gods of Men

“You will not end this month without a messenger who will carry your testimony on your behalf…”

“Your enemies will look and see your upliftment with their very eyes..”

“You will not loose any family member to sickness this year…”

Expensive sets of mega speakers, suspended mid-air above the large auditorium hall, amplify the preacher’s voice, imbuing it with a prophetic assuredness that ripples through the sea of people gathered together on the massive stretch of camp ground. I am perched on a dusty plankwood bench, my view of the stage obstructed by the line of bodies standing in the rows in front of me. Thankfully, the large rectangular screens hoisted up at each corner of the hall allows me a view of the ministering preacher. He is dressed in a glittery velvet suit, and paces across an elevated stage that is awash all round with bright white stage lights. At intervals, he would halt in place, and slowly start waving his right hand in the air, looking up to the ceiling with his eyes closed. The signal that he was receiving a new revelation directly from God.

A cahoot of “Ameeeeeeens” follows each declaration the Preacher makes. As his voice cascades across the hall, there is a kind of serenity that seems to settle on us like rain drops from a heavy cloud. It was as if all 200,000 of us strangers were being enveloped into a protective sheath that would from then on be an invisible shield against any form of tragedy.

Against my will, I find that I am slowly being worn down by fatigue. The fear of being scolded by my Aunty Chika had kept me awake, rocking back and forth on the bench, so I did not miss an ‘Amen’. But somehow, I must have dozed off, because I jerk up in fright when I feel a sudden painful sensation on my left shoulder. I know already that it is my Aunt Chika pinching me awake. When I look up in her direction, she gestures for me to stand up. Reluctant and annoyed, I pull myself off the bench.

“Favor will locate you wherever you are..”

“Your enemies will join in celebrating you…”

“Strangers will come from far and wide to bless you..”

More declarations are made for the widowed, the unmarried, the barren, the unemployed, the sickly. Fully awake, my active mind roams in between a wavering focus on the preacher’s words and my desire for sleep. Briefly, it also entertains a thought that had I eyes that could see the underworld, how satisfying it would be to watch the demons of death, singleness, barrenness, unemployment and sickness, flee the scene, chased away by the authoritative voice of the anointed man of God.

Papa had met the man of God in person, and I loved hearing the story each time he retold it over the dinner table. Another time, while I was away at school, the man of God had come to the house, when Dami was having her spiritual attacks. Junior had recounted every detail of that night to me, about how the entire family had stayed up all night encircled around Dami, stretching out their hands over him, as the man of God cast out the funny spirits that were troubling him.

Ten years have now elapsed since I struggled to stay awake on that dusty plankwood bench. I now no longer wish for eyes that could see the underworld, because that night as the preacher made his pronouncements, there was nothing much to be seen. The mass exodus of the demons of bad fortune that I had wished to see, were no more than an expert play on my ever-active imagination. For that night, the agents of the underworld carried about their usual activity, unfettered by the Preacher.

2014. It was the year I found out. And when I did, try I might, I could not escape it. It was deafeningly loud and unmistakable. An unshakeable feeling that something had gone wrong. Perhaps I ought to be less vague and clear up the air a bit with a little introduction about myself. I grew up sitting on many dusty benches like the one in 2004 at different churches, annual conventions, and outreach programs. And so it was that I became an avid practitioner of preventive religion. You may find my phrasing strange but I am sure you can relate with its meaning. The vast entirety of my religious engagements centered around a primal desire to keep off bad fortune, and all the undesired parts of human reality; sickness, spouselessness, childlessness, joblessness and all the hosts of ‘lessnesses’ that make existing painful. And so I grew to serve a god whose primary purpose was to obliterate pain from the pages of my story. Did you notice I used the lowercase ‘g’, I was hoping you would.

So now about what happened in 2014. It was the year I realized I had been worshipping a ‘god’ that bore a striking yet false resemblance to the God of the Bible. And I had done so for years, as I was raised to. Across the Old Testament stories, psalms, proverbs, Gospels and New Testament letters of the Bible, ‘pain’ features repeatedly. But it was Isaiah 53:3 in particular that did me in, sweeping the rug right from under my feet. Isaiah describes Jesus as ‘a man familiar with pain’ A description that comes to full expression on that harrowing night in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44), when so overcome with pain and sorrow, Jesus sweat became drops of blood, a real medical condition that 21st Century physicians term ‘hematohidrosis’

If Jesus was not granted his Gethsemane prayer for death on a cross to pass over him, on what authority do I demand God a life devoid of pain?

God will either cause pain or allow it to happen in your life. Now if you read that sentence and had the unconscious urge to whisper a “God-forbid”, consider my point proven.

Now I conclude with one realization. Even as I type this, I hover under a shadow of guilt. I have always found it easier to teach than to abide by the very things that I teach. In the preceding weeks where I penned this, I was tested, I was tried, and sadly, I pleaded for God to take away, rather than use my suffering to make me like Him.

Pray for me.