Of wayward clerics, the church and the nation

If you are Christian in Nigeria, and one who takes his faith with a measure of seriousness, you should every now and then, feel some sore discomfiture at the news of men of God who dip their hands into stuff uncomplimentary of their celestial office. These stories are endless and their atrociousness, unimaginable.

In the warm up to Nigeria’s general elections in 2015 for example, we heard stories of billions of naira exchanging hands between politicians and preachers. Now, why a preacher would take money from politicians confounds the mind, especially when it is to deliver on a mission related to the elections.

Congregations are, usually, a mixture of people of differing political persuasions, such that it would be difficult, if not impossible for any pastor to secure the block vote of his flock on behalf of any politician. I imagine my pastor telling me who to vote for! This, in my own case is even a thought beyond contemplation. I have a pastor too self-respecting to suggest that while I, like many other Christians that I know, am too self-assured to pander to such advisory.

Behind every acceptance of such monetary consideration therefore, are two mutually ungodly and illegal failings to wit, corruption and false obtaining. One being the acceptance of money from a politician against every ethic of sane politics and the expectation of God and the other being  deception to deliver what is patently impossible, I believe that is what Section 419 of our Criminal Code describes as obtaining under false pretense. These two are without any doubt, unacceptable to God and to man.

Sadly corruption and deception will pale into insignificance when other forms of injustice that some of those who call themselves men of God mete on their “calling,” are considered. For instance, in the past couple of years and in a progressive way lately, there can be nothing by the name of misconduct that people who claim to have the mandate of God have not been found engaging in.

Men of God have been found to lure other people’s wives into bed in the name of intervening for them in prayers. On a lot of occasions such women get ultimately appropriated by the one who claims to represent God.

That is not all. People who claim to represent God have been found to rape grown up women, they have been found to rape children, they have been found to cheat and dupe people,   there is sodomy, there have even be stories of murder!

Then there is the manipulation of hapless but ignorant congregants who equate their pastors to God. We have heard of churches where ladies were instructed to attend worship without underwear. This, we read would allow the easy penetration of the spirit of whatever god they serve.

It is okay to teach the brethren about the desire and promises of God for their prosperity in health and otherwise, but many a claimant to the gospel have made a career of the commercialisation of the Christian faith, prioritising the acquisition of the material over the spiritual. It would therefore not be far-fetched to a substantial chunk of our social capital deficit is attributable to the watering down of the commercial essence of the Christian faith by its supposed custodians.

This is increasingly affecting the fortunes of the Christian faith in Nigeria. Every now and then, you have the ventilation of discontent amongst a lot of faithful against their pastors while some would even abandon the faith in protest of the hypocritical or outright criminal tendencies of people that they look up to as saints of God.

And this is where the problem is for a lot of Christian adherents. To start with, there do no saints existing on this planet and even if there were saints; those saints would only be saints, not God.

Pastors are mere men who are susceptible to every token of emotions common to mortals. It is right to expect that intimacy with God would place those who do his work in higher spiritual pedestal than mere men, but nothing vitiates the mortality of all men, whether they are pastors or bishops. And the earlier human being realised this, the easier it would be for them to deal with news of shortcomings of some men of God and their own spirituality.

The second and perhaps most important point is that it is not impossible that a lot of those who perpetrate these evils have actually not been called by God! They may have invited themselves into the ecclesiastic fold, given the very individual nature of things spiritual. How do you query anyone who says God has called him, really?

But Christians who know their onions should by no means be surprised by this because, Jesus Christ, on whose sacrifice the faith is himself, warned of the inevitability of attempts at the corruption of the gospel.  In Mathew 24: 24-25,  Jesus warns: “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand…”  I am therefore surprised when Christians react to the news of the assortment of misleading doctrines that currently fly around the world with shock.

It is even more outrageous when people, on account of the error or even errors of a man of God chose to abandon the faith in disappointment. They forget that having come to the knowledge of Christ; the race becomes a personal one in which every one of us will account for their lives.

The fact is that when God sits in judgment, we are not going to appear before him in a convoy or congregation. The Bible itself testifies that everyone would appear before God to account and so what a pastor did or did not do would not be a good reason for anyone who has professed the faith to fall back.

God himself ensures that this is easy by making his Spirit available to everyone who believes in him. It is for this that Hebrews 1: 1-2 says : “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.”

God expects personal relationship with him with the ability to fellowship him and speak to him and hear him speak from every Christian. It is the refusal of a lot of us Christians to grow in the faith and develop personal intimacy with God, and know God by and for themselves that makes induces vulnerability to the manipulation of people who are bent on exploiting the gospel for their personal gains. And for a fact, every one,  truly called into the care of Christians by God would teach them the importance of personal intimacy with their Creator and the dangers of subjecting to manipulative men.

In essence, I am saying that I do not think that the misdeeds of pastors should fundamentally affect those who profess to be Christians to the extent that it detracts from their own personal races. If anyone who professes to be a man of God falls foul of the laws of the land, they should have their day in court in accordance with the laws. His account of his stewardship to God is absolutely his personal burden, one which I do not think needs interposing.

But the pew in all churches must pray for their leaders and work towards Christ’s charge to love God with all their heart, with all their soul and to love their neighbours as themselves. This is what Jesus described as the summation of the law and prophet. They are virtues, which if all Christians in this country dare  embrace, would, even more than church going and pontificating, change this country beyond our imagination and assure us of eternal rest. May God help us.

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