For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. (Matt 25 v 35-36)
The Christian faith today seems to have lost its flavor. It is now, unfortunately, being trampled like discarded salt. Look around you and you will find almost no evidence of the power of faith, the stability of the social environment or even individual prosperity beyond the natural and which may be attributed to the effective positioning of Christianity. I fear that millions of Christians are today living in denial of the hard truth that the Bible shares about a people “having a form of religion but denying its power thereof”. If Christians today were to be true to selves and be humble enough to assess their prayers –answered matrix for 2016, then I will be quick to ask, in percentages, how much of your prayers came to pass? Christians are as broke as ever, as heckled as ever, as killed as ever, and as ill as ever. We cannot point to a steady, linear or progressive chart achieved on account of our Christianity in any more ways than unbelievers, or adherents of other faiths do. While growing up and learning about the shades of faith, I learned that Christianity was beyond a statistical label. I sincerely hope that it is not so today.
Let me explain.
The social dynamics of Christianity in Nigeria seems to find a basis in an interactional loop of customer-client nature. The leaders do a SWOT analysis of the Christian industry and identify the latent opportunities therein – a people who are as lazy as hell, ever willing to place the power of ‘’prayer” and faith above standard work and believing that breakthroughs are the only highways to success. Christianity in Nigeria today seems like a dress rehearsal, almost as if the real thing is on the horizon and not yet here. Today, it is a transaction – God-do-your bit- and-I-do mine. The people forget that all God needed to do for them was a birth while many religious leaders simply pad the word (depending on yearly strategy) than offer substance of the word. Once a system feeds on human need, an addictive dependency is created and which often than not gets milked on a lifetime continuum for many. It will take a reset, in my opinion, today for the average Christian to understand the symbolism of the torn veil and access to the Throne that a sacred resurrection as Jesus’ offers. Millions will die, totally ignorant of the power that they carry in their bodies and minds and oblivious of the fact that in every way possible, they are Pastors, first to themselves before any other can be for and to them. The unfortunate downside of this remains the broader disconnect between Christianity and social development which is the interest of this piece.
The Nigerian Christian body has not been able to proffer nor effect any positive impact for instance on the electricity quagmire that Nigerian has been thrown into for decades. We have however witnessed exponential growth in church membership and the financial fortunes of churches. Christianity is historically a positive force for change and while it propelled Europe and America to immeasurable development, we have artfully dodged that component of Christianity which drives social change to making it become an unwilling driver of personal greed. Is Christianity and its power strictly a personal enterprise and unable to adequately attend to social needs? What has the practice of our faith achieved for the social conditions of living in Nigeria other than personal prosperity? The Bible is replete with examples of how masses of people benefitted immensely from the awesome power of God in the past. Is this power headquartered now only in our children attending expensive schools and vacationing in exotic lands? Hungry thousands got fed and victories were won in battles when the effective power of God was at work and evident with the people in times past. Where is that power today? What has Christianity done for Nigeria?
The practice of Christianity in this land is attired like a limited liability company – you can only sue the business! Whereas we are called to be “the light of the world”, we cannot even light our rooms. I look forward to the day when we will have a coalition of our revered men of God in Nigeria adorn jeans and casuals and all they, in buses find their ways to hospitals to pray in unison for the sick. I wonder if we could have a Coalition of Deacons from different churches take turns to visit prisons while pursuing a new social order for the prisons system. Do we have an association of pastors’ wives that go to feed widows and orphans? Can we get a ‘Union of Ushers’ of all churches in Nigeria that engage in community service across the length and breadth of Nigeria? Can we have an interdenominational central account for the first time in global history to solve social problems? This sounds like a joke right? I am laughing here too but we must advance Christianity beyond the silo structure that we have forced on it. We have made Christianity a competitive venture and not a way of life. When we are all headed to our churches on Sundays, we are headed to narrow minded groupings led by narrow-minded leaders who can only give back narrow minded teachings. We are not taught to think global but rather to become deliberate, reductionist tribes looking for territory to conquer.
Can the Christian body in Nigeria not within their God-given talents, assets, and resources cause a small progressive shift in the challenges of transportation and education in Nigeria? Can we run an efficient transport system that adopts the best technologies to trail the blaze for the secular world? Can we not within us have a Christianocracy that Democracy feeds from and learns from? The secular is leading the Christian today and so all the conventions and mass services have not translated to as little as 100 kilometers of tarred road anywhere in this country for 50 years. This is failed religion in its basic form. Is it not a shame that the conglomeration of big churches cannot point to any national development blueprint that they can be responsible for? Can the big churches in Nigeria not simply donate 1 Billion per month to each fund as little as a tuition-free university in Nigeria? Why are we so engrossed in a competitive proliferation of universities that totally works against divine purpose for collective humanity but which feeds satanic capitalism?
Our inbred selfishness as separate bodies has failed to enable us to see the power in Christian unity. Over 80 million people with millions in services every Sunday cannot pray a single prayer about power supply that Heaven hears! There are problems. Millions gather every Sunday to pray for national prosperity – it never comes! Many have been praying for a change in the mindset of our political leadership since 1990 (I used to attend Wonder City in Ajah for Crossover back then) but that might never happen in even my lifetime. We are praying amiss. We have our solutions already in our hands as the church but we have been distracted with expansion of landed property, increased membership while failing to see how these million member strengths can be translated to national development and growth. We have tried a South-South Minority, we have tried a Yoruba Farmer, we are now trying a Super Man from the north and the scorecard remains – FAILED.
It will remain so till the churches really know why they exist.
