Features
Dangers of passive permission and relaxing principles
Negativity yields no positive results
Continually there comes before us the question of tolerance. Men, after all, are individuals, and none thinks alike, otherwise we would find ourselves in hopeless friction and fighting without sincere tolerance to allow the give-and-take of living side by side with differing ideas and people.
There should be no tolerance for intolerance. However, there are some things that do not deserve tolerance. There should be no tolerance for corruption, no tolerance for lawlessness and no tolerance for tyranny. Instead we should look critically at the type of so-called tolerance that possess more of laziness and complacency than it does of honest open-mindedness.
If wouldn’t tolerate a vicious animal or dangerous epidemic why then should we tolerate influences which are dangerous to our morals and manners or to the principles on which freedom is founded? It is not only a privilege but it is our inescapable obligation to rise in righteous resentment and rigorous resistance when the law is being flaunted, when outlawed evils are invited in, or when reprehensible practices are passively permitted. Perhaps there have always been those who would flaunt and defraud; but when a society begins to look upon such things with cynical acceptance, when men begin to justify things that nobody should do on the assumption that everybody is doing them, then we have cause for concern.
It isn’t only the fact that an evil deed is done, bad as that may be, but the fact that it doesn’t meet more reaction, the fact that it is easily tolerated; that should be a serious concern. Diseases, germs and viruses are everywhere and will always make inroads where there is an opening. And the greatest danger comes perhaps not in the presence of the germs bad as that may be, but in the lowered resistance that permits them to enter in and do their damage without meeting effective antitoxins.
Basically, there are no new evils in the world, and age, society, or city, is without evil but the critical issue comes when evil is met with cynical acceptance or passive permission just as it is done with Galamsey.
Today there are some people in this country with a disposition that the means justifies the end, no matter how drastic or deceptive that may be. Superficially, and in isolated cases, this may sometimes be true, but it is never true where fundamental principles are compromised, where truth is ignored or where human rights are set aside. For those who would sacrifice human rights to achieve allegedly desirable ends, it should be known that “While they promise liberty, they, themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought into bondage.” II Peter 2:19.
In these perilous times we need to learn that two essentials for a good and effective life are flexibility and firmness; flexibility in some things and an absolute immovability in others.
Frequently, we hear that times have changed. Young people say it. Others do also. In some ways it is true. But it is a statement that can be seriously deceptive. Many things have changed, either for better or for worse. There is a new process, in packaging, promotion; travel, fashion; tools and techniques. Almost every outward aspect of life has changed, and those who attempt to do business as it was once done in the past would not likely stay long in business. The pace of life has changed. We live in a faster and different world, both a worse and better world, and in some ways we have to adjust to the times and be flexible enough to face realities.
The pace has changed; yes. But not the purpose or the principles. Let no one be deceived about flexibility as to fundamental principles. We cannot afford to be flexible in matters of honesty and land degradation. We cannot afford to be flexible in matters of virtue, old-fashioned as the word may seem. Flexibility must not mean setting aside considerate manners, sound morals, honourable obligations, or setting aside the commandments or tampering with the basic laws of life.
We must discriminate as to change and know when it is safe to be flexible and where we must be firmly fixed. To change the facing and the fashions is one thing, but to tamper with the foundations is another.
The age-old, God-given rules of honesty, morality, responsibility “commandments” if that’s what we want to call them, and even the inner voice called conscience, are still what they have always been, no matter how times have changed, how modern we feel or how flexible some things may seem.
God bless our homeland Ghana and make us wise to save it from ourselves.
Email: samueleghan@gmail.com
By Samuel Enos Eghan
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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