Settle down. I have no intention of going all preachy on you. Not today. I only want to send us down memory lane to the teachings that helped us develop our principle characters. At a time when there’s so much confusion among people, it’s essential that we go back to where we all began to find our path once again and find ourselves. As mothers, we, especially, must be firm in what we accept and pass down to our children. I’m sure no sane mother intends to put their children in harm’s way. But just how do we find ourselves at the mercy of religious groups that drain us of all we initially believed in?
Where is your faith?
Do we have any? Or are we dependent on the faith of others? I once tried to advise a friend to learn to pray for herself rather than rely purely on teachings from her ‘Nabii,’ as she called her pastor. Sadly, she ended up asking me to pray for her! I have also known members of a well-known and respectable religious faith redirecting fellow members to witch doctors when their prayers took too long to get a response. It reminds me of a book I edited called A Religion with Gaps by Dr Andrew Ratanya, a Theologian and Religious Scholar (Ph.D.) Dr Ratanya explains how religious groups coaxed the African people to accept God yet allowed them to turn to their traditional healers when matters became more serious.
It’s OK to question
Don’t follow anyone blindly. Don’t feel guilty for questioning when it concerns your faith. Ask and do your research. Open up those verses or suras whenever someone quotes them. Analyse them and research more on them to see what others think of them. But most of all, pray for yourself and ask the Creator for insight. Pray that your spiritual eyes be opened to see and decipher when a message is true and one that is not. Let your religious following only be for your guidance because, most importantly, you need to develop a personal relationship with your maker so you may see the world in His eyes and know when someone else’s truth is not yours.
