Another attempt to explain God in times of con preachers

Does God exist? That is a question we are not very sure about. Christian preachers never help us much here in Kenya, because their pins and potassium permanganate are often the best evidence that God was probably never there right from the start.

Their only saving grace is that whether something exists, and what we do with what exists, are two very different questions. So perhaps God does exist, only that we can be sure He is not this same bank-deity which Kenyan preachers begin crowing about earlier than the cock every Sunday dawn, till midnight.

At a personal level though, my standard answer is I do not know. I have never met God at Awasi on my way to Muhoroni. So we go to church in search of truth. Unfortunately it is in those churches that you meet buffaloes of ignorance bigger than mine. Every time you ask a Christian believer how the first three days were counted if the sun was created on the fourth day (as the Bible says), he seems to imply that God had a very big watch, and therefore He counted seventy-two hours before moulding the sun.

And when you ask – as many still do – how Joshua could have stopped the sun with a prayer when that same sun has never moved, then your typical ‘muumini’ looks at you as if they began Class One yesterday. It is a question author Collins Olaki Amayi’s book, Unleashing Your Understanding (2014), does not directly answer. However, the book appeals to your spiritual weakness from a Christian perspective. The text affirms existence of God, but you will not meet the thoughts of John Mbiti, Baruch Spinoza, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Galileo Galilei, Ignatius Loyola, or even Ngonya wa Gakonya and Alice Lakwena.

The young author seems keenly aware that most Kenyans grope in the dark. Their spirits are so hollow that they risk committing suicide. He gives you the spiritual strength with which to confront personal misfortunes such as divorce, death of your child or spouse, terminal disease, retrenchment, general loss, and even public suffering such as the politician who steals your money for five consecutive years.
In just 109 pages, the author convinces you to grab back your hope, and continue with the business of life. It is 12 simple chapters which tell you who God is, how He operates, and how you can make Him your friend. The general craft and page layout is such as I have not met with in recent history of Kenyan publishing – very neat. The publisher’s keenness is recognisable on all pages. I bumped onto only one typographical mistake: “Jesus [sic] unquestionable and complete authority in heaven and on earth!” (p.5). It is gratifying to note that Zeed ‘n’ Cee Ltd, the publisher, is a new entrant into the Kenyan publishing industry.

The author is a young graduate of Meru University. He should be congratulated on his daring effort. Age may explain the clever ducking behind biblical quotes while avoiding difficult questions which the mere mention of ‘religion’ immediately pours into the mind of every serious reader. I find nothing wrong if I derive my motivation from looking at the eye of the sun. After all, I do not see how even the loudest preacher on a Kenyan TV can be alive without that sun – not even the tiniest amoeba (the sun is the primary source of energy on this Earth, and the ancient civilisations which worshiped it knew this fact).

Unleashing Your Understanding is ‘sterilised Christianity’. Were the author aware of Nawal el Saadawi’s God Dies by the Nile (1985), he would have appreciated the pulpit conmanship which goes on in the name of Allah. It continues in the name of God and His ‘son’ Jesus Christ in the case of Christianity, but with the obliteration of the image of a woman called Mary, the same point Dan Brown puts across in The Da Vinci Code (2003).

Had he looked a little deeper, the author would have seen how almost all belief associated with religion is thoroughly anti-logic; how it relieves every shrill pastor’s wife of nearly all her brain. If only the author knew the number of rapes committed in India each day under the watchful eyes of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva! Belief in Christianity itself requires a good deal of motivation.

Yet the above weaknesses do not ruin the author’s original intention: to motivate you. Religion offers practical explanations to things we are incapable of fully grasping, and badly need assurance when we feel spiritually hollow.