By Frank Tietie
One of my tragic realisations is that there are very few people who have your interest in this world. You really hardly have real friends because people really care only about themselves. Therefore, I have tagged many people in my life as USER-FRIENDLY friends who only use you.
Such tactical friends are in your life for your possible usefulness to them one day. They really don’t care about you. Not that you are indispensable because they ‘ll turn to another the moment you are no longer around or relevant.
The reason why many are tempted to make themselves relevant is to avoid the loneliness and the deprivation of social intercourse. It is a mental health issue.
A greater tragedy that I have come to realise is that the larger majority of self acclaimed followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ, appear to be the biggest culprit of self interest. I mean plain selfishness. They have transferred the USER-FRIENDLY mentality into matters of faith.
So Jesus Christ is now meant to be used they way they use people. It is not He using them but they using Him. So it goes like this: “You need anything? Turn to Jesus”. You want to be president? You want to make money? You want a wife? You want a child? You want promotion? Whatever you wants, masked in needs, Jesus will provide. That has been the popular neo- christian message. After all, Jesus Christ, the Lord is quoted to have promised He will supply every need according to His riches in glory.
Meanwhile, who really cares whether the Lord Himself needs anything? I thought even if He didn’t need anything, He does need, more than anything, for the name of His Father (and our Father) to be hallowed, magnified and glorified on earth. He also wants the Kingdom (Government, and God’s way of doing things) done on earth; and equally, importantly, the will of God to be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Does anyone really care how much He needs these to be done? That is the crux of the prayer He taught us.
In the once very prosperous Western worlds of America and Europe, not much fervour has been put into the pursuit of the Saviour for things they already have. People over there have been mostly saved and become the followers of Jesus Christ when touched by the power of His love and the working of His eternal Spirit in the heart and mind of a man.
Now, have we forgotten the message that the Lord’s death as an example of no greater love is to cause us to share His love and life?
Our encounter with the power of His love is to share His blessings and not make a career of amassing transient wealth which takes much of our time and attention?
Jesus’ power has been purveyed to be used to achieve anything. We now have a Christianity that exists only to meet fleshly needs.
Jesus Christ has been marketed as the meeter of all needs hence, the masses have thronged to congregations drawn more out of intimidating assertions of digital prelates who, rather than draw the people to the Saviour’s love, they promote themselves as so highly anointed and thereby draw the people to themselves. They are building kingdoms and empires for themselves rather than for Jesus Christ.
I sometimes see most of these preachers atimes as ‘jazzmen’. They talk and act like magicians by their claims, some of which are factual anyway, yet with skewed motives and wrongful appropriations.
They have wrongly defined successful Christianity by a measurement of how much a believer has used Jesus to acquire material things and not how much he or she looks like Jesus. In fact, dare to look too much like Jesus these days and you might be mocked by the Church till you crave obscurity.
Would Jesus still be needed if all our perceived needs are met? I have recently come to see the poverty of mainstream Christianity. Its empty boasts and a parade of unregenerated lives which have little or no impact in today’s crazy world.
There is no much difference in the style, manner, means and motivation between how adherents of mainstream Christianity pursue material things with how the rest of the world does.
Therefore, like the apocalyptic Laodicean Church, many of today’s churches are poor. I mean those churches that have plenty of money without commensurate good works to all persons whether or not they share the faith in Jesus Christ.
In fact, much of the modern church is very bankrupt on account of biblical standards. The lack of good works which naturally flow from the Saviour’s love is evident that a revival is sorely needed.
One of the biblical principles of good works is that since the Father God gives rain and sunshine to be enjoyed by good and bad people so should Christians do good to all men without distinction, with some preference for believers. That is the principle that caused early missionaries in Nigeria to build hospitals and schools with scholarships even in places, predominantly occupied by non-believers in Jesus Christ. They only hoped their love and faith would become contagious by their good works. They didn’t discriminate.
When modern Christians fail to do good works, it seems they no longer believe in the faith principle of storing treasures in heaven.
Modern churches spend much of their resources in preaching material success and not really to broadcast the power of God’s love to save the soul.
One area one can see so clearly how bereft the modern churches have become is how much the majority of Christians now fear death. They are more afraid of leaving the earth that they have come to so love by over-indulgence. They prefer the earth to meeting with their beloved Saviour in heaven’s sublime. They easily forget the words used to describe saints who made it to Heaven.
A voice in Heaven said concerning the saints: “They have conquered (him) Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death”.
Secretly, most materially successful christians really don’t like the heaven idea because they don’t know what is up there awaiting. Heavenly life has not been much of modern Christian theology. Heaven has been presented by the way, as a place where the soul of a Christian will go to by Jesus’s insurance, on account of accident or unavoidable death.
Heaven is secretly considered by many Christians to be a boring idea.
Majority of modern day Christians are a very weak and fearful people who are full of compromise in order to maintain a puny status quo. They cringe at the enormity of the demands of living out the will of God with a declared public faith in Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Modern Christians have become like everyone else. No more marked distinctions even in ethical matters. Thus, traditional Africans have even become more vociferous against ills, than the church has been.
When Christians lie and compromise it is considered as wisdom, sometimes sacrilegiously attributed to the Holy Spirit. They have forgotten the import of the injunctions to be light of the world and Christ ambassadors.
Abuse the interests of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Christians might be quiet but touch a material interest of the church and the real stuff would be made manifest. Anger and viciousness even against and among Christians will set in from nowhere.
This modern twisted Christian worldview is not without repercussions. It has opened all of us to deceptions. We now even deceive ourselves. Shall we continue in this manner of self-deception?
Well, it looks like the signs of the end, one might say, but do we as Christians still believe as part of our creed that the world will come to an end? That sounds too old-fashioned now.
Therefore, Father, Lord have mercy on us and by Your grace in Christ, lead us in the pathways that You have laid for each of us. Save us from ourselves. May we fulfil the reason and purpose for which You have created each and everyone of us.
May we look to your grace to help us do Your Will. I ask that you bless our country and its leaders. Give peace, love, protection and prosperity to all the people of Nigeria whether or not they believe in You. For Christians and non-Christians, manifest Your goodness to them all. I pray with all that I am in the name of Jesus Christ, by Whose shed blood we are forgiven and restored. Amen.Thank You Father.
▪Tietie, a lawyer & human rights defender, writes from Abuja
PS
Frank first published this writing in September, 2013. This revised edition of the article is published in honour of all Christian martyrs in North Eastern Nigeria, particularly in honour of the Reverend Lawan Andimi, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Chairman of Adamawa State who was recently beheaded by Boko Haram terrorists. It is by the blood of such martyrs that revival and victory will emerge for they overcame evil and the devil by the blood of the lamb and they loved not their lives unto death. The memory of all Christian martyrs will forever remain blessed.
