CAN THE GOSPEL ALONE SAVE AFRICA-or there’s something about being black, I wonder?
I have been imagining how the white man invented the aeroplane. Amazing piece of technology.
To my mind the most fascinating invention is the radio and television.
And my father made modest attempts to answer my queries on how the radio and TV work. And my first degree in Engineering still didn’t quite sort that conundrum.
And the white man remains my enigma. Who is he? And why should he dictate to me? Yes, he dictates to me by the force of his gifted intelligence and inventiveness.
For a fact he dictates to everyone who look up to his race for science, technology and how he rules the world by the sheer power of human genius. We must buy what he produces to stay relevant.
And when you finally arrive the Whiteman’ land and observe the way he reasons and plans and how he has brought his cognitive skills to make his society great, you soon realise the gap that naturally exists between him and the rest others.
What was God thinking? Such ocean-wide difference in virtually everything between the Whiteman and others?
And now the gospel arrives Africa what more can one ask for?
Thought the gospel was the redemptive package: to save, restore and bring all men to the equality table to enjoy the bounties of life?
Or was salvation limited to the saving of the human soul? Or has it other imports on the human intellect and man’s capacity to reason, let’s say the black man can launch his own rocket and guide missiles and begins to find mental and political independence without asking the Whiteman for his guide and tutelage?
After more than 100 years of Whiteman’ contact with Africa,, which brought education and Christianity along:
Poverty pervades still. Standard of living keeps plummeting.
Education hasn’t made the continent harness the mental resources it capacitates into creative and successful social conditions.
Seem like the African society was better organised, efficiently run under the colonial mandate. Only the white man could have done it?
The gospel again! With all it holds in holistic human transformation, why is Africa still the way it is?
Some may say well does it really matter after all we are now saved?
Did God send His son to die only for the salvation of our soul, not minding if the person toils and die like a fool?
Why did he make the brain and other faculties?
And I begin to imagine that the gospel has all it should have to set a people free and give them the resources for all they can become, but the application of the truth it gives matter so much.
I love the fact that God does not prefer the Whiteman to the black.
After all, why did He give the best of things to the Blackman: oil, mineral wealth, and a wonderful sun-powered climate.
And the wonderment emerges once more: it is the Whiteman that shows up to the black man’ continent to show him how to exploit the resources in his own land.
And once again takes over the management of what he should normally have capacity for.
Would Christians of black origin simply rest content on just being saved without the deeper and finer interrogation of the import of salvation and one’s rightful place in the world ?
Its so easy to live and die without even living up to a fraction of what we were originally made for.
And I leave us with this powerful portion of the bible: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism” …Acts 10:34-43.
Even as I’m writing this I still feel totally dissatisfied.
