Dr. Chris Anyokwu

 By Chris Anyokwu, 

This may sound somewhat agnostic, a bit atheistic or even arguably cynical, if not downright disbelieving coming from the quill of one whose persona betokens Christian humanism.  Let us, therefore, from the outset, concede this much before Jonathan Edwards of Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God calls down divine fire upon us; before E.M. Bounds of The Necessity of Prayer begins to intercede on our behalf; before A.W. Tozer of The Pursuit of God proceeds to the mountain top to beseech God to save and salvage our supposedly erring soul and before Leonard Ravenhill of  Why Revival Tarries commences to send forth sweet-smelling savour of High praise in a bid to send down the rain, the rain – the rain of God’s providential munificence.  I am talking of praise that breaks down the prison walls; that parts sundering seas; that creates roads in the wilderness and rivers in the desert; that raises the dead and makes impossible things possible…

We believe in God, the Christian God referred to as the Ancient of Days and Alpha and Omega in the Holy Bible.  For the sake of augment we humbly invite those who do not subscribe to this system of belief to set aside their fond biases and join us in this roller-coaster of epistemological discourse and let’s reason together.  Does God really answer our prayers?  How often does God answer your prayers? (I mean you reading this?)  When you stand full-length in front of the mirror of the Word, do your sins and trespasses not stare you in the face?  Do you, regardless, still go on your knees to pray?  Has God not said that the prayer of a sinner is an abomination to Him?  Now, let us picture ourselves as a travelling band heading to the City of God (read: place of answered prayer; a Goshen of fulfilment).  And as our vehicle labours along the hilly path towards this much-desired destination, everybody on the bus begins to pray, heart-felt, agonising prayer: “God, hear my prayer… Oh Lord, do this for me; do that for me….”  It is a deafening din of universal clamour, like Babel.  The bus driver can hardly hear himself think or maintain his focus on the straight and narrow road.  Passenger A is a mechanic.  He prays passionately, tears streaming down his craggy face.  Roughly reformulated, the gist of his prayer is that God should allow people’s cars, buses, vans and lorries to malfunction so that their owners can patronise him.  Passenger B is a policeman.  He prays that crime should overwhelm society so that people can appreciate his role as a crime-fighter, an enforcer of law and order.  Passenger C is a trader.  She says to God that she will be delighted to see people in need, ravaged by hunger, hunger of all sorts.  A situation in which there is no food, water, household items, etc. in homes is an ideal scenario for the trader.  Needy folks will throng her shop.  Passenger D is a landlord.  The sight of the homeless warms his heart.  Thus, he builds and develops houses everywhere for rent/lease.  And, of course, he smiles to the bank monthly or yearly.  Unsurprisingly, he takes delight in increasing the rent and seeing poor homeless people grovel in the dust, pleading with him to reduce the rent.

A man praying to God

Passenger E is a farmer.  He is praying for rain, abundance of rain for his crops.  He cannot be bothered whether or not floods sweep away homes and other forms of property.    He desires a bumper harvest so that he can make a kill on the market.  Passenger F is a driver who beseeches God to make life difficult for his fellow human beings, for them not to be able to buy cars or buses for themselves.  When he sees a lot of commuters stranded at bus-stop waiting endlessly for vehicles, he cannot contain his joy!  Passenger G is a teacher.  He is always angling for a pay rise, for better conditions of service without caring two hoots about other competing needs on Government’s plate.  Passenger H is a student who wants to pass her examinations without investing in books or even reading!  Not for her and her ilk the requisite rigour, the hard work and tenacity of purpose, constitutive ingredients of success.  The question to ask at this juncture is: if God were to answer all of these passengers, wouldn’t He be endorsing vice and criminalising virtue?  Let us go on.  Passenger I is a medical doctor who, by trade, wants patients to be ill and sick always, so that he can remain relevant to society.  This is so because without the prevalence of sickness, his services will not be needed and he and his dependants will starve, literally.  And that brings us, finally to the Passenger J who is a coffin/casket maker-cum-seller.  Indeed, as they say, he loveth best that prayeth most: the coffin seller’s voice on the bus is the loudest.  He prays to God to kill people, to cause people to die both old and young.  He asks His maker: How do you want my family and I to sustain ourselves if people do not die? “Let people die! Die! Die!”  Now, how does God answer the prayers of these passengers without feeling any qualms; without suffering some inner disquiet arising from self-contradiction?  True, He says: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will answer you”.  But He also says: “The prayer of the sinner is an abomination to Me”.  If He answers the prayers of the passengers, for instance, Passenger A, wouldn’t there be crisis and chaos of some kind in the life of Passenger B or C or D, etc., etc.?

Coffin makers in Lagos
Photo by AKINTUNDE AKINLEYE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Let us consider the different groups in society, some in families, churches, workplaces, name it – everywhere two or three people gather together.  One, the Thomas Group.  You find in this group, doubters, destiny-killers.  An encounter with a person belonging to this group will sound a death-knell to your dreams.  Two, the Demos Group.  Those are fair-weather friends and acquaintances, freeloaders, leeches and scroungers.  They are everywhere.  Three, Judas Group. These people are notorious betrayers; disloyal people.  You lean on these broken reeds to your own peril.  Four, the Korah Group.  These are frienemies, that is, by turns, friendly but dangerous.  They usually constitute a deadweight to your imaginative flights, your vision of self-improvement.  Five, the Ham Group.  They are very close to you but love to expose your nakedness – your weaknesses, and frailties.  Six, the Absalom Group.  Very close and equally ambitious, they detest your rising profile, and, consequently say damaging things about you.  Seven, the Gehazi Group.  This group of people is known for their excessive greed, love of money and are as insatiable as the grave.  They never cease to ask alms and financial assistance.  And when you are unable to meet their expectations, they waste no time in giving you bad press.  Eight, Diotrephes Group.  This is the most dangerous group by all accounts.  Very vocal, and influential in the workplace and family, they can and do fabricate false tales to destroy your reputation, to wreck everything you have worked for.

Shakespeare in Othello

This is how William Shakespeare in Othello captures this reputational theft:

Good name in man and

Woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls.

Who steals my purse steals

Trash; tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his and has

Been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed. (Act 3, Sc. 3, 155 – 161)

Thus, the Diotrephes Group of individuals, to be certain, is very territorial, grasping and ruinous.  Again, they people the earth, litter every nook and cranny – in families, businesses, among friends, in churches and so forth.  Some are, additionally, lazy or slothful in business but very prayerful. They are, if you prefer, prayer-warriors; salesmen and women of faith.  They could be in positions of power and authority in church and, as a result, their conduct invariably carries a patina of peace and a veneer of sanctimony.  They usually dupe the credulous herd and, as reggae maestro, Max Romeo intones, they steal in the name of the Lord.

Faith without work is dead: Work is all-sufficient; it is faith-in-action, work, in sum, is belief; it is faith; it’s righteousness.  A lazy and indolent person, therefore, is an unrighteous person: a sinner!  The hard-working and sedulous individual is the true believer; a secular saint.  Consider the world, for a moment, the rich and prosperous Northern Hemisphere versus the poor and abject Southern Hemisphere, or the perennially indigent Global South.  Where do you think God resides?  In the North or in the conglomeration of margins and peripheries known as the Global South?  Go to Western Europe and North America.  People there hardly go to church except for the odd funeral, or, very rarely, celebrity nuptials. 

My father’s house of worship

Has become a den of thieves

Stealing in the name of the Lord

[-          –           –           –           –           ]

They tell us of a heaven

Where milk and honey flows

Stealing in the name of the Lord

[-         –           –           –           –           ]

Yet the reverend drives out fancy car

Buys everything tax-free

The people have to  sacrifice

To give in charity …

Faith without work is dead: Work is all-sufficient; it is faith-in-action, work, in sum, is belief; it is faith; it’s righteousness.  A lazy and indolent person, therefore, is an unrighteous person: a sinner!  The hard-working and sedulous individual is the true believer; a secular saint.  Consider the world, for a moment, the rich and prosperous Northern Hemisphere versus the poor and abject Southern Hemisphere, or the perennially indigent Global South.  Where do you think God resides?  In the North or in the conglomeration of margins and peripheries known as the Global South?  Go to Western Europe and North America.  People there hardly go to church except for the odd funeral, or, very rarely, celebrity nuptials.  Everyone you see is in haste, trying to beat the clock – beat deadlines, that is. Everyone at train stations, bus stops or at the airports is chasing one big dream or another.  Even in the exciting world of sport say, soccer, you would rarely hear any footballer or a coach mention “God” or attribute victory or failure to Him.   Does that make them any less Christian, believers in God?  Does God hate them for their apparent irreligiosity?   Why do most of them live far more comfortable lives than obsessively religious types do?  Those holier-than-thou, hollow men and women, full of religion but pitiably lacking in humanity, in spirituality?  Every time, these whited sepulchres, these hypocrites open their mouths, you’d hear: “By the grace of God…” They garnish their language with God-this, God-that.  Why?

Silhouettes of church and mosque

Firstly, to demonstrate how holy they are; secondly, that they and God are on first-name terms; thirdly, to exemplify false humility and affected self-effacement; fourthly, it is part of the fashionable or voguish politics of divine attribution and fifthly, to give an impression of good-breeding (He or she is from a good, Christian home). The blind culture of divine attribution is at the foundation of the universal poverty and millennial immiseration of the so-called Global South countries where religion (without spirituality, understood to mean a deep sense of inner purity of thought, desire and action towards God and fellow man) thrives.  Places such as Latin America, some Pacific Islands and, worst of them all, Africa come to mind.  In Nigeria, for instance, it’s usually a race or contestation between common sense and stupidity, dramatized through capital flight, the Brain Drain Syndrome, the shutting-down of industries and factories, on the one hand and the pandemic mushrooming of pseudo-churches and prayer-houses across the land, on the other.  Thus, whilst people in the Northern Hemisphere are hard at work, finessing the art and science of fine living, denizens of the Slough of Despond  (i.e., the Global South) are holding vigils (both day and night), fasting and praying for manna to fall from heaven.  Oh, that will be the day! Manna, from heaven?  Oh, boy, you’ve got a lot of agonising praying to do for that to happen.  And, tell you what, as the Americans would tell you, it aint gonna happen!  You’ve got to cast your bread upon many waters for things to change; you’ve got to brave the rain to sow; overlook the cold, the heat to till the earth.  You’ve got to follow the simple laws of nature to turn things around.  So, does God answer prayers? Yes!

Chris Anyokwu writes from university of Lagos.