The Sigh of the Oppressed Creature

In all the things I’ve heard about the tragedy of the Nigerian Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos, I’ve missed reference to the motives of the 110 South African visitors.

Rescuers amid the rubble of TB Joshua’s The Synagogue and Church of All Nations in Lagos, Nigeria, after the building collapsed, causing many deaths and injuries. Among the dead were 84 South Africans. (Photo: 91.3 FM The Voice of the Cape)

I understand the journalistic instinct to never blame the victim. Hence the greater portion of the blame has been put on the pastor, TB Joshua, rightly so. The onus was on him to ensure the safety of the structure he was building.

Both the Nigerian and South African governments have also been dealt a portion of the blame. If governments fail in their mandates of providing basic services to the people, the argument goes, then people seek solutions from self-professed prophets and charlatans who rob them blind of their meagre earnings in the name of God. It’s a fair argument.

To complete the diagnosis of this tragedy, so as to avoid similar incidents in the future, we need also to talk about the apparent gullibility of our people who become religious fanatics.

When you have pastors telling people to eat grass, drink petrol and holy water in the form of the pastor’s semen — and they do it gladly — then we have a problem of gullibility and dangerous ignorance. Authentic religion does not require hypnotic, unthinking fanaticism.

I know a church in Maitland, Cape Town, of similar building arrangements to the one that collapsed in Nigeria. Whenever I see it bursting at the seams, especially during its monthly all-night vigil, I see a tragedy waiting to happen. I mentioned this to a friend as I dropped him off there once, but things turned uncomfortable. In the end I was accused of many things, including xenophobia (the pastor is not South African).

These churches are filled by desperate people looking for quick fixes in their lives. Most of them are foreign nationals, but some are South Africans looking to turn their financial situations around through the promises of the prosperity theology these pastors preach. Some are single parents in desperate need; some go there looking for life partners (the churches are also notorious marriage factories); others go for spiritual comfort.

They all give colour to the Marxist criticism of religion being the opium of the masses.

Karl Marx wrote: “The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.” The materialist take on religion is that it can only be understood in relation to other social systems and economic structures of the world.

Hence according to Marx, “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature” and the “heart of the heartless world”. These churches nourish his assertion. Of course, religion is also much more than that, especially since it is obvious that opiates too fail to fix injury.

Christ didn’t deny that our spiritual lives have a connection to our material conditions. Instead, looking at the evidence before him, he claimed that the poor are blessed, as the prostitutes and tax collectors were bombarding the gates of heaven.

He even gave stern warnings against false prophets and priests who overburden people with yokes they themselves are not willing to carry. He was harsh in judgment against the blind guides who strain at a gnat but swallow a camel. They are led by dishonest gain.

Through the prophets of old — mostly Isaiah, Malachi and Jeremiah — God insists that judgment be left to him who sees all things.

Our own responsibility is to make sure the inner light we are led by is not dimmed; else we’ll end up being duped by false prophets. And it is by their fruits, we are urged, that they are to be judged.

We may blame governments for failing to provide basic needs for our people, but don’t tell me someone who can afford a plane ticket to Nigeria lacks basic needs. They might be desperate in some other ways—we have heard that some MPs also visit the church.

If as a so-called man of God you lead many to death, and instead of repenting—as any authentic man of God would when such a thing happens — you bribe journalists to cover up the story, then your fruits are before us to judge.

Desperation is not an excuse for blinding that eye. It is also, according to Christ, the faithless generation that is always seeking signs and wonders.