which they exist, a life without God fulfilled by hacking down the gods of others.

Black holes that gravitate to endless disputing, argumentative to disagreeableness, they drive you to exhaustion, but as you review everyone else you engage of the thousands you communicate with on Twitter, these are radically different, odious and repugnant, they must be withstood at all costs and the best way to achieve that is to treat them like strangers – ignore them; if you must humour them, tease them but never fancy them.

They seek to unsettle your equilibrium and make you a drifting cloud bereft of water for rain, obscuring the sunlight needed for warmth, life and growth, you follow at your peril into the abyss of bottomless rancour.

The Taliban in new garb

My opening gambit was, “So take your ball back home, no one wants to play in the rain.” I should have brought a trailer of tissues for the sniffles that followed for I had not appealed to their sensibilities because their extroverted inferiority complex worn in every intonation to show some superior knowledge is too burdensome for them to engage without conflict.

If for once they can divorce themselves from the extremism that is quite similar to the Taliban but without the religion, you might take them for nice chaps, but even the social graces they might have once possessed has been lost with their kind of indoctrination, they must ram their guano down your throat and woe betide you if you attempt to gasp for oxygen.

Like those who have received their religion prone to error with obtuse interpretation and practice, so have these too, we seem to be predisposed to practice what was not intended of those who schooled us in the new knowledge and beliefs we have received – it is unfortunate – even where reason should prevail, we find ways to suspend intellect for the purpose of obstinacy at where we immovably stand.

I could be persuaded

Surely, there are reasonable atheists out there, ones who having railed about the divisiveness religion brings who do not go on to create another dimension of divisiveness their consciousness exudes in – I seek common ground in most things – where I see conflict looming, it is unnecessary to be unduly confrontational for kicks.

I am tolerant of others who are ready to be tolerant of me, the human race is too diverse in culture, beliefs, views and persuasion for anybody to think where they have arrived is the final destination of human knowledge be you adherent, agnostic or atheist – if we seek co-existence where we meet and when you go away fellowship with those of your persuasion, there is harmony and where we agree to disagree, it will never become disagreeable.

I might be persuaded differently of the opinions I have expressed here, but to date, these views have been reinforced, if this is a pattern, extremism finds a home in the character of anyone regardless of what they do or do not believe and that is a very dangerous thing.

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