Ghana’s Part-time Christianity

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“Among my first impressions of Ghana was how deeply religious the country is. In fact the question I got asked most frequently by Ghanaians was, ‘do you have faith?’ With a religious mix comprising approximately 70% Christian, 20% Islam, 5% traditional beliefs and only 5% Irreligious, religion is everywhere in Ghana and it’s often found in the most unlikely places. … The first thing that strikes you is how deeply religious a society Ghana is, with worship performed both regularly and with devotion.  This struck home on my drive away from the airport after landing, with the preponderance of shops and stores that are named to reflect religious beliefs: ‘Praise the Lord Welding Services’, ‘Good Shepherd Plumbing and Building’ and ‘The Lord is our Provider General Stores’. The most souped up car I noticed was a ‘boy-racer’ type, with a massive custom spoiler, alloys and undercarriage neon which was emblazoned with ‘Lord is my Shepherd’ transfers on the rear shield in a ‘scary’ halloween script!.” These are words I read on the blog of a UK visitor to Ghana.

We would be hard-pressed to deny these observations – we are religious. Unfortunately, these public displays of religiosity are worlds apart from the personal characters of many Ghanaian Christians, who form the majority of Ghana’s population. Whether you are looking at politics or business, academia or popular music, you will find many professing Christians. There are certainly Christians who are genuinely living Christ-like lives but one does not encounter them often enough, even within the church walls. They are embarrassingly outmatched by those who pay lip service. Many Ghanaian Christians love to make a show of the religion but when it comes down to godliness and moral uprightness, they are found wanting. Ghana is drowning in the filth of corruption, dishonesty, indecency and sexual promiscuity yet the biblically prescribed morality of the Christian majority, whose songs, symbols and landmarks immediately stand out to visitors to this country, cannot be easily seen nor felt. This is one of the most disturbing and irreconcilable features of Ghanaian Christianity.

Many of us who profess to be Christians simply do not walk the talk. We know our Christian doctrines alright, we understand them, but we simply will not live them out. Perhaps we feel that life is too real for us to keep clinging to the admonitions of the faith, which we are not sure will work in life proper. We give and take bribes before work is done and we also lazy about in the office because the companies we are working for “is not my father’s property,” as we like to say in the local parlance. We sleep with our fiancées and fiancés before reaching the church’s altar, and excuse ourselves saying “who in Ghana is not doing it these days. Even the Pastors know that most of the couples they bless in marriages at the altar are not virgins.” We lie chronically on our fancy and smart cell phones about our geographic locations, to our friends, business colleagues and family. Despite all these things, we pay church tithes religiously because presumably our blessings are inextricably linked to the monetary tithe rather than the impure lives we are living. We claim that God exists yet live as if he doesn’t or, even if he exists, he is not looking. We love to go our own way and make it look like it is God’s way. All this has contributed to an overwhelming spiritual darkness and restlessness in this country, from the pulpit to the home, from the market centre to the boardroom, from the internet café to the seats in trotros and taxis. It is a sorry state of affairs.

 

Poor Work Ethic

Chances are that you have worked with or seen a Christian who comes to work and puts in just a little effort but complains about not being recognized or promoted, as if he had been doing extraordinary work all this while. Some may even attribute this to their enemies and wicked spiritual forces. Again, chances are that you know a Christian who goes to work late and leaves early, although it is against the rules of his workplace. Do I need to talk about customer service? The Christian receptionist puts on a look that almost says the customer is disturbing her. It is so hard to even put your trust in the Christian employee. The employer is ill at ease not to closely monitor his Christian employee at work because this employee is likely to do the work anyhow in the absence of close supervision. We would rather pray in the open office space for people to see us than work hard and dutifully as if we were working for God. We easily get angry at customers and work colleagues. The Christian Manager or Director is known in his workplace for his rudeness and lack of respect for human dignity. Work which can be done in minutes or hours takes days and weeks if not months, when the Ghanaian Christian is on the job. Yet he proudly reminds office colleagues that he has to leave early today because a powerful man of God will be gracing a church program. Making up lies to cover up incompetence has become a skill. We intentionally delay working on people’s requests so that they will be forced to pay bribes. Having done this, we go to church and take part of this bribe and give it as an offering to the house of God.

Some might argue that this is a general Ghanaian work culture and therefore singling out Christians is unfair. But you see, in a country where Christians are in the majority this cannot be unfair. More so, Christians ought to be singled out because we are presenting a curious dilemma to the Ghanaian society and the rest of the watching world. We have shouted for years about how powerful Jesus Christ is and how his death on the cross saves us from the guilt of sin, but the country has been waiting unfairly long to see if the death and power of Jesus Christ is also able to save us from the power of sin which causes us to do the unethical and immoral things that we keep doing. The world has the right to know the answer to their question, “How are you Christians able to claim to be following a person as pure as Jesus Christ and yet live such impure lives?” I bow in shame and admit that I cannot answer this question. It is simply baffling. But one thing we can be sure of is that many of the people in the workplace who profess to be Christians do attend Church on Sunday mornings as well as other weekday and weeknight programs at their churches faithfully. Church programs have become more cherished than actually living like Christ.

 

Indecency

The level of decency regarding Christian women’s dressing in particular has deteriorated so much today that it seems our preachers find it a fruitless effort to talk against it. From the professing Christian actress or songstress to the professional Christian business woman to the Christian girl on the university campus, the story is the same.  Our women today do not only wear revealing clothes to lectures, work, and social functions, but they also wear them to church – to the midst of their fellow saints. The sense of shame is gone. Try to complain about it and you would be hushed with the popular refrain “God looks at the Heart and not at outward appearance.” It is not uncommon to hear a Ghanaian Christian make a statement like, “A woman may dress in an indecent way but you never know, her heart may be pure before God.” And this is usually intended to serve as a knockout punch for any moral judgement from an onlooker who has been irritated by a particular woman’s indecent dressing. 1 Samuel 16:7 is where the cliché “God looks at the Heart and not at outward appearance” was coined from. From the verse 1 through to the verse 7 we are told this story: God has rejected Saul as king of Israel and asks Samuel to go and anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be king. When Samuel gets to the place where he is to do the anointing, he sees Eliab, one of Jesse’s sons and says to himself, “This man … is surely the one He [God] has chosen.” 1 Sam 16:6. But God responds to Samuel saying, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him, because I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.” vs 7.

The context is clear – Samuel ought not to use the person’s physique or nice features to determine God’s choice. This verse has however been conveniently extended today to mean that God is really not all concerned about or interested in how a Christian dresses. “All God is concerned about is how pure your heart is,” so the thinking goes, as if the heart has nothing to do with how a person lives his/her life. Those with this mindset think that we can do anything we want and for so long as our minds tell us that we still love God, everything is must be fine. But Jesus demolishes this thinking when he says, “To have a good fruit you must have a healthy tree; if you have a poor tree, you will have bad fruit. A tree is known by the kind of fruit it bears. … A good person brings good things out of a treasure of good things; a bad person brings bad things out of a treasure of bad things,” Matt 12:33-34. The point is simple. We live out what our hearts are full of and Proverbs 4:3 tells us to guard our hearts. Our lives are shaped by the way we think in our hearts. If we are hypocrites at heart, our lives will manifest this trait in the form of a double life. In the same way, if we are indecent at heart, it will show on the outside in our dressing, speech etc. If you have a godly heart it will also show.

Once when Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees of his day, he said, “Blind Pharisee! Clean what is inside the cup first, and then the outside will be clean too.” Mat 23:26. Some Christians are so uncomfortable with this truth – that a pure heart does not live an impure life – but it is blindness to think that a person’s heart can be pure when this person’s life shows consistent impurity. Inconsistency is always a sign of error and the more we try to disprove the truth of God’s Word the more it will prove that we are in the wrong.

The indecency we see among Ghanaian Christians today in the church and in the work place and on the streets is only the outward expression of what has taken place in their hearts – we have become irreverent at heart and left the path of righteousness. We do not fear God anymore. How one lives reflects what he/she really believes deep in the heart. This is why Jesus starts the healing of our disease of sinfulness from the heart. When the heart is changed, the way we dress and the rest of our character will be affected. It will all begin to reflect God’s character of holiness. Jesus cures by giving new hearts that have holy desires and passions. Until we give ourselves fully to Jesus, the flesh will dominate us, even our sense of fashion and choice of dress.

A false Dichotomy 

Whenever a Christian separates his religious life from his secular life it is practically impossible to live a consistent and credible Christian life. The distinction leaves him with no hope of integrating all the complicated but wonderful aspects of human existence into his faith. Indeed this separation is likely to produce the situation where he is often plagued with the question of whether he is in the Spirit or in the flesh. The Ghanaian Christian needs to have a holistic worldview where he sees every aspect of life through the lens of Jesus Christ. Our flesh, spirit, and mind are all inseparably combined by God to make us what we are as human beings and he wants us to bring all of these in a life of submission to him. This is why the greatest commandment tells us to love the Lord with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our strength.

The Christian has only one life to live, and it is a full-time Christian life. We are best placed to impact Ghana for Jesus Christ if we immerse our Christianity right into the political, academic and business life, rather than hiving off our piety away in our numerous and often noisy church programs. Ghana is not feeling the spiritual, economic and moral influence of the followers of Jesus Christ because we are failing to live holistic lives. If we remain in Christ even in the political halls of power, in the company boardrooms and offices, in academic halls of learning, in the shopping centres and market places, in our marriages and friendships, then we will really bear much fruit, just like Christ promised. On the other hand, if we try to be “smarter” than Jesus Christ and live without him, then just as he also promised, we can do nothing. We must not live part-time Christian lives because Jesus Christ is not a part-time Saviour.

 

Just believe

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In John chapter 6 it is recorded that after Jesus had fed 5,000 men (no woman or child was included in this figure) and left, the people looked for him till they found him. Jesus explained to them that they were looking for him because they had eaten the bread he gave them and were full but not because they understood his miracles. He cautioned them not to work for food that goes bad but for food that lasts for eternal life. In saying this he was pointing the people to himself. He said it is this food that the Father has put his mark of approval on. It was at this point that the people asked the question, “What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do.” (v. 28 GNB)

They were looking for something they themselves could do, perhaps a way to life, a moral code, or some rituals or steps to follow. Jesus answered them saying “What God wants you to do is to believe in the one he sent” (v.29 GNB). This was as unexpected and uncomfortable to the people then as it is for us today. “How can simply believing in this man give us eternal life?” they must have thought. In our technique-oriented world today we are always looking for the “5 methods,” “7 ways,” and “10 steps” to achieve many things, including our salvation. We want clear steps to follow. We may also want easy steps to follow (although we may not mind doing some difficult tasks) but Jesus’ prescription sounds suspiciously too easy. Just believe? We want to save ourselves so that we can pat ourselves on the back. But like C. S. Lewis once illustrated, if you are drowning in a river near its bank and a friend standing on the bank tries to save you by putting one of his feet in the river and extending his hand for you to hold on to it, will you put your hand in his or will you protest saying “This is not fair, you have one foot on the bank”? Spiritually we are helplessly lost, but God has extended his hand of help from heaven to save us.

Salvation is given freely by God alone to those who believe in the one he sent. It is not on merit so neither the believer who was born into a Christian family nor the person who converted from atheism or Islam or African Traditional religion can boast about it. It is God’s gracious gift to man. A noted Christian writer once said that he is not going to complain to God that there are not two doors to heaven but rather he is going to thank him that there is at least one door to heaven. I think he is spot on! Salvation comes only through Jesus Christ.

But lest we think that to ‘believe’ here simply means to give our mental approval of Jesus as the one sent by God, the context clarifies what is entailed in this believing.The people had eaten bread which was miraculously provided by Jesus. When he provided the bread, the people did not just look at the bread and believe that the bread existed – they ate it. “I am the bread of life. Those who come to me will never be hungry; ….” says Jesus (vs 35 GNB). There is a ‘coming’ to him. Jesus is not just asking us to believe in his existence as a person sent by God! No, he wants us to, as it were, eat him and digest him into our blood so that he becomes life to us. Food gives life to our mortal bodies only when it is digested into the blood, and not when we look at it and believe in the fact that it exists.

We must come to Jesus, we must give or make ourselves available to him (just as we make our hands, mouths, digestive systems and as a matter of fact, our whole physical bodies available to tangible foods). This way Jesus will penetrate our whole being – heart, soul, mind and body – with himself and with his life-giving words. This is what it means to believe in him who was sent by God. This kind of belief has a purifying effect upon our nature because the Spirit of God comes to indwell us and work within us to produce good works. “But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control. There is no law against such things as these. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have put to death their human nature with all its passions and desires,” writes the apostle Paul to the Galatian church (Gal 5:22&23 GNB).

You can never work your way to earn God’s salvation but you will begin to work out your salvation once you have believed in Christ Jesus because God himself through his Spirit will work in you both to will and to do. Without Jesus Christ you can do nothing remotely worthy of earning your salvation. Have you believed in Jesus Christ, in the sense of allowing him into the deepest parts of your being?

*GNB – Good News Bible, Second edition ©1994.

The Pastor Chris divorce – Modern Christianity and self-deception

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I was hoping that the rumours about Pastor Chris Oyahkhilome’s pending divorce proceedings with his wife Anita may just be one of those things – rumours, until I heard the man himself speak on the subject in a YouTube video. As is normal of human nature, those who love the man will defend him to the hilt in spite of his obvious flaws, and his critics will have found even more reason to be critical of him. I on the other hand choose to do exactly what an American theologian whose opinion I respect, Roger Olsen did about the resignation of a certain Mark Driscoll, a prominent pastor of the American megachurch called Mars Hill – I choose to analyze why this always happens and why without changing how we think about and run churches, these things will happen again and again.

Do not worry when I allude to resignation – I know that there tends to be very little difference between African politicians and a large percentage of African megachurch leaders and I’m not demanding nor expecting Pastor Chris to resign from leading his church in spite of how this does raise a lot of questions about the theology he expounds . What worries me the most is what contemporary Christians have come to expect as “normal” of church and church leaders.

OUR PASTORS ARE SUPERMEN

Modern Christianity is caught in the superstar mentalities of our generation. A number of churches tend to be built more around the personalities of their “founders” than they are built on Jesus Christ himself. It expects (and accept) flawless oratory, knowledge on everything from archeology to zoology, perfect lives and the assumption of perfect and always correct teaching. When I find myself in the company of certain “Christians”, they talk a lot more about their pastors than they do about Jesus and his kingdom. As a result of this elevation of these Christian leaders to the demigod status, they have also gotten it into their heads to demand absolute loyalty to them – whether this is warranted or not. There is this perception that these leaders have received a special “vision” from God about their ministry which cannot be challenged, and so even when they are expressly wrong in what they say and do, it is safer for the contemporary Christian to not ask questions but rather behave like sheep in a herd. It deludes Christians that there is safety in numbers and would rather not be the ones that ask questions. We therefore overtly support our leaders in their abusive and non-Jesus-like behaviour, all in a flawed interpretation of “touch not my anointed”.

 CELIBACY IS EVIL

Modern Christianity has somehow gotten it into its mind that a conscious decision to remain single in the service of the kingdom of God is bad. It views young men and women who are not married as second class citizens of our churches although we don’t realize that’s what we are doing. This is however in contrast to Jesus and Paul the apostle’s own attitude to marriage and divorce represented by Mt 19:1-11 and 1 Cor 7:1-16 respectively. This is summed up in 2 opposites, either stay married (and fulfill all your marital requirements as expected of you – “the husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise wife to her husband”) or be single so one can devote oneself to working for the Kingdom of God. If celibacy was still an option amongst contemporary Christian leaders, then those who feel marriage is not for them as well as our “supermen” pastors can save us all the crocodile tears they cry when, to use the American expression “it all goes south” in their marriages. There really is very little room to maneuver biblically when it comes to divorce, so let ALL Christians (not just the mere mortals amongst us) be sure that marriage is what they want and they should be willing to stick with it.

HUMILITY IS OVERRATED

Contrary to what pertains today, early Christianity was very unique and in some ways weird for being amongst the earliest religions that propound humility as a virtue. In the Greco-Roman world of the 1st century, pride was the norm, not the exception. For those who think “if you’ve got it flaunt it” is a modern notion, you will be mistaken to know that Epicureanism already had the goods on that one. The notion that we are all frail and worthless human beings who have somehow been favoured by God to be called into his kingdom, and who although redeemed by Jesus are still susceptible to these failures was central to the mindset of early Christianity. Peter the apostle, who received a lesson or two about humility from none other than Jesus himself, had a lot to say to both leaders and members of the church in his letter of 1st Peter chapter 5. To the leaders he says “Be shepherds of God’s flock … not lording it over one another but being examples to the flock” (v 2-3). To the whole church he says “all of you clothe yourselves with humility to one another”(v 5). Hence the notion of the body with many parts and all contributing their bit to build that body up.

Modern Christianity on the other hand, not realizing it has bought into Enlightenment ideologies and its earlier antecedent of Epicureanism, is fraught with pride, with people feeling they are special and should be treated as such. Showing oneself to be vulnerable and therefore actively taking steps (and not just “talking humility”) to make sure that our lives, both as leaders of the church and as ordinary Christians are open to questioning, change and support by others is out of the question.

It is because of this knowledge of frailty and the fact that one man can’t do it all that early Christians preferred a group of elders guiding the church than the CEO style leadership we are running today. This spreads the load of doing the work of God, and allows leaders to also lead normal lives and have time for their wives like the rest of us if they were married. But today’s “CEOisque” Church leaders must write devotionals, write their own “bibles”, preach every Sunday, be the only public voice of the church, attend every meeting, write books, be the church administrator and monitor church finances to boot.

OUR PASTOR/CHURCH IS THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD

Together with this lack of personal humility is an arrogance of theology that can sometimes be nauseating. Christianity has existed for well over 2000 years now, and yet some modern Christians think that what their pastor/church teaches today is the only (best/perfect) revealed truth. Whenever I personally question some Christians on their knowledge of Christian history, I’m scandalized by the monumental levels of ignorance exhibited. How have we allowed the philosopher George Santayana’s sayings that “those who do not remember the past are bound to repeat them” to be true of us? Even within the last 100 years, many “men of God” (preachers) have faced such spectacular personal failures and from which we must learn lessons, and yet somehow each generation of Christians thinks that it won’t happen to them and doesn’t make structural changes to prevent these things from happening again.

CONCLUSION

Modern Christianity simply sets up our leaders to fail. And when they do, most of us do the 2 things that unreflective human beings do – crucify them for their failure, or go on as if nothing has happened and find some means to excuse them for it by blaming something/someone else.

Instead of simply concluding that the main lesson from this is that “we all need to spend more time with our spouses” as I’ve heard some say, maybe Christianity as whole should be less naive and ask ourselves more critical questions about the structures we have adopted that lead to these failures. We can start by admitting to ourselves the possibility that we might be slightly insane. After all a certain wise scientist once said that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.

Maybe we need to admit that some humility is required of us, and expect the same of our leaders. Maybe we need to ask ourselves if celebrity pastors are what the church needs, or people who are just mere mortals like you and me will suffice. Maybe we need to take Jesus Christ seriously that Christian leadership must not be one that lords it over and exercises authority over its people like the gentiles do (Mk 10:42). Maybe instead of the categories of “men of God”, “preachers” and “the rest of us”, Christians will be more satisfied with “brothers and sisters in the Lord who need each other”. That way when we fail, we can have the guts to say “I’m sorry”.

Because it actually takes men of courage to recognize their mistakes and to apologize for them. That is the way of the Lamb, must we not follow it?

Constructing the circle of faith

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Author: John A. Turkson

Looking back some five years ago, in Junior High School, Pre-technical Skills was one of my favourite subjects; specifically the Technical drawing aspect of it. I don’t know how they call it these days, considering the frequent alterations in our curricula over these past few years.  There was something special about following all those given instructions to construct various fascinating figures, the precision that came with practicing, the accuracy you needed to employ in your drawing to gain the highest mark, the habit you needed to form to present the neatest work possible, the instruments you needed, even the wide range of pencils required to perform specific tasks. Those were the days; when you’d go to school carrying your big drawing board as if you were that architect chosen by God to draw the plan of an entire new world!

 It sounds funny at first, but that is exactly who we are: architects chosen by God to draw for the world to see His grand blue-print of love! With the tip of the compass firmly planted in Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, we Christians are supposed to describe certain circles in the world with our lives. Christ must be the centre! Christ must necessarily be our focus and salvation, our goal! But all we see in the ‘goalpost’ today are ‘balls’ of gospels about wealth, work promotions, favours, concocted prophesies etc. when the purpose of the gospel message is to reach as many as we can with God’s gift of salvation. Christ is no more the centre and without the centre, a circle does not exist! As tiny as that point is, Jesus, His death and resurrection—the gospel—holds us together in one piece. When our lives are void of this key ingredient, we are lost in the haze of hopelessness and like a lead-less pencil, our lives are pointless. Jesus must be the focus!

 Johannes Kepler, upon analyzing the astronomical observations of one Tycho Brahe proposed three laws supposed to describe the nature of planetary motion. In the first law, he asserted that the orbit of a planet was elliptical with the Sun at one of the two foci. An ellipse is an almost-circle with two ‘centres’ called foci (singular: focus). At one of these foci, in our solar system, the Sun holds the planets in place. Christianity is a kind of solar system in which Jesus is the Sun. The strategic position of the Sun is imperative to our survival. As it stands now, the Earth is hanging in space because it is suspended by threads of gravitation from the Sun; likewise the other planets. It’s been said about Jesus, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17, ESV). Jesus is our Sun, around whom we are supposed to revolve. Without him, we shall fall. Apart from him, we’d sink into darkness. But today, we hear about preachers instead of Jesus. The gospel which will lead to salvation has become relegated to the appendix session of our sermons when in the life of the early church, it was the main theme (Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, Paul’s famous Athenian sermon in Acts 17:16-31 and many more throughout the book of Acts). Apart from the Vine, the branches are as useful as firewood! If we are indeed bearing fruit apart from the Vine, I shudder to think we have decayed for some opportunistic multicellular fungus like mushroom to sprout on our ‘skin’! Have we not been deceived enough already? Look within and examine yourself: is Jesus at the centre?

 After the rains have fallen, the winged reproductive termites will want to congregate around a source of light. This forms part of their ‘nuptial’ flight ritual. In the process, they lose their wings. This mode of life is natural. The termite species will not survive without this process the same way we the branches cannot do without the Vine. Apart from the Vine, we lose our wings of faith. We lose our wings when we choose to hover around some drugging ‘miraculous’ light lit to trap our attention from the real Bull’s-eye, Jesus. Jesus promised us he’d send us a comforter, the Holy Spirit. Even as we believe Jesus has sent forth His Spirit to enable us bear fruit, the Holy Spirit will only flow through us through the Vine and not apart from Him. Jesus still remains a chief part of the equation! After all, the Holy Spirit was promised through Jesus to empower the Church (Acts 1:8)  to further the cause of reaching far and near with the gospel—that Jesus, died and resurrected and that it is only in believing in him that we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). The various gifts the Holy Spirit stirs in us are not to be used for amassing wealth, or procuring passports or visas, or promotions. The message must not be about how God wants us to be wealthy (really?), about prosperity, success etc but must be about Jesus in the right concentration—the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). The dilution thereof makes the ‘solution’ fake (Galatians 1:6-10). The centre must be Jesus, otherwise the fruit is wrong and the bearer, false! (2 John1:9-11).

 Today, the Prophet, the Apostle, the Miracle worker and the Teacher are the celebrities. Where is Jesus? Today, we can only have faith when we have that ‘special’ wrist band on our wrist, that white handkerchief, or that bottle of ‘anointing’ oil, or that ‘Florida’ water. Where is the Author and Finisher of our faith? Today, it’s all about prophesies and miracles (I am in no way saying they are not real. God reveals to redeem. He also works awesome miracles) but have we forgotten about the fruit of the Spirit; about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; the very ingredients that make us Christians? Have you even examined that Prophet and seen the fruit in him? What did Paul really mean in 1 Corinthians 12:28-31? What is the most excellent way? In the subsequent chapter, we read about love. Does that celebrity Preacher come to mind as a lover of the needy, friend of the widow or a vendor of the recipe to prosperity? Or Jesus does— the pure definition of love? Is Jesus at the centre of the web of ‘spirituality’ you are entangled in?

 Jesus still stands in the centre of time—He virtually holds history together with wood drenched in His blood. Blood He shed for you and I to earn a place at the centre of our hearts. Where is Jesus in relation to your life—outside that circle, inside somewhere or at the centre?

 In constructing that circle of faith in your life, Jesus MUST be the centre. Without Him, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold”!

Unmasking the Prosperity Gospel

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Author: Robert G. Coleman

About two and a half decades ago, the popular Christian message that one often heard in Ghana was about salvation, and this was traditionally presented as relating to sin, righteousness and eternal life. The call then was “Repent and accept Jesus and you will be saved.” Today, in many places, salvation is presented as an experience with Jesus Christ that will give us the tools and power to be successful in life, enable us rub shoulders with rich non-Christians and make us happy. In addition, the understanding of the word “faith” has also been changed. Faith used to be seen as a living trust in God so that even when things did not go well, we still trusted in the Lord. Today, faith is understood in many quarters as a power or force that is used to get anything we want. This modern interpretation of the gospel is what theologians call the Prosperity Gospel.

This gospel may be presented in different forms and even with different words, depending on who is preaching it, but the core of the message is that Jesus died so that the one who believes in him will become materially or financially wealthy and will never fall sick. Some of this gospel’s oft-used vocabularies include “sow a seed,” “abundance,” “breakthrough,” “anointing for success,” “inheritance,” “prophesy into your life,” “you are destined for greatness,” “claim it by faith,” “positive confession,” etc. Another unique thing about this gospel is that it thrives on changing or playing with the meaning of particular words. The meanings of scriptural verses are often twisted in order to present a semblance of biblical grounding for the prosperity gospel’s non-biblical message.

He Became Poor So That You Might Be Rich

Prosperity preachers usually tell their hearers that God wants them to be rich or to have material abundance. It is not uncommon to hear them use a verse like 2 Corinthians 8:9 which teaches that Jesus became poor so that those who believe in him might be rich. But did the author, Apostle Paul, actually mean that Jesus’ agenda for his followers was to make them rich materially or financially? Ironically, the reason why Paul even brought up this issue was because he was seeking for donations to help the believers in Judea, who were in need. Now think about it, if believers in Christ are automatically to be materially rich just because Jesus “became poor,” as it were, then why were the believers in Judea so in need that Paul had to get the assistance of the churches in Macedonia and Corinth (2 Cor. 8:1-4, 8-15). If it was case that the believers in Judea had failed to “claim their inheritance or birthright,” as the prosperity gospel language goes, all Paul needed to do was to tell them to either “claim it by faith” or “prophesy it into their lives,” but he did not do this because this was not the kind of Christianity he was preaching. It is also worth noting that the apostle made particular mention of the fact that the churches in Macedonia gave generously “even though they are very poor” (vs. 2 GNB) and he meant this in terms of material wealth (vs. 3).

In verse 9 however, when he uses the word “rich” he does not imply financial or material wealth. The context bears witness. He clearly states what he means by “rich” in verse 7 of the same passage: “You are so rich in all you have: in faith, speech, and knowledge, in your eagerness to help and in your love for us.” GNB. There is no mention, literal or implied, of material riches here. Indeed if by “rich” Paul had meant material or financial riches then his actions would be either a joke or an insult to the Judea believers, on whose behalf he was asking for donations, because they would already be materially rich by virtue of Christ having “become poor.” But the prosperity preachers have a different agenda: they want the believer in Christ to see riches as a birthright, something to be grasped, something the Christian is entitled to. But this only leads many believers to disillusionment, because when God has not promised something and you force yourself to believe that he has, disappointment is inevitable in the long run.

The Blessing Of Abraham

It is also common to hear prosperity preachers make reference to the blessing of Abraham in the book of Genesis, in the Old Testament. At the same time these preachers are inclined to use Galatians 3:29, in the New Testament, which says that “If you belong to Christ then you are the descendants of Abraham and will receive what God has promised” (GNB) to explain why they believe a Christian ought to be materially rich and fulfilled as Abraham was. A successful linking of this passage in Galatians to the Genesis narrative about Abraham’s blessings seems to provide a solid foundation for preaching material prosperity in the Church today. But there are some important things to note here.

What really is the blessing of Abraham? Abraham is called blessed in Galatians not because he received prosperity or material wealth or good health. Instead he is called blessed because he believed God and God accepted him, on the basis of his faith, as righteous (Gal. 3:6). It is this “righteous” status that the apostle Paul has in mind when he says that all who believe are blessed as Abraham was (Gal 3:9). Any person who believes in Jesus today is blessed because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. Galatians 3:13&14 explains: “But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, ‘Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God’s curse. Christ did this in order that the blessing which God promised Abraham might be given to the Gentiles by means of Christ Jesus, so that through faith we might receive the Spirit promised by God.” GNB [Emphasis mine]

Paul’s meaning of “God’s promise to Abraham” is very clear. He does not have in his mind any idea about Abraham’s material blessing nor does he allow room for extending the meaning of this phrase beyond Abraham’s spiritual blessing of righteousness to include “everything” (Gen. 24:1) else in Abraham’s life, like the prosperity preachers like to do. The promise of blessing for the whole human race through Abraham, according to the Spirit-filled Apostle Paul is spiritual not worldly – it is the receipt of the Spirit promised by God. Interestingly, the author of Galatians, Apostle Paul, whose words prosperity preachers like to use to justify their material wealth preaching, actually wrote disapprovingly about people who try to interpret the Christian faith materialistically in 1 Timothy 6:5-12 saying:

“…They think that religion is a way to become rich. Well, religion does make us very rich, if we are satisfied with what we have. What did we bring into the world? Nothing! What can we take out of the world? Nothing! So then, if we have food and clothes that should be enough for us. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and are caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a source of all kinds of evil. Some have been so eager to have it that they have wandered away from the faith and have broken their hearts with many sorrows. But you, man of God, avoid all these things. Strive for righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Run your best in the race of faith, and win eternal life for yourself; for it was to this life that God called you when you firmly professed your faith before many witnesses.”(GNB) [Emphasis mine].

Paul lifts the attention of his readers from the material to what really matters – the fruits of the Holy Spirit: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

Sickness

Typical prosperity gospel does not allow room for a believer to get sick. It claims that a Christian, full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit and who has favour from the Lord simply cannot get sick; Jesus has redeemed the believer from every disease. Thus if you get sick it must be because of your sin or unfaithfulness. But as if to refute the prosperity gospel on this particular point, the Bible contains a record of several godly men (both those who can be described as physical seeds of Abraham and those who are spiritual seeds of Abraham) who suffered sickness yet the Scriptures put no blame on them: Elisha, a man with the “double portion anointing” died of a fatal disease (2 Kings 13:14); King Hezekiah, a man described as one who did what was pleasing to the Lord (2 Kings 18:3), actually got sick and almost died (2 Kings 20:1); Timothy, Apostle Paul’s son in the faith, had frequent stomach problems (1 Tim 5:23); Trophimus, one of the early Christians, was left in Miletus by Paul because he was ill (2 Tim 4:20); Epaphroditus, Paul’s fellow worker in the faith, fell ill and almost died (Philippians 2:25-30); the great Apostle Paul himself got ill physically (Gal 4:13). If the Prosperity preachers’ teaching is true then we must question whether the apostle Paul (whose letters we consider as part of Scripture) and his colleagues in the early church, who got sick, were truly the seeds of Abraham or even Christians at all.

Conclusion

In a developing country like Ghana, where many people struggle financially and with health issues, and where a lot of young people are upwardly mobile, the Prosperity Gospel sounds appealing and inspiring. But it would be in our interest to heed the warnings of Scripture and also the warning of Jim Bakker, the former American prosperity preacher, whose ministry was hit by financial scandals in the 1980s and was subsequently imprisoned. From prison, he repentantly wrote in a letter saying: “It’s time the call from the pulpit be changed from ‘Who wants a life of pleasure and good things, new homes, cars, material possessions etc?’ to ‘Who will come forward to accept Jesus Christ and the fellowship of his suffering?’ … I believe the heart of God is grieved when we cannot delay self-gratification for earthly things in exchange for life in eternity with Him.” Having deceived masses of people, Jim Bakker finally saw the light. I hope the prosperity preachers of our day and their sympathizers will also come to the same realization before it is too late. C. H. Spurgeon once insightfully noted that, “The old covenant was a covenant of prosperity. The new covenant is a covenant of adversity whereby we are being weaned from this present world and made meet for the world to come.”

While Biblical Christianity does not teach believers to actively seek poverty or sickness, it does warn against seeking worldly riches (2 Tim. 6:9&10) and worldly fulfilment (Matt. 16:26) and also entreats Christians to pray for the sick and care for the poor, both within the Church and outside of it. In the Christian life, whatever the believer does, he is to work at it with all his heart as though he were working for God and not for human beings (Col. 3:23). Hard work is encouraged. In the end, however, whether a believer becomes rich or poor or in-between, sick or healthy, the important thing is to have a living trust in Jesus. Faith, in the Christian sense, is a confidence in Jesus Christ and in his power so that even when his power does not take away the unpleasantness you face in this world, your confidence in him remains because of who Jesus is. He is a loving God who can be trusted to always do what is good for those who belong to him.

I have come to worship

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Author: Akyana Britwum
I have dwelt in the midst of sin for a long while. I delighted in it and refused to part ways with the destructive lifestyle that had come to typify my way of life. Today, the 15th of May 2014 I listened to a sermon on faith by Paul Washer. He spoke on Hebrews 11. He said something about verse 15 and 16 that struck me:
Hebrews 11:15-16 “If they had been thinking with [homesick] remembrance of that country from which they were emigrants, they would have found constant opportunity to return to it. But the truth is that they were yearning for and aspiring to a better and more desirable country, that is, a heavenly [one]. For that reason God is not ashamed to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God–the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], for He has prepared a city for them.” [Amplified]
And I realized my sin. It wasn’t the bad things that my heart had come to delight in. No. It was then fact that my heart had become content with this world, with its current ways, its wisdom, and its entertainment. I no longer longed for the kingdom Christ was bringing. The things of this world became sweet. Their attractive allure held me fast. So that even my pursuit of Him was tainted. Tainted by a quest for worldly knowledge a worldly knowledge of Him. I did not delight in Him anymore. I could only appreciate Him from a worldly stance.
So I tried to cast away my worldly sins as I saw them. Lust for the earthly things I knew were killing me. Little did I realize that I was worshiping the world’s system and it had so corrupted me that my quest for Christ became a worship of the world. In other words, every tool that I looked to for emancipation became my god. I did not look to God. I did not want to nor could I do so. I was trapped and caught up in my folly.
But today, I heard the Scripture from Hebrews 11 and I knew He was reaching out to me. So I have come to worship my King and my God. As I worshiped I struggled to let go of the vain things that charmed me most. “Certainly Lord not these”, I said. Then I saw Him on the tree crucified for the sins that I held so dear. The image of how He gave it all up so that I didn’t have to live with my sins nor face the righteous wrath of God for the sins I was unwilling to give up. 
“Lord” I prayed “I have sinned because I have not esteemed thee as I ought. But now at Thine feet I pour my love, my all, withholding nothing. Take as I am. Cleanse me, restore me. You are all I want, You are all I need. Fill me up anew.” 
And so at the mercy seat where I found myself, I lay, waiting on my God and my King. I am still lying down. I have come to worship my God.

Prophetic Confusion

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Elijah fed by the Ravens

Any observant Ghanaian, Christian or not will notice a fad which seems to have caught Ghanaian Christianity – an infatuation with the “prophetic”. Today, we have “prophetic encounters”, “prophetic conferences” and all the what not. The favourite title of the modern man of God is now “Prophet”. It seems that everything that a lot of churches do today is prophetic. But has anybody actually stopped to ask themselves what the Bible says about prophets and their vocation, and what qualifies whatever they are doing to be prophetic?

Prophets in the Old Testament

The Jewish Bible (the Tanakh), from which we gain our Old Testament has 3 divisions – the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), the Neviim (the Prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings aka Job, Psalms, Songs of Songs etc). When Jesus said in Mt 5:17 that “Do not think that I come to destroy the Law or the Prophets”, he was referring to these 2 sections – the Torah and the Neviim.

The Neviim was further divided into the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah,Ezekiel and the other prophets) for one very clear reason – the former were those whose work was before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and exile, and the latter was those who were active during and after the Babylonian exile. One could say then that this division was pre-exilic and post-exilic.

Pre-exilic Prophets

In the books of the Former Prophets, we find prophets like Nathan, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha and their work. Anyone who pays serious attention to their work will find one thing clear throughout – they were concerned for the people’s relationship with God, ensuring that they will not depart from God’s commands. And when the people did, they made every effort to draw their attention to this. The one thing that the people of Israel prided themselves in was God’s special relationship with his chosen nation Israel, and a true prophet was therefore considered to be one whose ministry drew or kept the people’s mind on God and his will for the nation as encapsulated in the Torah.

And it was expected that if the leader of the nation at any point in time is doing what pleases God, he will lead the nation as a whole to do the right then and therefore God will continue to bless the nation and not take his favour away from it. This is why there seems to be a very close relationship (and not necessarily a happy one) between most pre-exilic prophets and the kings of Israel – between Nathan/Samuel and David, Elijah and Ahab, Elisha and Jehu etc. There are instances where their ministry involves helping individuals who may have one need or the other (including Elijah and the widow of Zarepath in 1 Ki 17:7-16), but their main task is to be the watchman of the people of Israel, and that was evidently clear in their ministries. Elijah and the incident of the priests of Baal is a clear example.

Post-Exilic Prophets

The prophets who lived close to the conquering of Judah by the Nebuchadnezzar carried on the same function as their forbearers – warning the nation of Israel of the coming destruction due to their hard heartedness and disobedience of God, which was bound to make God abandon them to their own fate. For example, God tells Jeremiah to go to the temple built by Solomon, and tell them not to think because they have the temple, it means they can do all they want. Of course, they didn’t listen (Jer 7). Interestingly by then false prophets had also come in their midst, who were doing what most false prophets do.

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.‘Peace, peace,’ they say,when there is no peace” (Jer 6:13-15).

After the destruction did come, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and the rest later on spoke words of comfort from God that he will return to them and save them (mostly echoing what Moses said in Exodus 30). But this return always was predicated by they themselves returning to serve God more faithfully. Throughout all this, we see a clear focus of their ministry on God’s plan for Israel, and by extension for the world through Israel. And just like the previous focus of God’s will being achieved through good kings, they prophecy again of a Messiah through whom God’s return will be truly felt not only by the chosen nation, but by the Gentiles as well. This Messiah will conquer the enemy, rebuild and cleanse the temple so that God will return to it in glory like he did before in 2 instances i.e. when the Tabernacle was first built and when Solomon dedicate his temple. Lastly God will then bring resurrection and judgment to the world including Jews, and reward those who had been faithful to God.

Prophets in the New Testament

Its 500 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the beginning 70 years of which been spent in servitude to the kings of Babylon. Since the return from exile, a new temple had been built and yet God’s “Shekinah” hadn’t descended on it like before. Though they lived in their own country, Greece and after them Rome were now their bosses, and there was no sign of the resurrection event or of God’s judgment. Messianic expectations were very high, as people waited for God to do the rest of things the prophets had spoken of.

We see the first mention of a prophet in Lk 2, where an eighty-fourish year old woman called Anna is named as a prophet having received baby Jesus at the temple (v 36-38). Previously a certain righteous and devout Simeon who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (v 25-33) is also given a chance to see the baby, and they all thank God for the same thing – the redemption of the people of Israel has finally come in the person of baby Jesus.

We see in the Gospels the life of John the Baptist, who is considered a prophet by the people, not because he was saying “peace peace”, but was rather preaching quite unpleasant things about what the future held for them – “John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’”(Lk 3:7). And quite similar to the rocky relationship between the previous prophets and the leaders of the nation Israel, we find Herod arrests him because of the things John says about him and ultimately John the baptist is executed.

Jesus’s life as a prophet was no more comfortable to the establishment than his cousin John. Jesus went about healing, teaching, feeding and many more. But the point that many readers of the Gospels fail to see about Jesus prophetic ministry is how close Jesus’s ministry was to the other prophets who came before him. The reason why Jesus performed miracles, fed thousands and healed many was to point them to one thing – the kingdom of God and its fulfillment which would come through Jesus himself. In this way, he was not different at all from the other prophets – pointing to God’s will for the world through his nation Israel, but focusing that hope on himself.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see his disciples taking up the task of being a witness to the announcement of God’s kingdom and of the reign of Jesus, saying that by defeating death, Jesus is King of the world. Again, we see opposition to this announcement, from their hometown Judea all the way to Rome. This opposition is not just from the ordinary Joe walking about, but from the leaders themselves. See the obvious pattern of what prophetic life and ministry leads to? Not praise, but condemnation.

We see an example of someone called a prophet in the New Testament in the person of Agabus (Ac 21:10-14). Agabus predicts Paul’s arrest if he goes to Jerusalem, which happens as expected. What most people fail to realize about this event is that this will seriously affect Paul’s ability to continue carrying out his God given mission of announcing the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. This is not Paul going on a normal business trip to probably buy some raw materials to expand his tentmaking business (as he was a tentmaker by vocation), this was a trip related to his work for the kingdom of God, and he responds that he was“ ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (v 13).

So What’s Gone Wrong

There are multiple other angles to explore on the subject of prophetic vocation and work, but I’ll pause here and come to what prevails today. And I can’t help but be appalled by what is going on today amongst Christians in Ghana. We are busy jumping from one “prophetic nonesense” to the next. We gather people who will tell us “peace, peace” when in fact our house is seriously burning. We prefer those who will twist the word of God to give us a jolt of personal motivation to pursue our selfish goals, whiles we totally ignore the corporate and cosmic dimensions of the kingdom of God. We live in a nation with supposedly 70% christian population, but with corruption up to our jaws. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing by the second, and yet we are busy collecting more money to enrich the clergy and pursue more magnificent infrastructure projects which the poor amongst us will never have access to. We have become a people driven only by individualistic pursuits, looking in the bible for phrases and verses that will give us a boost in the pursuit of personal success. We are the beginning and end of our world, and the political structures pay less and less attention to us because we’ve lost all moral authority to challenge the establishment. Our messages is no longer met with the hostility that prophetic ministries truly elucidate. Sin is no longer something shameful to us, but something we glory in and give nice names. We no longer desire truth that will push us to open our eyes to Jesus’s mission to the world and how we may participate in it, and rather only gather to hear sweet things from our preachers.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:3)

If prophecy is not making us uncomfortable in our comfort zones; if it’s not encouraging us to be strong whiles we pursue Jesus and his will for the world through his new Israel – his church; if prophecy is not showing us as a people together what to do in preparing for God’s future, but is only here to speak to our personal desires for self-fulfillment; if prophecy is not leading us to be a changed people, who place the other’s needs above ours; if prophecy is not leading us to show in our own selves, to take up in our own bodies and as churches the announcement that Jesus is indeed running the world – that the poor are friends with the rich, the friendless find friends, the rejected find a new faithful family all through the active work (not just talk) of Christians, please don’t call it prophecy. Any other name will suffice.

Living with convictions

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Authored by: Robert G. Coleman

On the morning of April 20, 1999, 16-year old Cassie Bernall, a student at Columbine High School (USA) wrote a note to her friend, Amanda Meyer, which said this: “Honestly, I totally want to live my life completely for God. It’s hard and scary, but totally worth it!”[1] What she didn’t know was that the genuineness of her expressed desire was going to be severely tested later that same day. With a gun pointed to her head, a gunman asked, “Do you believe in God?”[2] She said “yes” and the next thing was Kabooooom! She was shot to death. Several other students in the school who held the same belief paid with their lives that day. One year earlier, Rachel Scott, who was among the students killed that day, had written in her diary these words, “I’m not going to apologize for speaking the name of Jesus. … I’m not going to hide the light God has put in me. If I have to sacrifice everything, I will.”[3] And sacrifice she did, on the 20th day of April, 1999.

C. S. Lewis once noted that you never know how much you believe a thing until it becomes a matter of life and death. You see, conviction is what makes a person not cower when his beliefs are being tested. Real Christian conviction goes beyond having personal preference for the Christian gospel. It goes deeper than a personal opinion. Having conviction is when you are so thoroughly convinced that something is absolutely true that you take a stand for it regardless of the consequences. Are you really convinced about Christ and his teachings or are you only wishing them to be true? If you are not sure if the Christian message is really true, are you making the effort to find out? To be a Christian fit for Christ’s Kingdom, you must have convictions – convictions about Christ, about the ultimate Truth. Christianity is about truth, about reality as it really is. The gospel is not just to help us through life, it is really true and until you come to this conclusion, it will be very difficult to have genuine Christian convictions.

For most Christians today, the test of our beliefs does not need to be stretched to the point of “life or death” for us to deny our beliefs. All we need is the threat of a little “heat,” a little discomfort, and we are willing to deny, bend, amend or alter the claims and teachings of Christ and his apostles.

A few weeks ago I engaged two young people in a chat regarding the Christian teaching of Salvation. They appeared to agree that it is through Jesus Christ alone that a person gains salvation from God. So I asked them what they thought of other religions. After a short period of thinking, they said something to the effect that, different people have different ways of worshiping God. I probed further by asking them whether they actually believed that the gospel of Jesus Christ was true or they were only hoping and wishing it to be true. (There are people in the world today who think that believing something to be true is what makes it true thus making truth something that subjective.) Both of them, without hesitation, said they believed it was objectively true. At this I reminded them that Jesus claimed to be the only way to God. They agreed. Then I pointed out to them that if Jesus’ claim is true then all other religions must be false by default on the issue of salvation, since they don’t accept this claim of Jesus. From the look on their faces, I could tell that what I just said had switched on a light. Apparently they had not really given this issue much thought.

I went further to explain the situation a person falls into when he/she comes to the realization that it is really true that Jesus is the only way to God: I told them to imagine they were in school and a few minutes away from writing a mathematics exam and that they had found themselves with a group of friends trying to solve a particular math problem. As a group they managed to arrive at an answer. But then after they (as individuals) left the group to study on their own they noticed an error made during the process of calculating the final answer. So then they correct the error and whooaaaa, they arrive at a different answer. I asked them, “What would you do as someone who is concerned about how well your friends fared on the exams?” The answer was clear: You would quickly go to your friends and prompt them about the error so that they can also correct the answer previously arrived at. And I said it is the same for the Christian. The moment you become convinced of the truthfulness of the gospel message, you want to tell others about it and not only that but you also want to live for this truth.

This was the case of Cassie Bernall and her school mates who were shot dead. They had convictions. They were only teenagers, yes, but they knew what they believed, or better still, in whom they had believed. It is this kind of convinced, committed belief in Christ and his gospel that every professing Christian is challenged to pursue. Jesus says, “If a person is ashamed of me and my teaching in this godless and wicked day, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:38 GNB. The Apostle Paul was convinced about Christ and his teaching. He really knew the resurrected Christ and had faith in him. He was stoned and left for dead, he was given lashes, he was imprisoned and eventually beheaded. While alive and enduring suffering he declared in letter to young Timothy, “… . But I am still full of confidence, because I know whom I have trusted, and I am sure that he is able to keep safe until that Day what he has entrusted to me.” 1 Timothy 1:12 GNB.

Do you know Jesus to this degree of commitment? Are you living with convictions about Jesus Christ and his teachings? Are you so convinced that the Christian message is absolutely true to the point that you are willing to take a stand for it regardless of the consequences?

[1] Quoted in, Beyond Belief to Convictions, 2002, Josh McDowell, Tyndale House Publishers Inc., p. 23.

[2] Ibid p.23

[3] Ibid p. 23

God, Sex and Me

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The desire for sex is one of the powerful hungers of our humanity. It can make you  restless when you have in one way or another provoked and entertained it but have no way of immediately satisfying it. Being a Christian or following Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour does not shield you from desiring to have sex. Getting married does not mean your sexual desire can only be aroused by your spouse. Some men in high positions have destroyed the trust and admiration the public had for them by not controlling their sexual urges. Think of the scandalous stories of Bill Clinton, Straus Khan, Tiger Woods and even King David in the Bible. A good thing can be abused and this has been our predicament with sex.In non-religious societies or among individuals who do not submit themselves to conservative religious doctrines, sex is like a free drug to be dispensed to anyone ready for it. They may only discriminate because of personal preferences such as attraction to the potential partner or the fact that they want to wait till marriage so that their wedding night will be special. Some Christians may hold the latter reason as something laudable. But as ideal as it sounds, it is not even Christian nor is it a biblical reason not to have sex.

In his satirical poem titled, Creed, the English journalist, Steve Turner, speaks about many of our modern secular ideas, and his second stanza mocks our present ideas on sex:

We believe in sex before, during, and

after marriage.

We believe in the therapy of sin.

We believe that adultery is fun.

We believe that sodomy’s OK.

We believe that taboos are taboo.

Many people today believe everything is alright as long as you do not hurt anyone, to the best of your definition of hurt, and to the best of your knowledge.  This belief has worked itself out in our lives – for both non-religious and religious folks.  Today we have an expression like “two consenting adults” as if to suggest that so long as there is agreement about the sexual act among two adults, there is really nothing morally wrong with it. The moral rightness or wrongness of the sexual act is now defined by the agreement or its absence thereof between the two adults.

Followers of Christ’s teachings have been and are expected (and rightly so) to live above reproach yet we are miserably not living up to expectations. Stories of pastors and church leaders involved in sexual scandals are common place. These are people whose philosophy of life dictates that they ought to have sex only with the woman they have married yet are living otherwise. ‎The unexposed private lives of the ordinary church members are no better. To suggest that the frequency of extra-marital sex and pre-marital sex among Christians within our churches is a problem is to state the issue too mildly. It is a scandal, a travesty, a matter calling for repentance and mourning. There is no denying that to some extent, these are indications of a stunted theological understanding of our sexuality. I remember attending youth programs in two different churches, (one an orthodox church, the other charismatic) that featured a talk on God’s view of sex and listening to some of the youth asking questions about whether sex before marriage was wrong. I was quite surprised to realize that this was an ambiguous area for them. But it underscored for me the fact that the times had changed. Churches are not preaching Christ’s precepts in this area; or if they are preaching it then perhaps not well enough. We are more concerned about teaching practical solutions for the temporary problems, rather than the eternal realities. Believers must be brought to a point of understanding that inspires firm belief and encourages acceptance of God’s teachings about our sexuality.

 Putting things in perspective

God made this world. He invented sex, so to speak, when he created our reproductive systems and also commanded us to reproduce. So sex is good and is a gift from God. In the Genesis story, God told man and woman to multiply and this required being one in flesh and in spirit. Indeed in the book of Malachi when God was no longer accepting the offerings from the people of Israel, the prophet explained one of the reasons as follows:

“You ask why he no longer accepts them. It is because he knows you have broken your promise to the wife you married when you were young. She was your partner, and you have broken your promise to her, although you promised before God that you would be faithful to her. Didn’t God make you one body and spirit with her? What was his purpose in this? It was that you should have children who are truly God’s people. So make sure that none of you breaks his promise to his wife. ” Malachi 2:14-15 GNB [Emphasis mine]

From this it is clear where the place of sex is intended to be – in marriage.  Outside this institution, having sex is sin. And sin means missing the mark, falling short of God’s standard. This does not seem like something serious. “Okay so, I missed the mark. What is the big deal?” one might think. It is a very serious deal – a deal with eternal dimensions.

Sin must be understood in terms of man’s relation to God. This is why Jesus, God in human flesh, can forgive sin that was not even done directly to him but rather to our fellow man. The definition of sin was given in the Genesis story when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s commandment not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. They ate this forbidden fruit because they lost faith in God by believing a lie. They believed the devil’s subtle suggestion that God could not be trusted because he was keeping something good (i.e. the knowledge of good and evil) from them. Sin then is the faithless rebellion of man against the just authority of God. And this is where the significance of sin lays. Whenever we sin, whether we lie, cheat, yield to our bodily lusts etc, we show how faithless we are in God; how much we do not trust him. We make a statement which says we do not believe that God’s precepts and commandments are for our good or are in our interest; we believe he is keeping away from us something that is good for us.

Further, breaking God’s law at any point involves transgression at every point (Galatians 3:10). If we break the law of adultery, we have also broken the law of covetousness, killing etc. How come? This is so because the very authority of God which instituted the law of adultery is the same one that instituted the rest of the laws. As a result, rebelling against his authority in one area of life is simply rebellion against God’s authority, pure and simple. God has just one authority and it is himself. If you defy his law, you have defied his authority – you have defied him. You have broken fellowship with him. But because man was made to have fellowship with God, and to thrive on God, a sinful life brings a sense of restlessness and often a general lose of meaning in life because the divinely intended fellowship has been broken by sin.

In the Old Testament (Leviticus 18) God prohibited certain sexual activities. Also in the New Testament, in Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings, it is also clear that not all sexual encounters are permitted in God’s scheme of things. Adultery, homosexuality and fornication are spoken against in very clear terms – that people who engage in such things will not inherit God’s kingdom. Some current myths about sex that people have include:

        i.            Sex can be casual

The truth is God does not look upon sex as something to be treated casually; a pleasure to be had with just anyone when you feel like having it.

      ii.            If you love each other you can have sex.

The truth is that love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4). Real love will wait for marriage, under God’s blessing, before expressing itself through sex. If your love cannot wait, it is not love. It is lust, it is selfishness – it wants what it wants, how it wants it, when it wants it.

    iii.            We are going to get married soon anyway, so what is the big deal?

The big deal and the gospel truth is that being “about to get married” is not the same thing as “married”; you are not married yet and any of you could change their minds (or even external factors may prevent the idea of marriage from becoming reality) after the sexual act.

iv.            There is the need to ensure “it works” before you commit

Here is the hard but real truth: If you have genuinely given your life to Jesus Christ yet God in his infinite wisdom gives you a sexually defective partner, you can be sure that God will also grant you the grace, the wisdom and strength to be able to live with that partner as you keep depending on him. I know this is easier said than done. It might be hard to take in but it is truth. God has the power to carry us. In the most trying times of life, trusting and obeying God is the only way to enjoy his profound peace and joy which transcends human understanding. God is always with those who rely on him in their times of distress. He carries them when all else is spent – when strength (whether emotional, psychological or physical) is gone, wisdom is …

ON JESUS AND THE TRINITY – Responding to the Jehovah’s Witnesses

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In the August 2013 edition of the Awake magazine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, there is an article on pages 12 &13 which is titled, “Should You Believe in the Trinity?” Essentially the article argues for the case that the word Trinity and the idea it seeks to encapsulate (an idea which is believed by many Christians) are not found in the Bible. They build their case by tracing the foundations of the Trinitarian idea to Roman Emperor Constantine, whom History recognizes as the first Roman Emperor to have embraced Christianity as his religion (at least if you read the work of the 4th century biographer, Eusibius). The article makes the case that Constantine called for hundreds of the Bishops in his empire to assemble at the city called Nicaea to settle their differences on whether Jesus was God or whether he was created by God. The article however does not explain why the Christians came to be divided on the matter. It just states that they were divided. So let me give you the background story from Eusibius.

A presbyter by name Arius had started to preach that there was a time when Jesus, the Son, did not exist – in other words, the Son was a created being and not eternal with the Father.  This implied that the Father was God but Jesus couldn’t be. Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, at the time,rejected this teaching and asked Arius to recant which he refused. Constantine wrote a letter, not as an Emperor decreeing, but in his own words, as a ‘fellow-servant’ ‘righteously’ advising them to solve their differences. Evidently this did not yield any results. The dissension grew to the point that it was no longer just an issue between heads of churches but was now among ordinary members. To prevent this tension from turning into a full blown instability in the empire, Constantine called all the Bishops in the Empire to meet in Nicaea to agree and outline what was Christian belief in the year 325 AD. Note that by this time Constantine had already come to faith in Christ and had received some education in the faith. As a result, he felt a certain brotherhood with the Church and felt that this disagreement was a disgrace, apart from the likelihood of it causing civil unrest. Constantine attended the meeting on the day of the final solution. The meeting had actually lasted for more than two months.

With this background, let’s come back to the Awake Magazine. The article says that the Emperor suggested they should insert the expression “of one substance with the Father.” This point is very true, but the Bishops did not add it without vigorous discussions as to what that expression meant.  The final Creed at the end of the meeting read as follows (which is a bit different from what we currently recite in our churches, which is from the council of Constantinople in 381 AD):

We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible:— And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, Only-begotten, that is,from the Substance of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God, begotten, not made, One in substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things in earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, was made man, suffered, and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and cometh to judge quick and dead. “‘And in the Holy Ghost. But those who say, “Once He was not,” and “Before His generation He was not,” and “He came to be from nothing,” or those who pretend that the Son of God is “Of other subsistence or substance,” or “created,”or “alterable,” or “mutable,” the Catholic Church anathematizes.

The word ‘anathematizes’ implies the Church curses those who say the sort of things listed in the last few lines which go against the heart of the creed. This shows how strongly they felt about preaching correct doctrine. Again, as Eusibius, a Bishop present at the Council recounts,they did not accept the expression ‘of one substance with the Father’ without vigorous discussion:

On their dictating this formula[referring to the Creed], we did not let it pass without inquiry in what sense they introduced ‘of the substance of the Father,’ and ‘one in substance with the Father.’ Accordingly questions and explanations took place, and the meaning of the words underwent the scrutiny of reason. And they professed that the phrase ‘of the substance’ was indicative of the Son’s being indeed from the Father, yet without being as if a part of Him. And with this understanding we thought good to assent to the sense of such religious doctrine, teaching, as it did,that the Son was from the Father, not, however, a part of His substance. On this account we assented to the sense ourselves, without declining even the term ‘One in substance,’ peace being the object which we set before us, and steadfastness in the orthodox view.

It can be clearly seen that the Council was not about inventing new ideas but about stating in clearer terms, what was an existing view. And this they did. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, would have us believe that it was this expression, ‘of one Substance with the Father’, which in their view erroneously makes Jesus God, that laid a false foundation for what we call Trinity today. Thus since Trinity is based on this idea of Jesus’ oneness with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Christians have erred. The article goes onto say that “… Jesus never claimed to be equal with God.” (p.13) According to the article this is what the Bible says:

  1. “My Father is greater than I [Jesus].”John 14:28 KJV
  2. “I [Jesus] ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God” John 20:17 KJV
  3. “To us there is but one God, the Father.”1 Corinthians 8:6 KJV
  4. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:3 KJV
  5. “These things saith the Amen [Jesus],… the beginning of the creation of God” Revelations 3:14 KJV

[Notice where they place their emphases, in italics]

If these were really the only verses in the New Testament, then obviously the Church Bishops erred gravely. But you see, the issue of who Jesus is has always been more complex than this simplification by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Jesus Christ is the ‘Son of Man’ (his humanity), yes, but he is also the ‘Son of God’ (his divinity). But the Jehovah’s Witnesses are ignoring this and saying Jesus never claimed to be equal to God. This is not a strong argument. The fact that Jesus did not, in direct words, claim to be God or equal to God does not establish that he did not claim so indirectly. When he forgave the sin of the paralyzed man in Luke 5:20 what was he communicating. He was pointing out the fact that he had the same authority of God to forgive sins. Further he promised his disciples (John included) that he will ask the Father to send them another Helper who is the Spirit who reveals the truth about God. And in the beginning lines of the gospel according to John (this is after the Holy Spirit had come and was leading them into all truth), John reveals Jesus’ divinity in clear terms, “In the beginning the Word already existed; the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …The Word was in the world, and though God made the world through him, yet the world did not recognize him.” John 1:1-10 GNB. If this does not expressly speak to the Godhood of the Son, Jesus Christ, I don’t know what does.

Don’t the Jehovah Witnesses think that the Bishops at Nicaea were aware of these things as well as verses like:

  1. “The Father and I are one” John 10:30
  2. “Fora long time I have been with you all; yet you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Why, then do you say, ‘show us the Father’? Do you not believe, Philip, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” John 14: 9-10
  3. “Nor does the Father himself judge anyone. He has given his Son the full right to judge so that all will honour the Son in the same way as they honour the Father. Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him.” John 5:22-23

This just shows the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ one-sided shallow study of the Bible, their intentional bias in selecting scriptures that support a preconceived idea and their wilful blindness to the entirety of Scripture.  When we want to get to truth, we must weigh all the evidence available, not just what suits our fancy. If Jesus did not claim equality with God, then why did he place himself on the same level of authority in the baptismal formula which he gave to his disciples?:  “… baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, …” Matthew 28:19. Also think of the Apostolic blessing used in 2 Corinthians 13:13, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” It shows how the first century apostles saw Jesus.

Trinity, as a word, may not be in the Bible, in fact it is not in it, but the concept that it captures is too uncomfortably visible in the Bible to be ignored. We see three persons (yet not separate) in the one God. This strikes us out of our wits. Mysterious, if you ask me. There is distinctness and a three-ness, yet a real indivisibility and a unity – a oneness in this God of the Bible. A tri –unity, a Trinity!

* Unless otherwise stated all scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible, Second edition © 1994