Why Call Your Own God A Fool?
Another Sunday...
Another day to go to church...
Another month of Ramadan...
Another month to engage in fasting...refrain from cheating...and illicit sex...and "beering"....
Another Lenten season, another period of fasting...and refrain from stealing and bearing false witness...
And spiritual cleansing...
You sin intentionally up till church time and just before lent...but gleefully revert to status quo ante as soon as the fasting is over!
You sin intentionally up till mosque time and just before Ramadan...but become cruel, greedy and adulterous right after.
You sin intentionally... believing your "God and personal saviour" would always be there to grant you "unconditional" pardon or "amnesty"! Afterall, aren't you so lucky to have such a forgiving God?
This exceptionally gracious God automatically forgives your crimes, you delude yourself. In fact, "your Bible tells you that your God had already forgiven all your envisaged earthly infractions in advance long before you knowingly commit them in arrears!" Long before the sperms that conceived your distant forebearers were ever formed!
You are so eager to introduce yourself as a born-again Christian...ever urging your gullible audience to attend only a "Bible-believing church"!
You think betraying trust is smart...and being fair is dumb.
You flout all conceivable earthly and heavenly laws...thinking you are fine so long as you are not caught in the act!
You believe the end justifies the means...
You seize upon every opportunity to shortchange fellow humans, including outright theft of family, group and societal commonwealth....only to so eagerly, give out crumbs to beggarly fellow primates and religious houses...especially during religious festivals.
The words "tithe, offering and zakat" are so prominent in your personal dictionary. And your motive? Bribing your God to overlook your felonies? Placating Him to gloss over your crimes? "Settling" Him by giving Him what you consider His fair share of your loot?
And of course, such gestures should place you in good stead within your circle of thieves and the unwary poor. Besides, it's smart advert anyway...so you rationalize in your demented mind!
You haven't said your God is a fool...at least not in those exact words! But you have loudly implied that He is dumb!
Your body language is clear!
Your external posturing nonetheless, you either think that this God does not exist beyond the books in which He is so written about...or the houses of worship in which His name is so proclaimed...or you think He must be such a fool...
You are so religious but definitely not Godly...
The main factor propelling Nigerians to sin with such exasperating impunity is the concept of an all-forgiving God.
This to me, is the bane of Christianity...
Anybody who is rest assured he would be forgiven for a crime would brazenly go ahead and commit that crime! Worse still if he has spiritual assurances that he had been pardoned in advance!
There is just no dissuading or deterring element!
And that is why I would not desist from saying that the books of the Bible were written by well-meaning persons who merely claim to have done so under the influence and tutelage of God.
There are just too many things in that book that reek of man's...not God's wisdom!
Now, worshipping God with the Nigerian brand of fervor presupposes that the worshipper holds such God in extreme reverence...but what obtains in this clime is high pretence...as worshippers merely strive to be seen to worship God.
It would lend itself to more meaning if the threat of eternal damnation being tossed about in our churches is keyed to intentional commitance of sin than mere reverence of, worship of, and acceptance of such God as a "personal Lord and saviour"!
If worshippers were certain that they would be punished for crimes they intentionally commit, our pastors would shout less that brethren be of good comportmemt....
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.