Our Selfishness (Post 9)

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

Once more, I must assure you that I have not forgotten my assertion that there is another alternative to the two options we often give for the origin of things – God or Chance. It doesn't have to be between these two and I will definitely revisit this topic at a later date.

From where I left off last week, it is evident that our religiousness is more to do with a selfish outlook on life. We expect a lot from God or the supernatural especially against the backdrop of a nation that offers us nothing but turmoil, danger and death. It is only natural therefore that we are very quick to see any odd event in our favour as the hand of some God who is out to take care of us. We stay worshipping, waiting for this sign of personal favour and when we have desperately interpreted some occurrence as that sign, we stay worshipping excitedly expecting some more – Alleluia! God is on our side; He definitely watches over us; we are favoured!

Don’t get me wrong; I must always remind you Nigeria that this is not an anti-Christian write-up. I only use Christianity that I am well familiar with as an example to show how religion can be inherently empty and should be handled with cynicism. This is especially necessary in our country where our religions have formed a huge divide among us that has been exploited by politicians time and time again to fatal, devastating ends.

Like I said previously, ignorance is the soil on which belief in miracles grows and this in turn breeds superstition. Such a concoction provides a very fertile environment for all kinds of unspeakable atrocities by humans who have reverted to base animal instincts as we Nigerians have often demonstrated in despicable outbreaks of violence between Northerners and Southerners.

So when we have shirked all kinds of religious adherence, not only would we have moved one step closer to a more unified nation but we would be of a higher level of thinking, one that would, in itself, make us more humane and give us the ability to actually see the advantages of co-operation in developing our country.

You see, when we can accept that there almost definitely is no God out there who watches over us, that it makes no sense that we would survive the death of our brains in any kind of afterlife, that the only life we can realistically expect to live is this one here, then we would be being intelligent enough to actually begin to live in the present and perhaps, that would be a giant step into our true liberation.

Back to this selfishness of ours in our religiousness, I once had the horrifying experience of being in an armed robbery attack. I was staying with a family living at the top of a four storey building in a very Christian neighbourhood, full of Igbo traders. A forty man robbery team were assembled outside the walls of the compound and were taking their time in boring holes in the walls for access. They stayed for four hours pillaging homes and beating up their victims. They even took time out to shush a Church nearby at prayer before carrying on with their business.

I was a Christian at the time and joined the family in hysterical prayer as we waited for the thieves to get to us. Thankfully, the robbers didn’t and in the morning, we began giving thanks to God as Christians would. So what was the difference between my host family and the others who were attacked? They were all Christians. Were my host family any holier? Some Christians would claim so in a fit of self-righteousness but how can you prove that for sure? Has there not been even one good worshipping Christian in the millions of people who have died in the preventable disasters we experience – road accidents, robbery attacks, violent ethnic clashes?

And what do the survivors say? Well their prayer is a template that has etched itself in the fabric of Christian prayer all over the country. It begins with thanking God for every good thing that’s happened – ‘we are alive and healthy Lord; many are in hospitals, many have nothing to eat, many are dead. Thank you Lord.’

Apparently, God has paid more attention to those praying people than he did to the others in hospitals or the ones dead. This is false consolation.

Wake up Nigeria; it is only a matter of time before, in all likelihood, someone else might make that same prayer about us. We are all going to be ill, in hospital and dead someday.