First published on February 24, 2011
No Bullshitting!!! (By Harry Agina)
SOME TERRIBLE SOCIAL EFFECTS
Greetings!
This is your radical Socio-Political Critic, Mr. No Bullshitting. ‘He’ is my journalistic alter-ego whose spiritual being I represent in human form. And I am Harry Agina. Welcome to this sensitive treatise. The subject is global, but the interest or focus of Mr. No Bullshitting is primarily African, with objective look at African peculiarities. However, the following is not purely a No Bullshitting treatise. It also falls a little within our Afro-Scope Project concern over misguided Christianity in Africa.
SUMMARY
When it comes to the matter of sex and sexuality, too many Christians are doggone hypocritical, period! They often say one thing when they mean or do the exact opposite. They are too quick to falsely proclaim, and then they must pretend, that they possess the self-control that is required to shun sex and sexual activities. My key concern here is that their hypocrisy often leads to all manner of sexual ‘atrocities’ behind closed doors, and, grievously, defenseless children are most often the victims of the sexual atrocities that result from hypocrisy.
“My born-again husband watches pornographic movies. He watches it late in the night. It started when I was pregnant, of course I understand that one because I couldn’t do it (with him) that time; and also it’s better than committing adultery. We had a talk after I delivered; that there will be no indecency and that I will try and give him (some).”
The preceding is an excerpt of a comment posted on Nairaland.com platform on the net on January 23, 2011, by a housewife, apparently a Nigerian, who decided to report the “sins” of her husband to the entire world. A number of people responded to this comment—on the Nairaland forum and off—with a variety of comments and advice. Somebody advised the woman on the platform not to report her husband to their pastor. Another respondent teased (not on the Nairaland platform), that reporting ‘the sinner’ to a pastor does not really make things any better. The undertone of this comment is that the pastor to whom the housewife wanted to report the sin might be guilty of the same, similar, or even worse sexual sins.
Feeding off this episode, the theme of my piece today is: when it comes to the matter of sex and sexuality, too many Christians are doggone hypocritical, period! They often say one thing when they mean or do the exact opposite. The comments by the respondents about pastors were apparently spurred by the public knowledge of the hypocritical activities of funky pastors in Nigeria, and throughout the entire Christian world! The truth of the matter is that God made humankind with sexual desires, and, a mere human pronouncement that a person has become a pastor does not necessarily automatically switch off all those desires that God put in us.
The key issue here, therefore, is self-control, otherwise called self-discipline. Christians are too quick to proclaim, and then have to pretend to possess the self-control that is required to shun sex and sexual activities, but they don’t. It is common knowledge that all manner of sexual abuse abound in the Christendom, many of which are products of hypocrisy. I will tell you, as if you did not know already, how this happens sometimes. Too many Christians, contrary to their true feelings, have to put up the front that they are not sexually aroused. Some actually pretend to abhor sex. This is common with pastors and other “men of God.” Indeed, by virtue of their positions, it behooves some of them to damn sexual activities of various kinds in public.
Now, that is the problem; just because it behooves one, due to his/her public office, to damn sexual activities in public does not automatically extinguish sexual desires in one. Keyword here is ‘behoove,’ which implies that the person is condemning sex only because it is expected of him to do so, and not because he or she really wants to shun or condemn sex. A “man of God” may have this obligation placed upon him by his office, but, unless he truly has the anointing from God Who would give him the spiritual strength to suppress sexual desires and urges, he is still the intrinsic sexual animal that most of us are. Indeed, if we really want to be honest about this, then we must admit that even those who are truly anointed do often succumb to temptation and go astray, too.
Ultimately, my position is that too many Christians, who proclaim to shun sexual activities in public, are committing sexual “atrocities” behind closed doors every day. One step further, all in line with the basic theme of my “Invasion Of The Funky Pastors” series, I posit that there are relatively very few pastors out there who truly practice half of what they preach in the matter of sex and sexuality. More grievously, too many of them are getting away with sexual atrocities simply because they claim to be men of God. This is due to the gullibility of many Christian minds that are plagued with ignorance, who believe that pastors are never wrong. Sadly, some extremists actually believe that even if a pastor is caught red-handed doing anything wrong, a true Christian should pretend as if nothing happened and leave the judgment to God. Trust Nigerian funky pastors to capitalize on this weakness to the max!
Unfortunately, very often the victims of sex crimes that result from hypocrisy are innocent defenseless children. The reason is simple—the erring hypocrites have proclaimed to the adult world that they have no interest in sexual activities. When the natural urge comes, and it always does because the culprits in my scenario have no spiritual anointing to resist it, they are too embarrassed to approach adults to satisfy the same desire that they proclaim to abhor. The way out for many pastors in this situation is to molest children and intimidate them not to report the act to anybody. Alas, every day in the Christian world, children are molested in great numbers in this manner. In ‘open’ societies such as US and parts of Europe many cases are exposed and the culprits brought to book.
The case is quite different in less open societies, however. My case study, Nigeria, is one of those less open societies where, generally, sexual offenders prey on children undetected. Chances of detection dwindle many times over when an offender has a holy bible in hand and goes by the title “pastor.” Indeed, a child that is bold enough to point accusing finger at a pastor in Nigeria is most likely accused of blasphemy, and given the beating of his or her life in some cases.
In all my postings on this forum I try to leave an underlying message. My message for this edition is obvious already. It is for the gullible Christians out there who believe that it is okay to leave their children in the unsupervised care of any man who claims to be a pastor. Do remember, it does not matter if the child is male or female, the debased pastors (male or female), do not always differentiate between girl and boy; they are often homosexual!
Please check out Part 2. Here is the link:
