Superstitious beliefs: the Bane of Nigerian Christian society.
By Ogiri John Ogiri.
One of the biggest problems or the most dangerous evils facing Christians in Nigeria today is superstitious beliefs. What is more worrisome is the fact that these superstitious beliefs are encouraged and propagated by some of our so-called men of God,some of who teach that every elderly man or woman in the Nigerian villages is either a witch or a wizard. The nocturnal bird,the owl,can no longer hoot at night time; the cat can no longer live at home with man,even fireflies are scared of flying in the night in Nigeria for fear of being branded a witch.
Even the charitable act of giving money to beggars on the street has been demonized by some of these pastors. Gullible church members are sometimes taught to believe that giving money to a beggar can cause the fortune of the giver to be transferred to the beggar. Did our lord Jesus Christ ever teach that to his disciples? But these pastors do not have a problem with your donations to their churches. In fact, you are not a child of God if you are not taking money to their churches. This is why some church members can refuse to help a neighbour who can not afford his or children school fees but can go to church and donate fifty thousand (#50000) naira or more. Ignorance, indeed,is vice!
I am not surprised. Many of those who venture into church entrepreneurship are driven by the motive of supernormal profit maximization. And so they do or teach anything that can attract large members. After all, increased numerical strength of members equals increased amount of targeted income per weeks.
To enjoy wide followership,they (pastors) create and impart fears in their followers, majority of who are ignorant, illiterate and gullible. This fear of the unknown keeps them following very blindly and foolishly.Don't forget that people are scared of what they don't know. Put more succinctly, what and who you already know no longer scares you but you're always afraid of what and who you don't know.Some Nigerian pastors are smart enough to exploit fear, particularly fear of the unknown,as a portent instrument of personal economic engineering and aggrandizement.
The result is that those who seek miracles, those church prostitutes-those,with highly grandiose expectations from God and who keep moving from one Church to another in search of a non-existent miracle,or solutions to a problem which answer may even be hidden in them; those who want to hear what they want to hear and not what they need to hear, will always fall victims to the antics and manipulation of those so-called men of God who promote superstitious beliefs so that they can call for deliverance-which in most cases is stage-managed and mired in meaningless cacophonies or abracadabra to bamboozle the gullible Christians into believing that their problems are from their villages.
Oh Nigerian Christian!
Wake up to reality
Stop living false lives
Escape from the dungeon of deception
Break free from the grip of fear
And take charge of your destiny.
Reject superstitious beliefs.
Embrace reason and pursue knowledge.
Jesus cannot be present in a church that teaches you to demonize your family so you can abandon them. Jesus cannot be present in a church where the pastor is not interested in whether or not you are taking good care of your family as long as you keep taking your money to his church.
Now is the time to liberate yourself. Change your thinking. Seek knowledge and wisdom.
(Culled from "How To Achieve Real Happiness in Life" an unpublished work by Ogiri John Ogiri.)
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