By Al Akhigbe (Farmer Al)
I decided a long time ago, to distance myself and my family from religion, moreso, religious leaders like pastors. I don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s my choice.
I don’t hate anyone. But, I don’t attach that ecclesiastical air to anyone. Most of them, if not all, are fake. I was myself a pastor for more than 15 years. I have my ordination certificate, several awards for meritorious services, made impact both locally and internationally.
But, I saw the deceit, shenanigan, jujuism, scam, abuse, etc and was turned off. I became a lone voice in the wilderness crying against them. Probably, that was the reason they decided to eliminate me.
Agreed, no human or association or group is perfect. But, to be so blatant in the perpetration of evil was discomforting to me.
I was in the world and knew how to do a lot of bad things. How could I be in the church as a Christian and we were perfecting the act of doing even worse evil?
When I believe something, I believe with my spirit, soul and body. My zeal for the things of God (as I thought they were), made me grow and became a church leader. As I grew in pastoral ranks, I discovered, to my amazement, that God was just a facade. Everything we did, we did for the G-hoe. Any other thing, we did for greed. And my bible condemns these things.
You needed to have known me. This post is public and anyone that knew me can come and dispute it if I’m lying. Sometimes, during meetings, I’ll argue with the head pastor, using scriptures. And I will be told that revelation is progressive, God talks directly to the man with the vision. Meaning that the bible doesn’t have the present information about the church.
Afterwards, some of my colleagues will come over to try and counsel me. My question was always, how can we say we’re children of God and be engaging in acts worse than those of the unbelievers? They’ll tell me that there are different levels of grace.
If I tell people I stopped pastoring, they’ll be like, “how is that possible? Were you not called before?”
People actually believe this nonsense ”call” thing? Smh.
Get it into your head now, church is a business. Just as people thought of the line of business to start and decided to go into fashion, so also people decided to go into church business. It’s the most lucrative business in Nigeria after politics.
They start it and tell you God called them. It’s a LIE. They called themselves or their pastors selected them to spread his tentacles.
That’s why I laugh when people say, a church has a board. Which kind of board is a board that is selected by the pastor and CEO to act on his behalf and as a semblance of public organisation? Do you people reason at all?
Someone wakes up one day and tells you, God called him. You believed. Busola wakes up one day and decided to narrate the story of how a pastor raped her, you refused to believe. You’re asking for the evidence. Which evidence did your pastor give you believed God called him? The big bible that carries? Anybody can buy a big bible.
Quite frankly, it’s a feat to be able to pull out of church and the pastoral profession. It’s not easy isolating from people that have become family and friends. But, I had to do it for my conscience. I couldn’t bear to see the systematic impoverishment of people. I couldn’t bear to see the perpetuation of falsehood. I couldn’t bear to see women abused. I couldn’t bear to see dirty politics…dirtier than that of APC and PDP put together.
I did. And since then, about 5 years ago, I’ve never been more at peace with myself. I hope to take out time to write a book on this very soon. It will be a biography. Names of people, places and events will be mentioned. I had wanted Pastor Anita to write it herself. Let the world hear her own side of the story. But, I guess they succeeded in gagging her with legal technicalities and she might not be able to.
Well, she is not me. There ain’t no stopping me if I decide to do something. I don’t mind stepping on and hurting toes.
Al Akhigbe (c) 2019
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