The introduction of Christian religion in Nigeria by the Europeans or best placed, Irish missionaries was not meant to eradicate our culture.
Meanwhile, there is already a big gap between the Christian religion brought by the Europeans and the one we practice at the moment.
I do not think that the one we were introduced to, was filmed in hate. Christian religion as it was preached, was majorly on love, and deep appreciation of others gifts and talents.
The early Christians retired to sharing many things, starting from their proceeds, landed properties and most importantly loving one another.
The birth of avarice and other forms of dangerous exercises being perpetrated by some Christian leaders and her members are not the teachings of the European missionaries.
Let me remind us, that any religion that is focused on the negative advancement of evil, is not meant to stay. It is contrary to the ethic of humanism. If you can as well understand, for those who think that Christianity as a religion brought many untold challenges, it is mainly how we carry it out, that matters, not the religion itself.
Christian religion is rooted in culture and it does allow every section to apply their own culture in the worship of the Supreme being. Especially, when the culture has an atom of Supreme ethics.
As it stands now, our mode of worship in this part of the world is different, due to the cultural undertone. It suffices to mention that our activity as a Christian begs the accommodation of culture, our culture in order to be validated.
There are many things carried out today in the guise of Christianity. Many religious pastors have replaced the teachings of faith with first and second collection and it doesn’t bother them that the spiritual culture, which supposed to be sowed basically by breaking the truth from the Bible is taking a sorrowful dismissal.
The European missionaries never taught us spiritual competition. A stage where each pastor boast of how best he performs and how many crowds he can pull from other side of the road, maybe from the content of his words, vocabulary and mastery of the Scripture.
Materialism was not one of the things they brought to us. It is evident now that a good percentage of our religious pastors are fighting tooth and nail to polish their posterity by accumulating material things. That is why you are likely to see a pastor own about ten houses in different parts of the world, drive the most executive cars and even go to the extent of procuring a private jet for his or her comfort.
The list will be endless if I continue to mention where our practice of Christianity has derailed from that of Europeans.
Moreover, it will be nice I remind us that Europeans are still going to Church and they are by far more spiritually refined than us. This is for some of us who are always coming with the logic that those who brought Christianity to us are no longer practising it. That they do not worship like us or crowd the Church building doesn’t mean that they are no longer participants. Or they are suffering from a spiritual dwarfish mentality.
One thing is very remarkable among the Europeans, there is time for everything. When you supposed to be busy in your working place, you are in the chapel praying against those who are pursuing you. The time you can use to research and develop your world, you are busy chasing rats and cockroaches in the Church. And when others who address their time very well, are progressing, you term them to be ritualists or antichrist.
Europeans understand the knowledge economy than us who are pontificating on the altar of the spiritual economy. The worship of God is not centred on faith only. Pope John Paul II who published an encyclical on Fides et Ratio, knew the advantage of reason in the economy of human salvation. So, while you speak against the Europeans for distorting our life with the Christian religion, check too if the ‘form’ of Christianity you are practising is attentive to love or something contrary.
