Tony Campolo: For the Record | Tony Campolo

Is the Christian church getting rid of those that are dubious hermeneutically? Do values change as human being progress or are humans just discovering exploring values as they progress?



Tony Campolo: For the Record | Tony Campolo

PREACHING A STRESSED SERMON

Here I am seated on my table with my favorite tea in the world listening to Curtis Mayfield's unique style of funk music. My room is pretty clean thus allowing me the opportunity to think clearly and critically. But not with some people within the region I live in Central Nigeria.

I recalled seeing a man in the market sometime this week. He is probably in his late fifties. His head is all covered with grey hair. He had a huge frame probably would weigh around 75kg. This man was going about in the market square shouting as if something bad had happened to him. At first, I thought he was talking to someone across the streets but unknown to me, he was preaching with the Bible in hand.

Religion is a big thing in Africa, people find social security and a sense of meaning in their various religions. Most of the religions practiced in Africa are missionary or evangelistic religions except for African traditional religion.

Now back to the old man preaching in the market. He was proclaiming and propagating his religion which is obviously Christianity. Watching this scene raised a lot of questions in my mind as I  asked why a man his age will consider going about 'preaching'? It then occurred to me that he might be going through some form of stress ranging from environmental, psychological, emotional, 'spiritual' etc. His mates in developed climes have retired or thinking about retiring with some of them looking for places around the world to holiday but not the case with old people in sub-saharan Africa.

There are myriads of problems bedeviling the continent of Africa. One of them is environmental degradation. African worldview have a less regard for the environment as they believe that their ancestors (the living dead in the words of Bolaji Idowu) hang on trees and the forests and that is their abode. So for the African, he dares not change or beautify his environment because he may be doing harm to an ancestor.

For most of Africans, especially Nigerians whom 70% live in rural areas, they use firewood to make their food. Obiviously the source of this firewood are the trees around them. These rural dwellers cut down trees indiscriminately to make firewood and charcoal. It takes time to cut down trees and also making charcoal from them. How different will it be if these rural dwellers will use gas or electricity to power their cooking stove? Here is where the government needs to come in to ease the hardships of people.

What if this old preacher lived in a very clean environment, would he go about preaching? He maybe living in a poor neighborhood as those living there are stressed in many ways thus the reason for them to turn to religion to find succor. Not so with the rich!

There is a lot that needs to be done to make this continent move forward to catch up with the rest of the world that are already recycling waste to get energy and other valuable materials that makes life easier. African worldview needs to be adjusted.

NAPKUR: OLD WINE IN NEW WINE SKIN

Napkur, grew up in a small village in Langtang North Local North Government area of Plateau State in central Nigeria. He was born into a poor home. His parents were farmers, which is the predominant occupation of the people in his village. He is the first child in a family of five.

Napkur’s village has only a hospital to cater for the health needs of over 500 people in that community. The hospital rarely smells the presence of a doctor; only community health extension workers generally known as CHO work in the hospital in Napkur’s village.

The school is 10km away and there over 100 pupils to a teacher in the classroom in the school that Napkur attends. As the oldest child in his home, his father trained him to work with his muscle by farming to meet his needs. The general believe in Napkur’s community is that exerting physical strength is what makes you a man and so every young boy is taken to the farm and taught how to farm by his/her parents.

Napkur attends the crowded school in his community. He goes to school because of Nanpon, who attended that school and further his education to become a Grade Two teacher. Nanpon is revered in that community because he is the only one who went to school and graduated to become a teacher. Nanpon always use the few vocabularies he knows to intimidate his peers in that community. Nanpon got his education in the big city thus making him one of the few persons in that community to visit a big city. Nanpon is the center of attraction in the community and he always have guests in his home who want him to tell them about life in the big city.

On a very faithful day, Napkur visited Nanpon. Napkur asked Nanpon the entire questions he has about the big city. Nanpon now told Napkur all that is in the big city from the cars, the buildings, the markets and electricity in the city. Ever since that day, Napkur life was changed and he developed an interest to visit the big city to live and maybe raise a family with one of the women of the city.

Twenty years passed and Napkur is now old enough to fulfill his childhood dream. The decision to migrate to the big city did not sit down well with his parents as they are now old and in need of his support. But Napkur defiantly travelled to the city. He left without completing his education; he just thought that all he needed was the physical strength he used while in the village to survive. And so the journey goes for this young man to the city to fulfill his dreams.

He arrives in the city without knowing anybody to stay with. He found the boys at the bus park welcoming and some of them shared the same story as he. He now found shelter in one of the stalls at Bus Park. He ate whatever they ate and soon he became like them; smoking, drinking and doing all sorts of things to survive.

This story is typical of a good number of young people who left their villages in search of a ‘better life’ in ‘big cities’. Their story is true of a young African who thinks that physical strength is what is needed to thrive. This is because they are in old Africa; old Africa is the type of Africa that Napkur grew in. Where men were taught that physical strength is what is needed to thrive or survive. This type of society oppresses women and it treats women as properties and not persons with dignity.

Africa is in a transition. Africans are moving into a culture that has been described as post-modern; a culture that there are no absolute but relativism is what is championed. The system of education in most of African countries is not structured in the way that can meet the demands of what is needed to thrive in the post-modern world.

How different would the life of Napkur be if he had a good and solid education so that when he comes to the city, he would readily have the skills needed for him to thrive in the city and possibly support his old parents?

Educators have submitted that ‘a nation cannot grow above the standards of her education’. Africa’s development lies in the hands of Africans; it is left to them fix their system of education in order for the continent to grow.