Tag Archive for: Ghanaian Christianity

The Great Omission – Why We are Busy Producing “Twice the Sons of Hell”

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As a child growing up in multiple Pentecostal churches, nothing was more important to us than the “winning of souls” via evangelism. I can recall so many sermons where we were guilt-tripped with repeated questions of how many souls we had won for Christ that year. We were criticized for our lack of care for the souls of all those going to hell, and how we needed to do more to evangelize the world. What is today commonly referred to as the “Great Commission” aka Matthew 28:18-20, was read and repeated as the go-to command of Jesus, which requires us to be diligent in preaching salvation to all men who are destined for hell.

But Father Richard Rohr says, “You only see what you are told to see”, and the more I have studied this “Great Commission” passage, along with the help of other bible scholars, the more I see how we miss the point of it, confirming Richard Rohr’s statements. Apart from the fact that this passage is itself one of the most important summaries of what our “good news” should actually be about – which “good news” has very little to say about “souls” destined for a “hell” – it’s become obvious to me that many Christians read this text with their mind already made up and miss the very real meat of the matter. This has made me begin to think that for all the money, time, prayers and energy spent in fulfilling what we have called “the Great Commission”, perhaps we may rather be fulfilling “the Great Omission”, to the joy of the devil himself.

The Great Omission

“(18) Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (19) Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt 28:18-20, my emphasis)

As mentioned before, my emphasis is on verse 20, and especially on the words “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”.

But first and foremost, we will notice that Jesus’s command is for us to make disciples. For many Christians, our first mistake arises from having a wrong mental image of what a disciple is. The mental image we have in our heads is that of students – people who sit in a school classroom/lecture hall, listen to the teacher/lecturer, take notes, acquire knowledge into their heads, and regurgitate that knowledge at an exam. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

The word disciple here is akin to “apprentice” i.e., one who is learning a trade from a master. The mental image we should have should be that of a young man or woman learning carpentry/masonry/auto mechanic/dressmaking/hairdressing from their master. A good master shows their apprentice what to do practically, whiles explaining why it needs to be done that way. In the end, the goal is to produce an apprentice who is as skilled in the trade as their master, not through examinations, but through practice.

Applying this logic to Christianity, the goal of Christianity is Christlikeness. It’s not “Christ knowledge” – aka piling on sermon upon sermon, neither is it “saving souls” from hell to heaven, nor is it the typical African’s favourite form of religion – transactional religion aka getting God to do what I want for me. Rather, it is being empowered by the Spirit of God to become more like Jesus in his example of self-sacrificial love – even if it means the disgrace of the cross and ultimately, the suffering of death.

If you doubt that the goal of Christianity is Christlikeness, ask the foremost “soul winner”, Paul the Apostle.

“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end, I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” (Col 1:28-29)

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Rom 8:29)

And this is why Matt 28:20 is critical, and so easily misunderstood, even amongst many classical Protestant Christians who pride themselves in being more “biblical” in their Christianity than the Pentecostals, Charismatics, Roman Catholics et al.

Jesus doesn’t say “teach them about me”, as if he is a person of historical curiosity that we learn about in school, like Kwame Nkrumah or Christopher Columbus. Even more importantly, Jesus doesn’t ask his disciples to “teach them to obey the bible” or “teach them to obey scripture”. Jesus is homing in on the specific instructions he gave his disciples when he was alive and with them, which the Holy Spirit has graciously preserved for us in the sweat and labour of the Evangelists we call Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Why? Because Jesus is not interested in producing apprentices of Moses, David, Joshua, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah or any other biblical character. Jesus the Master is interested in producing apprentices of himself, therefore his teaching, that is, his own words hold supreme to anything that came before him or even after him (including the revered Paul the apostle).

Jesus knows that even if you focus on teaching “scripture” or “the bible”, you are still very capable of missing Jesus, whom scripture points to. That is exactly what he told the Pharisees who were serious students of the scriptures, in John 5:39-40

“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39)

So, to misconstrue “teach them to obey everything I commanded you” to mean “teach them to obey the bible” is a very serious mistake, a mistake Jesus had warned the Pharisees about. And if we think this mistake is not that serious, check out what the impact of “teaching the Bible” leads to, from Jesus’s own mouth.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” (Matt 23:15).

And this is why I call the current model of evangelism and church planting that dominates the African landscape the “Great Omission”. Many of our churches are busy making students and not apprentices, and in the end, making them twice the sons of hell because they refuse to teach them to obey what Jesus commanded, but rather anywhere and everywhere in the Bible that suits their cultural fancy.

I see a billboard on my way home at Atomic Junction, advertising an “Evangelism Conference”, and I am saddened. I hear millions of dollars being raised to organize so-called “crusades”, and I cringe. I see people zealously engaging in street evangelism or holding signs with pithy messages about “accepting Jesus”, or street preachers with their megaphones raining the fear of hell on passersby as I walk to the Madina market, and I sigh. So much zeal for the Great Omission.

And because we have made “soul-winning” the benchmark of what Christianity is about, and not Christlikeness, we can’t see when our pastors have totally missed the mark and need to be corrected, because after all, who are we to correct them when they are “winning souls”, and the church is “growing” (numerically of course, but not in Christlikeness)? God must be pleased with such increased numbers of “souls won”, not so?  And if our local pastors are treated this way, then how much more are our church founders/overseers/presidents/moderators/bishops/chairmen? They are Jesus themselves, after all. They are God himself!!

The History of the Great Omission

But how did we come to think that “saving souls” and teaching “the Bible” was what Christianity was about?

Well as I always say, if you don’t want to learn your Christian history, you always think that what your church is doing is the best thing since sliced bread. So, let’s dig into history a bit.

According to a scholar of early Christianity – Alan Kreider – in his book “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”, in the first 400 years of the church’s life before it became a national religion of the Roman empire when a person wanted to become a Christian, they went through a process called “catechism” – a period of 1-3 years where the interested person, called a “catechumen” was introduced to the faith by a teacher officially called “a catechist”. A watered-down version of this is still practised in Roman Catholicism and in orthodox churches in Ghana. An even more watered-down version is done today in some modern churches as “new converts” classes.

Hear what Alan Kreider says.

“Many catechists saw that instructing the catechumens in the teaching of Jesus was central to their catechesis”. (pp 157, Patient Ferment of the Early Church)

And where will the “teachings of Jesus” be found? Not in the book of Exodus, nor in 1st Kings? It will be found recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. Now it doesn’t mean that they didn’t teach any other books of the Bible, it just meant that they focused a lot more on what Jesus taught. The Old Testament was taught as background to show how Jesus’s teaching was different, while the rest of the New Testament was used to give examples of how Jesus’s commands in the Gospels were practicalized. The Gospels were the centre of their teaching because they knew the Bible was capable of being twisted to teach anything you desire if you don’t home in on Jesus. They knew very well the story of the Pharisees.

This practice produced Christians who mainly focused on being like Jesus. Of course, there will always be a minority who struggled, but that is normal for any human institution. Christlikeness was the goal, right from the word go, and the leaders of the early church tried their best to get that message across right at the door, or you were free to leave and continue life as a pagan. They were not in a hurry for numbers, yet the church grew rapidly because their lives (not just their beliefs) were so radically different and yet attractive.

But in the 4th century, the Roman emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian (no kidding, he refused to attend catechesis and decided to teach himself the bible – you see where this is going?), and at least the persecution of the church stopped. The leaders of the church were so happy that Christians were no longer the hated class of the Roman world and began to change the teaching of the church to accommodate the empire’s ways of doing things. What better place to find “laws” and “rules” that work for an empire that dominates the world through violence, than to do away with Jesus’s commands on the love of neighbour and enemy alike and to begin to focus more on Moses, David, Joshua and Solomon – great leaders and kings of Israel – with the excuse that “all of it was Scripture” after all.

In the 5th century, St Augustine, an African bishop, called on the empire to use violence to attack not another empire/state/country, but fellow Christians who were teaching heresy. Yes, the Donatists were teaching falsehood, but is that the way of Jesus? Did Jesus kill his enemies? Because the church now had state backing, it began settling disputes amongst itself not by talking with one another or maybe just shunning heretics but asking the state to capture and kill heretics. Of course, by this action the church had lost the ability to question emperors when they go to war and began to find biblical passages from anywhere but from Jesus, to support the empire’s wars and violence. The church had the power now, why jaw-jaw, when it could war-war? It was a numbers game, and the official church was winning.

All this ingrained the habit of not obeying Jesus’s commands but finding whatever passage suits one’s agenda in the bible to do whatever one desired, so far as one claimed to be “Christian”.

Over centuries, this led to so many excesses in the church, and Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin led a Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, which led to a break from the Roman Catholic church. And when some of those who were part of that resistance pointed out to these Reformation leaders that they were not obeying Jesus’ commands, what did they get? Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk followed in the examples of his mentor from 1000 years earlier, and like St Augustine, asked the German state to capture and kill those who questioned him, who are today called the Radical Reformation. Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin also perpetrated some of this same violence, forgetting again that it’s not about “knowledge of Scripture” as Jesus told the Pharisees, it’s about following Jesus’s example. But alas, it was a numbers game, and the Radical Reformers were small fry.

Today, we are children of the revivalists of 18th century America, who were so gripped with angst about Jesus’s immediate return and the fact so many people would be condemned to hell if Jesus returned. They prioritized raising money and exerting their lives and organizing mass “crusades” and “tent gatherings” to preach to thousands and “win souls” in preparation for Jesus’s second coming. But again, following Jesus’s commands was not really a priority. It was a numbers game.

In Ghana, our churches, whether Roman Catholic, traditionally Protestant or Penteco-Charismatic, might be doing their best, but too many of us don’t realize the water we are swimming in is already contaminated. The desire for numbers (and the power that comes from it) means that even when a local church pastor is interested in Christlikeness, the system they are operating in is interested in numbers. Even a pastor’s local congregation measures him by numbers. And since Jesus’ commands are not really amenable to building large numbers, the Great Omission will always be preferred to the Great Commission.

But building with the Great Omission instead of the Great Commission has its consequences, and I’ll leave us with the words of perhaps the most faithful builder of God’s church – Paul the apostle.

“If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.” (1 Cor 3:12-13).

top view of loyalty lettering made of wooden cubes on blue backg

Why Entrepreneurial Christianity Needs Loyalty Teaching To Grow

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It has been a long time coming, and finally, it has arrived in the general public. Reports of abuse of pastors and former bishops of Lighthouse Church have surfaced on TheFourthEstate, and Ghanaian Christendom has been divided on whether to castigate or to defend the church. Many Ghanaian Christians fail to do the hard work of detecting patterns and analyzing church structures to discern if their own churches are susceptible to the same abuses. Perhaps now is the time for me to write about a pattern I discerned a long-time ago about Charismatic Christianity in Ghana, a pattern that should tell many of us busily castigating or defending Lighthouse and Dag Heward-Mills, that maybe this was bound to happen anyways, and is sooner or later going to happen in our own Charismatic church (if it hasn’t already).

Charismatic Church Founders as Entrepreneurs

Their goal is to create a product that people are willing to pay money for. Once the product is launched and money is coming in, they have the starting blocks of a successful business.

Many Charismatic churches in Ghana are run on a lot of the principles of entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur is someone who sets up a business, taking on financial risks in hopes of profit down the line. I’m an entrepreneur myself involved in technology and real estate, so I know how this works.

Entrepreneurship typically begins with having a business idea. The idea may be novel or one that is already known, but the founder feels they can add their own twist to satisfy a target market, and in the process make gains from it. To bring this idea to fruition, an entrepreneur invests their own money and/or raises money from investors and begins the task of trying to bring their idea to market.

Their goal is to create a product that people are willing to pay money for. Once the product is launched and money is coming in, they have the starting blocks of a successful business.

In the case of founders of Charismatic churches, their equivalent of a business idea is “a call from God into ministry”. This “call” cannot be questioned, as nobody was there when God “called” them. In an overly religious country like Ghana, saying you have been “called into the ministry” is all you need to get going. Now the product that they develop is a church. It’s a tried and tested formula, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to offer that product. Ghanaians are already very religious, so it’s easy to get family and friends to join the startup church as initial customers of the product. The founder then goes about enticing already existing Christians from other churches or “winning souls” – the religious terminology for bringing in new unexposed customers to the product.

Typical of entrepreneurship, the seed funding comes from sacrifices of the founder: their money, their time and effort, are spent with the belief that all will be repaid in leaps and bounds as the church grows bigger. The initial product offering consists of finding a meeting place (called “the church”) which may be paid for via rent or via someone gifting a space, finding a good source of already familiar gospel music, giving a sermon that meets some existential (and especially financial) need of the customers (members), and the collection of revenue (tithes, general and special offerings). 

After the starting blocks have been built then comes the seed stage, and this tends to be the stage where there is much intimacy in the church. Do not be fooled though if you are in the church at this rosy stage. It is still the Charismatic founder’s church. And just like a business entrepreneur, a typical Charismatic church founder’s sacrifices are done with the assumption of profit down the line – profit that is typically labelled “God’s blessings” manifested in material wealth. So, the “intimacy” of the setting is not really the goal: it is simply a means to an end. Growth is where the money is, and to do that, certain approaches are required.

All this while, the founder lives with one insecurity – the fear that another “founder”, whether a long-established one or a new entrepreneur like him – will snatch away his members. Because at this stage there is only one church, this tends to be easy to manage. But this fear and insecurity never goes away

Now to ensure that the product has a sense of permanence, the final block that is needed to complete this seed stage is the acquisition of land and the building of a physical structure with all sorts of fancy names – tabernacle, temple, sanctuary or church. Apparently, the God who created heaven and earth needs a place to live, a place where he can be commanded to meet the customers’ needs. If this part of the product is not yet done, the product is still deficient and hasn’t truly arrived.  

All this while, the founder lives with one insecurity – the fear that another “founder”, whether a long-established one or a new entrepreneur like him – will snatch away his members. Because at this stage there is only one church, this tends to be easy to manage. But this fear and insecurity never goes away, as we will discover below. 

How Charismatic Church Founders Grow Their Churches

In almost all religious circles (not just Charismatics circles alone), success is measured by the ABCs (Attendance, Buildings & Cash). And so, for the founder to feel his business – religiously labelled “his ministry” – is growing, he needs to see an increase in these ABCs. The product is the church, so it needs to multiply into different areas. And they have a religious justification for this – more church members/customers for the product means more “souls” are being won for God. This MUST be pleasing to God. Who cares if the souls are hungry, are homeless or are the best bribe-takers in their offices? So far as the ABCs are on an upward trajectory, it is a sign that God is “blessing the ministry”. 

For a private business founder, it is very clear who the business belongs to – the shareholders. If the business founder believes he needs to grow the business, he simply raises funds (from revenue he has made, a bank loan, from a shareholder or an additional investor), hires additional people and tasks them with selling the product in the new markets he wants to move to. However, the Charismatic founder starts off their initial church creating the impression that this church is “our church”, aka it’s something that he and his “customers” own. This is where the difference begins to emerge between a normal entrepreneur and a church founder. In a private business, the founder (or majority shareholder) can take whatever decisions they feel will bring more money to the business without asking his customers. He is only accountable to shareholders. In the church, the founder cannot be seen to be taking unilateral decisions, since his customers perceive themselves to have a share in this business. So, religious language is deployed to justify a need to expand as part of a drive to “save more souls”. 

Unlike a private business, Charismatic founders cannot simply hire and fire a new pastor to handle the expansion. They need someone they can “trust”, someone who will not attempt to “steal” their church from them. They need someone loyal to the founder’s “ministry”. This fear of treachery exists obviously because this happens to many churches all the time – a pastor is appointed to lead a new branch, and in the eyes of the founder, he “led the people astray”. The reasons why this happens are myriad, and I have no intention of discussing them here. One of the cardinal tools by which many founders (and many other established churches) use to avoid this occurrence is the practice of transfers – a practice the church inherited from the world. Don’t be fooled by all the justifications that churches give for this practice. Transfers are a tool of control.

One of the cardinal tools by which many founders (and many other established churches) use to avoid this occurrence is the practice of transfers – a practice the church inherited from the world. Don’t be fooled by all the justifications that churches give for this practice. Transfers are a tool of control.

Enter the False Teaching of Loyalty

And so, to protect the “ministry” of this entrepreneurial founder from being “derailed by the devil” (in the form of junior pastors stealing churches away), there has always been in existence in many Charismatic churches, teachings in one form or another about loyalty to the “mother ministry” – something that is not needed if this were simply a normal business with a clear founder/CEO who can hire and fire. This stealing away of followers is just stealing away from the founder’s empire they call their “ministry”, but it’s typically couched as being “unfaithful” to God. 

However, nobody has done a better job of clearly making codified teachings out of this than Dag Heward-Mills, the founder of Lighthouse Chapel International, now renamed United Denominations Originating from the Lighthouse Group of Churches (UDOLGC). And he makes it explicit why he codified this teaching in his book “Loyalty and Disloyalty”. If you want a brilliant study in twisting scripture to support empire-building, there is no better book.

So, let’s take a few passages from the horses’ own mouth. Unfortunately, my copy doesn’t have page numbers properly showing, so bear with me for specifying only chapters.

Sadly, by the 2nd page of Chapter 1, the deception begins.

“An inexperienced person would think that a friendly brother would make a good pastor. He may also think that someone with good oratory skills would make the best preacher. Do not make that mistake. The Bible teaches us that the cardinal requirement for leadership is faithfulness and not anything else. “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful (1 Cor 4:2)” (Chapter 1- Loyalty & Disloyalty)

The question to be asked here is who is Paul referring to when he talks about faithfulness? Is it about being found faithful to Jesus or Dag’s ministry? If you are doubting which one Dag is referring to, hold on to your horses.

“Because of this, anyone who wants to extend his ministry and bear much fruit has to learn to work with many other people. These people are the team that I’m talking

about. However, it would be better to work alone than with a team of disloyal, disgruntled, disunited and dis-affected people.” (Chapter 1- Loyalty & Disloyalty)

So, there’s the answer. It’s about Dag’s ministry (or any other entrepreneurial Charismatic founder’s ministry, for that matter).

As I mentioned before, an entrepreneurial Charismatic founder (and other misguided Christians) measures himself by the size of his church network. And that is no more obvious than when he says this.

“If we want to have a large church, we need to minister with love and with oneness. If we cannot be one, let’s stop pretending. You see, I encourage people to walk out of my church if their hearts are not with me. “He that is not with me is against me.” Matthew 12:30” (Chapter 1- Loyalty & Disloyalty)

Not only does he tell us clearly that the name of the game is “having a large church”, but that he also requires that his pastor’s hearts must be “with him” – not with Jesus. Worst of all, Dag Heward-Mills equates himself to Jesus by repeating the same words as Jesus did, words that apply only to Jesus, not to any human on earth. He is the Son of God, the one to whom all power and authority have been given. He is the only one to whom loyalty is owed, and every other human who demands it is in danger of idolatry.

Loyalty, Every Dictator’s Favorite Word

I cannot count the number of world dictators who have commanded loyalty. And I don’t begrudge them. Loyalty is the way dictators ensure the longevity of their empires, although every empire in the world collapses at some point.

But for Christian leaders to be demanding loyalty? That smacks of idolatry. No scratch that. That IS idolatry.

Loyalty, whether demanded by autocratic politicians and businessmen or Christian leaders always leads to the same thing – abuse. The abuse may not always be widespread, so don’t be surprised if others under such leaders claim they have never experienced it. Many under such leaders will have imbibed this loyalty teaching so deeply that it takes an extremely negative event happening to them before they wake up to the reality of such abuse. Many in the good books of such leaders either do nothing when they see abuse or actively participate in its perpetration, having already religiously justified their behaviour.

Perhaps, this “system” has forgotten that even Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him, and yet he kept him in his company till the end. And yet mere mortals like Dag and his company of entrepreneurs need – no scratch that – crave loyalty to them, brazenly twisting scripture to pretend that this is about the kingdom of God.

So, I’m not surprised by these reports of abuse. I have personal friends who have shared with me their own experiences of abuse not just from Lighthouse, but from many other Ghanaian churches, whether they explicitly or implicitly teach loyalty. I’m also not surprised by the PR campaigns to save face as well. The system is always more important than the people it hurts, so defence is more important than introspection. Perhaps, this “system” has forgotten that even Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him, and yet he kept him in his company till the end. And yet mere mortals like Dag and his company of entrepreneurs need – no scratch that – crave loyalty to them, brazenly twisting scripture to pretend that this is about the kingdom of God.

And So What?

Because of how religion and power can so easily blind, there is a reason why the historic, faithful Christian tradition has always emphasized humility and submission to one another, instead of loyalty. In fact, I struggle to find the word “loyalty” in my NIV translation – the word is always faithfulness, and it ALWAYS refers to faithfulness to Jesus and his mission, never to a Christian leader. Humility and submission to one another is the New Testament’s way because humans are broken people, and when elevated to a pedestal, they will hurt fellow humans. Wherever humility and submission to one another are lacking, people will tread over others in pursuit of a leader’s empire agenda. 

Wherever humility and submission to one another are lacking, people will tread over others in pursuit of a leader’s empire agenda. 

And it is in this spirit that one who wants to centre their faith on Jesus – the one who is God incarnate and who shows us what God’s own character is – needs to pay attention, not to books about loyalty but Jesus’s own words. 

“Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mt 20:25-28)

No matter how “gifted”, no matter how “qualified”, no matter how “called”, no matter how “blessed” a supposed founder or pastor is – it is actually quite easy to see whether his “ministry” is really about Jesus or themselves. 

First, how do they treat those whom they claim are in ministry with them – no matter the levels of maturity or years of service. Do they treat them (not just in words) as co-workers, even the youngest of them, or are they their underlings: to be lorded over, just like “the Gentiles lord it over them” in the name of fulfilling the founder/pastor’s “ministry”? One easy way to discern this is to listen to their “junior pastors” or ordinary church members speak about their founder/pastor. Do they speak of him/her as a co-labourer or as one who “exercises authority” over them?

Secondly, how do they treat their perceived “enemies”, or people who hurt their supposed ministry? Do they curse them, – paradoxically in the name of the one who says to bless our enemies? Or do they forgive them and look forward to a time when they might even work together for the good of the kingdom of God?

Beware therefore that Ghanaian Christianity is made up of many demigods building their entrepreneurial empires, and (despite what it says on the label), many of these church empires have little to do with Jesus and everything to do with religious entrepreneurship. 

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.