By Agba Jalingo

I heard that question more than a hundred times in 2020. I want to attempt to answer it in the hope that no one will ask me again in 2021.

I believe in God, as the supreme universal being. One who owns everything and from whom all authority is derived and that our existence must be fashioned as an expression of God’s universal sovereignty.

What I disagree with is the attempt to make us all see God through the eyes of the Arabs or the the white people or the Chinese or Indians. I insist vehemently that I want to see God through the eyes of African tradition and not through concocted wi-shions of Prophet Mohammed or the genealogy of Jewish ancestors, Abraham Isaac and Jacob or the deep visions of Lord Buddha or Lord Hindu. I have my own ancestors here in Africa who saw visions too and dreamt dreams. At this point, you don’t have to agree with me. It doesn’t matter and it’s in order.

I have utmost respect for how anyone else wants to perceive their God. I even don’t mind once in a while participating with you to see things from your perspective.

Others should also reciprocate this respect for my own way of perceiving God through our African tradition even if it doesn’t tally with theirs. That’s how the world will attain peace.

Your attempt to convert me to your belief is not only annoying, it is an insult on my intelligence as a matter of fact. The shallow thinking that once you don’t belong to any of the foreign religious beliefs, you don’t know God, is deformative.

Anytime I see someone in front of me having the audacity to insult and call our deities idols and then asking me to pray a short prayer to become a believer of a so called higher foreign belief, it sounds no different in my ears than racism and domination.

I will rather sit on a table where, like the United Nations table for Presidents, all religious beliefs including my own, are treated as equals than to dwell in the company of self conceited believers who seek by all means to subjugate my own belief to foreign beliefs.

That is the difference in our belief in God. While yours is in the sky, mine is here with me and there is nothing wrong with the difference.

It was Apostle Paul who wrote in the 20th verse of the 9th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians in Greece that:

“When I was with the Jews, I lived like a Jew to bring the Jews to Christ. When I was with those who follow the Jewish law, I too lived under that law.

“Even though I am not subject to the law, I did this so I could bring to Christ those who are under the law.”
(New Living Translation)

So when next we have an encounter, be like Apostle Paul. Instead of trying in vain to convert me, subject yourself to my traditional law.

Subject yourself to my own belief. That will enable you understand me and in the end, we will realize that the Christ we all seek, is not in any our religions but in the way we treat our fellow human beings.

Thank you and happy Sunday.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.