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The tempo was supersonic, the result too ironic! How did we get to find ourselves in this moral traffic? Who did this to us? Is this what religion is or have we developed our own brand of it?
I grew up in a family with strong Christian tap roots, the type whose grandparents sang masses in Latin. I took up with it also all conservative attitude of a Christian family planted in the midst of ‘pagan’ families as we were made to call them then. This afforded me opportunities to know the attractions of our traditional religion before imported religions of the Cross and Crescent became vindictive and deceptive in the unrepentant hands of the modern Pharisees and hypocrites using the chair of Moses to rapture traditional moral legacies without giving us alternatives.
Our traditional religion is a religion of love and mercy. Our traditional feasts were such love celebrations would make us wonder why our grandparents chose to be Christians. In my native homeland, Izhi, the feast of ‘Otutara (All Souls)’ was a love dinner between the living and the dead. People who perform the ritual together as a family were in unbreakable special bond of brotherhood. A brother with ill-feelings against another would not perform the Otutara rituals with him.
Like Otutara, Ojiji, a new yam feast, showcases love, mercy and sharing. Fraternal solidarity was evident as people would easily rally around someone who has suffered misfortune before the feast to help him provide items required from him for the feasts.
In Igbo society, all sins are virtually forgivable as long as the culprit is ready to go through sacrifices prescribed by the customs. Adultery required just acceptance and after purifications of few days, the woman is neat again. Thieves were only stripped naked, forced to walk on the streets to create sense of shame and where compensation was not necessary, the punishment ends. The end of punishment in traditional law is to expose the violators to public shame and provoke contrition. Once a crime has become public, the entire process is completed and the culprit is reintegrated with a great feast of love.
Even murderers have a place in traditional religion. They were abhorred; but they would be ostracized to penitential villa inhabited by people with similar crime profile. Those who committed suicide were dragged and thrown into evil forest to avoid contamination with the living.
Christianity was to show us higher degree of love. From Bible, we know that If Jesus were to walk on the street of 21 century Nigeria, He would have chosen as disciples: the Facebook slay queens who are familiar with all noises emanating from each bed and room in Nigerian hotels; the homosexuals who occasionally get tired of their protracted psychological disorientation and climb sycamore tree to augment their diminutive moral stature; militants who are tired of agitation; custom and police officers who are willing to make u-turn. Jesus would have accepted politicians who would have come at night like Nicodemus ahead of Pharisees.
Like in Jesus own days; I am tempted often to think that politicians are more sincere than pastors. The reasons are simple. Politicians do not hide their intentions. They announce to whomever it may concern that they are out to get power and defraud. They keep their promise. On the contrary, the intentions of religious leaders are most times deceptively hidden.
My mum would tell us to fear the rat that bites and soothes at the same time. It is the most dangerous. This type of rat accounts for so many wounds people who live in unkempt houses do wake up with sometimes.
The wounds in our hearts come more from the religious rats. Religion under wrong leadership is comparable to a rat that bites and soothes. Under the pretence of love, they destroy you systematically. You ingratiate them when they are inflicting injury and defecating on your psyche, and before you wake up from the slumber, you stuck in the chapel of Divine Mercy while they have achieved their political goal.
The greatest of all Christian mysteries is that God loves us in spite of ourselves. Christianity without love and mercy is a mere contraption of power hawks. In a world dominated by the likes of Nathaniel, a guy whom no guile was found in, a bandit became the first beneficiary of Jesus’ paradise and a retired prostitute became the first to see the risen Christ.
Sadly, Christianity in Nigeria has become a legal religion full of legal technicalities devoid of basic human love. When the parable of the Prodigal Son is read, the lessons from the Loving Father are ignored and the rebuke of the Elder Brother’s attitude who added to the sins of the young is no longer emphasized. Were all animals equal before the law there would have been always reason for consolation and self-blame. But where some animals are more equal than others, victims go with nativity stigma.
Often, the attitude of Christian leaders represents the prevailing mentality of the faithful. We are a generation of envy. A typical Nigerian Christian does not even want Christian burial for one who died owing the church or who accepted Christ on sick bed. A child is not to be baptized because it is born out of wedlock. A woman is not to wear white wedding gown because she is pregnant or has given birth and no longer a virgin.
Always, these co-judges of heavenly court are serial procurators of abortion. The implication of this rising judgmentalism is to force church leader to walk on tight rope with pretentious virtues. They become risk-averse, though morally moral stinking. At the end, they help us elevate sacrifices above love and mercy, an attitude which Jesus condemned among Hypocrites from the beginning of His Ministry in Nazareth till His death in Jerusalem.
Our history bleeds with crimes committed in religious name. It is littered with heart-breaking incidents of denied love. We have shied away from the very ingredients of Christianity and exposed those who need our love to the public ridicule, humiliations and frustrations leading to death.
It was neither the cheering crowd nor the executioners who shared the largest blame of Jesus’ death; rather the attitude of those who felt unconcerned, passive to what happened around them. Such neutralists are still among us. They end up postponing the good they need to do until the opportunity to show love becomes too late.
If we must recover the true spirit of Christianity, all of us must rise as a love community. There are many pastors working hard with sincerity in our villages. They are not known until they commit scandals; then they form headlines of our newspaper. We must encourage strength when it is best manifested than celebrate weakness when it outweighs.
Our love is not only towards victims. We must seize every opportunity that presents itself to plant ourselves in another person’s hearts especially the needy. If we are materially poor, we can be psychological rich to help the victims in our midst.
After 6 years of followership, a Facebook fan whose friendship never went beyond comments and replies on my posts confessed her admiration of my advocacy when I celebrated birthday on 13th March 2017. She asked for my address to send her birthday gifts. After much persistence I yielded. Then, nothing was heard of her again; the supposed gift did not arrive either. I carefully avoided any body language that would indirectly remind her of the gift. A month later, I saw her obituary on Facebook. She died the very week she made the promise unknown to me.
Although we never met nor did I receive my gift, she died having a place in my heart as one who has encouraged me in this advocacy. Sometimes, what the person next to you needs is not really your material gift, not fulfillment of your promise, but your desire to help, your love and goodwill.
Until we leave good memories of our lives in a living or dying heart, we are not yet Christians. We are all thieves and our salvation depends on which side we turn while dying. Good thieves turn right side of Christ’s love and mercy; the fault finders die in their pride turning left and insisting they are not like republicans who need Jesus mercy.