Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.Quote from, OCTAVIA BUTLER
1 Nov 2020, at 10:14
PENTACOSTALISM: REFLECTIONS BY TOYIN FALOLA
Pentecostalism. Systems or institutions govern society with specific guidelines, rules, and regulations that affect each individual's behavior. Such methods and institutions persist for a long time and they contribute to the development of society. Going by this understanding, the Pentecostal community in Nigeria could be seen as an institution created to guide Christian community members as a group.
On the occasion that the institution is broken down, it allows for a mass departure from rules arranged to serve as its compass, incidentally bringing about an absence of the rule of law. The Pentecostal community in Nigeria has convulsed into the abyss of anomie, where those who have a moral and statutory mandate to guide its existence have upended the basis for creating it as an institution. Because of this occurrence, it becomes inevitable for the system to degenerate to the level where leaders engage in what Francis Fukuyama calls reciprocal altruism (Francis Fukuyama, Political Order, and Political Decay, New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication, 2014).
At the breakdown of laws and order, reciprocal altruism allows people to exchange resources and favors with individuals with whom they share genetic affiliation, such that that favor could be recycled among the same circle of people when needed. As Fukuyama has noted, keeping favors for this purpose is not in itself an amoral engagement, because it appears that such a method is favored by nature as animals (of which the human species is considered in higher order) tend to socialize with species of the same type, which once again, is called natural sociability. Therefore, humans instinctively tend to preserve their interests by adopting such techniques to avoid exposing their identity to danger and to avoid having their privileges ceded to others of different species.
This approach worked in the human circle before developed human thinking that brought about civilizations and its affiliated institutions. Even though humans have shown a considerable level of control on issues around them, which in some way delegitimizes a situation that can expose them to extant dangers, humans, out of fear, either psychological or ones caused by their imagination, still retain the tendency to degenerate into the socializing strategy where those who share similar genetic ties with them are favored.
The world's political evolution has shown that humans have not stopped natural sociability; it has only been repackaged or redesigned. This same system has manifested in the Nigerian Pentecostal community where the institution has experienced sudden natural socializing form.
Pentecostalism has brought around leaders of churches who acquire a level of wealth and simultaneously use their political integrity to fix leadership positions to individuals based on their genetic relation and not spiritual merit, which shown in what Fukuyama has termed reciprocal altruism. The reason for this is apparent, one that is not different from the preservation strategy shown by other animal species. The real concern that poverty could strike at any time and immediately expose those who are financially incapable of affecting social or political decisions inspires these leaders to scrap the moral and spiritual philosophy of Christianity that disallows favoritism.
Certain Pentecost species of Christianity in Nigeria crop up with the intention to deconstruct immemorial ideas that are etched into the Christian religion to fulfill their hero complex. So when one keenly observes the leadership interest in this community, one may unravel their unrivaled kleptomania. Indeed, it was this attitude exhibited by many Nigerian pastors during the Covid-19 lockdown protocol that was introduced by the Nigerian government as a preventive measure to the outbreak of the disease. When it was made apparent that many of these churches have the financial oxygen to finance a digital-based system where church activities could be run remotely without requiring the physical presence of a pastor or leader, many pastors were very loud in their criticism of the government about the need to reopen churches, using the excuse that lifting the lockdown injunction on the market or other activities should not exclude churches. In contrast, most of these pastors did not register their voice against police brutality, which the younger generation has undertaken against the government. Many people think that inaction was due to a lack of direct affect in their Pentecostal business.
From all indications, it is obvious that of all the attributes of Jesus Christ that the leadership of Pentecostal churches attracted, his disinterest in material possession (and money) is not one. Contemporary Nigerian Pentecostal leaders bask in the surplus of money. They have made a very single-minded devotion to having a taste of everything that the Nigerian political class has enjoyed at the taxpayers' expense. Like Nigerian politicians, Pentecostal leaders want a measure of heroic glorification and worship, which explains why most of them appreciate the ascription of the honorific appellation to their name with the mononym "Daddy." They move about, even within the confines of a church environment, with a heavy security entourage just as Nigerian politicians do. Their flair for adding a fleet of cars to their garage (not to mention private jets) shows a compelling level of similarity between both. All these examples explain why the institution has degenerated in sharp contrast to the moral character which birthed its creation. Amidst all of this, they are usually concerned about retaining their genetic circle of power. This is why these churches' successors are either direct children of the current leaders, individuals with whom they share a close affinity, or those who they are sure would return similar favors when needed. The leadership is not based on merit.
The glorification of materialism has affected the younger generation in Nigeria. This innocent generation has developed a mindset where they establish a fraudulent association of religiosity with astonishing wealth. Strangely, it has enabled them to pursue every opportunity with interest to generate affluence. There are churches with young pastors who would not accept the invitation to pray at child dedication programs if a certain amount of money is not pledged. Nigeria boasts numerous occasions of pastors refusing to attend programs that do not promise a chance at adding to their riches. Therefore, the installation of this mindset has contributed to the corruption of Nigerians' morale. Those who do not have the opportunity to register themselves in the religious sector seek alternative routes of getting unmerited wealth by all means. Moral behavior is naturally contagious. When individuals realize that their source of energy in moral structures (religious leaders) exhibit certain characteristics, they refer to them and justify their actions with those of their leaders. In essence, those who learn from these Pentecostal leaders will not agree that material possessions at the expense of others are condemnable behavior as they have concrete evidence to support their delinquency. Politicians who see a religious leader's extravagant urge to possess materials would find it difficult to accept that excessive materialism is not morally acceptable.
Somehow, Nigerian Pentecostalism has enthroned a belief that all challenges must have a spiritual side attributed, even when they are systemic dysfunctional products. Melancholic situations are believed to be caused by unseen forces, and the most efficient way to contain them is to confront them head-on at the spiritual realm. The introduction of this philosophy has affected Nigerians' thinking and has inevitably killed their sense of responsiveness to immediate challenges. Instead of providing an empirical evaluation of situations so that logical solutions can be proffered, Nigerian Christians have been conditioned to believe that their mental capability is insufficient in handling affairs that are triggered by human flaws. This has led to heightened superstition of the average Nigerian Pentecostal as they are inadequate at offering pragmatic solutions to existential problems. If a Nigerian graduate, for example, fails to secure a job after spending a considerable number of years studying in school, they immediately consider their misfortune as the product of their imagined enemies, and the current generation has coined a hilarious phrase to refer to these imaginary enemies: "village people." In other words, it is the "village people" that stand in their way of securing gainful employment instead of a dysfunctional system, and they must engage them in a spiritual battle.
Pentecostalism has configured people to react first to issues as spiritual beings instead of as a rational entity. Their immersion in the erroneous understanding that challenges always have a spiritual dimension has eroded their sense of personal accountability and triggers them to hold their leaders accountable for their own life challenges. And since Pentecostal leaders usually do well, especially in the financial sense, these followers immediately conclude that they have the spiritual arsenal to deal with emerging enemies to help them excel. To have such grace to excel, they must confront their challenges in the spiritual realm. This warped way of thinking has further expanded governmental irresponsibility since they understand that people would rather blame unknown spirits and hold them accountable for their woes instead of political leaders who truly are responsible for these challenges. With this mindset, political and economic depravity have reached their peak. There has been an acceleration of institutional decay because of this faulty orientation, and Pentecostalism has been instrumental in its establishment. Effects of this aftermath are corrosive. An opposing viewpoint of this idea is that a Pentecostal in Nigeria sees everyone as a potential enemy who, even when they are not consciously involved in bringing them down, could be recruited involuntarily by a demonic power to harm them. Thus, every relationship they hold with others has the potential to be strained in a short while.
Ineluctably, this orientation has necessitated that even the political class enjoys an undeserved right to maximize human abuse. They deliberately allocate funds to themselves under the aegis of a reformation or transformation of society. They embezzle these funds greedily, sometimes paying a reasonable percentage to religious leaders whose desire to acquire wealth prevents them from taking appropriate moral ground. Therefore, the continuation of this abuse has provoked an unparalleled level of damage to the country's institutions and has dimmed the chances of development, and thereby, increases immoral indulgences among the youth. The political class and religious leaders combine to truncate institutional progress, which could be attained in a corruption-free society. The school as an institution has been exposed to similar challenges because there is the need for those in academia to receive financial compensation for the work they do, which has not been orderly remunerated by appropriate political quarters. The rot in Nigeria is interconnected and can be explained logically. As there is the breakdown of natural law even in religious places, the people have the confidence to pursue personal ambitions even at the detriment of innocent bystanders. Perhaps the Pentecostal community's investment of reasonable interest to challenge political leaders when they refuse to deliver on basic social welfare would have ushered in a greater sense of accountability and moral direction among the youth. Social problems, such as unemployment, high mortality caused by poor infrastructure, and the absence of primary health care services are signs of a social breakdown. They require human effort to bring about solutions. When spiritual beings attributed to these issues, this denies the people an opportunity to use their God-given talent to contain challenges and attain a higher height.
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