A Nigerian Christmas
The title is deceptive, perhaps that’s intentional. This is not a particularly happy post. I don’t want to steal anyone’s happiness or be a grinch (although I fear I already am), it’s just that I wonder what I celebrate these days. “Running away” to the west seems more and more like the wisest option for a young man like me. Perhaps it’s for the best, but the guilt remains. As I speak, my brothers and sisters in this country are going through a lot of pain. Lost businesses, rising and worsening poverty, no one but the extremely rich is exempt.
This is more of a rant than a post. I probably have no choice but to leave. I’m not much of an entrepreneur, and it’s not like the country as a whole prizes its educated youth. However, I do look at everything around and see something brewing, and this brings me to the Nigerian Christmas.
The person Christians celebrate every 25th day of December was born into a world very similar to today’s Nigeria: Rampant corruption, ethnic and religious violence, and mini despots from merchants to the government itself. It is into this mess the deity many love or despise put on skin and bones and depended on a woman’s breast. It was in this kind of political situation that Jesus proclaimed the return of the “Kingdom of God”, which ultimately earned him his death. This volatile world where religious leaders build ever opulent temples and palaces while the poor suffer and cry for mercy, where there are millions of sore ridden Lazaruses and a shrinking number of increasingly sore hearted Rich people, and an continuously uneasy middle class fearing the loss of their small empires (like me).
It’s a situation that reminds someone like me the way christmas originally was, and still is, behind the consumerist holiday it has become: A war on the systems and people who enslave and exploit, a proclamation of “woe to the rich” and “blessed are the poor”. A word that cuts to the pastors as well as laity, right up to the highest echelons of government. It denies “charity” that is simply a disguise used to curry favour. It is world denying, exactly by being world affirming. It is what made me leave the “miracles-money industrial complex” Nigerian Christianity has become.
A lot is riding on my studies, so I’ve never been one to risk political opinions, and so that is all for the political thoughts. Family comes first for me, and maybe I’m betraying my gospel in that, but I can’t do anything as I am. I can just pray and do my part. There is time for everything, but if you want your voice to be heard, I suggest you do well where you are, and face your immediate obligations. That will back up your speech, and God will give the increase, if that is His will. Amen, and Merry Christmas.