Religious Sermons, Lies and Public Health

Religious Sermons, Lies and Public Health

Leo Igwe

Sermons are critical to religious work and ministry. Clerics use their preaching to build, motivate, counsel and inspire their congregation. More importantly they use it to secure support for ‘the work of God’. So most religious preachers ensure that they deliver very powerful and ‘spirit-filled’ sermons. But in the course of that most of them tell lies. They cook up all sorts incredible stories that confuse, mislead and endanger the lives, the physical and psychological health of their members. Any critical listener to religious sermons would easily identify these holy falsehoods and fabrications. I want to share a few with you.

Some years ago, while I was on vacation, my mother persuaded me to follow her to a local church service. It was an Easter Vigil mass. At the service, the presiding priest was trying to underscore the significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He cited a story, which he said, happened in the ‘Land of the Hausas’- as many people in Eastern Nigeria refer to Northern Nigeria. Of course all of us know that there is nothing like that ‘Land of Hausas’ in Nigeria today. But that is by the way. According to the priest, a man in the ‘Land of Hausas’ boasted that he would, like Jesus, die and resurrect from the dead.

This man, he said, died and on the third day, as he was about to rise from the grave, he was instantly crushed by a thunderbolt. What a fantastic story! If we look at it more closely there is no way this could be true. Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim and there is no way this incident could have taken place without making international headline news.

Apparently, this priest cooked up this story to get the rural audience to understand that resurrection was an extraordinary feat, which no other human has ever and would ever replicate. But is citing such a farcical tale a very credible and responsible way to do it? I don’t think so.

On a lighter note, last Good Friday, I listened from a distance to a sermon by an imam at an open Jummat service in Ibadan. It was clear this guy didn’t prepare his sermon. So he went on rambling, saying whatever got into his mind. And at a point he lashed out at the idea of Good Friday in a way that whenever I recall it makes me laugh.

He said ‘some people say today is Good Friday. To say that there is a Good Friday means that there is a Bad Friday. Look, all Fridays are good. May God not allow us see any Bad Friday in our lifetime. And all the worshippers chorused ‘Amen’. He went on to pray for the people and that was the end of the sermon.

But there is this particular incident that really provoked me to write this piece.

On Sunday April 15, I went to a pub, and Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the
Redeemed Christian Church of God was preaching over the television. The central message of his sermon was that God could ‘Reverse the Irreversible’. I didn’t pay attention to the sermon till he started narrating a incident which he said happened in one of these countries ‘where they say there is no God.’ Again he did not tell us the name of the country in question. According to him, an atheist in this country challenged a Christian to drink acid since it was said in the Bible that in the name of God anyone could drink any thing deadly and nothing would happen to him/her. He said the atheist boasted that if the Christian drank the acid and didn’t die, that he would start believing in God.

Pastor Adeboye said the Christian hesitated for a while. Then he prayed to God not to see what he was about to do as a test but as a way for God to manifest himself and confirm his existence. After praying, he drank the acid. According to Pastor Adeboye nothing happened to him. At this point the entire audience applauded, shouting Hallelujah, cheering and waving their hands in praise of God. For me, this is absolute rubbish and dangerous nonsense. And I think it was very unconscionable of Pastor Adeboye to have used this apparently fabricated and misguided story in his sermon. Why do I say so?

First of all Pastor Adeboye did not tell us where exactly this incident took place. Because there is no way this kind of miracle could have happened without someone else documenting it in print or online. But this is not the case. And most likely this story has no other source but the pastor himself. Again acid is acid, and water is water. Their chemical components and reactions are not the same. Are they? And if prayer can turn acid into water and water into acid, then there is no way one can really differentiate one from the other. Because as you are holding water, someone could be praying out there and vice versa.

And if Pastor Adeboye really believes that God could turn acid into water, why didn’t he come with an acid, pray over it; drink it before his congregation so that his God would turn it into water? He didn’t do this. Instead he preferred to use this story,like those contained in what they call holy books, which is obviously from questionable and unconfirmable sources.

Lastly the underlying message of this story is very dangerous to the lives and health of the people. I am not sure that Pastor Adeboye knows the implications of it all.

How misleading it is and could be. Those who take this incident as literally true could end up trying it out by taking acid or drinking poison which would kill them or do serious damage to their health. People could, because of this story throw caution to the wind and indulge in very risky behaviors, believing that God who turned acid into water would save them. And Pastor Adeboye would not be held responsible for what happened to them.

That reminds me. Recently a new Pentecostal church, The Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Ministries devoted an edition of its publication Showers of Blessing to the testimonies of church members who were blessed by God after sowing what it called “Seed Faith”.

The Seed Faith is money-no specific amount- given to the church for which people receive miracles in return. And one of the testimonies aptly described as ‘unbelievable’ is about a church member who said he was refused wedding because he was found to be HIV positive. But according to him a ‘500 naira [about $4] seed faith (money) to The God of Chosen turned the HIV 1 and 11 negative’. Personally I found this outrageous, shrewd and shameful that a church could go to this extent to extort money from people. There is still no cure for HIV/AIDS. And what The Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Ministries is directly telling the world is that a 500-naira donation to it could ‘cure’ the disease in this 21st century. And this church is promoting this highly reckless and irresponsible claim when the AIDS pandemic is ravaging the African continent.

So many believers have been sent early to their graves or have incurred complicated health problems because they swallowed hook, line and sinker what their clerics preach and peddle. Many people have been misled or have been confused as to how to go about tackling their problems because they blindly accepted as true these fabricated lies, stories and testimonies crafted by these smart hawkers of religious wares.

I think it is high time we called our religious preachers to order. We need to hold them accountable and responsible for their claims, miracles and ministrations. We need to let them know the enormous harm and damage their sermons and revealed lies do and can do to the health and general well being of their congregation and the society at large.

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