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Defiling the temple of God
The body is the temple of God – THE HOLY BIBLE
WHEN it comes to this time of year, there is often great sexual excitement and people appear to be on heat. They start dreaming about female thighs, hot pairs of buttocks, slim sexy waists and voluptuous sensual bodies. When they sleep, they have wet dreams, and in the mornings they thank the gods of Larteh that when it comes to matters of the waist, they can also be counted.
The excitement is not for nothing. It is engendered by the wild expectation of another round of beauty contests from the regional level to the national level in order to separate the vultures from the crows. By the time it is all over rapists are super-charged because they have a low sexual boiling point; born-agains backslide and general male libido heightens.
Kofi Kokotako was just telling me that if a sexual temperature test is conducted at the next grand finale of the Miss Ghana contest for all males in the audience including the judges, it would be seen with much effort that 95 per cent or more of them would fail the test and be found with real stiffness between their thighs. It would all go to confirm the fact that the contest is not a decent one.
Kokotako who is now a man of God, once confessed to me that he got excited when the show was getting to fever-pitch with the girls showing their fleshly wares in bikini and swimsuits. Today, he is a Reverend and if he is fasting, you’ll think he is rather on hunger strike.
“The body is the temple of the Lord,” Kokotako preached to me last weekend. “People have since the beginning of time desecrated this temple of the Lord. Today moral degeneration is at an all-time low comparable to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. People are indeed defiling the temple of the Lord. Women use their private parts to smuggle cocaine and weed; women expose their thighs and buttocks in the full glare of lustful males in the name of beauty contests or material gain, and some women actually hawk their bodies for cash. The Lord is aggrieved.”
I have never seen Kofi so emotional. When he told me he was going to be a Reverend, I laughed aloud. I thought it must be for the financial gain. But the man has really transformed, breaking his friendship with mahogany bitters, gin-and-lime, and preaching the word with vim and power.
Yet, if 30 per cent of Sikaman natives could change completely and become like Reverend Kofi Kokotako, Sikaman will turn to be the abode of angels.
And if all young girls could engage in a measure of reflection and contemplate issues concerning womanhood and refuse to be exploited, used, paraded semi-naked and virtually made fools just because of material gain, the world would be blessed and free from calamities. We are sinning too much with our bodies!
Some see beauty contests and people see it as entertainment. In another sense, it is a subtle form of societal officially endorsing and confirming that women are nothing more than sex objects and have been created just for the fun and pleasure of men. To prove this, they must be conned and paraded almost naked and in the process applauded or booed.
Those adjudged beautiful get weighty prizes and the ‘money no fine’ get pittance and told better luck next time. And they grin like baboons unknowing that they have been exploited, debased, cheapened and laughed at.
At the Beijing Conference, a group of hot-headed Japanese women demonstrated and organised press conferences to protest the exploitation of women under the guise of beauty contests during which they are portrayed as sex objects with no value apart from being ideal to be lusted after. Those who attended the conference came back with a different view about beauty pageants.
They should rise up against this idea of yearly beauty pageants which have debased womanhood to the extent that the beauty of a woman is no longer seen as sacred but a thing of no value.
And if this has been the case, why wouldn’t rapists also seek to claim their fair share since the whole human female is being cheaply advertised, under-invoiced and can literally be had at a discount?
I don’t really know, but I have the feeling that this beauty contest idea is fast losing popularity anyway. At the last Greater Accra regional contest, it was difficult getting contestants to participate. There was only one willing contestant and girls in the audience had to be cajoled, begged and virtually forced to participate when they didn’t want to.
Although the eventual beauty queen came from Greater Accra, I guess it was wrong for the organisers to have compelled people in the audience to participate. They must realise by the disinterest being shown that their annual programme is becoming unpopular and must be scraped, leaving the dance competition.
It is tragic that although it is becoming unpopular at the national level, it is catching on fast at the local level, though. Beauty contests are organized at end-of-year parties, funerals, graduation ceremonies, outdooring, KVIP commissioning ceremonies and birthday parties.
Some of these are organised decently with no buttocks palaver. If the organisers cannot organise the national contests in a similar way then, they better stop wasting the time of the girls, and desecrating their beauty and parading them as only good for sex and nothing else.
Are we tired of categorising God’s wonderful creation into sheep and goats, vultures and crows, the beautiful and the ugly?
Females should not allow themselves to be used in such indecent ways. They must have pride in womanhood and think first and foremost of their bodies as the holy temple of God which should not be defiled as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
This article was first published on Saturday April 20, 1996
This week I have a very strong desire to put on my Apostolic Cap and talk about the power available to children of God which we can utilise to generate positive outcomes, in our lives.
There is a phrase in the Bible that if Christians meditate on, can immensely transform their lives. In Matthew 28:6 there is a phrase “… as he said…” according to the King James Version.
Thus phrase forms part of a statement declared by an angel of God to two women who were disciples of Jesus who had gone to his tomb early in the morning on the third day after his death.
According to the Biblical account, the stone covering the entrance of the tomb had been rolled away and an Angel was sitting on it and he made the statement to the effect that the Jesus they are seeking is not there and that he had risen, as he said before his death.
His resurrection affirmed the authenticity and dependability of the word of Jesus and therefore the word of God.
Christianity has to do with faith in the word of God. Pastor Mensa Otabil said if we view Christianity as an inside out view, you would go inside to operate the power that is in you.
As a Christian, the spirit of God and therefore the power of God, dwells in you. Anyone who is aware of this truth, does not go around seeking to have a so called powerful person resolve his or her spiritual issues.
Most Christians who move from prophet to prophet, do not believe that the spirit of God which operates in a Pastor or Prophet, is the same spirit that dwells in him or her.
In fact , that Christian may be more ‘powerful’ than the Prophet or Pastor he is going to for prayers because he is living a holy life, which is pleasing to God, for God is no respecter of persons according to Acts 10:34-35.
God does not give out his spirit in different measures to indwell believers. The spirit of God that dwells in a new convert, is the same spirit that dwells in a Bishop or a Prophet or an Evangelist or an Elder or a Deacon.
All you need to do as a child of God is to believe in the word of God and know that it works and that according to 1 John 4:4 we, Christians, that the Spirit of God dwells in us have overcome the world and Jesus in us, is greater than the Devil who is out in the world, wrecking havoc all around.
If we realise that we have overcome the Devil and everything he controls, then we can believe and act in faith and make declarations and just as Christ declared that he will die and on the third day, he will rise from the dead and it manifested as he said, there shall be a manifestation of our declarations also.
The problem of modern day Christians is that, a lot of them, do not study and meditate on the word of God, so they do not witness the manifestation of the power of God, in their lives.
Such an experience over time, give them the impression that the spirit of God dwells in different dimensions in believers. This then leads them to seek solutions to their challenges from so called powerful men of God.
Some Pastors also fall into this misconception of the measure of the spirit of God in believers. When the size of a Pastor’s church for instance, is not increasing the way he had been praying for self-doubt sometimes begin to set in.
Especially, if he begins to compare his church with that of say a colleague from the same Bible School, then he begins to wonder if there is not a spiritual secret he is not aware of.
This is when, if care is not taken, fellow Pastors who appears to be very successful in the ministry but are using occultic powers, could sway them from the narrow path and get them trapped in the Devil’s clutches and eventually and inevitably, destroy their lives. God bless.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
Introduction
You have been there. Twenty tabs open comparing laptops. A blank page for an email you’ve been “thinking about” for three days. A menu with 30 options and you leave hungry.
This is decision paralysis: the state where the volume of information, options, or perceived stakes prevents you from making a decision at all. It’s not laziness. It’s a cognitive overload response.
In a data-rich environment, it’s becoming the default mode for both individuals and organisations.
This article breaks down why it happens, how it shows up, what it costs, and how to break it.
1. What decision paralysis actually is?
Decision paralysis is a failure of the decision-making system to convert information into action. Psychologists call it ‘analysis paralysis’ or ‘choice overload.’
It has three components:
1. Cognitive overload: Working memory can hold between four to seven chunks of information at once. When you try to track 20 variables, the system freezes.
2. Anticipatory regret: You overestimate the pain of making the wrong choice. The brain avoids the emotional cost by avoiding the choice.
3. Ambiguity aversion: Humans prefer known risks over unknown ones. When outcomes are uncertain, we stall.
The result is not neutral. Not deciding is a decision. It costs time, momentum, and opportunity
2. Why it’s getting worse now
2.1 Infinite options
Amazon has 350 million products. Netflix has 6000+ titles. Dating apps have unlimited profiles. The paradox of choice: more options increase initial satisfaction but decrease final satisfaction and increase regret.
2.2 Information abundance without synthesis
You can find 50 studies on sleep. Each one has caveats, conflicting results, and different methodologies. Without a framework to integrate them, more data creates more confusion, not clarity. This connects directly to the “data-rich, wisdom-poor” problem.
2.3 Reversibility anxiety
In the digital age, most decisions feel permanent. A bad post goes viral. A bad hire is public on LinkedIn. A bad career move is visible. The fear of irreversible error makes people delay.
2.4 Algorithmic mirroring
Platforms show you what you already engage with. This creates an illusion that there’s one ‘best’ option you are missing. You keep searching, convinced the optimal choice is one more scroll away.
3. How it shows up
Personal Level
Cannot pick a career path after six months of ‘research’
Spend two hours choosing a movie and watch nothing
Delay sending an email because it ‘isn’t perfect’
3.1 Organisational level
Teams spend 80 per cent of time in meetings gathering data, 20 per cent deciding
Product teams delay launch waiting for “one more data point”
KPIs multiply but no strategic choice is made
3.2 Common cognitive tells:
Endless comparison tables
Asking for one more opinion
Reframing the problem instead of solving it
Feeling drained after thinking but not acting
By Robert Ekow Grimmond-Thompson
