In Nigeria, there are men of God and there are also gods of men. There are worshippers who seek to serve God in complete subservience to His will, and there are those who have willingly surrendered their critical thinking and ability to discern truth from a harvest of spiritual lies to those who control them. From time immemorial, issues of religion and religiosity have always drawn contrasting opinions. Religion itself has been described as the opium of the masses, used by manipulative religionists to enslave the people. Often, when this happens, common sense takes flight, and men become robots to the commands of those who assume the authority of spiritual controllers. Stories abound detailing how otherwise intelligent and right-thinking individuals have willingly committed mass suicide at the promptings of their spiritual leaders, in anticipation of gaining eternity. The same belief propels suicidal individuals to kill innocent citizens, believing that aside from eternity, a specified number of virgins are stationed in heaven to satisfy their sexual cravings as rewards for the genocide they inflict. Such is the potency of the opium that men now take upon themselves the cruel task of killing fellow men for an all-knowing God who has admonished men to leave vengeance to Him. These bigots no longer wait for God to act; they become the jury, judge, and executioners for the presumed failings of fellow humans. Pity.
It is important to note that religion itself is not bad. Practitioners of different religions are united in saying that at the crux of every religious practice is peace and God’s love for humanity, even if there are different ways of worshipping—from Christianity to Islam, traditionalists to Judaism, and Hinduism to Buddhism. For this piece, I will focus on my faith, Christianity. The Bible admonishes all followers of Christ to be Christ-like and live a very simple life. Jesus set several examples in the Bible to show us what it means to be a Christian, and his disciples espoused those beliefs after his resurrection and ascension. That tradition didn’t stop with the death of the disciples; Christianity is all about saving lost souls and bringing them to Christ so they can enjoy eternity after leaving this sinful world. The mantle of continuation was handed over to those we now call pastors, evangelists, apostles, and men of God. They are expected to be Christ-like in nature and shine His light so that, through them, people would come to Christ and worship His majesty. This is no small task; it demands more than knowledge of the Bible, the ability to speak in tongues, or the possession of healing power. It encapsulates everything about Christ, including his simplicity, comportment, sacrifice, teachings, moral rectitude, and holiness. His temple, he admonishes, should be kept holy at all times, and those who tend to it must strive to live above worldly temptations. By their calling, they are expected to be immune from all that glitters but is essentially meaningless in the sight of the Lord, who is Christ, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—the Trinity.
This piece, I must stress again, is not a homily on the nature of Christ, as I am the least qualified to write about spiritual things. The introduction above is just to draw our attention to what is happening in our modern-day cathedrals and the implications for our strivings to make heaven. As things stand today, we need to ask if the church has not completely derailed and fallen into the trappings of satanic wiles. Are the shepherds still looking to Christ, who is the author and finisher of the faith, or have they succumbed to the devil’s alluring temptations? Are they teaching us how to hold on and qualify to be candidates for the narrow gate to a life of bliss rather than dancing into the wide gate that leads to perdition? Are they maintaining the cathedrals according to Christ’s rules of engagement, or have they turned them into a “den of robbers,” as the scripture tells us in Matthew 21:13? In case they have forgotten, Jesus didn’t just wake up one day and display rare anger against the money changers that he chased out of the temple. There was a reason for it. The temple is a holy place that should not be desecrated by the hypocrisy of fake worshippers. It is not the marketplace where anything and everything is tolerated. But realizing that it was being used for misleading people in their worship, cheating God with their sacrifices, and converting it for purposes it was not originally meant for, Jesus flared up and drove the money changers away, saying, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”
What baffles me is that nothing has changed in how we run our cathedrals today. In fact, things have grown worse. Religion, especially Christianity, is being exploited to impoverish the masses. It is used as a potent object of deceit, extortion, and deprivation by so-called men of God who are nothing more than ‘pastorpreneurs’ in the cathedrals of faith. Today in our country, the richest and most flamboyant people can be found among fire-spitting, prayer-spraying, and tongue-speaking pastors, evangelists, apostles, and general overseers. Some, if not most, can compete with our politicians and public servants who relentlessly steal from the public till. Yet, hardly can anyone explain how they come by such wealth. They live lifestyles fit for kings and queens, spare no expense constructing mansions, and move around with armed convoys like their well-known band of thieves on the other side of the divide. We now know that they abuse their office privileges to help economic pillagers launder slush funds. And let no one ask me where it was written in the holy book that it is permissible to do that.
Perhaps, the presumptions above would have remained just that if the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Ola Olukoyede, had not told some of these pastors to their faces that they are nothing but petty thieves who pretend to have moral chastity that is shambolically deceptive. Being an ordained pastor himself, Olukoyede should understand how some of these men feast on the gullibility of their miracle-seeking worshippers to dupe them of the little in their accounts. And because these little droplets can easily make an ocean, it shouldn’t be surprising to see these men rolling in millions of naira within a few years. Yet, it takes courage to tell them to their faces to remove the log in their eyes before helping others remove the speck in theirs. That was a fitting biblical injunction deployed by the EFCC chairman to draw attention to how far they have derailed from Jesus’ exemplary ministry, which focuses solely on “sharing the good news, serving others, taking care of his health by resting when necessary, and spending time in prayer.” All these things, someone wrote, come together to form the bedrock of the Christian minimalist lifestyle.
Christian minimalist lifestyle? Well, whatever that means, I doubt if any of these headline-chasing men of God understand it. The last time I checked, the 20 richest preachers in the country boasted millions of dollars in both property acquisitions and taste for the best automobiles money can buy, in addition to owning private jets to propagate the gospel. These 20 are just a select few because some notable names, especially from the emerging, flighty, and fashionable Pentecostals, are conspicuously missing from that list. I still wonder why one of them has not deemed it fit to sue the tabloid that published such heresies! In the publication, a particular preacher is said to have a net worth of $150 million; another frolics with $65 million while another plays with $50 million. Others boast $41 million, $32 million, $30 million, $15 million, $10.5 million, and $10 million. These men also have a salacious taste for the best state-of-the-art vehicles like Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Range Rovers, and treated Toyota SUVs. They live the big life and enjoy the services of paid armed guards. Yet, they admonish their congregants to embrace a Christ-like lifestyle of unending giving and unbelievable sacrifice.
Listen to Olukoyede unedited: “Just this last week, I have had cause to recover millions from a religious organization. They appointed you a pastor, and that is when you become a big man. We don’t even know what you are doing to earn a legitimate living. You live on the ministry and the church or mosque money. You can’t even explain the source of your wealth. Some religious organizations are more corrupt than public offices. I have evidence to support that. You look at the speck in someone else’s eyes, but meanwhile, there is a log in yours.”
The Yoruba say it is the little fart that escapes from the anus that spoils one’s buttocks. In January this year, Olukoyede said the EFCC uncovered a religious sect that was laundering money for terrorists in the country. Last week, he scolded religious leaders to focus not only on winning souls for Christ but also on demonstrating good character in all they do instead of satisfying the greed that pushes them to transform God’s cathedrals into habitations of robbers, with themselves as cheerleaders. These are not just hollow admonitions. They are heavy words. They are deep. And they are depressing. Two weeks after that outburst, which must have come from a genuine concern for the body of Christ to stand firm in the race to eternity, it is a shame that the only response Olukoyede’s expose has attracted is loud silence. No one has been bold enough to challenge him to name the bad eggs caught stealing from God and converting the cathedral’s money to personal acquisitions. Not one of the billionaire “pastorpreneurs” who hoodwink a gullible crowd of worshippers to give more and suffer for the faith has been bold enough to reveal the source of his humongous wealth to the general public. Would they rather allow us to live with the presumption that what we have is a den of thieves in our cathedrals? Or is this fart not big enough to spoil the buttocks, as the Yoruba people would want us to believe?
The silence from these so-called men of God is deafening and damning. It suggests a tacit admission of guilt or, at the very least, an inability to defend their actions and lifestyle against the weighty accusations leveled against them. It is not enough to preach about righteousness and sacrifice from the pulpit while living a life that starkly contrasts the very essence of those teachings. The integrity of their ministry and the faith of their followers are at stake.
We must ask ourselves: what has happened to the Christian virtues of humility, selflessness, and service? Have they been replaced by greed, vanity, and hypocrisy? The church, which should be a sanctuary of hope and a beacon of light, risks becoming a breeding ground for deceit and exploitation. This trend is not just a disservice to the faith but a direct affront to the teachings of Christ, who emphasized simplicity and genuine devotion.
The call to action here is clear. Followers must hold their leaders accountable, demanding transparency and integrity. They must reclaim their thinking faculties and not blindly follow those who exploit their faith for personal gain. True worship is not about enriching the few at the expense of the many but about a collective journey towards spiritual enlightenment and communal well-being.
Religious leaders, too, must introspect and return to the foundational teachings of their faith. They must reject the trappings of materialism and refocus on their spiritual mission. They should remember that their calling is not to build earthly empires but to guide their flock towards a higher, more meaningful existence.
In conclusion, the issues plaguing our cathedrals are symptomatic of a broader moral and ethical decay. As a society, we must challenge these injustices and strive for a return to true spiritual values. Only then can we hope to cleanse our places of worship and restore them to their rightful purpose. The time for change is now, and it must begin with each one of us.
