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Opinion: Christians fail Ghana big time, money has replaced God
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I love your Christ but not Christianity. Christians are so unlike Christ”. Anyone hearing this quote for the first time, especially a Christian, will be taken aback. However, Gandhi was spot on at his time and what he said many years ago still stands tall today. The tenets or teachings of Christ are apt and so true that it should change anyone to live out at least the basic principles of true love and honesty.
The current Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Mahamudu Bawumia, at one of his campaign trails said this about the economy at the time, “when the fundamentals are weak the exchange rate will expose you”. The same is very true of the Christian living; when one’s fundamental knowledge of Christ is weak, your life style exposes you.
Talk of every sphere, nooks and crannies of this country, you would find a Christian either heading a department or a member of the team of that department; talk of the education sector, Health, sports, security, business, transport sector and politics.
The real and basic questions are: What is the population of Christians in Ghana, how many Christians are at the helm of affairs or holding bigger positions in Ghana? How many Christians challenge one another when it comes to corruption and other related vices? And finally, how many Christians are even aware or believe corruption is a sin?
The truth of the matter is, many Christians today treat Christianity like an association or an avenue where one can only seek something from God and not a “way of life”. Christianity has been reduced to mere business, where Christ’s name is used as a cover up, to extort money from people.
It is gradually reduced to a mere show, where God is literally forced to perform a miracle by hook or crook. The teachings about Christ in this country is skin deep and this is exposed in the kind of behaviour Christians put up in their families, churches, workplaces, and worse still in their relationships.
A lot of Christians’ minds are today tuned to what to expect or gain as opposed to what one also needs to do right in society.
One would imagine that with 70–80 per cent of the Christian population in Ghana and the number of churches in the country: those on social media and “trotros” (pubic buses), which have been converted into churches, corruption would have been an issue no one would even pay attention to. On the contrary, it has become a virus which has to be dealt with on daily basis.
Today, in Ghana, you could almost say the synonym of corruption is politics. Mention the word corruption in any conversation in the country and everyone’s mind races to politicians. This raises another question. How many Christians are in Politics? Corruption is bad in other sectors, worse of in most Christian homes or families.
Visit a typical market and a Christian seller will either sell a rotten or expired product to you. Take your car to a mechanic and he will either change your car spare parts with a worn out spare part or at best drain your fuel and bring you an empty fuel tank.
Visit the teacher in school or a nurse at the hospital and they are on social media the whole time. Call on the pastor and he will literally sell God’s blessing to you. Speak with the security about a crime and everything will be nipped in the bud in exchange for money.
Interestingly, these are the same people who go to church every Sunday. It is true Jesus said in Luke Chapter 5: 32 that “I did not come because of the righteous but sinners”, however, in the same Luke Chapter 15: 7 it is also true that there is more joy in heaven to see a sinner changing his or her ways or at least make an effort to live by the values of Christ’s teachings.
When you replace God with money or water down the values and principles of Christian living, your own life style will expose you. Most Christians in Ghana have failed Ghana and Christ big time through their way of life. With the overwhelming number of Christians in the country, one will expect a “Christ-like” life style, which pre-empts truthfulness, justice, fairness and above all sincere love.
Jesus invites every Christian to be light in our dark world and more importantly to be yeast to infiltrate every dark corner of the world. Nearly everyone is a perpetrator of the aforementioned. Christianity is a choice and when one chooses this lifestyle, it is no longer a choice. Christians in this country owe Ghana a genuine lifestyle and true Christian witnessing. Christian living should never be compromised
The writer is the Coordinator for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, Ghana-Liberia Province) Divine Word Missionaries: A Catholic Missionary Society.
Writer’s email: justiceandpeaceint@gmail.com or nicholasbetol@gmail.com
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.
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