THE PARADOX THAT IS THE PEACE-LOVING HUMAN

Category: Uncategorized

I have often wondered how it is that we strenuously maintain assurances of our love for peace and quiet happily-ever-after coexistence, yet derive all our entertainment from stories that carry in them at least some degree of conflict. 

Source: http://www.dscript.deviantart.com/ 

Yea. Whether it be a Hollywood thriller, a Bollywood love story, a Nollywood comedy, one of those genreless I-go-dye shows, a gripping football match from Old Trafford, a sizzling whatchamacallit from the Kardashians, there is always a side contesting AGAINST another side, an actor AGAINST another, a player AGAINST the other. The againstness of it all is the conflict. The conflicts in them all provide our entertainment because we want to see who gets to win, who gets to have the last laugh,  how it all eventually ends. We want to see conflict resolution but only after we have seen conflict development, the clash of wills, the flash of steel, the thuds of leather boots.

Yet, the only thing conflict has in common with peace is the letter c.

So maybe being people of peace doesn't necessarily mean that we are averse to conflict.

But then, what do I know? I'm just a human.

PERSPECTIVE

Category: On The Wall

I pray everyday that in my quest to expand the frontiers of my own knowledge and to cultivate in my friends the habit of asking questions without borders, I may not forget the reason I set out on this quest.  

Image source: http://www.pinterest.com/

That which I seek may appear to some to be a shadow at the moment, yet it is my objective, my goal, my substance struggling upward and outward from its many surrounding shadows.

And sometimes, the difference between this substance and that shadow is made by the lighting.

WE MAY - ALL OF US - BE TERRORISTS

Category: A Set Of Random Thoughts

I recently read accounts of a papal bull issued in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V. That bull (which is sort of like an Act of a National Assembly or an Edict or Decree of a government) was named Dum Diversas. Dum Diversas means ‘until different’. That bull was addressed to the kings of Spain and Portugal. The part of that document that caught my attention is this:

We grant you by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property … and to reduce their persons into perpetual servitude.

This is not a leaked facsimile of the drunken rants of a highly placed church official caught in a moment of indiscretion. Nope. It is an official church document, dating back to 1452, issued at a time when the church commanded loyalty with the bible and with arrows, issued to kings to permit them to persecute all infidels wherever they may be, issued to Christian political leaders charging them to reduce all non-Christians to perpetual slavery, for as long as they remained non-Christians. You can check out what Wikipedia has to say about Dum Diversas here.

This document is one of the many documents that illustrate how, over time, Christians moved from being the ones who were persecuted because of their faith (in the first few centuries AD) to becoming the ones who persecuted every other person, group, principality, region, or country who did not share the belief that Jesus is Lord as well as those who did not share the prevailing belief about the exact manner in which Jesus' lordship was conducted. It is another illustration of the view I hold about the potential tyranny of faith, the dictatorship of every ideology that deliberately divorces reason from ALL of its convictions, the totalitarianism that invariably results when religion mixes so closely with politics that both become a homogeneous entity. After all, one reason Jesus Christ was murdered by the Jewish authorities was that the message of compassion that he preached rankled when placed side-by-side with their interpretations of the mechanical “will of God”.

This post is not a criticism of the document or of the institution that promulgated it and saw to its implementation. Many others have done that before me. Many continue to do that today. I have no wish to lend my feeble notes to that resounding orchestra. Besides, thankfully, the Christian world has since been irrevocably wed to the divorce between the Church and the State (at least in print, but also in many cases, in fact).

It is rather a gentle reminder to my holy Christian friends who, on account of Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, ISIS, etc., dismiss all muslims as terrorists, and who proudly point to Christianity as the religion that has been spread to the ends of the earth exclusively by peaceful means, by the power of the Father, the miracles of the Son, and the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit. It is a gentle reminder to those peaceful, holy friends of mine that whatever evils those islamist terrorists are violently perpetrating today in the name of Allah, there are precedents, precedents left for them by our fathers in faith, heinous precedents committed in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

Of course, that our fathers in faith were guilty of the subjugation of peoples of different faiths, the oppression and execution of blasphemers, heretics, and infidels (abi unbelievers) several years ago as they strove to spread Christianity does not justify the perpetration of the same crimes by others today, as they supposedly seek to spread Islam. But the generalizations we make about people who believe in God in different ways than we do or even in different Gods than we do, are often unhealthy. Those generalizations, to me, are mustard seeds of the same kind of intolerance, which only need the right mix of circumstances to make us also terrorists.

Let us then beware, because the log we see in our neighbor’s eye may just have been hewn from the giant tree that is happily growing in ours, watered by our own prejudices, well nourished by the manure of our own oft-unrecognized bigotry.

THE HOLY MASS: MY PARISH'S HOLY EXCUSE FOR AN ETERNAL FUNDRAISER

Category: Uncategorized

I have noticed in my temperament an increasing impatience with the almost complete disregard that my church manifests for such seemingly small issues as Mass starting on time, as sermons being spiritually uplifting exercises rather than solely fund-raising speeches, as well as the big issues which are too big for me to even mention in this small post. I had better stick with the small issues.

I had earlier complained about my parish’s endless thanksgivings and how those thanksgiving processions invariably stretch one Mass thirty or more minutes into the time that the next Mass should have started - and that this goes on from one Sunday to the next, as regular as clockwork.

Today, I am bitter about how, in addition to the fact that the 6:30AM Mass stretched to 10:25AM despite the fact that the next Mass was scheduled for 9:30AM, the priest who spoke during the time traditionally allotted for the homily gave a long speech that was anything but a homily. It was more like an assemblage of the Top 100 Reasons Why You Must Give More to God Today Than You Have Ever Done In Your Entire Life. Needless to say, I yawned my way through most of the sham “sermon”.

When I attend Mass, I do so in search of spiritual upliftment; I do so because I desire an ever closer union with God and I look to my priest for tips on how to make my love affair with God something that permeates the rest of my weekday life, whether on my workbench or on the beer roundtable. I do not attend Mass to be told to come forward multiple times to the front of the church to count my blessings and to do so by “thanking God” on each of those passes with cash stuffed in various envelopes and deposited in the offering box first as a youth, then as a man, then as a young Catholic professional, then as someone from the southeast, then as a Nigerian, then as someone who knows God has done something good for him, then as someone who wants God to continue to do something good for him...and so on.

I wouldn’t mind so much if the homily focused on the readings of the day and the lessons that one could draw from it, and thereafter, the flurry of thanksgivings began. I wouldn’t be bothered if they didn’t start passing offering bags round the congregation within the homily. I wouldn’t be complaining loudly if the 6:30AM Mass had finished in time for the 9:30AM Mass to begin.

The kind of Mass that was said in my parish today - mind me, today was harvestday but mind you, it was also Sunday - is the kind of Mass that got me thinking that in some parishes, as in mine, the Mass itself seems to be morphing into a commodity available for sale - to all bidders high and not-so-high; the priests and church officials involved are such happy vendors. I am almost sure that these days, when they meet at informal fora, they ask themselves that Idumota question, 'how market?' 

Blessed be the work of their hands.

RELIGION AND RELIGIOTS

Category: A Set of Random Thoughts

In recent times, I have read about people who have been suspended from their jobs or jailed because they refused to carry out certain duties that run contrary to the tenets of their individual faiths.

Great news. It is always cheering to see humans who are ready to stand up for what they believe in - even where taking that stand may mean suffering withheld paychecks and in some cases jail time. But there is also something troubling in (some of) these stories.

Before one takes on a job in the public service sector, one should study the job description; one should find out what one’s responsibilities to the public would be, should one elect to take up the job. One should be sure that those responsibilities are responsibilities that one can discharge to the best of their ability and without any impediment. And where such an impediment exists but one is determined to take up the job nonetheless, one should be certain that there are alternatives that allow them to legally escape doing the (offending aspect of the) job while simultaneously ensuring that that (aspect of the) job gets done - at little or no extra cost to the employer.

It is irresponsible to take on a job and then refuse to do the job on grounds as shoddy as religion. People who do that should not just be suspended. They should be jailed and made to pay a fine for willfully deceiving the system into believing they were capable of doing their job.

And when they die, they should - kindly - be sent to Hell.

Rubbish.