When I make Nigerian pastors the subject of a post, it offends people.
I get feedbacks that chalk it up to spiteful words just posted for the fun of it. Followed by rebuttals from these pastor-advocates saying,
"Leave pastors alone!"
Funny, because I consider myself too grown to risk being a jerk over a few countable likes - for an unfair portrayal of pastors.
"Leave pastors alone," means let's all be mute to the systematic brainwashing and havoc caused in their name and continued by virtue of the authority they wield?
Leave them.
While they obligate you to fund their vanity?
While some of them dumb you down with unfounded principles and make sure to pass a warn off requiring you not to ask rightful questions?
While they prey on your desperation to abracadabra your way to earned successes?
These things will always sound provocative and cliché to you because your veneration of the name 'pastor' has beclouded your reasoning.
And don't for a minute think that I'm not equally as church-bred as you are.
I've been a chorister since forever; yet, very conscious and allowing my singing be my salvation route.
Not man. Not man-made doctrines.
.
I should conclude with this story so you see the root of my angst about pastors.
I was a boy of 13 or 14 and very wrapped up in church activities. One day, in a house fellowship, which was among the line up of church activities that year, an invited young pastor ministered. He was unrestrained, crude, illiterate and did more roaring than preaching the gospel with love - that ploy they adopt to scare you into obeisance. He successfully filled everybody with awe and fear. Then, he started a deliverance session and decided to single me out.
He brought me out before the house. He started fortunetelling scary stories about my person; in the full glare of church members; inconceivable frightful stuff which had no bearing on a child whose life revolved around secondary school and church choir.
While he branded me everything but a child of God, I did a self-examination to see where all this was coming from. I felt nothing less than whole. I felt superior to him intellectually but had to submit to a cretin - out of fear.
He took his crude deliverance a notch higher by yanking off my shirt, for reasons beyond me.
At this point I felt dehumanized as I stared at the ground, wishing it'd open and swallow me.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw the supposed godly brothers and sisters starting to get amused as their eyes bore into my unclad torso. They scoffed and chuckled.
In that den of hypocrites, I suffered a lasting childhood embarrassment, one that was hard to live down.
This is what these tricksters do to people: They complicate your life for you with conjured narratives - some whom you know very well are underachieving failures pastoring a ministry which serves as a life-filler.
But then, don't talk about them. Alright.
