The passport to hell

NATIVES of Sikaman are very religious people. Procure a Bible, hire an interpreter, get four benches, a chair, table and two candles and arrange them like you see in a church room. You have established a church and the natives will start coming to you for consultation. The ladies will come around mid-night if you ask them to.

Getting followers is normally not a problem but if you are finding it difficult, you only have to learn to be a good dancer so that your floor shows will be a side attraction.

Start a funky Christian hymn and dance in accompaniment. An old retired witch passing by is likely to join you. She wants last minute salvation. For sure, a civil servant wanting to fight VAT spiritually will also join the fold with his own brand of kpalogo. A church has indeed been born.

The demise or survival of such a mushroom church will, however, depend on the competence, cooperation or roguery of the interpreter. If for instance he is not properly fed before a church service, he can decide to give his own interpretations to reflect the extent of his stomach palaver. It is, in fact, a form of strike action Kumi Preko!

“You are standing on holy ground”, the pastor will say. “If you don’t receive your miracle and healing here, then Jesus is not alive. So long as Jesus is alive, no disease, no problem will come here and go back unsolved. Halleluyah!”

The hungry interpreter who wants to subvert the process of the new church will interpret thus “The pastor says this is a church for idiots and those who are idle and have nothing doing. It is also a church for those who want entertainment like you can get in the discos. Meanwhile he says the service is becoming boring so if you’re feeling sleepy you can go home and sleep”.

The pastor will immediately sense foul play and will call the interpreter aside to ask him whether he is normal.

Are you mental?” he’d ask.

“You gave me only one ball of kenkey so whatever you were saying didn’t enter into my ears”

“Did you use the kenkey to seal your damn ears?”

“No, I mean it was not sufficient for my stomach”.

“So if I give you three balls can you handle the job?”

“Yes, but if you make it four, I’ll not make any mistake again. But the fish must be double, or else I’ll develop kwashiorkor”.

With the increase in the ration of the almighty interpreter and a rise in his Sunday stipend, the church gains ground and before long, membership increases with beautiful women in the majority. They have got problems that can only be solved at the beach at midnight.

Yes, most women go to church for various reasons among which are learning to dance, seeking marriage, courting potential boyfriends, making business smooth and flowing and seeking healing for fibroids. Some women also go to avoid their sexy husbands who always desire to start climbing them as early as 7.30 p.m. By the time they return from the evening service such husbands are tired of waiting and resort to snoring.

Men also are not left out of the Christian show. They attend to pray so that God can reveal to them whether their wives are witches or not, because since marriage, they have not prospered. They’ve tried everything including lotto, but still … There must be setting behind!

Well, prosperity or not, Christian churches have been established all over the place. At Ashaiman alone, there are about 500 churches or Christian sects, some fellowshipping in converted kitchens and under trees. Many are breakaway factions but they all have the same objectives together with the orthodox churches that is SAVING SOULS. But are Ghanaian churches really saving souls?

Whether orthodox, spirito-charismatic charismato-magical, almost all churches in Sikaman have tragically deviated from the virtues of soul winning and now concentrate on financial matters.

Luckily, one man of God, Reverend J. K. Atto-Brown who obviously was becoming embarrassed by the unbridled and unwarranted ways of ministers of the word who concentrate more on money than saving souls, spoke his piece of mind.

“It is a well-known fact that a greater part of our worship time is often devoted to fund-raising activities, while very little attention and time is given to the spiritual message to feed the souls of members”, he said.

Reverend Atto-Brown also observed that the method used by churches to collect monies from their members clearly shows how Satan could easily adulterate spiritual worship with materialistic concerns.

Not long after he spoke his mind, another Reverend Minister, Francis Botchway, lambasted ministers of churches for using too many methods to collect monies from their members.

In fact, financial issues have gained priority in our churches to such extents that organizing offerings and collections have become major activities of the modern church. The sermon is hurriedly preached to give way to more serious matters – silver collection, etc.

Members are compelled to donate towards the building of a new church house that never gets built, a-new organ that never gets bought, pastor’s welfare, pastor’s transfer, harvests, funerals, tithing and sundry others.

Contributing to some of these things isn’t a bad idea but anything which becomes compelling, straining and excessive to the point that members are distressed and feel exploited is not good for the church.

Moreover, a large percentage of these monies are not properly accounted for and pastors often quarrel with their church elders over embezzlements of church funds and the like.

The whole palaver has become one suggesting that you have to pay money to get salvation and a visa to heaven, which must not be the case. Salvation is free. It also suggests that if you are poor then you better stay at home and go to hell. Poverty, therefore, becomes a passport to hell.

Anyway, the self-appointed Reverend Kofi Kokotako recently told me that there is no place for the poor man in heaven because heaven is a luxurious joint. The guy is not serious.

Anyhow, our Christian churches need to be reformed. The exploitation must stop so that even the poor can have the chance of getting salvation. Worshipping God must not be another luxury. Must It?

This article was first published on Saturday May 27, 1995