By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
It is a lot easier to live a celibate life than to stay faithful to one wife. Right from the Garden of Eden, it’s written that immediately a man tastes the apple of sin there is no limit to indulgence. Once a man discovers a woman, he goes farther afield to conquer the plural form known as women.
Of course there is no end to the quest until death supervenes. Womanizing has a lot in common with alcoholism. People addicted to alcohol when taken to Alcoholics Anonymous are asked to learn this dictum: One bottle is too much while a hundred bottles are not enough! It simply means that total abstinence is the answer, in woman as in alcohol.
In this new age of funky pastors and funkier prostitutes, temptation is indeed rife. And as the Irish wag Oscar Wilde knows, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” The selfsame Oscar Wilde goes further to make the confession, to wit, “I can resist anything except temptation.”
The very wild Oscar Wilde was by no means a pastor, but from available statistics of the divorce rates of modern-day pastors who are almost always accused of annexing the other woman, it is very obvious that the pastors are ever ready to bend the knee to erotic temptation.
It is not just a Nigerian matter, in case anybody out there is thinking that I want to make a meal of the charismatic pastor/prostitute brouhaha currently dominating the dailies of our dear nation. Looking farther afield all over the world, one can readily see that pastors and prostitutes have for long been sharing the same bed.
For starters, let’s go to Kenya for confirmation. A pastor with a Pentecostal church in the Nakuru County of Kenya was totally astounded once upon a bad time when a prostitute he picked up for sex pointedly told him she was a member of his congregation. The 56-year-old lustful pastor picked the woman along the road in Nakuru on the dot of midnight. The prostitute submitted to the pastor in his posh car, only to later divulge to the satiated preacher-man that she was a member of his church.
The confession made the pastor to quake in consternation. He there and then begged the prostitute not to expose him to other members of the church. The pastor of course offered extra cash for the prostitute to keep her mouth shut over the illicit liaison. It came to pass that the prostitute squealed by telling all who cared to listen that her pastor had her in his car: “For sex, I mean that’s why he picked me, that’s what I do, I’m a prostitute!” This unrepentant pastor had actually been disgraced back in year 2000 after his dalliance with another man’s wife was exposed.
The pastor of today, in Nigeria as elsewhere, dresses to kill. It is called power-dressing. The ladies, on their part, go to these churches in all makes of revealing wears that must rouse any man with blood flowing in his veins, pastor or no pastor. According to Chinweizu in his book Anatomy of Female Power, when a man’s board member gets up his brain takes French leave!
As in the issue of murder, no human being was born a serial killer. It all starts from murdering for the first time. When one kills for the first time, one feels very sick and remorseful. But after a few more killings it just becomes like any other sport. The pastor’s peccadilloes can be seen in this wise. He cheats on his wife for the first time and he feels like he has been damned to Hell. Then after a few more conquests he starts basking in the glories of the sex symbol as a serial lady killer.
America happens to lead the charge in the league of lady-killing pastors. There was the case of Jimmy Bakker who with his wife, Tammy Faye, owned the Pentecostal empire known as Praise The Lord (PTL). The church which was more popularly known worldwide by its abbreviation, PTL, had its headquarters in their theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina, near Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. It became a hot sauce revelation that Jimmy Bakker had paid his former secretary Jessica Hahn to keep quiet about their sexual orgies. This led to questions about Jimmy Bakker’s finances such that in 1989 he was sentenced to 45 years imprisonment for stealing $158 million from his flock.
Another celebrated American televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, was caught with a prostitute in a motel in 1988. He confessed his sins on live TV, crying pitifully. He was somewhat forgiven by the American public to keep his $12-million-a-year, 10,000-strong religious empire. His disaster eventually came when he was linked to another prostitute in 1991.
Need I go on? Pastors are very hot. Prostitutes are even hotter. May God save our hot pastors from the hotter prostitutes! The Poet has prayed! Say Hallelujah to that!