At first, the church was confronted with the question of allowing every type of public sinner to attend her services. Arguments swirled left and right, each backed up by biblical paragraphs. Some said we are not God who judges; others said we are warned against scandalising little ones. Before RevolutionNow could start, public sinners got mixed up with the Church. Members who felt aggrieved left the mainstream churches and became puritans. In their churches, places were marked for quarantining members who erred until they would undergo expiation.
Next, the church was faced with the pastoral problem of accepting donations from public sinners. With almost all politicians classified under this umbrella, some politicians were embarrassed when they had their donations rejected by the church. When some churches started accepting donations, another group of puritans broke away too to found churches in kiosks.
Again, the church is visited with a problem, whether her clergy should accept or reject political positions. Before one could say Okechukwu, a cleric from the puritan got the second highest political slot in the country. If gold could rust, what would iron do?
Finally, in an age of project competition among churches, both puritans and liberals now invite the good, the bad, the ugly; offer them political baptism in fishponds as someone said; and decorate them with awards and chieftaincy titles. Unfortunately, the group left to protest this trend is largely made up of poor, uneducated church sweepers and goers.
When salt loses its taste, it is best poured on the ground to be trampled upon. It is just a matter of time and LGBT ideology would take its firm root too; after all, what is good for the goose should also be good for the gander.
This is how winter came into the church and she became morally dry. She is now a toothless bulldog, morally barking but incapable of influencing Nigeria with gospel values. Curiously, Nigerian Christians are afraid of Islamization; but every day we kill Christianity from inside. It is not what happens to the church from outside but inside that kills her.
Is there no hope again? There is hope. Our heroes of faith would no longer be clergy like us, but every church sweeper, helper or devotee who is devoted to Christ in a church that cares more about infrastructural expansion than moral correctness. The church would rise from this little group, because Christianity has always been a religion that emphasizes greatness in small things.
© Felix Uche Akam 12.08.2019
