Follow Us on Google
However, some Muslims today are behaving as if only Muslims are their brothers and sisters. Christians too have this kind of attitude. But I think that the ancient Greek philosophy, the stoic doctrine of universal brotherhood, is applicable to Muslims, Christians, traditionalists and so on.
In Islam, Muhammad is an ideal human being to be approximated in order to be godly. In Christianity, Jesus Christ is a model, who, according to Christians, one must believe in in order to have eternal peace. As to the spirituality and lordship of Muhammad and Jesus Christ there is no doubt. But one finds it difficult to believe that it is through only Muhammad and Jesus Christ that one can become righteous. Until this question is settled once and for all, the history of mankind will continue to be punctuated by religious conflicts. And God will and should never be blamed, for that is not what I suppose He wills.
Again, religious leaders should practice what they preach so that others will emulate them. It is unfortunate that every religion claims to be superior to others. According to Bertrand Russell, “Since all religions disagree, none could be true.” But I think every religion teaches the same thing in the field of morals. According to Arnold Toynbee, “there is no one alive today who knows enough to say with confidence whether one religion has been greater than all others.”
According to Huston Smith, “Religion alive confronts the individual with the most momentous option this world can present. It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungle, peaks and deserts of the human spirits. The call is to master reality, to master the self…” Arnold Toynbee once asked, “Who are… the greatest benefactors of the living generation of mankind?” In answer to this question, Huston Smith says, they are “Confucius and Lao-tzu, theBuddha, the prophets of Israel and Judah, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad and Socrates.” In the Nigerian case, if the Christian and Moslems have been preaching and practicing the ways of life of Muhammad and Jesus, there could not have been religious conflict and riots witnessed so far.
In our nation Nigeria, religious violence and killing in the name of God is the fear of tomorrow. Are we still interested in the teachings of our religious leaders? Have we not failed them by politicizing religion? Irrespective of all these seeming intractable problems and hopeless situation, compounded by failure in virtually all spheres of her national life, a critical observer and The Reformer would still want to know if at all we still have not failed the Gods of our various religions. “Allahu Akbar, Lai illa-illa-allahu,” the Muezzin calls the faithful to prayer and to bloodshed. “Jesus is a mighty God, my God is not a poor God,” the pastor goads the Pentecostal and the born-again to a brand of Christianity that defies these date worship of the Orthodox, infusing fires of radicalism and zeal into the once docile and dogmatic Christendom. Noteworthy, you may say, but the resultin Nigeria is mayhem, bloodshed and colossal loss in both human and natural resources.
The craze for status in Nigeria has led to the corrosion of all our moral and social values. Ritual killings, embezzlement of public funds, bribery, corruption, siphoning of vast resources, ethnic/tribal unrest, violent crimes, armed robberies, cultism, mushrooming of churches, craze for miracle, signs and wonders and other forms of immorality have become the order of the day.
It was this situation that made the Greek philosopher Aesop to admonish thus, “Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.” Brothers and sisters, there is more to the truth than just the facts. Yes, our political class has become devourers, the priesthood a symbol of affluence at all costs, the result of this misplacement of values is a nation of inconsistencies and extremes, where nothing is sacred or hallowed, even the name of God. I want to ask like the late evangelist Sonny Okosun did ask about 38 years ago: “Which way Nigeria?”
A big question that has not been answered! Why won’t it be a big question when, even as at then, Nigeria was not adjudged the most corrupt country in the world? Why won’t one concernedly ask such when, unlike 20 years ago, our railways, the Nigeria Airways and our expressways are now a write-off and general electricity system a begging situation? Or is it about food and water resources or general security that one won’t ask?
This place has matriculated into the best place to be a criminal in Africa. Criminals rule as governors. Ex-convicts are in some positions of integrity and authority. In Nigeria, thieves are given places and tittles of honour in the churches, mosques and in society. In Nigeria, there is nothing money cannot do. It is the new god firmly emplaced in our conceptual temples. The way we worship money smacks of primitive acquisitive propensities. “If E no be me, Na who God go bless?” summarizes the way we approach religion. The sacred has departed from our land, a situation that madethe Reformer to conclude, “Some people are alive only because it is illegal or crime to kill them.” Otherwise, how can you explain the topsy-turvy theological philosophies ravaging our society today? The street theology that explains that man is a human being on a spiritual journey, instead of spiritual being on a human journey, which we are truly.
Yes, the sacred has departed from our land; it is now replaced by a syncretistic mélange of primitive magic, consolidated ignorance and a clever exploitation of fears. This can probably explain a professor obliging a pastor who asked him to dance in the market square naked in the middle of the night in order to revoke an ancient ancestral curse etched in his family’s genetic code and transferred inter-generationally to him.
In business, a Nigerian can cheat you while saying the afternoon Angelus in the market. G.S.M handset has been stolen at crusade arenas, pockets have been picked there, etc. The list is endless. I am not saying that every Nigerian should be a saint. But if not, why not! I am not equally saying that all Nigerians are crooks. Far from it! Millions of Nigerians are heroically living out their faith uncompromisingly. But the situation is so hopeless that the bad ones have overwhelmed the good people who are striving not to be a curse to their religion.
We have failed religion. We have smuggled the worship of mammon and other false gods into the sacred pantheons of religion. We pray in public and pray in private. Ours is an era in the throes of unmitigated materialism, an era of violent and superstitious spirituality. Our land and clime has been corrupted. Credulity has been enthroned and the ignorant masses swallow every neo-paganistic creed hook, line and sinker, with unparalleled gusto, in so far as it promises immediate liberation from the unpleasant socio-economic realities of our day. We have failed the Gods of our various faiths. We have failed. What should be our response to this situation? The situation is unpalatable no doubt. But it is not irredeemable.
We can still do somethingabout this.
