Reaching Into Modern Ghanaian Culture With The Gospel

Christian culture and rhetoric has been so successfully mixed in with a large part of the Ghanaian social fabric that what is now left is no longer Christianity but a vague spirituality; a spirituality that often abhors the active involvement of the intellect in the worship God. Interestingly, the greatest commandment according to Jesus Christ is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your MIND.”[Matthew 22:37-38]. We now have Christians who do not appreciate the importance of intellectually scrutinizing any religious teaching. They just keep imbibing everything from those described as ‘Anointed’ or ‘Man of God’.

While some of such Christians may be living happily, others may well be living lives of quiet desperation; they want answers that meet not just their hearts’ expectations but also their intellectual hungers. Sadly though, they are afraid to ask the questions because fellow Christians might see them as un-spiritual and lacking faith in God. Author Os Guinness observes that “The shame is not that people have doubts, but that they are ashamed of them.”

The State of Our Gospel Preaching

We have become used to the form where the proclamation of the gospel is only from the pulpit – where there is hardly any resistance or challenge. It is unfortunate that the culture of reasoning and debating (even in public fora) of those of contrary views and beliefs that characterized the early church and subsequent centuries does not appear to be part of Ghanaian Christian culture. In defending his ministry to the Christians in Corinth, the Apostle Paul writes:

“It is true that we live in the world, but we do not fight from worldly motives. The weapons we use in our fight are not the world’s weapons but God’s powerful weapons, which we use to destroy strongholds. We destroy false arguments; we pull down every proud obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ.” 1 Corinthians 10:3-5.

An example of public debating is captured in Acts 18:27-28:

“Apollos then decided to go to Achaia, so the believers in Ephesus helped him by writing to the believers in Achaia, urging them to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who through God’s grace had become believers. For with his strong arguments he defeated the Jews in public debates by proving from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah.”

Also, in the 4th century after Christ, when the critical debate about the nature of the person of Jesus and the nature of God (i.e. Trinitarian idea) threatened to divide the church, it took believers who could think ‘Christianly’ to defend the faith from the Arian falsehood – the teaching that there was a time before the Son of God, where only God the Father existed.

In times of controversy over the gospel (like it is in ours – as to whether the gospel is about financial prosperity and perfect health and faith confessions), it always calls for believers who can think clearly and make the finer distinctions to engage in the defence of the gospel. But I get the feeling that most Ghanaian Christians do not feel nor see the need for such defence. Such enterprise is seen as unspiritual (and to their minds Christianity is all about the ‘spirit world’). But what really do you think would have become of Christianity if the fathers of the 4th century had not opposed clearly the teachings of Arius. I contend that controversy, where Jesus or ultimate truth, is concerned is always spiritual and a Christian who engages in it, with wit, reliance on the Holy Spirit, gentleness and respect, is not at all unspiritual. On the contrary, such a person is that soldier who is fighting on the front lines, as it were.

In Ghana, we have often just preached Christ as that better option to our traditional African beliefs (as if all the non-believers in the country were of a traditional African religious persuasion). But today, there are many more belief systems that need to be engaged, some of them are more intellectual in orientation while others are more experiential in orientation. Fortunately the Christian faith has the tools to reach all of them. We have no excuse. But we need to be thoroughly educated in our own faith in order to contend for it.

This is a time when we must reach into the Ghanaian culture and (like Apostle Paul and his fellow apostles) “destroy false arguments; pull down every proud obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God; take every thought captive and make it obey Christ.” But we must do this not by assuming a superior posture but instead with a mindset that sees this enterprise as “a beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”