Many are still surprised that in spite of the overwhelming presence of churches across the country, Nigeria is nothing but a nation on her knees in morals and good conducts. Even Christian leaders are at loss over the challenge of moral decadence their faith has seemed unable to combat.
A cleric once said that the Church in Nigeria is sick, unwell, unhealthy and in need of critical change and restoration. The needed change and resuscitation, according to the cleric, requires repentance because repentance results in spiritual transformation.
Studies continue to show that comparing the churched with the un-churched Nigerians, in a number of categories (cheating, fornication, exaggerating resumes etc), there was little difference in the ethical views and behaviour of the churched and un-churched. Unfortunately, some would say, the body of Christ has suffered the same kind of moral erosion as the worldly brothers and sisters. Somewhere along the path, Christians filed dissolution papers, commitment to the Kingdom has been violated and the Church is now awaiting the final decree of divorce between Christian beliefs and Christian behaviours as seen in moral life and in public behaviour.
This fact alone, they argue, gives sufficient cause to re-evaluate the authoritative claims of the Kingdom of God upon individuals and churches alike. The greatest threat to Christianity in the 21st century, according to these people, is not in ritualism, dogma or orthodoxy, but rather it is the disconnection between belief and behaviour. Consistency in Christian lifestyle, they say, is no longer expected in the personal and corporate life of believers.
The startling statistics revealing the disconnection between Christian belief systems and practice, are pathetic to say the least. The effect the Christian disconnect has had upon pastors, lay leaders and the eyes of the watching world is alarming. Many view the church as an irrelevant and hypocritical institution.
The spiritual and moral decay of the lives of believers, the breakdown of marriage and family and the lack of spiritual depth and growth among confessing Christians, have all reached depressing proportions. There is no doubt that many will agree that the life values of Christian youth and adults are often indistinguishable from the world’s life values. By observation, the beliefs of Christians are largely the same as the beliefs of non-Christians.
Nigerians generally are naturally enthusiastic religious people, another Christian leader writes. According to him, the minarets blast five times a day simultaneously across the length and breadth of the country, calling the people of the Islamic faith to prayers. He continues: “Wherever your location is, you cannot claim not to hear it except those living in any of the Government Reservation Areas. A Muslim does not believe he has completed his personal house until a mosque is erected in the compound. Many in the Islamic faith endeavor to perform Umra in far away Mecca as many times as possible to make special prayers.
“Every street and corner of all our big cities, villages and hamlets, are full of churches. The Sunday services are filled to full capacity, some running three or more sessions. In spite of all these, corruption, dishonesty, moral decadence, decay, injustice, cheating, bribery, extortion, stealing and looting of government treasuries are on the increase. Could it be people other than these faithful worshipers are the ones perpetrating these evils? But I once met a policeman who wore a tag on his uniform, with an inscription “Touch not my anointed….” yet he was harassing and extorting motorists on the highway. I had thought that the religious houses are there to mould the characters of the worshipers in order to have a peaceful and habitable society, where all and sundry will live in brotherly love without being difficult to one another but instead be helpful to one another. Is it that these preachings are no longer emphasised on the pulpit or is it the worshipers that rub them off their ears the moment the services are ended and return to their different businesses as usual?
“Where have things gone wrong? Nigeria was a lot better when the churches and mosques were not as many. I want to blame the departure from the uprightness that was in existence up to the early part of the 70’s for the poverty and moral laxity that has plagued the nation ever since. The poverty itself was borne out of the greed of the ruling class that emerged and their handlers, the civil servants.
“The greed and selfishness of the perpetrators were what the church and the mosque should have attacked fiercely and mobilised the citizens to do also. Instead, it was heresies and imbalance preaching that overtook the pulpits.
“Emphasis shifted from the Cross largely to the stomach. I must not be misunderstood; poverty can easily make one to lose heaven. This informed the prayer of Augur in Proverbs 30:7-9: ‘Two things have I required of Thee (God); deny me them not before I die: Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me. Lest I be full, and deny you, and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the Name of my God in vain.’
“Poverty, when overwhelming can easily make anyone to derail the faith and make him or her do ungodly things.
“However, the Cross, in relation to the one on which Jesus died, is understood by the Church from time immemorial, as an emblem (symbol) of suffering. Yet this is what the Lord said His followers must take up. The instruction to whoever will be His disciple, to take up the Cross – was the major emphasis of His message throughout His ministrations on earth, which was well documented by all the gospel writers. Mathew recorded Him: “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine” (Matt.10:38). Luke recorded Him: “And whomsoever doth not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). The young rich man who claimed to have kept all the laws from his youth was told by the Lord one thing he lacked: “Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor and thou shall have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross and follow me” (Mk.10:21).
“When Peter rebuked Jesus for talking about a suffering that was awaiting Him, He warned Peter and the crowd very sternly: “Whoever wants to be my follower, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Luke recorded same incident as: “take up his cross Daily—-“(Luke 9:23).
“The consequences of being a disciple of Christ are ones that attract problems and difficulties because Christians cannot pursue the comforts of life the way the world does. Genuine Christians would rather suffer deprivation than to compromise with uprightness and anything that did not conform to the Bible teaching standards or Christian ethics. This face of the Cross was once the main emphasis on the pulpits.
“Unfortunately within the twinkling of the eyes, the preaching on majority of the pulpits tilted totally only to this face of this Cross that symbolises deliverance and erroneously added to it, is the right to possession of materials in abundance in what is referred to as “prosperity for all Christians” to the neglect of the face of the Cross that symbolizes partnership in Christ’s suffering and non-conformity with the world. The slogan in the mouths of many of today’s Christians is “Suffering is not for God’s children, or Christians are supposed to have the best of things in the world”. So, Christians today in whatever employment they find themselves participate with unbelievers in full glare: fraud, whether of the government or whoever, extortion, taking and giving of gratification / bribery, under the cover or illusion that it is God’s wish for them to prosper. There is no inhibition to engage in any business, not caring whether it violates the principles of Christianity or not. They afterwards return to the church with donations and praises to their sweet mouthed pastor who had predicted it for them as a year of wonders, surprises etc. Christians do no longer consider it a shame to acquire possessions and live completely beyond their visible legitimate earnings. Yet we are supposed to be the light and conscience of the world. This is where things bec
ame uncontrollable because there are no more differences in the morals of those who are supposed to be the conscience of the society and others described as the people of the world. In short, the checks to frauds, extortion and all ungodly behavior were lost.
“In Nigeria, in the earlier time, the born-again Christians did not announce themselves on the microphones or speakers. Their character and their behaviour did. They were quite few in the work places, in schools and on the campuses. But they could not be mistaken. Even in churches, they could easily be identified, because they were separated in and from the crowd. I am not talking about those who thought that dressing poorly was a way of identifying themselves as Christians or thought that staying aloof, not taking interest or not being bothered with what went on around them was an identity for Christianity.
“These ‘Born Agains’, upheld anything that was righteous, just and pure. They distanced themselves from anything that had the appearances of dishonesty, cheating and embezzlement. They would rarely be lured. They were a threat and reproach to the sinful world. Once upon a time this was the behavior of Christians in Nigeria.
“However, within a short time, all these have changed. The new generations of pulpits have been replaced with religious falsehood. The preaching of prosperity in abundance for all Christians coming from the pulpits has opened the floodgate of the church to all who want to be rich, purporting to accept Christ without a renewal or regeneration of the mind, leading to the degrading of the Christian virtues, which was once cherished. So Christianity, in my observation as of today, in Nigeria, has become a cosmetic or a superficial thing.
“Preachers and Christians today have created their own imaginations and ideas of those things that will only glorify God. Possession of materials in abundance, as opposed to humble living alone will glorify God, forgetting that the Lord Himself came to the world through a family of humble background and in all His utterances, He said nothing favorable of wealth because of the danger of one’s attention being driven away from God to material things. He did not condemn the rich however, as long as it is righteously acquired and properly managed i.e without shifting attention from heaven.
“The situation, which today we think in our imagination will alone glorify God is the one which depicts us not as an ordinary man, but a super power where anywhere we are, we make things to happen, we change any situation which we are not comfortable with at the Name of Jesus. We do not want affliction. Those will not glorify God, we think.”
In all of these, what do the leaders of the church in Nigeria have to say? The Eagle Online spoke with some of them.
Christianity in Nigeria is all noise but little spiritual substance – Rev. Fred Odutola, Head, Bible society of Nigeria: The main thing is that if you are a Christian, it must show in every aspect of your life. Today, what we have are people going to church to seek God’s hands instead of seeking God’s face. That is why you will see people with Christian names messing up all around. That is why it is said that our Christianity in Africa is thousands of kilometers wide but less than an inch deep; which is a slap on our face. It is not supposed to be like that. But what do our leaders talk about? In churches today, you have reserved seats for a category of people. Even in pentecostal churches where members are supposed to be equal, they will tell you certain seats are reserved. Those for whom they were reserved may not even come to church. We must therefore go back to the original because it is like all we are doing is eye service. It is a clarion call that we must not allow Christ to be blasphemed by our operations. Many are in existence today. Why is it so? It is so because it has become gospel of the stomach. Somebody committed an offence, may be adultery, in a church and as punishment he’s found not fit to continue. Few months later, he leaves the church to go and start his own. How can somebody who is not disciplined in one church go and start another and still claim to be working for God? But I think it will better if the government can allow the Corporate Affairs Commission or religious leaders to screen people before they start churches. This could be another way to check the influx of the never-do-well into the hallowed service of God.
It’s all the fault of church leaders – Pastor Wale Adefarasin, Guiding Light Assembly: I agree with the observation of high level of immorality in the midst of superfluous number of churches. In many churches, corruption seems to be getting worse, morality is lacking. So I agree that this problem exists in churches in spite of the large number of churches. But the problem is not the of churches, the problem is what are the churches doing, how deep is the faith of Christians. And I think this is an important point for leaders of churches to emphasise: raising the character of their congregation. Then they will begin to see a lot of impact because followers trust their pastors and they listen to them. Therefore, if a pastor continues to teach them Christian character and values, it will make a tremendous difference in our nation. I think that is where the problem lies: what the people going to church are being taught.
Society now the one changing the church, rather than otherwise – Dr. Francis Bola Akin John, International Church Growth Ministries: The church is the one that will change the society and not the other way round. The basic reason God put the society in the world is for the church to transform it, but unfortunately today we see the opposite. The church can change the society when we begin by changing the leaders. Let the leaders be leaders after God’s heart. Let the leaders be leaders that are truly transformed and believe and live by the Bible. If they can do that, then gradually and one by one, not by military fiat or revolution, the church will be transformed. Now, if you were in Nigeria in the 60s and 70s, you will recall that the church really transformed the nation. By then, companies came to the church to recruit workers because of the moral quality church members were made of. But they don’t do that today because most of the people who profess Christianity and are company workers, are the ones running the companies down.
Not the church but human nature to blame for moral decadence in Nigeria – Archbishop Giwa Amu, Goodnews International Ministries: There are not many churches already. We only have few churches and many churches are still needed. We should have what is called neighbourhood churches, because some people travel from Ketu to Winners Chapel and that is too far. There should be churches around you in your community and the more churches you have around the neighbourhood, the pastors will go there and ethics will then begin to manifest. Besides, human nature are diverse. For example, years ago, in the time of Okotie-Eboh, Tafawa Balewa etc, if somebody stole ten thousand pounds, people would shout their heart out. But now, people steal one billion and some don’t even take one billion, they want N10 billion. It is the developmental mentality nature of human being. Just like young girls in the university, when they go shopping for bags, shoes and the rest, the expenses are more than my salary for one month. Whereas before, ladies could buy necklace less than two thousand naira. But now if you ask them, they will tell you things have skyrocketed. One needs to train his mental ability and accept that situation is progressing and you just pray and then move along with it, that is the only thing.
Churches are no longer like the old church – Rev. Emmanuel Oludaisi Adekunle, Diocesan Bishop of Abeokuta: It is the duty of the church to positively influence the society in which she operates, lead and direct the masses to the path of their total emancipation and empowerment. The coming of the missionary gave us liberation from slave trade and va
rious ethnic wars. We were taught how to love and live in concord with our fellow men. Their entrance brought civilisation, western and technical education, orthodox medicine, improved agricultural systems and economic seedlings, agro-industries (fruit processing and cotton ginnery), journalism and exposed us to our legal and human rights to mention a few. But today’s church is failing in that duty. Rather than the fruit of love and spirit that should be coming forth from the church, what we experience nowadays is the opposite of that. The church must wake up and affect the society.
The church is to blame – Rev. Dafes Philip Mwelbish, Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria, Plateau State chapter: The decay in the society is not helped by the attitude of the church, where the mode of dressing among youths, both in and outside the church, has taken a shameful dimension. Again, when the issue of secret societies is mentioned, it is the names of Christians that are heard. I think parents and religious leaders have a lot to do by watching over their children and guiding them aright. The church must wake up and fight evil. We must work together for the kingdom of God and put the devil to shame, instead of occupying ourselves with matters that are earthly. If Christians do not put their acts together for the progress of the church, then Christianity may be over-powered by the world.