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Be your brother’s keeper
A few days ago, I witnessed a scene that gladdened my heart and demonstrated how God created us to behave towards one another.
A small boy of not more than five years, came to buy ‘Koko’ and ‘Koose’ with his little sister who also will not be more than three years old. I had also gone to buy ‘koose’ at the same place on my way back home from my routine of brisk walking early each morning.
When I was waiting to be served, I observed the little boy bend down to pick up his little sister and step over the gutter in front of them and when he had crossed over, set his sister down. I was so moved by this spectacle and it set in motion a train of thoughts going through my mind.
What struck me most was that sense of brotherliness, a natural instinct to extend assistance to another human being who needs help. This is the essence of life but unfortunately, the reverse is the case, most of the time. One would have expected that adults should rather demonstrate this kind of behaviour but that is not the case in real life situations.
People in this part of the world have over the years witnessed a gradual decline in the willingness to extend a helping hand to others. There used to be a certain culture of courtesy to old or elderly people on buses and trains, where people eagerly offer their seats to the elderly people much older than them.
There are still a few bright spots in this current morally depraved world of us, which gives me hope that all is not lost.
About three weeks ago, I went to a bank to make an enquiry and was directed to an office. When I got there, there were a few people seated and it became apparent to me that it was a queue but no seat was available to me so I had to stand and wait. A young lady who was just ahead of me got up and said to me with a smile “Daddy, please sit down”. After a few protestations that I am fine, she was insistent that I should take her seat and so I had to oblige. I then thanked her and sat down and I was glad that the culture of respect for the elderly has not completely vanished from our society.
Selfishness is what is entrenching this evil tendency of not wanting to extend a helping hand to others.
In our society, especially in our organisations and institutions, the desire to climb to the top usually manifest the evil side of man. Some people deliberately spread lies about, their colleagues at the workplace.
Pastors who are supposed to be our moral compass are not left out, political actors within the same party are damaging their colleagues and it is just a mess. What we fail to realise is that nature has a way of exacting retribution and that we reap what we sow.
If a colleague’s promotion was denied him due to your malicious lies, guess what will happen to you in the near future. Someone you trust, will do the same thing to you.
The Bible teaches that we should do unto others what we want others to for us. When we are young, the practice of this nugget of wisdom, comes to us naturally as exhibited by the small boy but when we grow and are supposed to be wiser, we somehow neglect or refuse to practise this.
There are certain principles that exist and are time tested. It does not matter who are or what you believe, it is what it is.
In Genesis 8:22, the Bible makes us to understand that sowing and reaping shall never cease. Therefore, if you plan on gaining promotion, help someone to gain promotion. If you want to live in peace, promote peaceful coexistence. Whatsoever you sow that shall you also reap.
The attitude of pull him down, will never benefit us and it is high time we deleted it, to use computer terminology from our file of life. That is the only way we can achieve an enduring success in all that we seek to achieve.
Contrary to the perception out there that to climb up you have to step on others, the reality is the exact opposite. If we step on others by manipulations and cheating and back-biting etc., we must be ready for the consequences that will surely come our way.
Surely as night follows day, we shall one day receive the fruits of whatever we have sown, whether good or bad.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
