Shameless Proliferation (Post 4)

'The fool who has said in his heart, there's no God above.'

Last week’s article has reminded me of something else, something that is the most irritating of my grievances with the religions that plague our country today – that they are foreign.

We surely wouldn’t have been any better off if we were still worshipping natural entities like trees, lightning, rivers – no, but it would have been us deluding ourselves. Now, what we’ve got is the West deluding us. This does not refer to Islamic North whose adaptation of Islam from contact with desert traders and travellers is quite more honourable than the colonial emasculation of Africa through which the South received Christianity.

So we happily swapped one fairy tale for another. We tell ourselves that Christianity offers us the true God; some even go so far as to narrate how Christianity wasn’t the sole preserve of Europe and how it had come to Europe too from outside. Yes, but guess how Christianity spread throughout much of the known world then – via the influence of the Roman Empire which was also a form of colonialism.

But maybe we could excuse ourselves and say, we are simply human. What has happened with the spread of Christianity to our country is something that’s happened all through Europe and to other races as well. Yes, we can say that but remember, Europe never had a precedent to learn any lessons from; they were in history as it was happening. We, however, have refused to learn from what we know is the history of Christianity – the political tyranny of Church and State in the middle ages; the crusades against Islam; persecution of minorities like the Jews; the inquisitions and burnings and finally apartheid and colonialism.

We may say that these have nothing to do with the message of Christianity, no but the white men who brought that message to us relied on our observance of the Christian tenets to exploit us. This is how it is expressed in jest: When the white men came to Africa, we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed; when we opened our eyes, they had the land.

I am sure most of us have heard this before but we take it as a very sophisticated joke, we laugh heartily and go attend to our personal Jesus.

The most gratingly annoying thing I find, however, are people who talk of us Africans having to re-evangelise the West. The Pope has, patronisingly, in one of his many letters lent support to that same fact. But, of course, he would; Africa and the third world as it happens, are fast becoming a major source of the Church’s income; oh yes, he would.

I am amazed that we would presume to think that we know better than Europeans about the religion they introduced to us in the first place. If they have dumped religion in the bin of history, why would we think we can revive it? If anything, we make ourselves out to be fools doubly, and that’s how proponents of this stupefying view are seen in the West - trying to sell a typewriter to a person who has got a computer.

I was actually told by a friend once that the only reason why the West is as advanced as they are now is because of the faith they had in the past, that God is rewarding them now. I needn’t mention that I let them know that that was the dumbest thing I ever heard, not even from fools. The exact opposite is clearly the case; when God died in Europe, they moved on.

Not that the Pope and the Catholic Church do not have competition in Nigeria South; they sure do. Has any industry been more vigorously developed in our country’s history than that of the search for God? Our cities and towns are packed with churches of every kind, size and strength; from ramshackle makeshift structures to magnificent cathedrals, pastors, preachers and priests let out thunder promising the masses miracles or favour in return for their membership and fees either as tithes or regular offering.

And how does this mammoth industry sustain its revenues? Simple – by making sure people understand the penalties for not belonging, for not believing, for not giving to God. God will abandon such people as they chart this hard life on earth, the pastors say, and even worse bar them in heaven.

And this is the clincher, Nigeria; there is no way to prove them wrong. You have to die to find out if the pastor and the bible are right or wrong. And if we are wrong, these men of deception say, the consequences would be dire – eternal punishment. Who wants to take such a chance? Not many, not especially a suffering people like we are. Therefore, like lambs we are led meekly to the slaughter.