Christianity in its meaning is an organized institution for spiritual attainment of an individual. But the conducts of many pastors, are not organized.. You can take it to anywhere! Anyone can do anything, any day or anytime and pray for forgiveness and go free, as far as that person goes to church. A girl and a boy can have fun just when they have dressed to go to church and still go and become the holier-than-thou in the church. One wonders who is killing who in the church dominated region of the Southern Nigeria, if not the same Christians killing themselves. One wonders who the ladies wearing abusive clothes on the streets of the South-Eastern Nigeria dominated by Christians are, if not the same people who go to the Church. And if you are a bachelor looking for a lady to marry, people would advise you to go to the church. But is this not the same church where many divorcees we are seeing today wedded? What happened to their marriages? Watching all these, one is paused to ask, what does the church of the Lord Jesus Christ teaches?
It is saddening that the Churches are proliferating in our clime without checks and balances by the Federal Government of Nigeria, due to the freedom of worship enshrined in the Constitution. Well, what about other religions? Against this backdrop, a lot of things happen in Nigeria in the name of religion and sometimes the perpetrators go free from the hand of the law, because of the ”Man of God” that is tagged to the perpetrators names. God will judge a lot of things.
A walk through our streets, especially where the churches are located, one is bound to bypass millions of poorest people who are tensed-up, and hundreds of millionaire’s houses along them. Even the pastors are today rich in the world, but not rich in the Lord. They are fishers of money, than the fishers of men. Which pastor would like to be transferred to the remote villages? Instead of acceding to that, he will abscond from the church he was in to open his own church.
But the tension and the poverty of all these, are working against the poor in the church. The advantaged use any opportunity, for a new and terrible way of exploit. And this phenomenon is leading to the abuse and the murder of hundreds of the poor, especially thousands of innocent children, in the ”Name of Christ”.
Everywhere one passes are churches in Nigeria, some with makeshift structures, oozing from inside are thunderous voices, disturbing the environment with noise pollution. And people seem to keep mute over this menace? But anyone who raises alarm over the menace this noise is causing to the human health is tagged ”œan agent of the devil”, and a lot of ”Holy Ghost Fire” would be the person’s reward by the brethren. Some who don’t know what the Holy Ghost meant and the kind of fire that is expected of the Ghost also shout ”Holy Ghost Fire”. Is religion by force? For people inundated by witchcraft or sickness, pastors make a living by ‘deliverances’. And to so many churches, this trend is becoming a lucrative ”market” or say, a competitive one. Many pastors are ready to go miles to acquire powers for ”miracles”. Even when the powers are not of Christ, they are less concern. Even the overwhelmed brethren do not like in the recent times, the sound doctrines of Christ, but the sabotaged preachments of the pastors. And the exploitative situations of pastors are now turning attentions to children, which has now grown into something much more baleful, as pastors are naming children as witches and wizards.
This has many a times brought confusions into the minds of parents, siblings and the whole environment turn on the child. These children named witches by the church are sometimes burnt, chained to trees, buried alive, poisoned, slashed, or simply abandoned off into the bush. Then, one should ask, if these children are subjected to the aforementioned, what is the meaning of pasturing if a pastor does not have the love of humanity and mankind, as Christ showed? Did Christ murder any man beseted with the impure spirit?
It is saddening that pastors now collect money for deliverances, thereby luring some parents to sudden debtors, where they scrape together sums needed to pay for these deliverances. After the first payment and the first exorcism, the pastors still ask for second money for a second deliverance.
In this case, it is where the parents of the ”witch” child want to keep the child. But the society sometimes is not pleased to seeing the witch child. They ostracize and abandon children, just for one vision (less) of a ”Man of God”. All these happen in the church, because of money.
