By Chinazo-Bertrand Okeomah
Many Nigerians on social media are today casting their votes for idolatry veiled with the robes of culture. They have turned their back on casting their votes for Christianity. Their action makes me laugh! Most of these people opine that Christianity is a scam! Others believe that Christianity is White Man’s religion. And by the White Man, they mean specifically the British, and generally the Western world. They believe that without the White Man’s religion and its act of intruding into our culture (read idol worship), Africans would have been light years ahead of the Western world. This is arrant display of abysmal ignorance.
For a start, if Christianity should be given a tag based on its roots or origin, it should be called a Jewish religion. But the Christianity Jesus brought for us is not just for the Jews. It is for the whole world. So it is not specific to any race or colour.
The so-called White Man, or Western world, received Christianity just as Africans did. Christianity also supplanted their idolatrous culture just as it did in Africa. Indeed before Jesus came, the Western world was idol worshippers. Many of them were worse than Africans in the ranking of idolatry and evil deeds. But Christianity, through the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross of Calvary, unleashed the LIGHT that begets civilization and transformation on the world.
God began this work by opening a portal for Himself through which He could reach and redeem Man who fell when Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Through this portal God picked Abraham from the Ur of the Chaldeans and introduced him to the worship of the true God. God used him and his offspring to “test-run” His redemptive plan for man. This was consummated with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.
Permit me to put this in bold relief: No nation ever got developed that didn’t have the footprints of Jews or believers in Jesus Christ on their spiritual or social DNA. The global press and atheistic historians have over the years made valiant strides to obliterate this truth from the sands of time. But they have not succeeded. And will never succeed!
I know there are many reasons why some young people have today cast their votes for idolatry as against Christianity. One of them is that they do not know the difference between colonial masters and missionaries. They also do not know the difference between the passions that drove the colonial masters and the passions that drove the missionaries.
The colonial masters were obviously driven by a craving for material possessions. But the missionaries were driven by a quest to salvage the perishing souls of men. The true missionaries sacrificed much more for Africa than whatever material benefits they ever got – if at all they got any. Indeed many of them left their life of wealth and comfort in Europe to come and die for poor and vagrant Africans.
And without the missionaries and THE LIGHT OF GOD they brought, Africa would today have still been engrossed in utter darkness. This is also true of other continents of the world where they took their crusades of soul winning, including Asia and America.
Such missionaries usually went with two major tools. The one is the gospel of grace that saves lives and gets man ready to go to heaven when he dies. The other is the gospel of the kingdom or gospel of truth or values.
This is the brand of gospel that helps to transform man into a being of values.
Values are the foundation upon which great people or great nations are built. So values could be regarded as the forces of primary greatness. They also help to transform the world and usher in civilization and development.
Most Nigerian preachers and pastors, out of ignorance or covetousness or due to desire to make a name for them, do not know this truth. So they focus only on preaching the gospel of grace. This singular act has destroyed perhaps many generations of believers.
For the gospel of grace is sweet and pleasant. It is indeed very seductive. It also panders to the whims and caprices of man. But gospel of the kingdom is bitter to the flesh and makes great demands on the adherents of Christ. It is the chief key to human transformation and societal development. So because it is lacking in the messages we preach today, we have produced a bunch of believers who are worse than unbelievers in ethics and conduct.
It is also one of the reasons ignorant people are voting for idolatry today. They have not been transformed by the kind of gospel they have been exposed to. For they have only received the starter dose of the gospel called the gospel of grace. They are yet to receive the sustaining and finisher dose called gospel of the kingdom. So many of them are now worse than what they were before they received the gospel of grace.
This is similar to what happens in the abuse of antibiotics. When the patient does not take the proper dosage, or if he takes the fake variant, the disease will develop resistance to the drugs. Thus subsequent intake will not be able to attack the disease.
This is what has happened to these people who now vote for idolatry. The preachers they heard did not give them the proper dose of the gospel. Or, in more tragic cases, they gave them the fake variant. And this is the variant that drips with a life of ease and sybaritism and materialism.
I don’t want to make this article very long. So suffice it to tell those who have started voting for idolatry to halt their move. Let them spare some time and ask God to reveal Himself to them personally. This should not be through any proxy called pastor or prophet. Some of those who bear such titles today are worse than infidels.
Let them also spare some time and study the Bible by themselves, asking God to open their heart to understand His Word. They should also study the life of genuine missionaries. A cursory study of the life of the intrepid Dr. David Livingstone will teach them some great lessons. It will make them realize that no man will ever agree to suffer as much as Livingstone did for Africans without being driven by a superhuman force.
A peep into the life of the inimitable Mary Slessor and all she sacrificed to stop the killing of twins will also help to wipe away their ignorance.
May I end by saying that idolatry has never helped any one or any nation. It only casts people and nations into darkness where Satan is the imperious lord and master. Some of the so-called developed nations are today gravitating into this darkness. And if they don’t retrace their steps, it won’t be long when they will become antiquities of history like Rome, Greece, Medo-Persia and Babylon.