Love is my religion

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.