Have leadership of religions noticed that their religions are losing their positive influence and fading away. That is, they are virtually expiring with each passing year. All over the world religion is losing its relevant and becoming more and more of a burden. The Jesus movement (Christianity) for the Kingdom of God is everyday becoming the kingdom of cheats, confident tricksters and down-right thieves. The despotic monarchs who kept Arab and Moslem states in the pre-historic age in t his modern era on the claim that their authorities to rule are on religious grounds as direct blood descendants of the family of the Prophet Muhammad are all falling. The fools are becoming wiser and the game is almost over.
What happened to the movement of Jesus, the wandering preacher, who walked on foot preaching love and service to our neighbors as the word of God? Can the modern day Pope, Right Reverend and Apostle, ride on a donkey to Jerusalem? What also happened to the religion of the great Prophet Muhammad, who abandoned his cattle herd to bring the word of God home and succeeded in mobilizing a bunch of nomadic tribes into the great Arab people? What will Muhammad say when about 99% of Moslems are not terrorists but 90% of terrorists are?
Since the inception of religion, it had always been the attempt of man to find God based on his culture. So religions have always been the deification of cultures. No religion has emerged in abstract and has always sought to make the pillars upon which cultures are set as instruments to praise and worship God. All religions that export their doctrines whole sale with the traditions and practices of the founding cultures and indoctrinate the followers to abandon their own traditional values with the intent of exploitation are bound not to achieve their aim of leading their followers to God?
As a result of wrong direction religion has taken recently, the Ghanaian society has changed. It is true we have become more religious. Christian churches are mushrooming all over the country. Fridays have become prayer meeting days in the forests and botanical gardens all over the country and on Sundays the churches are jammed packed with born again Christians. It is also true that the major cities of Ghana are dotted with temples and synagogues of many other religions due to our religious nature and tolerance for freedom of religion.
But what do we have to show for this? Go through rural Ghana now-a-days. Some of the most imposing buildings you encounter are all church buildings and mission houses for priests. But just outside these imposing buildings are the squatters of the people whose weekly contributions build these Chapels and Mission houses. Those of you who know mathematics should take your calculators. Just add all the monies paid as collections every Sunday at every church. Let us just limit ourselves to Sundays only. Almost every town or village has at least 5 churches. In the cities, there are churches and religious groups in virtually every public class room. Add that to special offerings on everything including the new pastor’s car and Osofo-Maame’s foreign trip. Add that to the monies used to pay for anointing, prayers for trading, visa application and all sorts of endeavors and the tithes. Now, let’s assume, 70% stays in the local church and 30% moves on to the next level – district and diocese and from there progressively on wards to the Pope. Just imagine the amount of money leaving all these small villages and towns every Sunday into the coffers of mother church. As a result, some of the most profitable businesses in Ghana now are spiritual churches with their accompanying prayer camps. In the face of the over whelming poverty and deteriorating rural life how can the organization charged by God to be their neighbors’ keeper supervises such exploitation. The Catholic Church has been turned into a den of homosexuals and child molesters all in the name of pleasing the church against their innate nature. In Ghana, a large number of Catholic Fathers, who have sworn the oath of celibacy, have concubines and large number of bastard children. How long does the church think that the people will keep on remaining quiet in abundance of all these hypocrisy and filth? Who in his normal mind in the leadership of the church thinks that in 2011 world, the people don’t know what is going on, and in the name of God think that they can sustain the status quo?
Look at the Moslem world today. They have used the word of Muhammad as an excuse to establish tyrannical rule. Almost all their leaders are life president or Kings to be succeeded by their children. With the exception of the “Royal” family and off springs of the Presidents, the total population is living in poverty and absolute oppression. Within the last 30 years, the Arab countries have earn hundreds and thousands of times more money from oil exports than all the earnings of the rest of the world combined. What do they have to show for this? A mass of poor people with no personal, constitutional and human rights living on Saraka from the rich. Women, who form more than half of the population are sub-human with no or little right and treated as items of exploitation. This half of the human race, are given in marriage at will, to whom the men want, at what age the men want and if she protests, killed for “family honor” when the men want. Their day to day activities including their dressing and outings and even driving are criminalized and dictated by men. They and all their children both men and women are banned from any secular education that bring development and personal advancement.
What is even pathetic is that the least provocation leads to Moslems coming out in droves to demonstrate and killing innocent people. But when terrorists strike in the name of Islam, there is no demonstration. Many innocent people were killed across Africa because some infidel in Denmark drew a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad. Some of these people who died as a result did not even know where Denmark is and have not read a newspaper let alone one from Denmark before. Most of the Kayayos in Ghana are children of Moslems who are living in the streets of the cities because they were denied education, and runaway from forced marriages to old and senile Mallams. How long can this go on and how do you think Islam be made stronger by these actions.
Some people in the name of religion kill in the holy and sanctimonious excuse of worshiping God. They same people say according to the Koran and Bible, those of us who don’t serve God will be punished including eternal burning by Him, when we die and come before him. With all due respect, I prefer God’s punishment in heaven to yours on earth. So if it is okay with you leave us alone to face our God. I don’t want any fatwa on my life because of the points raised in this article. I love my sinful life on this beautiful earth.
Here in Ghana, as a result of limited resources from Central Government, what we have in abundance in rural areas and on the streets of our cities is poverty, frustration and superstition. Coupled with underdevelopment and illiteracy, the majority of our people are living without hope and clinging to false promises from religious leaders and Sakawa.
We have fought for freedom from physical slavery and colonialism from outsiders just to be saddled by mental slavery and exploitation from insiders in the name of religion. How come a people who build great nations from Mutapa through Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Ashanti empires end up like this? How can a country like Ghana, that produced leaders that were the first to fight for independence south of the Sahara, are building a prosperous and democratic society, have smart children who are winning awards in all aspects of life including world soccer championship in far away countries, come to a point where people will give their life saving to a priest in the name of anointing and at the expense of children’s education and family welfare?
When I was growing up in Akim Otwereso, behind the Birim River, so many cocoa seasons ago, my father told me what prayer in Africa is. He said, in Africa, there are three forms of prayer. The first one is the normal conversation with God where we praise him and ask for help, like my favorite prayer – Give us this day our daily bread. The second prayer was a community conversation with God in the form of libation where the whole community participated. During the prayer, we worship and adore God, tell our history from creation to the present day, praise our heroes and ancestors whose contribution built our society and nation for us and who are mentioned in the prayer so the future generations will have idols to look up to and emulate. But the best and greatest prayer was a life of responsibility and righteousness. He told me that, if you are a farmer, your prayer is to ask for strength and resources to till the land and plant your crop when the season comes. What is expected of God is to give you the strength and provide resources such as rain. At the end of the season, your harvest is the answer to your prayer. In order words responsibility and service to mankind in the form of your family, society and country is a prayer and service to God.
Wow! So in the Ghanaian society, if you are student, it is expected of you to study hard and at the end of the course when you pass your examination and earn your certificate or license that is the answer to your prayer. An answer to a mother or father’s prayer is a well taken care of, cultured and successful children. A politician’s answer to his prayer is to enact laws and create programs that will ensure prosperity to the electorate, and a priest and malam’s answer to his prayer is to explain the word of God and lead his congregation so that their lives will be enriched and help them live a righteous life.
This African spirit based on our over reliance on the power and omnipresence of God has sustained us throughout history. We survived the destruction of Nubia and Egypt. We survived the destructions of the empires of Western Sudan (Ghana, Mali and Songhai) by the Moslems hordes. We survived slavery after more than one hundred million of our able bodied men and women were forceful taken away from us at the time when we were settling down in the forest belt of West Africa after long migrations. We survived direct colonial rule and fought for independence. We survived the cold war and apartheid when our countries were used by the United States and the Soviet Union as theaters for war rehearsals. I don’t know of any group of people, race or culture that could have survived such calamities and still have the kind of population explosion we are experiencing now. We are a very resilient people.
SO WHAT HAPPENED TO US? Why is thereso much decadence in the abundance of so many religions with their accompanying millions of denominations and assemblies? Why do we have so many street children? Why are we so underdeveloped living on aid and benevolence? Why are we afflicted with every disease that man knows? Why are we the scorch at the bottom of the melting pot of world societies? Why are Black and Beautiful still contradictory and never attained? Why do we keep killing each other? Why do we expect so little of each other and ourselves? Why can’t we stick together? Why is the joke of the world always on us, and why do we so willingly give up control of our lives and resources? WHY, AFRICA, WHY?
What happened to the brotherhood spirit inherent in our famous extended family system? We have never been are people who relied on manna from heaven. God gave us the strength and the blessing to be prosperous. In the ancient times, anytime we settled down we built civilizations. So what happened?
If we check ourselves, we will find that the greatest reason for our situation is the mental bondage associated with superstition brought on us by these many false religions. It has been said by many writers and thinkers that mental bondage is invisible violence. That formal physical slavery has ended in Africa but mental slavery continuous to this day. This slavery affects the minds of most people and in some forms, it is worse than physical slavery alone, because people under mental bondage become self contained. Not only will they fail to challenge the beliefs and patterns of thought that control them, they will defend and protect these beliefs virtually with their last dying effort. Under mental bondage, the priests don’t need to do much to get the congregation to part with all their belonging and worship them like kings with the hope of getting riches and salvation overnight with any effort. False religion as a form of mind control was used as advanced technique for the success of colonization and we have not seen through yet because it is addictive. It should be noted that creators and beneficiaries of belief system consider it as a SYSTEM. Actions are taken to nurture and keep the controlling system intact. Competing belief systems are described as pagan or fetish and fought off or discourage. So when an occasional scholar, priest or member of the general public discovers new and liberating information or even new ways of treating the old information for the liberation of the people, such people are usually treated with denial, persecution and death. Our mental enslavement is beneficial and profitable to the controlling priests.
In Ghana now, everything African is regarded as backward and savage. The indigenous belief system is regarded as pagan and evil. If you have to become a true human accepted by society, you have to run the holy mother church and to the bosom of the anointed man of God. As a result our standard for civilized behavior is the attainment of foreign ways of life and/or ability to rattle tongues during praises and worship. Our educated people have become faded carbon copy Europeans and Arabs and perpetual imitators. We have become so heavenly minded, we have forgotten we are on earth and wallowing in squalor.
In view of this, Mr. Right Reverend, Father and Imam, how are you going to be able to contain the explosion that is coming in the form of mental and religious freedom? See what is happened in the Arab World and n Facebook, U-tube and Twitter. The revolution and God’s judgment is coming to the society near you. With the help of God, the people will be free and you type of religion will expire probably very soon. Beware, you are marked for redeployment because the people will be free and we shall meet you on judgment day.
Kwame Yeboah
Harding University College of Pharmacy,
Searcy, Arkansas. USA.
gyeboah@harding.edu.
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