Opinion: Religious Soakaways of Talent Needed Elsewhere

Lurch from church to church

As I made for church this morning, I could not help but notice that hardly beyond my temporary abode, I could count 5 churches within the space of 50 yards.

This was no church district like some industrial or a Business Park, but a non-descript residential area with a few corner shops and a prominent fast food restaurant, to allow a liberty of description I rarely give to those places and a busy street running into a junction.

Whilst, each church had some highfalutin spiritual name, with a few of the usual suspects headed by some Nigerian folk, I could not but wonder about the variance in doctrine, dogma, diktat and culture that precipitated the deluge of mushroom churches all around London in grand buildings, converted garages, school halls or strange shelters that we so need that many.

Why this many?

Now, the revelations of Scripture might vary as one might see the dispersion of light through a prism depending on the angle of observation, but is the perspective so different that each person who seems to have the hunch must have their own church and following?

More so, I am concerned about the brain drain that this spate of churches has brought on society, I am of the opinion that many who eventually decide to enter some religious ministry is of probably some other more useful talent and ability, a professional with a different first vocation that probably has had a lot more to contribute to their field of expertise before they withdrew their services for this venture for souls.

I make bold to say that leaders of these outfits do have innate abilities of study, research, standards, articulation and communication that the wider society can so benefit from that we are now missing.

Talent at the pulpit

Academics with knowledge and perspective able to mentor impressionable young minds to excellence and genius, sometimes they could also be the level heads in dispute resolution, all withdrawn from our sadly moribund institutions that education is failing graduands at all levels.

Medical practitioners with skills that our hospitals need, considering how someone opined recently though without reference that a church in Nigeria had produced more pastors than Nigeria had produced doctors since independence.

I cannot corroborate that assertion, but when we read of health statistics and outcomes in our medical establishments that look like a published account of the road to a hellish existence, you wonder why good doctors are not in hospitals but in churches.

Skill to the versed

Engineers that we need for projects for growth and development such that me might not need foreign expertise to man the simplest activities; the engineers with their sense of precision, attention to detail and particularity have left our buildings, bridges, roads and infrastructure in the hands of others either overburdened or ignorant of what to do, some of our best engineers are building spiritual bridges to heaven.

Accountants with an eye on the figures, the costs, the budgets, gatekeepers on the judicious use of capital by reason of checks and audits, besides the ethical and principled perspective these career migrants could bring now totting up the accounts on God’s bank account in the church.

This is not to say that professions are not well manned, but we cannot ignore what has become the religious soakaway of talent where people who have a calling and gift for the society and the communities they exist in have deserted this great calling and crowded into the religious business.

Fishing for gold

This should also be bothersome because many of these crossover professionals to religion do not have formal seminary training apart from adapting the fundamentals of their profession to religious ends.

It is understandable that many professions do not offer great financial reward as it does seem that churches with the crowds that can attract depending of the charisma and the spectacular draw of the leader can become a banking breaking venture with returns that make the eyes water.

Peddling promises like croupiers in the casino of God, the followers are inspired by good talk to gamble on the assurance of better returns than any monetary system can offer, the spectre of hope dangled in sight but just a bit out of reach to keep the lure engaging enough with it being attainable.

Absent accountability

The mushroom churches also appear to have leaders that belong to no formal or established religious hierarchy, they have absented themselves from oversight of independent authority or have extricated themselves by schism from their mother congregations that they are no more accountable to any church organisation, authority or the flock that they oversee, they metamorphose from men of God to gods of men and with that comes error and more opprobrium upon the whole institution of Christianity because there is no order.

We need to get some talcum powder and antihistamine for our itching ears, our desire to seek out those who make us too comfortable to check ourselves or our leadership on the core principles of the faiths we have espoused that we become lobotomised flock conferring infallibility on our leadership excusing every indefensible thing out of dread, shame or embarrassment.

Shut these places down

It goes without need for much reason that these churches or religious establishments will first become lightning rods for public criticism and before long politicians might get interested and it would be a great pleasure to see these mushroom churches exterminated like vermin for they have become a pestilence giving haven to duplicitous leadership that act with impunity without consequence.

Let us reason about what this means for us as individuals, the way we congregate and the people we allow to hold sway in leadership over us with question or curiosity – it is an unhealthy state of affairs and repugnant beyond words.

Opinion: Exploring a new level of grace in infidelity

Vile chattering

The Nigerian Twitterverse was caught lapping up the salacious detail that graced the pages of a newspaper with regards to the excessive caring of a pastor to the deeper attentions of lasciviousness on many levels of grace yet not understood. [The news story]

In what appears to be a confessional exposing the dynamic of power and authority over vulnerability and victimhood, depending on how you look at it, a lady laid out in exhaustive lettering the trysts that led from catching the eye of the parson to when she was persuaded to join the Pastoral Care Unit.

Good temptations

Out of sight and the purview of the handlers and sycophants back in Nigeria, the pastor let loose his charm offensive, playing on the reverence that was already accorded him by the lady began an incipient ploy that lured the lady from doing ordinary favours with attendant scoldings of not doing much more until somewhere in the penthouse suite of London hotel, mesmerised out her gumption, she was sitting on his laps, then kissing him and by the time we knew it, the bed was defiled with the romping of two people who morally should not be in copulative abandon.

Now, there will be many angles to this story with the likelihood as we have seen before than only one side will gain a full hearing whilst the other regardless of the truth of the matter will go the way of stone-faced denial stringing it out until the lady is labelled every contemptible name from Jezebel to witch.

Tolerating abuse

It does not really matter the whats, hows or whys, but we need to address some fundamental issues within our society where those in authority or leadership have the impunity to abuse or exert influence without question, be they parents, elders, bosses, lecturers, leaders religious or otherwise.

We are inclined to give the aggressor the benefit of the doubt long before the detailed experiences of the victim are given any consideration – we see this in child abuse cases, brutalisation of others, sexual harassment scenarios, institutionalised bullying, academics demanding sexual favours for marks and everywhere else where the respected absent themselves from being accountable for their deeds and being responsible for their actions.

We need to advance beyond the dread of criticising those who have done wrong just because they appear to derive authority from an institution or a potentate. There are things we as a society need to challenge of what we have accepted before that perpetuates egregious abuse from which victims find no fair hearing nor justice.

Influence of authority

Beyond this, the matter of consent is not really cut and dried, power and authority can override the resistance one might normally have in a different setting, the setting usually beyond the scrutiny of others can be hypnotic or cajoling – when a mentor or leader in the midst of manifest wrongdoing says, “I will teach you a level of grace that you don’t understand.” It will take a superhuman presence of mind to snap out of the spellbinding influence of making the abominable look like a worthwhile service to a cause.

We must be able to call out those who should by their status and standing know that they have been called to a cause greater than themselves to set example of moral rectitude beyond reproach and odious accusation that can bring the ministry they oversee into threatening if not debilitating disrepute.

Wayward moral compass

Cover-ups can only do so much but when the stench of corrupt enterprise becomes the incense funnelling the fires of hell rather than redounding to the sweet fragrance of heaven, those who have become too accustomed by acclimatisation to this environment better beware that their discernment has not lost direction and they are caught in an evil delusion thinking they are doing good religion.

In less than two weeks I have found myself questioning the moral standing of institutions that have allowed controversy and opprobrium to dog the leadership – it is time for a greater level of accountability to register in these places with no one being able to act above question, principle, tenet and accepted moral guidance just because of the position they hold.

The trustees have a duty to protect the institution they hold in trust above fallible people and founders, that is what they were elected or selected to do for the sake of the institution and the people who gather as part of the flock of that congregation.

Mud, glorious mud

Even if the mud does not stick, a big mud bath has been stirred and there is a good bit of washing and drying to do before the matter can be cleared up, what even matters more is the hope that if there be others so abused, this is a time for them to stand up and speak up to prevent situations where new victims suffer from what could be been completely avoidable if the timing and courage linked up with a clamour for fairness, justice and truth to do right.

Finally, even if the lady were a woman scorned, the question is what really happened and how far was the authority figure ready to try their luck before it all blew up? For morality and justice, the truth must be made manifest after this salvo.

The laps of God are ready to deliver a coarse spanking to anyone who has thought they have found all the levels of grace like in some video game because, there is a grace too fiery for words and hell will look like a cooler to those who should have known better but chose for the worse.

Opinion: Miracle Cures and Against Religious Abuse of the Vilest Kind

Where I stand

There are some things are really get me seriously agitated and they pertain to rights and abuse. In the body of work I have produced over almost 9 years, I think these particularly stand out - human rights, injustice, child rights, women’s rights, sexuality rights, child sexual abuse, sexual violence, cultural and religious abuse.

There is no doubt that I also cover very controversial issues; it is just my nature to tackle those as passionately and objectively as I can.

Too vile for words

This morning I found myself on a Twitter soapbox dealing with religious abuse of the vilest kind. A church had concocted a cocktail of fruit juice and olive oil then marketed it as a cure for cancer or HIV; the prayer component of the product making up about 50% of the price.

People with chronic and terminal illnesses are desperately in need of succour and hope; they are vulnerable to the machinations of those who portend to offer palliation or cures for their ailments.

Hope like greed is easily exploited and nowhere is that best manipulated than in churches where the leaders with ethereal provenance and esoteric rituals that could border on the macabre but pass off as spiritual hold sway.

Your church as a ghetto

These churches serve as both communities and places of worship but the community aspect almost turns the congregants into members of a ghetto that project practices very different from the wider communities in which they exist. Like Nigerians in the United Kingdom doing only Nigerian things.

People need to feel comfortable wherever they go but to be exploited in this way is unforgivable.

There should be a number of inalienable facts that people should have when attending these churches which on closer scrutiny are more like sepulchres of despair engaged in commercial activity for the aggrandisement of the church leaders.

Rather than minister to their flock, their flock ministers to their every greedy need for ostentation and hedonism which they suggest are the fruits of service to God – they are not shepherds but wolves conducting assemblies with grandiloquent names that will be redolent of B-movie thrillers.

Miracles are free

Now, miracles do exist, but never for a fee, the best example of a miracle was when Jesus raised Lazarus who was 4-days dead petrifying and decomposing in a tomb for free. Neither did he charge for converting water into wine at the wedding feast where one would have expected at best a donation. It is implausible that those ministering in the name of Jesus will then demand some payment directly, by gimmickry or through the sale of potions to offer healing to those still alive but with terminal illnesses. Miracles are free, every time and always.

People should be very lucid about the function of the church and the function of medicine. They are not mutually exclusive. Using medicine is not a sign of the lack of faith; in fact faith and medicine can make the medicine more efficacious.

My testimony is that I had cancer and went on chemotherapy, according to the oncologist and nurses that came daily to dress the cancer lesions, it took up to six months for lesions as mine to dry up and disappear, but in my case, the lesions were all gone in 8 weeks. The doctors considered my response to medication and the result miraculous.

The church and healing

The church should not replace your hospital neither should your pastor replace your doctor. They have their roles. If your pastor does say to you, you are healed; you have the right to a second opinion, a medical opinion to confirm you are healed.

In all cases where Jesus healed lepers, He told them to go and show themselves to the priests, this, I believe was to fulfil all righteousness as they’ll say in religious parlance – or commonly, to ensure all boxes were ticked to allow their re-admittance into society.

Ultimately, if you are paying for any treatment and it is not to a professionally accredited medical practitioner, to a hospital or to a pharmacy for medicine, you have been swindled by a confidence trickster impostor masquerading as a pastor when they are in fact no better than bush witchdoctors.

Your pastor is not your doctor

Your pastor should have nothing against the use of doctors, hospitals or medicine, not everyone exercises feats of faith that at an instant will manifest as lightning bolt miraculous cures. Any assurance of healing should include the advice to have the medically competent confirm the change in physiology indicating healing – it is NOT a sin to do so.

As I have written many times before, never ever discontinue your medication without first consulting your doctor and only on the advice of the doctor and no other. If the pastor did not prescribe your medication the pastor does not have the authority or capacity tell you to discontinue your medicine – do not had your pills over to be destroyed as if you are attending a magician’s show – medications should be properly disposed of by pharmacies or given back to hospitals to be used by those less fortunate than yourself.

Beware!

Just be wary of those who take advantage of you in the religious space, demanding always but never giving, selling goods and snake oil remedies not independently validated by the authorities and whose rituals defy explanation whilst not informing of other reasonable choices or options you should have in this amazing vibrant world we live in today.

Source

Church slammed for selling blackcurrant cordial and olive oil drink as a 'miracle cure' for cancer and HIV : Mail Online