NIGERIA: RELIGION WITHOUT FAITH. IS IT WORTH THE TROUBLE?

Foreigners are often surprised to discover how religion is deep-rooted in the psyche of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians. When the Egyptian-American doctoral student of Harvard, Sarah al-Tantawi, visited me early this year to ask some questions regarding the impact of Sharia implementation on women, she did not fail to show her amazement at our religiosity.

“I am surprised to see so many people here attend the fajr (dawn) prayer”, she exclaimed. “Yes, more than you can find anywhere in the world, perhaps”, I replied with a temporary feeling of worthiness. However, as the interview took off, it did not take time for her to realize that our commitment to God ends just at the ceremonial level, that we are not better than the rest of the world.

I remember what was the most crucial question to her, about which almost nobody was ready to tell her the truth throughout her travels across Northern Nigeria: why were the Muslims in the North hesitant in applying the rajm (stoning) in the case of Amina Lawal; instead, they did all they could to find excuses for her? And when her appeal against the conviction succeeded one could feel the air of relief even among the Muslims? “Nobody wants to tell me why,” she complained. I asked her: “Do you really want an answer?” She replied, “Yes, please.”

“Okay. I will tell you,” I started to explain. “The reason is not farfetched. Though one can foresee the anguish of watching a woman actually stoned to death, the real reason why Amina gained so much sympathy because we all believed that she was not the only one who commits such a sin. We are many. This is a nation in which religion ends in the mosque or the church. Outside our places of worship, we are hardly restrained by conscience from committing any crime in any way. So since we go unpunished why would Amina suffer for a sin that is common?”

And so I went to present the usual points I have repeatedly made in my writings regarding our relegation of religion to the status of ceremony. The widely acclaimed article, Cheating God, was the most recent. I am increasingly approaching the conclusion that the Nigerian mindset is essentially but dubiously secular. We generally like God to be restricted to place of worship. We – Muslims and Christians alike – attend to Him there only under the wrong notion that regardless of whatever we do, He is the Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful, who will overlook our shortcomings and let us go into paradise. It is members of the other faiths (ironically, with whom we connive to perpetrate evil) that he will punish in the Hereafter.

We often deliberately expel Him from our minds when we come to commit one crime or another.  One day, the internal auditor of my local government gathered its councillors to discuss the distribution of fertilizer. The auditor told them that if they agree they would not need to return the proceeds of the sale; he will know how to cover them. One of them, the youngest, asked: “Ok. If we do not return the proceeds what do we tell God in the hereafter?.” The auditor quickly interjected, “Kash, Kash. Kai kuwa kar ka kawo maganar Allah mana a nan. (Oh. Please do not bring in God here). Among the eleven councillors, only two returned the proceeds and only they were saved when the matter was later investigated. Others had to sell their houses and mortgage their salaries to pay back. The auditor remains unpunished.

What pushes me further to discover our dubious secularity is its commonness. It is not restricted to Muslims or Christians. In fact, Nigeria would have been a great nation if either group had carried its faith beyond its mouth because the population of each is substantial. However, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria today are mirrors of each other. The Hausa used to be seen as an epitome of honesty in Eastern Nigeria, for example; but no more. The Hausa Muslim, on his part, used to see the Northern Christian as a more disciplined, more humble and more honest person. That one na before. My fellow Muslims express surprise when I tell them that very little of the aid sent to Christian victims of the Jos crisis through the Plateau state government actually reach. The case of consignments of Turai Yar’adua and Dangote in 2008 are good examples to cite. Turai, at her best hour, asked a consignment of six trailer loads of assorted household items originally destined for Republic of Congo to be diverted to Jos in the aftermath of the crisis in November 2008. Dangote also did the same, allocating almost an equal load of grains and beverages. Those consignments never reached the victims. Rather, Christian officials of the government sold them to traders –this Alhaji and that Alhaji – at subsidized rates! The Alhajis paid for the goods and claimed them directly from the warehouses. That is why both NEMA and Nigerian High Commission for Refugees took the pain of carrying their relief themselves to Dogo Nahauwa, at the distaste of the Plateau State government. In cheating God, Nigerian Muslims and Christians go into partnership; in killing one another, however, each faction demands the exclusive partnership of God. Glorified and Exalted is He above our wrongdoings!

Many times I contemplate the wish that we could leave God alone and go the whole hog to reject him. We would then vindicate God from our daily inequities and own up to our misdeeds. If anyone cheats in an election and become the president or governor, no cleric would anesthetize us by invoking predestination, saying he is God-given and anyone who does not pay him homage is a disbeliever as it happened in the aftermath of Yar’adua’s selection in 2007. We would employ reason to tackle our problems, not waiting for God to do it or waste time in appealing for His fear among the hearts of men who do not have any regard for him. We would realize that employing technology would do a better job, like introducing electronic voting machines during elections.

Our problem is that we want to enjoy both, the belief in God and the liberty to behave irresponsibly towards our fellow countrymen. The two cannot be reconciled. We should either believe in God and behave responsibly or acquit ourselves of Him and behave irresponsibly. Both ways would finally lead to orderliness as the latter, through reason and technology, would achieve with greater efficacy in the mundane what the former would achieve through revelation. This is a choice that Nigerians must make and stop wasting their time.

For me it is a choice that I made long ago. I told Sarah, the Harvard Student, that, given my background in natural sciences, I would have ceased from believing in God long ago, if not for two reasons: one is the profound conviction, against all that I read about Darwinism from Darwin himself down to his present vanguard, Dawkings, that the complex universe cannot be a product of chance; and, two, the computational and content analysis of the Qur’an which alludes its divine origin. The two continue to glue me back to religion whenever I tried to wander away, more than anything else that a Nigerian preacher would say, to whom I barely listen and treat with glaring contempt anyway. Yet, I often tell people in my conversations that if I have to cheat to win elections or loot public treasury to survive, I would abandon religion for it has failed to make me better than an animal. This is a promise that I have resolved to keep until death to the best of my ability.

I know there are thousands, if not millions, of Nigerians that are frustrated with our inability to use our entrenched religious fervour to solve our problems, which are essentially none other than our inability to transform ourselves from the levels of individuals to that of a community where we the action of one person has consequences – good or bad – on the life of all others. We still see ourselves as individuals, those hunter-gatherers that our ancestors were. If we gain any elevation, it is not beyond the divisive boundaries of clan, tribe or religion. We fail, repeatedly, to view ourselves first as part of the humanity whose members deserve an irreducible minimum of rights into which we must restrain our desires from encroaching. We have still failed to see that our survival, security, happiness and progress as individuals lie only within that realm of humanity which we must sacrifice our animals instincts of selfishness to protect. Instead, we prefer, to abandon the education we acquired in citadels of learning and behave as individuals first, aggrandizing for our selfish ends whatever comes of our way that is meant for our common good. The inevitable end is the collapse of any edifice that we build: NEPA, NITEL, Nigerian Railway Authority, INEC, education and health institutions, and all other public parastatals, along with the entire political structure.

We are in the last days of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. Thousands of Nigerian Muslim elites have gone for the lesser Hajj, umrah. So much time and resources go to these and other rituals which virtually every Muslim in Nigeria would agree have become mere ceremonies. Why suffer so much then in the name of religion? At the Holy Land, outside the Holy Mosques, the discussion will surely be dominated by politics. People of various parties and interests will be meeting to see how they can have an upper hand in 2011: the most effective way to rig the elections or hoodwink the masses. The concern of civil servants, who have now supplanted the local bourgeoisie in attending the jamboree, is the ongoing in their offices back at home. Two years ago, a cashier of a local government paid a huge sum to enable him return from Hajj a day earlier in order to participate in the monthly payment of salaries. He did not want to miss the proceeds from ghost workers. Subhanallah. What is the benefit of the Hajj or Umrah then?

The common answer is that well at least the reward from the rituals would compensate some of the wrongs we commit. This is underestimating the gravity of the wrongs. Islam lays a very high premium on public accountability. Everybody will stand trial before God in the Hereafter where he will account for his deeds. Yet, there a consensus that public office holders will have the severest trial for the sins they committed that border on denying the rights other fellows. Among us is the person whom the Prophet (peace be upon him) called muflis, the bankrupt cheat. He would come with a pile of good deeds. Then people would troop in each asking for his right which the cheat usurped backed on earth. God would start compensating them by distributing the good deeds of the cheat to them until when his entire good deeds are exhausted and many more claimers would be awaiting their compensation. Then God would instead remit the bad deeds of each claimant into he account of the cheat before he is finally committed to Hell. How many people would come asking for their rights before a president, a governor, a local government chairman, or a public officer who stole from the treasury? Is this end all what our religiosity could buy us? If this is what awaits us, is the religiosity worth it?

Our problem is that there is so much religion around, but no faith. We should acquire in the latter or free ourselves from the former, all together.

 

By Dr. Tilde,

GOD'S SECRETARIES AND THE MAKING OF THE BIBLE

I never had any conflict between faith and science. In fact, the man who told me about the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses was the one who taught me Physics and Chemistry.
Francis Osora Ezengige was the first genius I knew. He was two years ahead of me in high school. During long vacation when he visited Nnobi, he spent his time teaching science to my friends and me. He explained to me why a piece of yam changed color when cut and left in the open. Long before he made 2nd Class upper division in Engineering at UNN, he had explained to me why supersonic planes went far before we heard the sound. Francis knew the answers to all of life’s intriguing questions.
Then one day, we watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller on TV. After the performance, he said to me, “You see, white people indulge in voodoo, too,” I was stunned. His words devastated me. How could he believe in science and in voodoo, too?
For a couple of days, I suffered from the confusion of that knowledge. Then, a few weeks after, we watched “The Making of Thriller.” It explained how the music video was made. The making of Thriller took the thrill out of Thriller. The making of the Bible does the exact opposite. It humbles my assumptions.
While many Christians believe that the bible is the word of God, free of errors, the truth is a lot different.
With recent archeological, linguistic and literary discoveries, new insights are emerging on the making of the Bible. Africans typically do not want to invest in this kind of study because they fear that it threatens Christian religion itself. For a book on which basis you decide what is right and what is wrong; what you hate and what you love; and where you go after it is all over, one would have thought that everyone would be interested in knowing how the book came into existence. But that’s not the case.
In his book, “Who Wrote the Bible?” Richard Elliott Friedman outlines problems in the biblical texts. Several contradictions led to questions about the authorship of the Bible. In Books said to have been written by Moses, Moses tells the story of kings who lived after him. In one it says that Moses is going to a Tabernacle and later in the book it says that someone builds a Tabernacle. How do you go to a Tabernacle before you build one? In one of Moses’ books, it is said that Moses is the humblest man on earth. Moses will not say that Moses is the humblest man on earth. We also read the account of Moses’ death in a Book written by Moses. So how can Moses tell of his own death?
Friedman noted that investigations of the Bible have brought science, religion and secularity into conflict. In the past, books that challenged the authorship of the bible were banned and burned. Authors were excommunicated and some even killed. Adherers argue that the Bible is divinely dictated, revealed and inspired.  Whether the Bible should be interpreted literally, figuratively or symbolically, have far-reaching implications for many. So are questions of whether it is fiction, history or non-fiction?
Whether one’s interest in the Bible is religious, literary or historical, Friedman stated, knowing who wrote it and when it was written is important. An author’s life and time reflects the world the author depicts. It is virtually impossible to understand the text of the books in the Bible without an understanding of who the author was. The story by a witness of an event differs from the one written by someone with a second hand source. The author’s experience and event of his life influence the story he tells and how he tells it.
The Hebrew Bible that forms the basis of the Christian Old Testament is a compilation of books on the Jewish laws, the prophets and the writings. The first five books were attributed to Moses, as the author. Biblical scholars have since determined that Moses could not have written the 5th book. More likely, they were written by several people. Irrespective of who wrote them, scholars believe that the books retold what had been transmitted for generations through oral tradition. To understand how diverse the books were, imagine putting together as a book, Things Fall Apart, The Man Died, Labyrinth with Path of Thunder, Eze Goes to School, Palmwine Drinkard, Efuru, There Was A Country and Heavensgate, amongst others.
Here is a summary of the history of the bible as recorded in various encyclopedias –Americana, Britannica, Catholic, New World etc, based on books by numerous scholars in the last four centuries.
The Hebrew Bible came about when a committee came together to select texts from writings that survived the destruction of Jerusalem. These were writings the Jewish committee best believed would guide them in the observation of their religion. The Hebrew Bible is arranged in such a way that it ends with the Israelites returning to Jerusalem. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible ends with Malachi. The poetry of Isaiah did not refer to Jesus. But Christians interpreted it to mean a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ. Jews on the other hand rejected that interpretation. In some bible editions, the book of Esther did not mention God at all. It is one of those books now considered a historical novella that was not written to represent actual events.
The Hebrew Bible does not have the New Testaments in it. The New Testament was written in a 70-year period by several authors. All the authors were Jewish except for Luke. Paul, Peter, John and James wrote most of the epistles to the new churches on how to live and worship God. As the early church grew, church leaders began the process of selecting from numerous epistles and accounts of what would be the canon of the new Christian religion. At the end of the 2nd century, only 20 books were accepted for inclusion in the New Testament. The Revelation was rejected. The full 27 books in the New Testament were adopted at the synods of Hippo Regius in 393 and Carthage in 397.
Books like the Acts of John, and the Acts of Peter written by John’s companion were called apocryphal acts. Early church leaders saw them as texts not divinely inspired. Some were rejected because their authenticity was regarded as questionable.
What is accepted as canon by each church depends on the translation from which the particular church picked their books. The early Christians depended on the Septuagint. This was the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. In AD 382, Pope Damasus called a Council of Rome that put together the first list of books of the Christian Bible. Saint Jerome put together the texts in Latin. In 1546, the Church declared this Bible the only authentic Bible.
During the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, a debate about what books to be included in the Protestant Bible ensued. The Protestants took out from the Septuagint, books that were not in the Hebrew Bible. While Catholics called these books deuterocannonical book, Protestants called them Apocrypha. So the Protestants have 39 books in their Old Testaments while the Catholics have 46. The Catholic Bible has several books that are not in the Protestant bible. Books like Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children. The Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize other books like Prayer of Manasseh, Esdras, 3 Maccabees and Psalm 151. In the New Testament, the Christian churches are in agreement on the final 27 books that made it. But Catholic churches accept doctrines from other books that did not make it into the canon.
Bible scholars generally regard most of the books as a work of literature and not historical documents. For instance, the Exodus from Egypt and emigration to the Promised Land is not considered historical.  There are no archeological and historical evidence to support that.
Those who try to tell the story of the bible risk being seen as nonbelievers who intend to heap scorn on the believers. Bible does not mean God. The word, Bible, means little library. It indicates that it is a collection of books written by several people. In fact, a modern day analogy is the Wikipidia. Many of the books were written and rewritten by many people before it came to this final copy that we have today.
Because the bible was not written like most books of today, and because several books in the bible were written under different contexts and with different purposes in mind, there is a problem when we read the bible like a regular book. A lot of the things in the bible are not meant to be taken literally.
“The question all along was not who inspired the Bible?’ Or ‘Who revealed the Bible?” Friedman wrote, “The question was only which human being actually composed it? Whether they did so at divine direction, dictation or inspiration was always a matter of faith.”
If God had wanted, he could have dropped a definitive manual on how to live from heaven. But he didn’t. And because he didn’t, man did.

By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo  (Credit to Sahara Reporters)

THE CURSE OF THE NIGERIAN 'BIG G' GOD

The narrow, dirt streets in southern cities like Aba and Port Harcourt are lined with zinc and wood structures with motorcycles parked in front of them and worshipers dancing to praise songs in traditional languages with their white handkerchiefs. On the wide, tarred major roads, gigantic churches - beautiful by all standards and filled to the brim - add valor to the streets with the large billboards and newest cars parked in front of them. Up north, mosques are fewer, larger and even more elegantly adorned than churches but filled up nonetheless.

The religious faithful gather to pray, women lined up behind men, either in these tall, gold majestic mosques or on the corners of the streets where there are no official structures. In Lagos or Abuja or any other major city where migrant tribes are as dominant as indigenous ones,  the religions are not as distinct from each other; mosques sit side by side with churches. It is Nigeria, where almost the entire population identifies as either Christian or Muslim.
The most populous sub-Saharan nation embodies historical, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity as well as diversity of religious traditions including indigenous religions, new Spiritual movements and various strands of Christianity and Islam. The distribution of Christians and Muslims is stark in the predominantly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south but not as stark in the Western region, where Christians and Muslims exist in almost even numbers. The scriptures of the major holy books of each religion, the Bible and the Q'uran are plastered on the walls of homes, cars and city walls.
Religion continues to shape the ways in which Nigerians interpret the complexities of their existence and surrounding realities; to the extent of religion serving as a panacea for problems of day to day living. Christianity and Islam are the predominant practices in Nigeria with 45% of Nigerians identifying as Muslim and another 45% identifying as Christian. However, both religions are thoroughly influenced by indigenous religious and cultural traditions. One clear distinction between the two main monotheistic religions in Nigeria and the African Traditional Religions (ATRs) is that the former have sent God to Heaven while the latter have their gods on Earth.
When God was sent to heaven, He was sent along with the godliness and virtue that men used to have for things around them. All of a sudden, the Earth and its fullness thereof were no longer sacred because God had been removed from them. In fact, monotheistic religions encouraged their members to not only dominate but conquer the Earth. The Earth became a mere tool for man's anthropocentric agenda; nothing more than a base upon which man can proudly stand to exterminate everything else that existed in unison before man came along. The Earth became a less worthy being, one that deserved taming and exploitation. The Earth became a wildfire to douse, her parts became objects of war and her less mighty people became like mud to trample upon.
This is what happened with the Nigerian 'big G' God.
Nigerian monotheists spend more time justifying their God than they do serving Him and having God-like virtue is like having lady-like characteristics: if you have to defend it constantly with more words than character, you probably don't have it. Bring a piece of God back down to Earth. Bring an even smaller piece back down to Nigeria. We need it. If humans are greater species because humans have souls, how about we nurture and cultivate rather than destroy and conquer?
Monotheistic religion in Nigeria is both a blessing and a curse. Yet, this sentence will probably anger many Nigerians because God is the one part of Nigerian "culture" that Nigerians have refused to accept is borrowed especially as Nigerians are very inconsistent in their definition of 'culture' and 'foreign', per convenience. Monotheistic religion is the one part of Nigerian culture that Nigerians profess the most and understand the least. Monotheistic religion is the worst vice the colonials left Nigerians with because they left a piece of their arrogance, a piece of their self-righteousness on over a 100 million sheep.
I find God in the swaying leaves, in the sturdy mountains and in the chill of the river. In the same breath that we enthrone Him on high, we must regard Him in the simple things. If we did, we would not devastate a community's livelihood in Ogoni because our foolish wisdom discovered oil. If we did, we would not steal from the poor and give to the rich. If we did, we would not define our progress by how many churches are found on each street but by how many of our children are righteous and how many of our old men are wise. Righteousness is like wealth, those who've mastered its craft don't need to speak about it; their lifestyles do without much effort. Religion can be a virtue in Nigeria but it isn't one yet. Until then, like I have mentioned before, Nigeria is not a literary and artistic land of contradictions but a pitiful paradox.

Oluwafunmilayo Oyatogun is the founder of BailiffAfrica.Org.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN?

In Genesis 32: 25, Jacob wrestled with God. The Bible says that, God touched “the hollow of his (Jacob’s) thigh.” In Genesis 47: 29, when Jacob was near his death, he asked Joseph to swear an oath not to bury him in Egypt by, “putting your hand under my thigh.” What does ‘thigh’ in those expressions mean? Who puts his hand under someone’s thigh to swear? Was it an ancient tradition? Does ‘thigh’ refer to something else in Hebrew, the original language of the Jews used in the Old Testament scripts? Or was it a euphemism?
Ziony Zevit, a professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles states that the world “tsela” in Hebrew does not mean ‘rib’ as translated in Genesis. He said that it means ‘side’ literally. In his book, “What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?” he suggested that ‘rib’ does not make sense in the story of creation that was littered with sexual innuendo. He said that the writers of the book of Genesis used ‘tsela’ as a euphemism for ‘baculum’ – penis bone- found in Chimpanzee, gorilla and males of other mammals. There is no term for penis in Biblical Hebrew. In a way, the story in Genesis provides a mythological explanation for the lack of this bone in man.

Put in that context, the line of the Bible that says, “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and He took the bone of Adam’s rib and made him a woman” will then read that God took the bone of Adam’s penis.

Translation is hard. Translating a text written and rewritten by many writers straight from oral tradition is a lot harder. It is a hardest when the translation is ordered by people with a particular agenda.

The King James Version of the Bible was 400 years old last year.

In 1604, King James I of England gathered 54 scholars at the Hampton Court Conference, all member of the Church of England, to translate the Bible into English. The King was concerned about problems in the available translations of the Bible. Out of the 54 scholars gathered, 47 finished the work in 1611.

The scholars were divided into six groups. Each group was responsible for a different part of the Bible. Some were based in Oxford, some in Cambridge while others were in London. They based their work on the Tyndale Bible, the first printed Bible translation into English from Hebrew and Greek, and on the Bishop’s Bible of 1568. The John Wycliffe Bible was the first English translation of the Bible in a manuscript form. It was banned in 1409 but its texts showed up in the Latin Vulgate. Tyndale Bible was succeeded by the Great Bible of 1539. The Reformed Protestants based in Geneva under John Calvin revised the Tyndale Bible and the Great Bible to produce the Geneva Bible.

The King James Version became the third printed translation of the Bible into English.

King James’ instruction to the translators was to make sure that the new Bible conformed with the ecclesiology of the Church of England. He was also interested in getting a Bible that would reflect the Church’s belief on the ordination of clergy. The other available Bibles at that time had divergent views. The King James Version was seen as ‘a document of political and theological compromise.’

Though the first edition claimed that it was translated “out of the Original tongues,” it was clearly based on the two previous English translations. Scholars were correcting grave errors on the margins of the previous translations like one in the Great Bible where, ‘They were not obedient;’ was translated into ‘They were not disobedient.’

The scholars made draft of changes they recommended on the margins of specially printed Bishop’s Bible. They compared and revised these works. A general committee made general changes with the Archbishop of London having the final say.

The 1611 print was made before the standardization of the English language. Spelling of words, punctuation and grammar were later revised. In the preface, the translators stated that their goal was not to make a bad translation good but to make a good translation better.

Initially the new Bible was rejected by leading Bible scholars of the time. They still preferred the Latin Vulgate. It took a long time for the King James Version to become universally accepted. It reached that height in early 18th century. That was when a challenge to its text was seen as an assault on the Holy Scripture. For over 250 years, the King James Version was the dominant Bible.

Though dominant, thousands of changes have been made in the course of time. From 1638 to 1762 the text had a lot of printers’ errors. In 1631, the Eight Commandment read: “Though shall commit adultery.” That edition is often referred to as the Wicked Bible. In 1653 another error in 1 Corinthians stated that the unrighteous shall inherit the earth. That edition is called the “Unrighteous Bible.” There are greater mistranslations noticed over the years. It is so widespread that each reinterpretation seems to lead to yet another version of the Bible.

Though the King James Version of the Bible was the most influential, it was, like others before and after it, aimed at satisfying its own interest group – in this case, the Church of England. It is not impartial and its translation has been questioned over the years. As our understanding of the world of the biblical age increases, so are questions about the translations. Archaeological excavations have unearthed ancient documents that question the understandings and translations of the texts. The Bible’s continuing translation problems remain us that it a book of other people who lived in other times and spoke other languages.

“The Christian appropriation of the Jewish scripture involved allegorical or figural readings of many of the texts,” says the introduction of the Oxford World’s Classics of The Authorized King James Version of The Bible. “Often, however, these did not so much replace literal readings as complement them, so that multi-level, or polysemous, readings became the normal method of biblical interpretation.”

Unlike the Quran which is in Arabic, the language of the founder and most of the adherents, the Bible came about from scriptures written in a language that no Christian spoke. The Christians believe that the translation of the Bible was inspired. The Muslims believe that the English version of the Quran is not a translation and does not have the inspiration they find in the Arabic Quran.

The Bible, unlike the Quran, evolved from oral tradition. It was written by several writers over a long period of time and in several languages. It was put together by a committee.
The King James Version has remained the most influential translations of the Bible. It is also ranked as one of the influential books in the English language. It makes up over 15% of all American Bible purchases.

As we celebrate the birth of Christ and the 401 years of the King James Version of the Bible, we remember that we still do not know what really happened in the Garden of Eden.
 
By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

SHALL WE BAN RELIGION?

I got the first phone call just before 1:00pm, UK time.  This was Tuesday 13th November 2012.  It was from my sister in Lagos.  She was frantic.  Our younger brother’s wife was bleeding, losing a lot of blood, laid out on a bed at the National Hospital, Abuja.  She had just delivered a baby, their second in just over two years.  My sister informed me that despite serious pleas from everyone in the family, from clinical staff at the hospital, and from concerned strangers, my brother refused to give his consent for his wife to have blood transfusion.
Why?  Unfortunately for his wife, my brother is a Jehovah’s Witness.
I called my brother and spoke to him.  He didn’t budge.  He said his faith; his religion forbids its members from accepting blood under any circumstance.  Though I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I said that it was ok.  I told him that he could refuse blood transfusion when he is the patient, but since it was his young wife at death’s door, he should give consent for the treatment for her.  I added that after his wife has been saved, he could go ahead and ask for forgiveness from the anti-transfusion god, and once again reconcile himself to his faith.
He declined.  
I then went into the medical aspect of what was happening.  I informed my brother that the average male has only about 5.5 litres of blood in their body.  The average female has even less.  I told him that if the body loses too much of that, there wouldn’t be enough for the heart to pump, and the heart would stop beating.  The patient will die.  He still didn’t budge.  In fact, he promptly hung up on me.  I called him back a few more times but the young man refused to answer his phone.
I called back my sister in Lagos and reported my failure.
T
he second call came at exactly 2:00pm.  This time my sister was crying.  The young lady has died.
I immediately called my brother again.  I wanted to tell him to take and bow and to clap for himself.  But he was still refusing to take my calls.
I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about religion.  I know that religion has its many benefits, but I am beginning to wonder whether these are outweighed by its negative aspects.  Most people appear to check their intelligence at the door when it comes to their religion and practicing their faith. 
Unfortunately, my brother is one of them.  I couldn’t believe that an educated man (he has a Master’s degree from the University of Ibadan) would sit around and watch his wife die when he could have very easily prevented her death by signing a piece of paper.  What has religion done to us?
I called my other sister in Abuja to get more details.  I wish I hadn’t.  
She informed me that she spent more than an hour on her knees begging our brother to give his consent for his wife to be given blood, but he refused.  He refused her, and he refused all pleadings from the medical staff, some of whom were begging him with tears in their eyes.  He was told repeatedly that without blood transfusion, his wife would die.  He wasn’t moved.  He informed them all that if his wife died from bleeding and never got blood transfusion, she would go straight to Heaven.  This is a novel idea.  If only Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Abacha and the rest of them knew this nice little secret.  All they needed to do was slit their own wrists and the express lift to Heaven would have come for them.
Then it got worse.  I was informed that the young lady’s mother was present throughout at the hospital.  The doctors went to her to give consent for her daughter to be given blood to save her life, but the mother also refused!
She too is a Jehovah’s witness.  She maintained throughout that only the husband can give consent, she would not.  
In desperation, the doctors called the young lady’s younger brother who is a junior doctor in Jos.  The deceased worked at the National Assembly and was the main breadwinner in her birth family.  She paid for the education of all of her siblings, including that of this junior doctor.  As the doctors in Abuja pleaded with him on the phone to give consent for his sister to receive blood to save her life, this junior doctor demurred.  He directed that she be given some coagulants and blood clotting agents.  He was informed that all of that has been tried but the patient was still losing blood.  In the end, he refused to give consent.  He claimed that it was the duty of his sister’s husband, not his, and terminated the call.
He too is a Jehovah’s witness.  A doctor!  What has religion done to us?
Before this, I have never imagined that any mother could sit on a chair, fold her arms and watch her child die and not do something about it.  This was a child she gave birth to and nurtured, and who in turn, had been taking care of her in her old age.  I don’t know whether I’m the one losing my mind.  What has religion done to us?
Anyway, the mother and my brother were finally called to go to the lady’s bedside as it became obvious that she was struggling through her last breaths.  Mama ran in the opposite direction shouting, “Jehovah o!  Jehovah is life!  Life is Jehovah!”
qqqqMy brother took his place by his wife’s bedside and watched life ebb out of her.  He stood there and watched her die.  What kind of boldness is that?  What kind of cold-heartedness is that?  When asked why he did what he did, he responded that when he dies, he would marry his dead wife again in Heaven!  Is this logical?  I have to confess that I am not the most religious person in the world, but are there marriages in Heaven?  Are we going to continue having more children in Heaven?
More importantly, would God be pleased with a person who had the power to save one of his children, one of his creations, but deliberately refused to do so?  It is one thing to watch helplessly and only give comfort as someone lies dying on a motorway, but to deliberately and actively withhold life-saving consent?  Especially to your own wife?  Your own child?  Your own sister?
My brother has become a latter-day Abraham.  He even went further by sacrificing his wife on the altar of religious principles.  But why are some religious people like this?  Is it the fear of going against the grain of their faith’s community?  Is it the fear of being seen or being thought as not faithful enough by their fellow religious comrades?  Is it the shame of being considered weak by one’s religious peers?  And if this is the case, are these feelings not trumped by love for another human being?  Personally, I think that it has got to be illiteracy of the mind.
Once upon a time, the Earth was thought to be the centre of the Universe.  That was the Church’s established view.  It was widely accepted that the Sun and all heavenly bodies revolved around an unmoving Earth.  Furthermore, it was thought that if the Earth moved, why are we not flung off its surface?  As Copernicus and science began to intrude, the Church was compelled to re-assert that the idea that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved were "false" and "altogether contrary to Holy Scripture."  Well, Galileo later published a book, ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’ in which he argued and proved that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe, and that the Earth does move.  The Church and its head, Pope Urban VIII (who was actually Galileo’s friend) were enraged.  In 1633, Galileo was arrested and found guilty of Heresy.  His book was banned, he was forced to recant, and was placed under house arrest until he died.
But all of that took place in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Why are people today still favouring antiquated religious policies over love for one another – especially after the advent of Jesus Christ?  It cuts across all strata!  I don’t get it!  
The entire belief system of Jehovah's Witnesses is founded on the basis of its teachings about the second coming of Christ.  They are so fixated on the end of the world that they sit there, petrified, unable to move forward.  From year dot, they have been making loud predictions about this.  Some examples:
•    1877: Christ's kingdom would hold full sway over the earth in 1914; the Jews, as a people, would be restored to God's favor; the "saints" would be carried to heaven
•    1891: 1914 would be "the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men.”
•    1904: "World-wide anarchy" would follow the end of the Gentile Times in 1914.
1914 came and went.  Nothing happened.
•    1916: World War I would terminate in Armageddon and the rapture of the "saints”
•    1920: Messiah's kingdom would be established in 1925 and bring worldwide peace. God would begin restoring the earth. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful patriarchs would be resurrected to perfect human life and be made princes and rulers, the visible representatives of the New Order on earth. Those who showed themselves obedient to God would never die.
•    1922: The anti-typical "jubilee" that would mark God's intervention in earthly affairs would take place "probably the fall" of 1925.
•    1924: God's restoration of Earth would begin "shortly after" October 1, 1925. Jerusalem would be made the world's capital. Resurrected "princes" such as Abel, Noah, Moses and John the Baptist would give instructions to their subjects around the world by radio, and airplanes would transport people to and from Jerusalem from all parts of the globe in just "a few hours."
1925 came and went.  We are still here.  Things are still the same.
•    1938: In 1938, Armageddon was too close for marriage or child bearing.
•    1941: There were only "months" remaining until Armageddon.
•    1942: Armageddon was "immediately before us."
Hmm…
•    1966: It would be 6000 years since man's creation in the fall of 1975 and it would be "appropriate" for Christ's thousand-year reign to begin at that time. Time was "running out, no question about that." The "immediate future" was "certain to be filled with climactic events...within a few years at most", the final parts of Bible prophecy relating to the "last days" would undergo fulfillment as Christ's reign began.
•    1969: The existing world order would not last long enough for young people to grow old; the world system would end "in a few years." Young Witnesses were told not to bother pursuing tertiary education for this reason.
•    1971: The "battle in the day of Jehovah" was described as beginning "shortly, within our twentieth century".
•    1974: There was just a "short time remaining before the wicked world's end" and Witnesses were commended for selling their homes and property to "finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service."
Nope.  Nothing happened.  1975 came and went un-obstructively as well.  
Well, after mama ran away, my brother too voted with his feet.  He couldn’t be found for a few hours.  Eventually he showed up and took his day-old baby over to our sister in Abuja to look after.  The next day, ten of his fellow Kingdom-hallers turned up to stare at the baby.  I cannot help but wonder what would have been going through their minds.  Would they be jubilating that a fellow member has been ‘martyred’ by her husband?  Are they happy that a needless and easily preventable death took place in their midst?
My brother is now faced with the daunting task of raising two infants on his own.  I wonder whether he has thought much about the future.  What would he tell his children when they become old enough and ask about their mother?  Is he going to lie to them for the rest of his life?  They would find out eventually, of course.  And when they do, would they thank him for the leading role he played in their mother’s death?
And bringing up those two infants on his own would be tough – very tough.  I assume he would have to stay single now for the rest of his life since he claimed that when he dies, he would remarry his dead wife in Heaven.  It would therefore be illogical for him to marry someone else again in this world.  That would complicate things for him in Heaven, unless Jehovah Witnesses are entitled to marry more than one wife in the great beyond.
But God is so patient!  The many mad things we do in His name!  What a waste.  What a complete waste of human life and human potential.  What has religion done to us!
Well, three days later, my brother called me.  He was looking for N250,000 towards funeral cost.  Of course I hung up on him…

By Michael Egbejumi-David

demdem@hotmail.co.uk
Twitter: demdemdem1

GOD'S PRIVATE JETS AND LIMOUSINES

And it came to pass, that the congregation of the Lord in the Word of Life Bible Church took count of the forty years marked by the wonderful things that Jehovah, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had done through his humble servant, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, in their lives and they were ashamed that they had treated the anointed servant of the Lord very poorly. They had left him to the indignity of traveling by car and commercial air travel to his many deliverance missions in near and far places even when his fellow Daddy Overseers owned private jets. And being deeply shamed, they said unto themselves, Behold, in this year of our Lord, our father in Christ shall mark the fortieth year of the “unique anointing upon his life” that has “brought Salvation, Deliverance, Revival, Healing and outstanding Miracles to millions across the world as God’s power is demonstrated with signs and wonders.”

Now, therefore, let us hasten and do unto him according to the riches with which the Lord has blessed us; let us buy for him a private jet. And in this, we shall do as our brethren in the Living Faith Ministries did unto Bishop David Oyedepo, and in the Redeemed Christian Church of God unto Pastor Enoch Adeboye, and in the Redeemed Evangelical Mission unto Bishop Mike Okonkwo, and in Christ Embassy Church unto Pastor Chris Oyakhilome. Then shall we present the aircraft as a gift to our Papa Ayo, that he may fly without hindrance, delay or discomfort to the farthest reaches of the world, where the people walk in darkness and do not know God, and have not confessed Jesus Christ as their Lord and personal savior, for behold, the kingdom of God is at hand. Yea, let us do this mighty thing in the sight of the Lord that we may cease to be the laughing stock of our brethren in Christ who say of us, Surely, their God is a poor God! Wherefore do they preach prosperity? Oh, their God is a poor God indeed!
And it came to pass that on the 10th day of November in the year of the Lord, which also is the anniversary of his birth, the congregants presented unto their pastor, Papa Ayo, who also is the spiritual leader of Christians in all of Nigeria, a Bombardier 601 Aircraft, the cost of which is about $5 million. And the same was done in the presence of the President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who knows a thing or two about not one but a fleet of jets and their constant replenishment. And the president, whom Jehovah, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, appointed over his people in the un-promised land of Nigeria, gave testimony of the servant of the Lord in words that I understand thus, Verily I say unto you, Papa Ayo is the uniquely anointed son of God in whom He is well pleased. Hear and honour him with every material thing of which your hands and the blessing they have received are capable; but which, in his own words, went thus, “I can say without any equivocation that Oritsejafor, from the very humble beginning in 1972, has moved from strength to strength. … he is a Christian visionary leader who preaches the words (sic) of God clearly and eloquently as a good shepherd … He has earned his respect among his peers and this explains why he is holding the two very important positions in Christendom in Nigeria as the President of CAN, and President of Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.”
 And the congregants made a great shout, such as could have felled the walls of Jericho, and there was dancing and merriment and the offering of praise to Jehovah who had brought this great deed to pass, according to his riches and glory, that the world may know that he is Lord and there is none like him.
Since Pastor Oritsejafor loudly entered the Jet-set Club, many Nigerians disturbed by the phenomenon of unabashed embrace of a hedonism usually associated with the heathen have begun to ask questions about what a true life of the spirit entails. And the fruits of the prosperity gospel that has overawed a nation steeped in grinding poverty have now begun to set on edge the teeth of a few in the fold. Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly, for instance, does not believe that without private jets the gospel suffers. And I agree. After all, Mary Slessor did not sail from Scotland to Calabar in a private ocean liner. Nor did St Paul or any of the apostles, founders of evangelism, need the equivalent of a private yacht for their mission. Bakare sees not soul-winning but soul-weaning, the separation of church-goers, majority of them poor, from their means of keeping body and soul together. He sees thieves in priests’ clothing and would have them imprisoned and then cast into the hottest part of hell on judgement day.
But not so some of his brethren whose doctrine of prosperity has long done away with the key tenet of sacrifice. So we have heard the defenders of high-flying predator capitalists in cassock and collar, and very often in pin-striped suits, say that a pastor is deserving of his reward. Here on earth.“There is nothing wrong for a preacher to own (sic) a jet. If people in the secular world can acquire jets for chief executive officers of big private enterprises, there is nothing wrong in giving gifts to a man of God of Pastor Oritsejafor’s standing. … He deserves what he has been given,” says one Reverend El-Buba, General Overseer of Evangelical Bible Outreach Ministries International, Jos, clearly anticipating his own jet for the glorious all-nations-for-Christ crusades and revivals; though this always excludes, quite conveniently, places like North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, China, India, and even good old Judaist Israel. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with comparing self-proclaimed men of God and churches to CEOs and business enterprises!
The Pharisee-pastors and congregants defending crass materialism think they answer their critics by claiming that the jets belong to the church, and not to the Daddy Overseers. The only problem is the damning evidence of bondage to Mammon; of the manic setting up of treasures here on earth: palatial mansions, jewelry, fleets of luxury cars (even including stretch limousines).
Ye shall know the truth and the truth shalt set ye free? Here is the truth: the predator capitalists in cassock and collar are rich men in the manner of that poignant parable of Christ in Matthew 19. A rich man, who has followed the commandments, comes to the barefoot carpenter to know what else he might do to gain eternal life. Jesus says tells him to go and sell all that he has, distribute to the poor so he shall have treasure in heaven, and then “come and follow me.” Whereupon the rich man went away sorrowful, “for he had great possessions.” Prompting Christ to utter the famous words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

By Ogaga Ifowodo
omoliho@gmail.com

PRIVATE JETS FOR JESUS

Should a pastor own a private jet? That this is even a debate issue in Nigeria reflects just how wayward some of our Christianity has travelled, particularly since the end of the civil war and the arrival of large piles of oil money.
We are good adopters, and in the past 20 or 30 years, these Christian strands in Nigeria have “grown” side by side with the monies flowing in the streets and the technologies produced by others. Christianity has moved from the pews into the realm of business, and from the pulpits to American-style television.
In the process, some of the emerging Christian leadership, adopting the culture of American television and stage, became celebrities and rock stars. Christianity became marketable, and marketability became mistaken for commercialization.
These pastors also became instant television producers, concerned about their looks and make-up as they prepared for worship services tailored for broadcasting. They worked on scripts and colours and lighting, and arrived in stardom wearing expensive suits and jewelry.
They became stars as their Ministry became a business. And since there is no business without politics, business took politics in its arms and kissed her.  Increasingly, pastors prayed not for right over wrong, nor simply for the mercy of God or the wisdom of Solomon, but for specific individuals or political parties.
Increasingly, pastors enshrined and preached the immediacy and centrality of prosperity, often praying for prosperity answers before nightfall.
Prosperity is good. In a way, our entire journey as homo sapiens is about prosperity: health, education, longevity; heaven is prosperity over earth, and if we make heaven, we triumph—that is, prosper—over humanity.
The problem is that some of our Christian leaders often neglected the fact that prosperity is not always about materialism. From their glittering thousand-dollar suits, some of them prospered into the best cars, alligator-skin shoes, suites in five-star hotels.
All of this often happened alongside barbaric businessmen, guzzling governors and looting legislators many of whom, in moments of guilt or periods of sickness or sadness, sought the comfort of a pastor.
As you know by now, many pastors pray with their eyes closed. It helps focus on the celestial, but also conveys the impression of holiness.
Evidently, it also helps block out the obvious: that some of the powerful people appearing for prayers in the dead of night, or conveniently arranging to meet with the pastor in faraway lands, are thieves who have robbed the people blind.
Now, forgiveness is normal in Christianity.  It is the foundation of the Christian Church, as the entire mission of Jesus Christ, in the Christian faith, was to take away sin and effect reconciliation with the Father.  It is the place of a Christian leader to help with that process, so when he engages a sinner, it is to be expected.
The only problem is that in Nigeria, some pastors have often seemed to close their eyes a little too much and too long: allowing celebrity thieves to impoverish the people longer or escape justice.  The pastor thereby becomes an accomplice, accepting vast “contributions” they had reason to know could not have come from a legitimate income.
In 2007, Archbishop Peter Akinola, the leader of the Anglican Church, showed up at a “glorious homecoming” celebration for one Olusegun Obasanjo, who had recently, reluctantly, and vindictively, given up the job of President of the Federal Republic.
“You have got the best in the world and your eyes have seen the worst in the world.  All that is left now is to make heaven,” he told Obasanjo.
He assured the former president that while he had finished his “horizontal fights,” his spiritual journey had just begun, and urged him to fight the battle of his conscience, and seek forgiveness from those he has wronged.
The people Obasanjo had wronged, for eight long years, were the people of Nigeria, and the good bishop knew it as did all of the pastors who followed Obasanjo around and prayed with him routinely.
Akinola told Obasanjo God had blessed him with everything.   “You have enough money, you have enough houses, you have enough land, enough (cars), and enough properties, even enough children and all should be enough God has given you far too many houses.  What to eat is not your problem.  Paying children’s school fees is no longer your problem…”
He did not tell Obasanjo that all those riches were at the expense of his deeply disappointed people.
Indeed, many of the Christian leaders who interpret Christianity as a tool for personal prosperity pretend to see no link between bad governance and the manna from heaven they preach to their exhausted congregations.  For them, their access to the corridors of power is merely part of their own prosperity. 
They do not see their blindness to bad governance to be collusion, or their silence to be support.
This is really a double rape, because on the other side, the pastors collect relentlessly from the poor to fund an affluent lifestyle.  It is the collections that are now said to be lucrative enough for pastors to bank hundreds of millions of Naira in personal wealth, and purchase jets by which to rule the sky.
In the case of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), he did not even have to work at buying the jet himself: his congregation presented it to him as a “gift.”  It is impressive when a congregation can raise $40 or $50 million to buy a jet.
According to a recent newspaper story, in Nigeria private jet ownership has grown by 650 per cent in the past five years, with those wealthy enough to afford it, including our pastors, spending about $7.5 billion
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah has described this trend on the part of Christian leaders as an embarrassment because it diminishes the moral voice of the church in the fight against corruption.
It is not surprising that he immediately came under attack.  Sunday Oibe, a spokesman for CAN, said: “If there is any clergyman in the country whose constituency is government, it is Bishop Kukah, who served every government in power in the last decade.”
Kukah, he accused, served in the Obasanjo government, only to later attack the former president.  Kukah, he accused, fraternized with former Governors James Ibori and Peter Odili.
Kukah never served in the Obasanjo government.  “Fraternized” with corrupt governors?  Does that mean he knew them, accepted contracts from them, used them as his route to riches and glamour?
Which explains the very point: corruption fights back.  Corruption not only defends itself; in Nigeria, it advertises in Eagle Square.  Corruption blackmails; on the offensive, it paints everything in its own colours.
The obvious is that it is those pastors who buy jets remind one less of a Christian leader and more of a playboy or a corrupt former governor.  A pastor who buys a jet, even from “legitimate” resources, cannot avoid being perceived as being corrupt or compromised
The reason is that a private jet is not just a mode of transportation.  It symbolizes a lifestyle of opulence and challenges the Christian values of humility.  It suggests matching riches and possessions, affluent luxury homes, exotic cars, expansive hotel suites and immense bank accounts.
A private jet, for a Christian leader, suggests the corruption of the Christian spirit and contradicts the life of Christ and the ability to live a life of humility and compassion, or to serve the poor.
A private jet may be transportation to a businessman, and a Christian leader can argue eloquently that he needs it to simplify his mission.  In a country as desperate as Nigeria, the only destination to which a luxury private jet transports a pastor is away: from his ability to confront power, and from the mission.


By Sonala Olumhense
sonala.olumhense@gmail.com