Rescue workers watch as an excavator removes rubble at the site of a
collapsed building at the TB Joshua Synagogue Church of All Nations in
Lagos on Wednesday. Picture: REUTERS
IT HAS been more than two weeks since 84 South Africans perished at the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria and their mortal remains are still not home. Perhaps it is the fact that the bodies of the 84 South Africans are still in Nigeria that I have found confusing about the manner in which the people of this country have responded to this calamity.
Most of the debates, at least on talk radio, have been about TB Joshua, the high priest of the church in which life was crushed out of the broken bodies of the pilgrims.
Many questions have been asked about the religious credentials of this high priest, and others have made the direct allegation that he is more the anti-Christ than the Man of God he and his followers claimhe is. The allegation has since become generalised to include similar churches in this country. It is argued that these preachers and high priests prey on the vulnerable and those who worship them in the hope that the more they give to the high priest, the more they will prosper.
But questions have also been raised about the intelligence, or lack thereof, of people who are so gullible that they are willing to put themselves in harm’s way by worshipping, not God, but common crooks who can quote chunks from the Bible. I suspect that all of this speaks partially to a truth that is much more complex.
Further, by extending the "truth" about Joshua to other "charismatic" preachers and people who regard them as men of God, the possibility is that doubts will be cast about all churches that are not "traditional" in the Anglican, Catholic, Methodist and other senses.
As we try to make sense of what happened in Nigeria, the possibility exists also that the ill-feeling that is felt by some South Africans will be transferred to all Nigerians or people who look Nigerian given the fact that in this country "Nigerian" has become a generic term for all foreigners from other African countries. What concerns me deeply in this regard, though, is the possibility that the debates we’ve been having about the tragic death of so many South Africans has been an unconscious attempt to distance ourselves from the pain we should all be sharing.
The distance between SA and Nigeria has, in my view, been made longer by the fact that we have not seen the coffins of the 84 South Africans.
This, in turn, has created a distance between ourselves and the place in which our collective pain is hidden.
The collective pain has been displaced by generally unsuccessful attempts at cold analysis of, and debates about, the religious and psychological meaning of the phenomenon, religious or otherwise, high priests and prophets such as Joshua represent.
My fear, therefore, is that the floodgates of collective emotion and anger will collapse when the coffins start coming home.
As a nation, we must find a peaceful resting place for our collective anger.
The alternative is to direct the anger at Joshua, Nigerians the pilgrims and one another.
Whether we think it is the height of folly to go all the way to Nigeria when God is supposedly everywhere, we must still mourn our dead with the dignity their spirits deserve.
Whether we are religious or not, we must condemn not the believers but those who seek to profit from their faith and souls.
We shall have more than enough time after the period of mourning to have deep and meaningful conversations about religion and the human condition. As we cannot deny that there are some among us who worship and propitiate false gods, we, after the period of mourning, must come back to the issue of whether the kingdom of these false gods extends to the power of money, politics and traditional leadership.
If it does, we must find ways to protect the true believer from those who have created a God who has an insatiable appetite for money, power and the blood of the innocent.
To do this is to defend the true church and its men and women of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment