My Disillusionment with Nigerian Christianity
I was raised a Charismatic/Pentecostal Protestant (For Nigerians, think MFM, RCCG, e.t.c.), so my statements concern that line of churches.
I’ve never really been comfortable in church. I grew up hopping churches, that didn’t help. My mother is a very intelligent person, I owe her a great deal in terms of how I view churches. In many ways, my view is an advance on hers: Churches aren’t perfect, the very existence of conflicting teachings should make you wary of taking too seriously one claim over another.
I’m sure a lot of Nigerians know of the various teachings I’m talking about, trivial things really, at least in hindsight: Whether or not females wearing trousers constitutes a sin (according to bad exegesis of the Old Testament laws), Head coverings (Still an issue in the west, so maybe this one – Note: due to its long history, not the fact of its presence in the west – isn’t trivial.), “Speaking in Tongues”, and so on. Honestly, I’d like to say there are no trivial issues, but the way these are taken (at the expense of the most central teachings, like the incarnation) makes me characterize them this way. We have far bigger problems with church members understanding what the gospel actually entails more than we have with Aunty Nkechi wearing Jeans trouser and flashing painted nails to church last week.
It got worse. I started down a slope when I started reading more serious theology, written by Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and liturgical Protestant (Lutheran, some reformed, Anglicans, e.t.c.) theologians. For those who hear the word liturgy and don’t know the meaning, Liturgy is simply worship with meaningful rituals. Every church is liturgical, but some more than others. We can say God allows multiplicity of expression, but God is also not an author of confusion. When churches became detached from history, the multiplicity that appeared didn’t express the faith well, rather it expressed entertainment: Stages instead of altars, entertainment instead of worship, looking to “feel” the Spirit instead of partaking of the incarnated Christ’s body and blood.
Reading through the various meanings behind various liturgies (They have multiplicity, but are historically conscious), I saw a light, a beauty I had been searching for. The gap between reasoning, logic, and revelation that my childhood churches had instituted was crossed:
I ceased my belief in the popular depictions of the “Rapture” (The rapture happened at the first Christmas till the first Easter 2000 years ago, happens every sunday, when Christ meets, judges, and saves us in His bread-body and wine-blood, and will happen at the end of time, without any of the fuss of a seven year in between)
There is nothing wrong in theology and philosophy, they aren’t “head knowledge” contrasted to, and opposing “revelation knowledge”, instead revelation knowledge is God Himself redeeming “head knowledge”.
The Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and other “High Liturgy” Churches aren’t evil satanic cults, and the fact that they may appropriate popular depictions and activities of other “pagan” Deities for their saints isn’t so different from appropriating a microphone, used to utter blasphemies in the past, to preach the gospel.
The Spirit isn’t shamanistic. I don’t need to roll on the floor before we know He is here. He is omnipresent.
The Bible is not God’s word in the same sense I am the author of this post. God didn’t dictate the words. Not everything written there has to be “historical” in the sense it has often been put.
The Basis of our Faith isn’t “The Bible”, it is the resurrection. Without the resurrection, the bible is worthless to us, and without the resurrection, like Paul says in that very same bible, we are to be most pitied.
Worship isn’t having goosebumps at a music concert, and a concert isn’t a service. Worship is sacrifice, and the way we offer a sacrifice as christians is to partake of the bread and wine, the current form of his body by which we are made His body.
There is more, but this post would go on forever (and I didn’t mention my universalism, which now makes me odd, even in liturgical traditions). The entertainment/motivational (or “condemnational”) speech service makes me cringe usually. It’s not that there aren’t good christians (I have met wonderful brothers and sisters from all traditions, offline and online), and not that there isn’t truth from the mouths of pastors, they just work in an immensely flawed system, a system that has more in common with the “satanic” entertainment industry some of them condemn so much – with its stages, performances and general marketing – than with the gospel they want to preach. That is why it is rather easy to move from performing on church stages to club stages if they want greater fame. Pastors look like, preach like, and behave like business men, motivational speakers and marketers, rather than Pastors. I know it’s not easy to see if you’re brought up in that system. It is obvious, yes, but the obvious is often the hardest to see.
This system, the system of Christian services that is entertainment-like and business-like (which then goes on to affect every area of one’s faith) is the breeding ground for so many charlatans who, following and perverting the system used by well meaning pastors, claim miracles and swindle you of your money, time, and energy; and Nigeria, being filled with the poor who are desperately looking for a way out of this hell of a country, turn up in droves to see the exalted charlatan – The very embodiment of an antichrist – entertain you with light shows and smoke machines, performance of staged “miracles” and give lies disguised as motivational speeches disguised as sermons. These guys then give good pastors a bad rap. I’m sure it’s more complicated than this, with pastors being the mixture of the two sides at times, but I blame the church system, It bears a resemblance to the very same corrupt Roman Catholic System that led Martin Luther to start the Protestant Reformation.
For now I remain outside traditions, I want to join a liturgical tradition if I can, but school is taking my time. Perhaps God still has something I need to know before I commit. I implore whoever reads this to be patient, I am not slandering your faith. These are my reasons, not yours. You can stay where you are, I’m not saying your faith is invalid, and I’m not saying liturgical traditions are blameless. I just can’t stay with you, I find the liturgical traditions to be more in line with what can be called “Historical Christianity”, a better expression of the faith’s deep truths; and in this I still am very “Protestant” in my thinking. If anyone replies with the tired old anti-intellectualist excuse to the effect of “It’s because of too much knowledge, you’re confused and have lost your way”, I won’t respond, since you’re instantiating exactly the mindset that made me leave in the first place. Thank you for reading.