Times Of Swaziland: MAKING MOCKERY OF CHRISTIANITY

MAKING MOCKERY OF CHRISTIANITY
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Editor on 05/02/2024 08:20:00


Sir,
EmaSwati are supposedly religious people; but what is religion? Is someone who
believes in ancestral worship religious? Or is it only faith in the one true
God? In Sunday school they taught us that religion is a set of beliefs about a
supernatural being, and a set of practices entailed by those beliefs, usually
articulated as responses to the demands of that supernatural being in question.
Agree
If we agree, then for a set of beliefs and way of life to constitute a
‘religion’, there has to be an element not just of belief in something
supernatural and sacred, but also a practice associated with this
‘something’ – taken as a response to it, or in obedience to it, or
conformity with it. In other words religion ultimately is a ‘lifestyle’.
Other Christians go further than that, because emotional content is important to
them; feelings of awe, reverence, fear, dependence and love are invoked as
characteristics of ‘true’ religious sentiment. This is all good to me but do
we serve God in exchange for posthumous felicity or for who He is?  EmaSwati
claim to be a Christian nation; are we really a Christian nation or it is
something we wish we were? Is our national faith aimed at glorifying the one
true God or aimed at using God to elevate ourselves in the eyes of man?
Shield
Do we use God as a shield from people not to question our ethics? The evidence
on the ground tells a different story. Who’s fooling who here?  If despite our
huge Christian numbers we are being overcome by a very few ‘unfaithful’
people’, what does this say about us Christians? Is our faith weak or
misplaced, misguided or not genuine enough to overcome evil? The country is in
tatters as we speak because of people who claim they are Christians. There is
backstabbing everywhere, there is theft at national level, there is bickering,
back-biting and moral degradation in high places. There is greed of biblical
proportions and all of these are committed by people who visibly carry
gold-plated Bibles. To me it looks like we have done enough damage by
misrepresenting God as a nation and it is time we chose which God we want to
serve. If it’s our ancestors, let’s go that route all the way and stop this
mix and matching because it confuses our children. If it’s Christianity,
let’s go that route all the way and live that lifestyle only, which is Christ.
Right now we keep on tripping on purpose and making a mockery of a faith we
truly don’t want to follow in truth.