A Tale of Two Tales

You don’t have to choose between faith and doubt. You can just have a cup of tea, feel the sun, wonder about the birds at sunset, make someone smile, learn something about the world, feel the silence and go to sleep. These things that don’t ask for faith or punish doubt. Walk the narrow bath between this and that, here and there. You have grown up. It’s time to grow out.

I get Bible verse flashbacks. I have not read the Bible in a decade. They bring me comfort. However, they always come in part. The first part, which I take to Google Search and add “Bible Verse.” Most times I get the right verse. Sometimes I get one that sounds like it, especially with Psalms. I know it’s not the exact verse when I feel a quiet discontent.

Three months ago I got a flash. “I was young and now I’m old…”

Google Search result:

“I have been young, and now am old; Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. He is ever merciful, and lendeth; And his seed is blessed.” Psalms 37:25–26 King James Version (KJV)

It didn’t feel right. I choked it up to poor memory. It was almost good enough.

Around the same time I came across a Nigerian TikToker. He takes a harmer to governments, leaders, the West, African culture and Christianity with impressive logic. He’s a former Evangelical on a quest to wake African youth from the big C. Slumber. Colonialism. Conmen. Take your pick.

Ihedi Light of Africa is his user name. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders. Uninhibited. He still loves to sing Christian hymns. This is part of what reeled me in. That Christian music umbilical cord that never goes away.

However, soon after the jolly good fellow takes ‘God’s Word’ to tear Him from heaven, return him to the cross, undo his crucifixion, undo his trials and tribulations, and return him to Nazareth among his kin where “a prophet is without honor.” (Mark 6:4)

Usually in the same breath, he paints the African Eden.

A time before Western ideologies. A time before Western culture. Before “eagles told fish that swimming was outdated.”

He longs for African men to return to their glory. Agriculture (the African’s superpower), owning land and property, brotherhood code of conduct, leadership, polygamy, and raising bountiful families. To return lost women to their posts. Where each woman was assured a husband and didn’t have to go to pastors to pray for marriage. To be mothers and wives and nurturers. To return their husbands voices to their rightful place, inside their minds.

What could have been.

It is a daring move. To shift a culture so eroded. To return to a place you have never lived. But there’s a giant bridge on fire that these kinds of dudes ignore.

Yes, Christ was rejected in his home town. Instead of using that ‘Christ-awareness to make it up to them, he turned it into a teachable moment for THEM. Talking about how family and people we know can be unjustifiably set against us. (They can also be unjustifiably set for us). It’s easier to start over with strangers especially when you’re on a time crunch.

Yet it’s unfair to taint Jesus’ name while you share a crucifixion spot with him.

There are principles of engagement.

It was African men who lost African Eden.

Scheming men, treacherous men, scared men, greedy men, naive men, foolish men, disbanded brotherhood, who were (are) in charge of protecting and fighting for it. Dominated, conquered and pushed aside. Nothing good to show for it.

Those men are long gone. Those women are gone.

When one of their descendants calls for a return to the “good ole days” he ignores this fact completely. Instead he paints a picture for fellow strangers, urging them without saying so, to return to the place where they betrayed their kin, land and families. To bury and ignore that shame and sing Kumbaya until their former glory is restored inside their dainty little households where they are the big bad wolf.

Without trying to earn the respect and gain the trust of all their kin, the saviour springs up and starts talking about the lost glory where he’s returning everyone (and getting a nice right arm seat at the top). “It’s for your own good! Shame on you!” Condescending, arrogant and tactless.

Then he bands with a “chosen” kin for “the mission.” They make a podcast or WhatsApp group.

“Woman, behold thy son. (Brotherhood) Behold thy mother.” John 19:25–27

Their compassion is performative and hard of hearing. Their memory is propaganda. Only they have “real ties” to the land through their desire for the good ole days.

“Women of Jerusalem, don’t cry for me. Cry for yourselves and for your children too.”

Only they see reality. It is their birth right to correct the land. Not from a soft heart informed by understanding, mistakes and remorse from the past. But from a place of unfounded entitlement, disillusionment and delusion in the present.

An African Messiah turns to whisper to Jesus on the cross, “You destroyed my people. We did not know war and blood shed. We welcomed you. I have been young, and now am old. I have seen the righteous forsaken, and his seed begging bread. He is no longer merciful, and does not lendeth; And his seed is cursed.”

However.

We have to start from somewhere.

We have been Westernised, Easternised, colonised to the bone marrow.

A complex web of social, economic and political conquest.

But this is the story of mankind. We’re not special.

A shaky start, nay, a mimicry of our goodness, is better than none at all.

It doesn’t help to discourage those who still hold the seeds of a past vision and faith. If they could get off their high-horse about it this would be quicker. Nonetheless, if we cannot celebrate their voices perhaps silence is better than criticism this time.

Back then, those who escaped were eventually caught in one economic trap or another. Perhaps if the youngins take the tide, it will eventually sweep away the social colonial fruit. Some day. We live with ‘them’ but we don’t have to be ‘them’.

It doesn’t have to be during your time, dear reader.

Recently I bumped into one of Ihedi’s videos where he opens with the Bible verse I wanted months ago.

“When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:11–12.