IN this episode we continue to call for the restoration of our African spiritual independence.
Africans recognise the same principle of intercession as envisaged by Western Christianity.
But their intermediaries are their ancestral spirits.
What is the rationale of praying to God through the ancestral spirits?
The first assumption is that God is a Spirit.
We expect that he will communicate more easily with spirit beings.
Our own ancestral spirits are closest to us.
We can easily communicate our needs to them.
They speak our language; they can relate to and understand our feelings.
So we pray to God through them.
They in turn pass our requests up the chain of ancestors who all know each other all the way to Musikavanhu/God.
We are made to spend countless hours poring over copious volumes of Biblical gospel literature.
The preaching is relentless and preachers and pastors and now prophets have established a mega multi-billion dollar industry totally divorced from our true African spirituality.
That is the element that exposes the fallacy of Christian religion: Why do you need to preach forever!
And by comparison the religious fervour shown by Western Christian pastors in Africa is totally missing in their own countries.
Instead Sodom and Gomorrah prevail!
And Westerners have the cheek to even create whole non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to lure African youth into homosexuality!
The truth is that the spirituality of the Western churches is so artificial that Africans cannot relate it to anything in their collective experience.
Religion is supposed to be the people’s way of life.
It cannot possibly be our way of life if grown men and women spend all their time drumming the gospel into our ‘thick’ skulls!
Instead of spending time fending for our children, Africans are asked to spend most if not all their time reading and listening to the gospel.
To kill initiative and make sure Africans do not work to solve their problems, preachers propound the gospel of prayer.
Just pray and God will come to your help!
Miracles will happen!
That is a fake world; one in which people are led into cul-de-sacs.
No, the Western crusade churches’ miracle approach is not consistent with what God has ordained.
Wealth cannot be created miraculously!
Miracles (minana) wealth will disappear as miraculously as it has appeared. Even in the Bible God said to man, “you will eat out of your sweat”.
‘Uchadya cheziya’ goes the famous saying!
It is clear that the Zimbabwean ethic of hard work is now seriously eroded by the ‘miracle crusades’ movement.
To teach a person that the solution to their problems lies in prayer is to dilute their initiative.
It is tantamount to ‘taking the wind out of their sails.’
Where then is the place of perseverance?
Where then is the place of initiative?
Instead of husband and wife sitting down to map out strategies that they can use to earn a living for themselves and their families, they troop everyday to prayer meetings organised by ‘miracle crusaders’.
The preachers re-inforce the people’s sense of desperation all the time promising that a miracle will save their financial and other social plights.
And what is worse is that the pastor encourages them to give generously to the ‘cause of God,’ so that God will also reward them on a scale commensurate with their contributions.
Africans have been deliberately deprived of their spiritual independence.
They have been diverted from their African way of communicating with Mwari, their Creator through their ancestral spirits who represent a continuous unbroken line from the living all the way back to God.
That is why Christian preachers spend all their time crafting various diabolical schemes to persuade Africans to abandon their spiritual highway to Mwari/uMlimo, their creator.
It is because their gospel is hollow; it is artificial.
In the normal African set-up, we have our religious ceremonies.
We are constantly linked to God through our ancestral spirits.
All Africans raised in a normal traditional home know that we have ‘vadzimu’ who look after our welfare.
They are not a substitute for God!
They literally are the messengers of God.
These include our ‘masvikiro’ or spirit mediums.
The spirits of our forefathers possess divine powers derived from God.
These powers enable them to serve the people in terms of their physical and spiritual needs in a well-coordinated tested and tried way.
That represents our traditional religious practices.
The miracle Christian crusades are a diversion from our traditional ways of worshipping.
Not only are they foreign, but they are also exploitative as they seek to extract wealth (money) from the so-called believers.
African traditional worship does not require continuous payment of tithes and other donations to ‘Baba na Mai Mfundisi’ every week of every year.
With African religion, there are set times for specific rituals and ceremonies where those who can afford contribute in kind e.g. grain or livestock.
This is not done as a show-off or to earn credits so that God will give the individual blessings.
There are no such considerations in African religion.
And so we will continue to call on Africans to embrace their African ways of worshipping God.
Africans have a unique spirituality or link with their Creator which is simple, functional and practical.
It does not require constant drumming through prayer meetings and preaching sessions.
What is so difficult to comprehend about our relationship with our Creator that require all these elaborate teachings?
Is it not true that the churches’ approach is so foreign to our African way of life that we find it a nightmare to comprehend the religious jargon, and so need constant shepherding in the form of relentless teachings, Bible readings, catechism classes and prayer meetings.
Africans must be very dull or the message must be so confusing that they remain in the ‘First Grade’ all their lives requiring constant tutelage!
No, the church is a spiritual prison trying to keep Africans away from the God of their forefathers, of their ancestors.
The church as previously argued is an instrument for the oppression and subjugation of the people.
It (Western Christian church) seeks to keep the African shackled in spiritual bondage.
Such spiritual bondage facilitates exploitation of the physical resources that Africans would otherwise defend as their own.
Who says this line is ungodly?
Africans pray to their Creator through their ancestral spirits.
They pray when they start off on a journey, when they embark on a project, when illness occurs, when drought occurs, when hunger and starvation threaten, indeed when any calamity faces them.
Africans also thank their Creator for all the good things that occur in their lives! Elaborate rituals and ceremonies are conducted for the different situations but in all cases, the aim is to communicate with the creator, Mwari, God!
Western Christian teachings which claim that one only needs to pray and God will provide are misleading.
Our creator has already given us various gifts in the form of our hands and feet and our five senses.
We are expected to use these to fend for ourselves.
We are expected to dig ourselves out of various difficult situations.
When times are hard we may feel we need outside help, we can appeal to Musikavanhu.
We shall further explore the religious colonisation of Africans by Western Christian churches to show that it is not about saving souls, but exploiting the African continent and its people.
We will show that many Africans sensing rich pickings have also joined the prophetic bandwagon.