Desperation
has wreaked much havoc in our world, especially in Africa where ‘religion is
the opium of the people’ (Karl Marx). Nowhere else is this truer than in our
dear country Nigeria. Religious zeal in the absence of scholastic intellectual
knowledge has driven people to great lengths just to get God’s stamp of
approval. For some, it makes them detest and seek to exterminate, by every
means possible, everyone who doesn’t share their religious persuasion. For
others, their religious leaders have become cult heroes, demigods whose word is
law and whose force brooks no opposition.
You’ll be surprised how educated adults
with their thinking faculties intact would willingly bring themselves under
bondage. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Papacy, for example, held sway over
much of Europe’s religious and even political consciousness. It got to a point
where the Pope even abrogated to himself the power to forgive sins—something
which we all know is the sole prerogative of God. As the sole representative of
God on earth, the Pope was supposedly the intermediary between God and man.
Therefore, whatever God would do on earth had to be his to execute. He was the
voice of man to God and the voice of God to man. Pope Leo X (1513-1521) made a
habit of selling indulgences for sin (which meant that they could pay for
forgiveness with their money). The funny story was told of a man who had
intercepted a chest of gold being taken to the Pope. When he was found out later
and placed before the jury, he presented his papers proving that he had
purchased his forgiveness for that sin ever before
committing it. Thus, he was free from judgment because God, thru the Pope, had
forgiven him!
In presenting this piece I am delightfully
aware that I could be stepping on many toes and touching some of them ol’
sacred cows of religion, but so did Martin Luther on October 31, 1517 when he
nailed his ‘ninety-five theses’ on the door of the Roman Catholic Church at
Wittenberg, Germany. He was excommunicated within four years, but so was the
power of the Papacy also cut at the elbow. It’s such a shame that many of these
points Luther raised almost half a millennium ago are still here with us,
refined and embellished but still there anyway. We still confess our sins to
our church leaders in order to have forgiveness, as well as giving our all to
them as God’s representatives to us, and obeying them completely as God’s mouthpiece in order to inherit the blessings of
God.
Let’s move to the moslems for a while
too. I’m sure everyone who has sense in Nigeria knows that the Northeast and
North-central here have become a very large slaughterhouse in Nigeria. So also
is a large area of Syria and Iraq right now. This senseless religious war is becoming
an eyesore, scores are being reported dead time and again. It’s now so rampant
that we have become so calloused to their plight; no more feeling of sympathy
for the people who are suffering. We expect the people being affected to ‘get
up and move on’ in much the same way as we over here in the South recover after
being dealt fatal blows at the hands of ritualists, armed robbers, assassins,
and even men of the armed forces. Christians are being killed in the North as
well as moslems who don’t share the same mode of Islam as these
fundamentalists.
I say it with all sincerity and
compassion that Shari’a is one of the worst evils the world has ever known. I
know contemporary Islam has more or less whittled down the relevance of Shari’a
as an outdated barbaric tradition, but not for Boko Haram in Nigeria, the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Middle East, Al-Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb, Al-Shabbab in Somalia, and their ilk around the world. People
are being maimed and killed like animals daily while minors are being abducted
and married off as wives to shameless paedophilic men old enough to be their
fathers. In the Sudanese region was a woman who was severely persecuted and
nearly killed for proclaiming herself a Christian. In Bangladesh young ladies
are being excoriated and punished for wearing the hijab in a manner the moslem
authorities deem ‘inappropriate’. I love what a Bangladeshi lady said about
this culture. She said that it doesn’t
matter whether or nor she even wears the hijab, and she’s free to dress in
style because Islam is a thing of the heart and people should be free to
exercise their fundamental human rights.
I think that injunction applies very much to
Christendom, because in many churches even adults are forced to follow some
mode of dressing or the other; where failure to attend church service is
tantamount to signing up for hell; where money is given to the pastor or
whoever is in charge to help members beseech God to do something for them;
where people are made to fast and perform penance to be forgiven of sin or
receive blessing from God; where certain foods are forbidden because they
defile the body. These traditions have absolutely no effect on (in)discipline;
they only serve to salve the conscience and puff up self-righteousness.
Traditional
religions will not be left out. I cannot imagine, for the life of me, why
someone would carve an image out of wood or iron and then proceed to bow down
before it as his god. If this isn’t madness, then I don’t know what is. Others
worship the spirits of their dead parents and ancestors, feeding them all
manner of foodstuff that should have served a better purpose with the living
than the dead. Certain festivals must be kept, certain marks must be made on
specific spots on the body, certain tribes must [not] be married from, certain rivers
and hills must be crossed, and so on. The word of the chief priest is law, even
when he’s making no sense at all. All because of RELIGION!
Let
me tell you something now: You are the architect of your own success or failure
once you’ve reached the age of accountability, barring extraterrestrial
interference and unforeseen circumstances. You don’t have to obey the dictates
of any custom, tradition or religion that doesn’t suit your purposes or sit
well with you. The cure for religion is enlightenment.
Let intelligence
and conscience come before your religion. Religion is okay when it fortifies
the conscience to fear God, do good and eschew evil, not when it stifles
creativity and hampers productivity. In the end, every man is selfish and no
religion can tame that wild beast; go ask your politicians who all subscribe to
one religion and/or another. Take back your life and live it to the fullest.
You only have so long to live, so maximize the moment.
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