By Tochukwu Ezukanma
In our religionism, our neighborhoods are brimming with churches.
Christians throng these churches almost every day of the week:
Wednesdays, Thursday, Fridays, and of course, Sundays. There are vigils,
morning devotions, evening services, Sunday services, Fellowship
meetings, and one revival and crusade after another. In addition, the
radios and televisions inundate us with preaching and exhortations from
pastors. Why is such a religious country steep in wickedness, dishonesty
and selfishness? Why are we so knowledgeable of the Bible and quote it
with effortless facility but remain welded to satanic proclivities?
It is because our most important fount of morality, the church, lost its
moral compass. Ordinarily, the society finds its spiritual, moral and
ethical rudder in the church. But engrossed in their quest for wealth
and power, our “men of God” became spiritually and morally
rudderless. In their perversion of the Word of God, they strayed from
the essence of Christianity: salvation, and love, forgiveness, chastity
and other fruits of the Spirit; care and compassion for others,
especially, the poor, sick and weak; and respect for the rule of law.
They now preach prosperity. Prosperity Doctrine is falsehood. It ignores
the central themes of the Gospel of Jesus, and dwells on peripheral
issues. It dwells on money, cars, mansions, and sowing seed and getting
rich. It preaches inanities like: Jesus was poor so that we, Christians,
will become rich; if you are poor, you are not a partaker of the
covenant of Jesus Christ, etc.
With Prosperity Doctrine, many Christians became fixated on materialism
at the total disregard of the kernels of Christianity, like the
acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and upholding His
precepts: love God with all your mind, heart and soul and love your
neighbor as
thyself. As a result, unlike in the past, when Christians, inspired by
the unadulterated Word of God emanating from the pulpit, attempted to be
Christ-like, Christians, now, befuddled by Pentecostal pastors’
travesty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, are greedy, wicked, lawless and
licentious. They profess Christ, but endeavor not to be Christ-like.
Preoccupied with power and consumed by greed, these pastors, especially,
one-man owned Pentecostal church pastors, spout lies, and sometimes,
outright nonsense from the pulpit. They intimidate their members into
empting their pockets into the offering boxes as offerings, tithes,
first fruit and an assortment of seeds. They twist the Word of God to
convince their members of the staggering nonsense that to question or
disobey a pastor, “an anointed of God”, will bring the wrath of God
on you in this life and consign you to hell fire in the hereafter.
Although Jesus Christ came to raise believers, not pastors, and the
promises of God are to all believers, not, exclusively, to pastors, some
Nigerian Pentecostal pastors have successful apotheosized themselves,
and made themselves the objects of worship to their members. Thus, their
congregants worship them and submitting totally to their personal wills.
Many Christians are essentially enslaved to their pastors and are
victims of the pastors’ whims and caprices. This unbridled power over
their flock provides the pastors unparalleled latitude for exploitation
and abuse. Not surprisingly, many Pentecostal “men of God” break up
homes, seduced married women, defile under-age girls and fleece their
members in variegated ways. So, instead of being the fount of the Truth,
and consequently, a wellspring of hope, peace and encouragement, and
emancipation from fear and diffidence, the church became a major source
of problem for the Nigerian society; reinforcing the dread, dismay and
dispossession of the Nigerian masses.
That a country with the greatest concentration of extreme poverty in the
world is also home to the wealthiest pastors in the world is a powerful
testament to the exceptional success of Nigerian pastors in swindling
the masses with their distortion of the Word of God. Therefore, it is
imperative that the government scrutinizes the activities of these
greedy and unscrupulous businessmen, masquerading as men of God. The
Corporate and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) is splendid. The object of the
law is to inspect the financial activities of Nigerian churches. As far
as I am concerned, the law should also checkmate the enthralling grip of
pastors on the minds of their members by restricting the errant nonsense
some Pentecostal pastors proclaim from their pulpits.
In their penchant for mendacity, some super-star pastors and other
members of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) want Nigerians to
believe that the church is directly connected to God, and cannot submit
to the authority of the government. Ironically, a number of Bible verses
unequivocally state that the church must be subject to the authority of
the government. It was a precept that Jesus exemplified and the early
Christian leaders dramatized. Evidently, these Pentecostal pastors that
perfected the art of twisting the Word of God and hoodwinking their
members think that they can also deceive the Nigerian government and the
generality of Nigerians.
Some of them argue that a Moslem president and his administration lack
the moral and spiritual authority to regulate the affairs of the
Christian church. Caesar was neither a Jew nor a Christian. Caesar was a
Roman that believed in, and worshipped, the Roman gods: Cupid, Mercury,
Apollo, etc. Instructively, Jesus Christ recognized, respected, and
submitted to, Caesar’s authority, and obeyed the laws of his empire,
the Roman Empire. In the 1st Century, when St Paul wrote in Roman 13:1
to 7, and in his other epistles, and Peter wrote in 1Peter 2:13 to 15
urging Christians to subordinate themselves to the powers of the
government and all its agents, no kingdom of the world was ruled by
Christians. Invariably, they were urging Christians to obey the laws of
kings and governments that were not Christians.
Therefore, in accordance to the Word of God, irrespective of its
religious make-up, the Buhari administration reserves the right to
regulate Nigerian churches. As dictated by the Bible, pastors must
submit to government regulation, as stipulated by CAMA. Disobedient
pastors will be punished by the Buhari administration with the approval
of God.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
