There are not many people that can correctly tell what my
favourite musical genre is. This is so because I play and listen to different
musical genres all the time. The reason for this is simply that I grew up with
different musical influences. In fact, I tend to always mix it up depending on
the mood of the day.
Reggae is one genre I play a lot when I am feeling low or at times
just want to be philosophical. For this reason, many times I go beyond my means
to acquire a rich collection of reggae music every now and then. For instance,
I have this recording of an interview of Ziggy Marley being interviewed on
Dutch radio promoting his album ‘love is my religion’. Every time I listen to
the interview, I ask myself what exactly his philosophy on religion is.
During the interview, he
chatters and whimpers about how he thinks it is more important to love than to
be religiously correct. How does he marry this philosophy with Rastafarian
beliefs which he mentions in the same interview?
Rastafarians hold many beliefs
analogous to Christian beliefs like the existence of a God, called Jah, and
they accept considerable parts of the bible. I haven’t interacted much with
Rastafari literature but the little I know suggests that the core of
Rastafarian beliefs lies at the conviction that Jah sent his divine incarnate
son to Earth in the form of Jesus who made himself manifest as the divine
person of Haile Selassie I. The coronation of Haile Selassie I as ruler of
Ethiopia in 1930, probably gave impetus to the growth of Rastafarian beliefs
especially in Jamaica after the visit of the then Ethiopian emperor.
I don’t intend to
discuss Rastafarian beliefs contrasted with Christian beliefs. So before I
digress, I must mention that this blog only seeks to interrogate some Christian
beliefs that have come up in recent years. In my view the words of Ziggy Marley
a Rastafarian are very timely and important for Christians to have a look at
how the faith is being smut with questionable doctrines. In today’s Christian
circles, we have groups of believers who are so disconnected to realism that
they are only engrossed in religiosity idealism. These groups of Christians
unfortunately have given up their God given right to free thought and choice but
have given in to the idiosyncrasies of very unbiblical doctrines propelled by
some egocentric preachers whom I may have discussed in my very last Blog posting.
Christian faith is based
on the credo of love, in the order of love God and then love your fellow human.
Love, then is what all Christians should preach. However, today we have some groups
of Christians that pray for other people (their enemies) to be involved in road
accidents, plane crashes or whatever sort of death. In their minds they believe
God answers such prayers. They have even coined a term, ‘dangerous prayer’ and ‘fire
for fire’ which I may equate to the expression of ‘an eye for an eye’. This doctrine and the group of believers who
practice it believe that you have to pray for your enemies to have bad luck. It
is fire for fire.
This line of thought and
doctrine that encourages fire for fire is very much contrary to the biblical
teaching of love. These kind of doctrines which espouse such prayers
unfortunately are being encouraged by the vision and miracle preachers with
little or no theology education. This is a strange kind of teaching and this is
probably what Ziggy Marley is making reference to. Even I, would rather show
love than be religiously correct in line with a doctrine that allows me to pray
for someone to get cancer which becomes incurable and consequently they die. There
are prayers like, “I declare now for all
the witches to die in Jesus’ name, all my enemies to drop dead so their evil
plans won’t succeed…."
This is not the teaching
of the Christian faith. My views and thoughts remain that such doctrinal
beliefs and endeavors are not according to the Christian faith. Such a prayer
is actually Satanic. The bible teaches us to love our enemies and pray for
those that have evil intentions for us, so surely one cannot start aiming
prayer at people hoping that they die.
In the bible, Jesus’
teachings on prayer outline some important things which are well summarized in
Mathew chapter 6, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They
love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners,
so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in
full. But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your
Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will
reward you. When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans
do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. Do
not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.
This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in
heaven: May your holy name be honoured; may your Kingdom come; may your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need. Forgive us
the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us.
Do not bring us to hard testing, but keep us safe from the Evil one.’ If you
forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will
also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others, then your Father
will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”
The
emphasis on forgiving others, which Jesus makes in verses 14 and 15 of Mathew
chapter 6 cannot be over emphasised. This is love. Love even for enemies. I
know as mere mortal humans to literally show love to an enemy or someone who
wishes bad things on us is often not realistic. But we should never preach
hate. We should never include this hate speech in prayer. This is not the
teaching of Jesus Christ, so abash dangerous prayers, and mortify fire for
fire.
This is
my view. This is my thought.
