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Religion!

Tempers are usually at their peak wherever and whenever the issue of religion is touched in conversations. More so when it is perceived that an…

Tempers are usually at their peak wherever and whenever the issue of religion is touched in conversations. More so when it is perceived that an adherent of one religion is trying to rubbish another’s. I think that religious intoxication in Nigeria has reached a crescendo with the menace of Boko Haram, even though we have seen Islamic leaders come out to disclaim and denounce its activities as un-Islamic.
My friend would ask our mutual Christian friends: “would you be Christians if you were born Muslims?” And he would ask the Muslims if they would be Muslims if they were born Christians. The answers are always similar, like this; “why would I be born a Muslim?” “God knows I can never be a Muslim, so He made me a Christian” “Allah ya sauwake, (meaning God forbid!) I will rather die than be a pagan!” Such responses simply tell me that we lack basic understanding of ourselves, basic understanding of life, and basic understanding of who God truly is. We ‘serve God based on the ‘experiences of others and their understanding of this God we all strive to please. This is to say if whoever tells us about God has a warped understanding of God, we copy them and also live out this warped understanding of who God is without striving to know Him for ourselves.
We have come to see religion as one thing that is in vogue without really knowing the creed of our religious beliefs, hence we naturally gravitate towards the religious beliefs of our forebears no matter how enlightened we are. We are afraid to be tagged deviants, recalcitrant, pagan and at worse marked for death.
In a bid to chide our Muslim friends (in a friendly fire of course), the friend I mentioned would say that ‘all terrorists are Muslims but not all Muslims are terrorists.’ While that may be excused in that context, it is false. The 2011 Independence Day bomber, Henry Okah is still fresh on our mind. Joseph Kony of Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army for instance, is a catholic. Kony claims to be fighting for God and has held the northern part of that country to ransom for over a decade. He ravaged the country the same way Boko Haram is doing today, kidnapping women and children and turning them to sex slaves and child soldiers. He still remains at large even with assistance from western nations.
But come to think of it, is our relationship with God not supposed to be a thing of the heart? Are we not supposed to first feel or experience the love God before responding towards Him? Has God not been the one who has first loved us without discrimination? If indeed God permits me to breathe in the air He has freely created, why cut me short on that? For Kony, he fought to rule the people of Uganda by the Ten Commandments given to the Jews on Mount Sinai; and one question that always percolates my mind is, is his god so small that he cannot fight for himself?
One of the problems with the world today is that while some people don’t know their religious obligations, others have greatly misplaced theirs. Instead of loving the unloved and unlovable as God would have them do, they would rather mete out punishment to ‘sinners’ because God is either too merciful or too slow; worse still they would rather be God’s executioners hacking down every ‘sinner’ or ‘pagan’. In 1981, for example, Christians in Malaysia were banned from using the word Allah to refer to God. In the same year, the bible written in Malay language called the Al-Kitab was also banned on some flimsy reason that the bible contained words like Allah and some other words of Islamic origin.
What followers of the various religions do not know is that the task of evangelizing is different from that of conviction in its creed. While evangelism may be done by adherents of a certain religion, conviction is done by the spirit behind that religion. When adherents of a religion begin to use coercion to bring people to believe in their God and mode of worship, I take it that the following are wrong with the religion or its adherents; (1) Their god is not strong enough to convince the heart of men. (2) The adherents lack basic understanding of how God partners with man to bring His rule to bear on the lives of men. (3) The adherents suffer from acute myopia hence don’t see the big picture of why God allows people of all faith to cohabit. (4) Adherents don’t evangelize at all.
People are getting more enlightened world over and are moving away from anything that smacks of coercion; and this is no different with religion. In fact, religion should be a lifestyle that reflects the beliefs of its adherents. I don’t understand why people would declare to me that God is good, and yet be wicked towards their neighbours. These same people still delude themselves that they are followers of this good God.
It was Mahatma Ghandi who said “I like your Christ but I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” If your religion is that of peace, please infect the world with that peace that radiates from within, and not wars; let mankind truly find succour in your religion, Christianity or Islam, and not lose sleep because of your religious beliefs.

Ochelebe wrote Ladoke Akintola Boulevard, Abuja <[email protected]>;

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