The Cost of Africa’s Inferiority Complex (1)

By Honourable Saka

According to one estimate, African girls of today spend more money on fashion than what they spend on books and food combined. From pedicure to manicure, skin bleaching cosmetics, hair relaxers, wigs, weaves, eyelashes, nails, among others. Many women in the universities even go to the extreme: they blow part of their school fees on items that will make them look sexy.

Take Nigeria for example, it is estimated that Nigeria has a population of about 155million with about 56% between the ages of 16-54 years old. Out of these age group women are more than 40million. The details are as follows: Male = 44,296,228 Female = 42,534,542.

Therefore with over 40 million women in Nigeria, if each one of them spends at least $ 1 a week on any of the above items, how much will that be? At least that is $ 40million dollars per week; making it about $150 per month. Mind you this figure just applies to Nigeria only. What about the women across all the 54 African countries combined?

Every day, Korean and Brazilian families thank black women for giving their countries $ 16.4 million dollars each. The low self-esteem of African women is making them very rich and they’re happy about that.

Throughout Africa, women spend billions of dollars every week, to import Brazilian hair, Peruvian hair, Korean hair, Asian hair, European wigs, weaves, eyelashes, artificial nails and many other stuff, all because the African woman does not appreciate her God-given natural beauty anymore. She bleaches her skin and spends so much on her hair because she wants to look Asian, a European or American. She believes that is sexy! The result: cancer and other numerous untold consequences.

This is so because the African woman has been brainwashed to look down upon her identity and to boycott her natural beauty for someone else’s. Our women have disposed their natural beauty and are rather paying so much for Asian and Western fashion. In fact, it costs African women hundreds of billions of dollars every year to keep their artificial make ups, their artificial hairs, the nails, and all the fashion they have blindly copied from other societies at the expense of their God-given beauty.

At the same time, the African fashion has been thrown to the dogs. Africa therefore spends all this money to create jobs for Asia, Europe and the Americas, whilst unemployment and poverty is becoming the destiny of the African people. Most African relationships are unstable because African women of today would demand all that their partners may not be able to afford. Africa needs  a mental revolution.

Bob Marley warned Africans to emancipate themselves from mental slavery, yet Africans wouldn’t listen.

If African women are throwing their pride, natural beauty and their culture to the dogs, whom do we expect, to cherish and to promote the natural beauty of the African woman?

Source: Project PanAfrica (www.projectpanafrica.org)

LIFE GOES ON

Is there any simple sentence more popular than the above? Someone even summed up the whole mystery of life in the above three words, "Life Goes On". We hear it, see it and experience the truism of the above statement almost each and every day in our lives.

When you get dumped by your boy or girlfriend, life goes on. When you lose either a hand or a leg through a car accident, life goes on.  When you lose both parents before or after you are born, life goes on. When all your friends reject you, life goes on. When there is an earthquake that claims hundreds of thousands of lives, life goes on. The list goes on and on. But have you wondered why life goes on no matter what?

It is pretty obvious that life does not care about the tragedies or the fortunes that happen to us in life. It goes on. So you better get along with it. The world will not stop for you just because you lost a loved one. It will go on no matter how sad or happy you feel.

In the past, this made me feel sad when life goes on normally when I experienced sad moments. I wish it would stop to share my problems and comfort me.

Now I do understand the benefits of why life goes on or why it must go on. Apart from the fact that it goes on so that we can forget the unfortunate incidents in our lives and the mistakes we committed in the past, it also goes on for a better reason.

Yes, life goes on unceasingly towards the realization of the creator’s purpose. It is the creator’s purpose that he redeems the entire fallen human race through Jesus Christ and restores paradise to mankind through His Kingdom headed by Jesus. Thus, life and the world will continue to forge ahead till the realization of this purpose and even beyond. It will continue to go on till the new heaven and the new earth are ushered in. In this sense, the world is like a vehicle in transit that is heading towards the paradisaical promise land which God conceived and purposed to be the home of man even before the founding of the world.

 The creator is itching to see tears permanently wiped off from the faces of mankind resulting from all the tragedies we encounter of which we have no clear control. He is yearning to see grief, sadness, sorrow, pain, suffering permanently replaced with joy, happiness, peace, prosperity, and eternal  life.

Are you not happy to see life go on till the complete freedom of the children of God is fulfilled? I am and I hope you are too. Let us continue to run the race of life with faith and endurance while we look intently towards the fulfillment of God’s promises particularly the one recorded at Revelation 21:1,4 which states “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea is no more…. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away”

"God is NOT Dead"

Voltaire

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” - Voltaire.

The idea of God being dead is simply untenable. The intelligently designed grand universe, the instinctive wisdom of all animals, the life-giving activities of trees and fruits, and the wonderful make-up of the human body all attest to the existence of an intelligent supreme being beyond all reasonable doubt.

It certainly requires a tremendous amount of faith to believe in the inexistence of God than his existence. Probably, Nietzsche and other disillusioned people in general who believe in the “death” of God might have missed the divine purpose of God whose wisdom and the depth of his knowledge is past finding out.  He is certainly not dead.

See : "GOD IS DEAD" 

All the injustices perpetrated in the name of God and the problems that constantly torment individuals and bedevil the world as a whole coupled with the prolonged silence of the Almighty as conclusive evidence or proof of the inexistence of God pales into utter insignificance and completely fade away when they are examined in the light of true knowledge about God and his divine purposes.

We would better understand the seemingly silence of God amidst the numerous problems and troubles this world has ever seen by casting our minds back to the choices our first ancestors, Adam and Eve made and how the imprudent exercise of their free will affected them and all their descendants including this generation.

Adam and Eve in searching for a higher knowledge and desperately seeking to be like God disobeyed him disrespectfully by choosing to believe Satan other than the one who created them and gave them every good and perfect gift. Rather than depending on God forever, they chose to be independent of him, determining for themselves what is good and evil without God’s guidance or direction. Man, led by Adam and Eve, has eventually chosen to be his own “boss”, and to live as freely as he wants without the dictates and strict control of a higher authority.

But, would independence from God be a wise course of action? Would the freedom and liberty mankind has been yearning for be complete without God as Satan stubbornly implied?  Would a life and world without God be better than a life or world with God? It would only be a matter of time for all intelligent beings in the face of abundant information and evidence to arrive correctly at answers to these deep and unsettling questions.

God has allowed sufficient time to pass. Over the years, God has permitted man to “run his own show” without his interference, allowing man to use his free will to the full. As people multiply on the face of the earth, he has even permitted them to experiment with all forms of political ideologies or systems of rule, from totalitarianism to Democracy.  Thus, God has purposely remained silent for so long just to allow mankind to experience a life and a world without Him - without his control and direction, his assistance, and intervention. And what does the evidence show?   

True, the problems of man and the whole world keep getting worse and worse. The obvious conclusion is that life or a world without God –its creator- is simply a sick world.

Before God breaks his silence and intervenes to heal the world, reverse the unjust reward system, fix the broken, correct matters, ensure peace, stability and prosperity for all, he would first want to teach mankind a vital lesson - that no matter what Satan says about him, man is not capable of managing his own affairs; man cannot rule man. Jeremiah couldn’t be more apt when he captured this truism in one statement thus “It is not appointed unto man even to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23)

Indeed, God is graciously mute because He just wants mankind to see the folly in choosing their own way in the form of selfish personal pursuits and human governments under the influence of Satan. Without this loving effort on his part, humans would never respect and appreciate his loving authority and the wisdom in staying clear of any sin or act of disobedience. He is gradually teaching man through the ills and the evils of the present, the supremacy of his ways, the profitableness of his just laws, and the benefits of his sovereignty and authority for the common good- the common good that man has tirelessly, vigorously and rigorously searched for in vain with all sorts of ideas and philosophies.

It is now crystal clear that even a well-intentioned  attempt on the part of man who is limited in his own ability to achieve true freedom and create a better world by pushing the Almighty aside would result in only the chaos, selfishness, greed, and woes that we are currently witnessing. If God permits us further beyond a certain point, the worse case scenario would be global anarchy where nations and individuals would embark on a dehumanizing and world-shattering journey to obliterate one another.

Thankfully, the Almighty would step in to lovingly save his children before the unfortunate and the inevitable happens. How do we know this for sure? Because if he who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Romans 8:32.

"GOD IS DEAD" Part 1

Friedrich Nietzsche

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…” - Friedrich Nietzsche

 “If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.”- Mikhail Bakunin

Various religions, religious denominations and even individuals have formed different conceptions about this God. In line with their conception, they worship him the way they feel it pleases Him. 

While some are motivated by sheer love in their service of the "universal consciousness" otherwise referred to as God, others too do it unwillingly and grimly for fear of his divine wrath and grievous punishment. Other people too follow him religiously not because they yearn to willingly obey his sometimes-strict requirements but particularly for what they believe they can get -financially and materially- from following this God. Well, you might call it very selfish.

On the contrary, many a people are inclined to side with Friedrich Nietzsche that God is “dead”. Though Nietzsche had his own reasons for making such a courageous and outrageous statement, others prefer to interpret his words to suit their own observations. For  instance, 19^th century philosopher Mikhail Bakunin and others who share his line of reasoning posit that the “death” or inexistence of God is good for total human liberty and therefore believed that if  God really existed, it would be necessary and in the interest of all to abolish him.

God is dead? For people who believe in the demise of God or in his nonexistence, they don't find it surprising when people's prayers go unanswered. When people are sick and bedridden and there is no healing from above despite the patient's seemingly godly ways, the best explanation they could conjure or conjecture is either God simply doesn't care about human affairs or is simply suffocated to death by depraved, corrupt, violent and sickening human conduct and activities.

Even when there are violent wars where man is bitterly slaughtered by fellow man, when there are earthquakes that swallow hundreds and thousands of souls and destroys families, when there are poverty that impoverishes and fatally reduces the quality of life of many a people, when there are injustices, crimes of all sorts, pain and suffering, people are just disappointed when they understandably raise up their heads and ask God sincerely and justifiably the oft-repeated question   “Oh God, why?" only to be responded with a deafening silence from the "causeless cause"  and the “ birthless” and supposed “deathless” deity above.

For frustrated mankind, the only conclusion they can draw is that God is dead. If God isn't dead, why doesn't he use his infinite powers to solve the world's bizarre problems? why does he allow so-called men of God to misrepresent him and shamelessly use his name and his word to intimidate and dupe people, engage in loose and promiscuous conduct, constantly lie to their members through fake dreams and visions, perform fake healing and miracles to deceive even the elect and the elite and deliberately twist, misinterpret and misapply God's word to deceive thousands into blind submission to their authority? If God is alive, why doesn't he strike them with a bolt of lightening to put a stop to the defamation of his name and character? Why does God watch apathetically to the corrupt conduct of politicians who claim God's backing for their nomination, appointment or election but take delight in self-aggrandizement and greedy accumulation of national wealth at the expense of the masses?

The last straw that seems to break the camel’s back is when God if he was alive sat unconcerned for decades of intense religious persecutions and atrocities done in his holy name that took away countless of innocent and righteous lives. Indeed, it seems the worst injustices have been perpetrated in the name of religion and God.

Mikhail Bakunin

Currently, Good has been labeled as bad and bad good. People who pursue righteousness and godliness suffer whilst those who immerse themselves in every wrong conduct and behavior prosper at the speed of light. Shouldn’t the reverse be the case?  If God is that powerful and alive, why doesn’t he step in to correct matters and clear his name of all the reproach heaped on him? No wonder many people are concluding God is no more - dead.

 This is what Nietzsche obviously meant when he implied God is dead. Mere Humans have ably and completely reversed the just values and reward system purportedly instituted in our conscience by the omniscient and omnipotent God, and this is even worsened by the “ungolden” silence of the Almighty. One couldn’t agree more with Nietzsche when he stated “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him….”

This increasingly attests to the fact that the existence of God might be a sham after all probably contrived artfully and intelligently by a bunch of old but clever religious men who saw his existence necessary.

But is God really “dead”?   

NEXT: "GOD IS DEAD" Part 2