Pastors
and Private Jets: Is There an Airport in Heaven? – Mike Akhariale
The recent remarks by the Catholic Bishop
of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev Matthew Kukah, which seeks to question the
moral and spiritual validity of the practice in which men of God are now
fighting for space in the glittering world of opulence and razzmatazz with
modern day traders and money changers, and the flak it drew from the body that
ought to know better, Christians Association of Nigeria, through its
spokesperson, Elder Sunday Oibe, has exposed the obvious contradictions that
have emerged between what the Church was originally set up to achieve amongst
humanity on behalf of God and what we are witnessing today.
The
apostasy is such that church leaders are shamelessly trading places with CEOs
of Fortune 500 businesses. The old picture of Christ as the simple and humble
man from Galilee has been replaced by that of the rich and arrogant man with
swagger, who has no need for God’s help because all that makes the material
life meaningful are already with him. The picture of heaven that we were given
as kids at catechism and Sunday school classes was that it is a place of bliss
and endless peace, as against this present world of suffering and sacrifices.
The
new recklessly opulent lifestyle of those who call themselves “men of God”
seems to ask the question: Why wait to die before you have a taste of heaven
when you can financially acquire it right now? Of course, the natural
exclamation you will hear when you peep into the luxurious cabin of a typical
private aircraft is “This is heaven!”
What
Kukah said and which was largely similar to what another man of God, Tunde
Bakare, and other piously minded people are saying, is that Christianity is
being unwittingly misrepresented by the unbridled materialism that has taken
hold of the church, which has the potential for perverting the central message
of Christianity which is holiness and reverence, publicly and privately.
The
position of Rev Kukah that “the stories of corrupt men and women being given
recognition by their churches or mosques as gallant sons and daughters and the
embarrassing stories of pastors displaying conspicuous wealth as we hear from
the purchases of private jets and so on, clearly diminish our moral voice” is
actually the sad story of the worldly and corrupt Nigeria of today.
As
a Christian, I am surprised — in fact, disappointed — by the ecumenical
filibustering that was offered by CAN to the challenge that was being rightly
posed. In the words of Oibe, Kukah should not be taken seriously because “If
there is any clergy man in the country whose constituency is government, it is
Bishop Kukah, who served every government in power in the last decade. He thinks
people have forgotten in a hurry how he served in Obasanjo’s government and
turned round to attack the former president…” I wanted to hear Oibe list the
number of executive jets that are now in Kukah’s fleet as a result of his
association with those men of power.
Was
this really an intelligent response to the strong moral charge being leveled,
namely, that there is something not quite right in men of God wanting to outdo
men of the world in material pursuits?
Pastor
Ayo Oristejafor is the latest of the long list of men of God that are flying
across the globe with private jets while the faithful church members are
struggling to make ends meet after paying their burdensome church tax which
they call tithes.
With
respect to the advice that church leaders should be careful in their
interaction with political leaders, I think the Church should have taken it to
heart with all the seriousness that it deserves, rather than seeking to deflect
the accusation by pointing accusing fingers at those who are raising the issue.
I
am not too bothered about the incidents of church leaders fleecing their
members to support a lifestyle fit only for earthly principalities and powers
because my kobo will never stray into their till wilfully but I am worried
about the looming political and constitutional danger present in a situation in
which the church and the state are in active collusion to undermine the well-being of the masses.
It
is going to be difficult for a man of God who is hobnobbing with temporal men
of power now to be able to face them like the prophets of old and tell them of
their sins that have constituted a reproach to the nation for which we are
presently suffering.
That
was the point that Kukah was driving at when he counselled fellow clergymen that
“Unless we distance ourselves, we cannot speak the truth to power. We cannot
hear the wails of the poor and the weak. We should not be seen as playing the
praying wing of the party in power.”
More
importantly, I think they diminish God before His creations whenever they see
his “preachers” in the company of their tormentors, flying in the same jets and
lodging in the same champagne-filled five-star hotels where anything evil is
possible. It creates a huge ethical problem for those wise few who can see the
contradictions therein. The sad fact is that the majority of the church
faithful will never see it that way. As far as they are concerned, “it is the
will of God;” and that is why it remains the unassailable truth that religion
is the opium of the masses.
Why
would anyone bother himself with the heavy sacrifice of a holy life on earth so
that he can make heaven when, indeed, he is actually living his heaven on
earth? I get the feeling that these gluttonous men of God think they can
actually fly their way skyward into heaven while the rest of us would still be
waiting for the illusive rapture or the certain last day.
I
still think that Jesus Christ was right when he gave the parable of the eye of
a needle and the camel as far as making heaven is for the materially affluent.
The reality of God is made a little more doubtful by a lifestyle that God
Himself had advised against. They say their God is “not a poor God” as we now
hear every service day; but that assertion does not resonate as the central
theme of the life that Jesus bequeathed to His disciples.
My
hope is that someday, the people will begin to see the differences between the
will of God and that of man.
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