Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
Today was thinking day, Sunday. I bundled up my nephew and his cousin sister, my daughter, and off we went to church. Today I learned NEVER to make fun of God. In the morning, I was giggling at the thought of Him sitting by himself somewhere and coming to the realization of what a big mistake he had made allowing us the freedom to choose what we wanted to do. Little did I know that a big mistake was in store for me.
God decided that He would give me something to think about this thinking day. I also discovered today what it must be like to be like Jesus. Most church congregations if asked whether they would like to be like Jesus would gladly scream ‘yes’, completely oblivious to what Jesus’ life on earth was truly like and just imagining the fame He acquired long after He was gone. I discovered that during His lifetime, Jesus was probably the biggest fool to walk the face of the earth in the eyes of most people who met Him and I DO NOT ever want to go through what he went through if that’s what it takes to be like Him.
I mean just imagine if a guy comes up to you today and tells you that he is the son of God. Being truly honest with yourself, would you believe him? I am certain that I would not. At least not until he performs a few miracles to prove it. And even then, I would be left asking myself whether he is a Christian or a devil worshipper. I would also probably escort him to my mother’s doctor for a check up.
Jesus tried to spread his message to people and all he got was ridicule, embarrassment, persecution and crucifixion. It was not after He was long gone that people started asking themselves: “By the way, was that not the Son of God?”
If you truly WANT to be like Jesus, you have to be ready to experience the ridicule, embarrassment, persecution and crucifixion that He experienced. I had a taste of some embarrassment today and I could not imagine ever going through the same experience a second time. I dare you to try it. It is an experience to live for.
Today I had a conversation with the visiting pastor at the church I go to. Yesterday I was gladly preaching the message of being infected with God to students in school and got many congratulations from my colleagues on what a good message that was. Heck I even pledged to donate a mirror to the school with the message engraved on it! I suppose the euphoria of my revelations had not quite died out by the time I attended church today. The conversation went somewhat like this.
I was sitting among a congregation of a few hundred people. Yes, the church is pretty big and even that number of people is not sufficient to fill it up. The pastor was introduced and stood up to give us his message, presumably from God. I cannot remember his name but he told me that he was basically a thug, what I could relate to a member of the Mungiki in his country. His mother had dedicated him to God and was a prayerful woman. Eventually, after many years of thuggery, he developed an illness and after someone prayed for him, he was healed without needing an operation. After that experience, he joined a church and was now a preacher who had evolved from imitating other pastors’ methods of preaching to finding his own method. He confessed to having been diagnosed as HIV positive after he had changed his ways and after seven years, God miraculously healed him, he married and had some kids. I did not need any proof for what he said. I believed it without question.
You can imagine what stupid me was thinking when the dear pastor told me about his healing. Immediately I thought that the proof I needed about my preaching to the children yesterday had been presented to me on a silver platter. The pastor must have been healed because he started loving himself and doing good at which point the HIV infection was replaced with an infection with God. Woohoo!!
I was soooo excited that I forgot about my knowledge of church leaders as hypocrites of the highest order. When the pastor asked if any of us had a testimony after he had prayed for almost everybody to find healing, I put up my hand and waltzed to the front to give my message, the one God gave me to bring to the pastor. I grabbed the microphone and told the pastor in the presence of a few hundred people, about my revelation about being infected with God and how that must have been how he was healed and I told everyone that in order to be healed like our dear pastor was, all they had to do was to change their ways, start loving themselves and doing good.
Nobody clapped when I handed back the microphone. And as I walked back to my seat, the pastor told the congregation that healing does not come from being excitable and before you love yourself you must love God first. He also said that his HIV status was confirmed by machines. This was because I had asked him whether he saw the virus and he hesitated before saying no. He said a closing prayer and people started filing out of the church.
As he said the closing prayer, I was left wondering whether loving myself is not equivalent to loving God seeing as God created me in his image. And goodness, if I cannot love myself who I can see and feel, how can I be expected to love an invisible, intangible God? Does this pastor think that I was a starry-eyed teenager or someone who escaped from a psychiatric ward somewhere? Does he not know that I am an experienced self-employed advocate of the High Court of Kenya? These machines that confirmed his HIV status, who said that they cannot confirm his infection with God? Isn’t the fact that the machine was reading a positive reading at one time and then changed to negative when he found God itself a confirmation that God had entered his body? I said earlier that I felt alone on this quest of mine. Today, I felt like Robinson Crusoe.
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
Today was thinking day, Sunday. I bundled up my nephew and his cousin sister, my daughter, and off we went to church. Today I learned NEVER to make fun of God. In the morning, I was giggling at the thought of Him sitting by himself somewhere and coming to the realization of what a big mistake he had made allowing us the freedom to choose what we wanted to do. Little did I know that a big mistake was in store for me.
God decided that He would give me something to think about this thinking day. I also discovered today what it must be like to be like Jesus. Most church congregations if asked whether they would like to be like Jesus would gladly scream ‘yes’, completely oblivious to what Jesus’ life on earth was truly like and just imagining the fame He acquired long after He was gone. I discovered that during His lifetime, Jesus was probably the biggest fool to walk the face of the earth in the eyes of most people who met Him and I DO NOT ever want to go through what he went through if that’s what it takes to be like Him.
I mean just imagine if a guy comes up to you today and tells you that he is the son of God. Being truly honest with yourself, would you believe him? I am certain that I would not. At least not until he performs a few miracles to prove it. And even then, I would be left asking myself whether he is a Christian or a devil worshipper. I would also probably escort him to my mother’s doctor for a check up.
Jesus tried to spread his message to people and all he got was ridicule, embarrassment, persecution and crucifixion. It was not after He was long gone that people started asking themselves: “By the way, was that not the Son of God?”
If you truly WANT to be like Jesus, you have to be ready to experience the ridicule, embarrassment, persecution and crucifixion that He experienced. I had a taste of some embarrassment today and I could not imagine ever going through the same experience a second time. I dare you to try it. It is an experience to live for.
Today I had a conversation with the visiting pastor at the church I go to. Yesterday I was gladly preaching the message of being infected with God to students in school and got many congratulations from my colleagues on what a good message that was. Heck I even pledged to donate a mirror to the school with the message engraved on it! I suppose the euphoria of my revelations had not quite died out by the time I attended church today. The conversation went somewhat like this.
I was sitting among a congregation of a few hundred people. Yes, the church is pretty big and even that number of people is not sufficient to fill it up. The pastor was introduced and stood up to give us his message, presumably from God. I cannot remember his name but he told me that he was basically a thug, what I could relate to a member of the Mungiki in his country. His mother had dedicated him to God and was a prayerful woman. Eventually, after many years of thuggery, he developed an illness and after someone prayed for him, he was healed without needing an operation. After that experience, he joined a church and was now a preacher who had evolved from imitating other pastors’ methods of preaching to finding his own method. He confessed to having been diagnosed as HIV positive after he had changed his ways and after seven years, God miraculously healed him, he married and had some kids. I did not need any proof for what he said. I believed it without question.
You can imagine what stupid me was thinking when the dear pastor told me about his healing. Immediately I thought that the proof I needed about my preaching to the children yesterday had been presented to me on a silver platter. The pastor must have been healed because he started loving himself and doing good at which point the HIV infection was replaced with an infection with God. Woohoo!!
I was soooo excited that I forgot about my knowledge of church leaders as hypocrites of the highest order. When the pastor asked if any of us had a testimony after he had prayed for almost everybody to find healing, I put up my hand and waltzed to the front to give my message, the one God gave me to bring to the pastor. I grabbed the microphone and told the pastor in the presence of a few hundred people, about my revelation about being infected with God and how that must have been how he was healed and I told everyone that in order to be healed like our dear pastor was, all they had to do was to change their ways, start loving themselves and doing good.
Nobody clapped when I handed back the microphone. And as I walked back to my seat, the pastor told the congregation that healing does not come from being excitable and before you love yourself you must love God first. He also said that his HIV status was confirmed by machines. This was because I had asked him whether he saw the virus and he hesitated before saying no. He said a closing prayer and people started filing out of the church.
As he said the closing prayer, I was left wondering whether loving myself is not equivalent to loving God seeing as God created me in his image. And goodness, if I cannot love myself who I can see and feel, how can I be expected to love an invisible, intangible God? Does this pastor think that I was a starry-eyed teenager or someone who escaped from a psychiatric ward somewhere? Does he not know that I am an experienced self-employed advocate of the High Court of Kenya? These machines that confirmed his HIV status, who said that they cannot confirm his infection with God? Isn’t the fact that the machine was reading a positive reading at one time and then changed to negative when he found God itself a confirmation that God had entered his body? I said earlier that I felt alone on this quest of mine. Today, I felt like Robinson Crusoe.
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