Why Religion is Christianity's Biggest Weakness

   There’s a very heavy sense in which the concept of religion equals rituals. When someone asks another, ‘what is your religion?’ it can almost surely be rephrased ‘what rituals does the god you believe in require you to participate in?’. It’s not so much about the god; it’s about what you have to do stay in his/her/its good books. This seems to be the gist of my generations understanding of religion. That being the case, it comes as no real surprise that the majority of the youth shuns all things ‘religious’; they are seen as strenuous constraints.

Nonetheless, it seems that previous generations had a different understanding of religion. To them it seems to be an infinitely good thing. C.S Lewis, for instance, sees religion as a source of comfort in his Mere Christianity[1].  This is emblematic of the old guard’s conception of religion: if you were Christian, then Christianity and religion were inseparable. Likewise if you were Muslim, or whatever religious movement one belonged to. And that’s just it. Your religion was something you belonged to, not, as it seems to be the case today, something that belonged to you, along with your career and social preferences. To be sure, religion was the context in which rituals were carried out, not the rituals themselves.

I felt it important to discuss this dichotomy after a conversation I had with a certain Aliya Daniels at a camp recently. She asked me whether or not I am a religious person, to which I replied (something to this effect), “No. I’m not religious, but I am a Christian. And I think religion is Christianity’s biggest weakness”. She looked understandably perplexed but I then went on to explain how my faith in God is based not on rituals, but on a relationship with Him. The latter is alive and dynamic, while the former can be switched on and off, like a bulb. My faith, I said, wasn’t a set of prescribed practises. It is a conviction resulting in certain practises. To continue with the bulb metaphor, Christianity is the electricity behind the light, yet it is still up to me to flick the switch. And why else would I flick it unless I was certain of the existence of the electricity behind it? Subsequently, why in the world would I switch it off and continue to stumble in darkness when I have felt the joy of living in the light? Ditto baptism, and fasting, and consistent Church going, and observing lent etc. Surely these are the practises, the switching on which one chooses because of a prior conviction that God is alive, wants nothing but the best for me, and above all, wants me to experience Him and all that He is. If the practise itself is the religion, then what is its point?

Thus if religion has been made tantamount to rituals, then it makes Christianity undesirable, and this is perfectly understandable. No one in their right minds wants to simply be doing stuff, in a certain strict way, on certain days for the sake of it. It just does not make sense.

Here’s what I perceive is the crux: the synonymy of religion and faith is a myth, and it is a myth that is now more than ever deteriorating perceptions of Christianity, even in the church. Deifying rituals is not biblical. That is a misconception. I quote two scriptures, one from the old and the other from the New Testament, and will not further expound because I think they speak sufficiently for themselves:

 Psalm 40:6 “sacrifice and offering you [God] have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required” (ESV)

James 1:26-27 “if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (ESV)

And so it is with a sting that I read Chinua Achebe’s assertion in Things Fall Apart that “the church had come and led many astray”. It is a damning apprehension of the fact that, even if they meant the world of good, the early missionaries brought with them a set of rituals, ways of doing things, instead of bringing a faith. Hence, contrary to their mission, they indeed led many astray. It is a legacy which modern Christians are duty-bound to address. Failure to do so will, I suspect, create a generation of Christians enslaved by their own ‘religion’.

How ironic.

 

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[1] See 1969 edition, p. 38

Space, Place, and why Blacks need to know the difference

  The Internet is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. If you were to ask someone to point to the Internet, he or she would fail. Yet there can be no doubt that the Internet is in every big business, every academic institution, and many millions of households across the globe. I only point to this example because it begins to illustrate the dynamic relationship between space and place. If the Internet can occupy so much of our space and yet be in no particular place, then clearly the two homophones do not mean the same thing.

Let’s get into it. I’ve always had a fascination with the concept of space. I’m not talking here about the massive expanse of darkness and rocks that fills the gaps between the planets and the stars (although I was indeed a fan of astronomy in my early school days). I’m talking about the idea itself, the construct, and the thing(s) we’re supposed to think of when we hear the word ‘space’. I noticed that, for many people, of all races, it was used interchangeably with ‘place’. In other words, the two terms were generally seen to mean the same thing. But my keen sense of detail, coupled with a heightened awareness of words (a God-given gift I’ve treasured since grade 3), caused me to suspect from very early on that the connection was not so simple. I could not, however, find the words (ironic, right?) to express this. I could not explain to anyone why I thought the words ‘space’ and ‘place’ meant different things, let alone what the difference was, or why it even matters. All I knew for sure is that there was a difference and that, though small, it was significant.

During the course of recent months I’ve had the privilege of reading the intellectual musings of both Steve Biko and Mamphela Ramphele. In that same time period I was also afforded the opportunity of hearing a lecture by a certain fiery and highly controversial Andile Mngxitama (good luck with that surname my white friends). In essence, Biko and Mngxitama are advocates for the necessity for black people to redefine their blackness, to own it, and in so doing break the inferiority complex that continues to characterize black-white relations to this very day. What Ramphele does so simply but with striking clarity in her her autobiographical A Life is talk briefly about the idea of space. She points to the different aspects in which can begin to understand space; poverty, for example, is a clear lack economic space, while the expectation in the Apartheid era of every black graduate to be either a teacher or nurse points to a lack of intellectual space.

How do Blackness and space relate? Quite simply, I think that black people will only be truly free once they begin to (re)claim their space. What I am saying is that the end of Apartheid was essentially a giving back to black people their place. Prisoners were released from prison, and blacks no longer had to stick to certain parts of the country. “Place, place, place; hooray hooray hooray! We’re free!”, we must have thought. However, the second part of our transition must see us taking back space, economic, spiritual, and psychological space. I’m afraid this second part is yet to begin in earnest. Let me give you an example: recently I purchased a new phone and I soon had to take it back because of a defect on the screen. Instead of being promptly given a new one, I was given what eventually became a four-week excuse marathon before the phone was finally replaced. On one of the many occasions on which I went to check on the phone, one of the sales assistants quipped, “if you were white, they’d have given you a new phone immediately!”. When I thought about her comment later, it discouraged me to conclude that she was probably right.

You see, the black man is all over the place but occupies very little societal space: in the imagination of many a sales clerk, a white person is more significant than a black person, and therefore a white person is more likely to get better and quicker service. ‘Yes, the shop itself is full of black people (place), but the white person will probably pay more and be more polite (economic and psychological space)’. Can you see what I’m getting at? Can you see how, in the above scenario, the white person is afforded much more space, despite the occupation by the black person of the majority of the place? Suddenly, it makes sense that my white best friend with a matric certificate could get to a company and not only earn more than, but be given a senior position over his black colleagues, most of which had worked there for years. Though they have occupied that place as employees for a long time, they are no match for my best friend because his whiteness affords him psychological and economic space: he is seen as being more, and therefore earns more. It is not, as some people have wrongfully diagnosed, the other way around.

Sadly us black people perpetuate this limiting of space for each other. We have bought so much into the idea of Blackness as a limitation of social, economic, educational space that we believe it without realizing it. Hence many a South African wants to one day “travel to Africa”, not realizing of course that he/she was born in Africa. Do you see the disjuncture between space and place? Do you see that, although Africa is one place, it occupies a different cognitive space  in some people’s psyche as some remote patch of barren land that coincidentally has people with the same dark pigment? It begins to make sense, then, that the new Randela “looks like African money” (my gosh, how horrible are the new notes?). Surely it’s going to take more than a Forbes African rich list to address this.

Space, therefore, has to mean the capacity to exercise one’s freedom. We were given the right to claim freedom in this place, yet as we are being rudely awakened to decades after attaining democracy, the right to freedom and the capacity to exercise it are two different things. We have taken our place as the majority in our country. But Black man, it’s time to take your Space.