Chapter 74

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 74

My relationship with the Christian God was faltering. I asked myself why it is that no-one I know thinks like me and I thought that perhaps I am in the wrong religion. Perhaps I belong in scientology where life is analyzed scientifically. Scientologists would probably be more willing to understand my theory of spiritual identities than Christians.

If God is Love, why can’t the devil be selfishness? If God is Love and I am created in His image, why can’t I be Hope? Only a Christian can explain the difference in these concepts, if there is any.

I have been examining my relationship with God and wondering whether it is a good relationship or a bad one. How do you tell if you are in a good or bad relationship?

I was fearing that I was about to break up with God for the second time. My fear was derived from the fact that a relationship which results in people breaking up and getting back together again repeatedly cannot be a good one. Before deciding whether or not to break up with the Christian God, I had to find out whether my relationship with Him was good or bad because I knew that whatever I decided would affect my life in a serious way.

I decided to examine the relationships I have with people in my life which I consider to be good relationships. Of course my relationship with my husband was one of them but the fact of chemistry and attraction made that relationship unsuitable for a proper comparison with the one I have with God. After racking my brain for a while, I found just the right relationship to examine.

I have a partner in my law firm. He is a Kenyan of Indian origin and runs his own law firm in a different city. I hooked up with my partner about the same time as I hooked up with my husband. We started our partnership in July and I got married in August of the same year. I am not a racist or a tribalist. I love a variety of people in my life. I am a Kikuyu married to a Luo and partnering with an Indian-Kenyan. I believe that variety is the spice of life.

The relationship I have had with my partner has undoubtedly been a good one but I have never stopped to wonder why it has been good. I looked at the good things about our relationship and realized that distance helps us give each other space so that our levels of responsibility in the firm vary significantly. Just like my relationship with God. I am the one here in this life doing all the living while God is at a distance allowing me the freedom to think but giving me the assurance that I can call on Him. My partner is there when I need him otherwise he is busy doing his own things. The fact that we were not intending to work in the same office was a big plus towards us deciding to become partners. It was a partnership of convenience. Coincidentally, he was looking to open an office in Nairobi at about the same time I had had enough of employment. Our needs converged and we seemed to agree on what it was that we wanted. Another coincidence in our lives is that my partner and my daughter were both born on a Monday 30th October in the morning albeit several decades apart in years.

I can confidently say that my relationship with my partner has improved both our lives immensely. Everything has just seemed to fall into place with us both accepting our roles as if we were born to play them and our expectations have been greatly exceeded.
Am quite certain that any astrologer would confirm that the year 2003 when I got married and partnered up was a lucky relationship year for me.

My relationship with my partner has confirmed to me that the essence of a good relationship is maturity. A relationship in which you are able to deal with conflicts and disagreements in a mature manner and which leaves you feeling more grown up than before you entered into it is undoubtedly a good relationship. A bad relationship is one in which you are unable to resolve a conflict or disagreement in a mature manner and which leaves you feeling vengeful and bitter.

Is my relationship with God a good one or a bad one? Do I feel more mature now than I did when I entered into my relationship with God? Unfortunately for me, the answer is an obvious yes. I definitely feel more mature in a spiritual sense and I would not want to let go of that maturity. Starting afresh is not an attractive option but running away from the relationship in order to satisfy my doubts and seemingly free myself from the burden of trying to understand who I am and where my life is headed is an appealing option.

I am tired of thinking about my life. I wish I could just go back to being a floater. I now know the true meaning of the saying that ‘ignorance is bliss’. Knowing God is absolutely not the work of an ignorant person as philosophy would have us believe. Unlike any other type of knowledge, the knowledge of God tests the human mind to its limits and beyond.

I have now reached a stage on my journey where I have realized that I must let go of conventional thinking and let my imagination take me as far into the spiritual world of imagination as I dare to go. With my Bible in my hand and God leading the way, I guess I will succeed.

Conquering your doubts at this level of enlightenment is no easy task. I must keep reminding myself that death is inevitable and my final goal is to get to Heaven. A goal that I have set my mind clearly on.

Christians are always saying that with God ANYTHING is possible. So I have decided to let myself go for the unimaginable and let God show me how possible anything really is with Him.

Chapter 73

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 73

I am amazed by Christians. Christians are people who will tell you, without batting an eyelid that:-

1. There is a Being called God who created us all.

2. There is only one God, the Christian God.

3. There is a devil called Satan. Satan was an angel of God who rebelled.

4. Of the things you can see, they claim that all those things were created before man and man was given power over those things.

5. Of women, they claim that woman was created after man, from a man’s rib but man is superior to woman. You would have thought that woman having been created after man, would be superior to man just like man is superior to all that was created before him!

6. A man called Moses who lived a long time ago split the red sea into two by touching it with his shepherd’s staff.

7. A man called Daniel was thrown into a lions den and into burning fire and came out unscathed because God sent an angel to guard over him.

8. A virgin got pregnant.

9. The virgin gave birth to a boy who is the Son of God.

10. The Son of God rose from the dead.

11. The Son of God saved us from sin.

12. Even though the Son of God was a Jew, he came to save all people of the world and not just the Jews alone. I am a Kenyan woman and yet I am supposed to believe that the Son of my God came to earth as a Jewish man.

These are just some of the unbelievable stuff you get from Christians and they expect you to believe it without proof. They also tell you that if you ask Jesus into your heart, you will be saved from sin. Asking Jesus into your heart entails saying a prayer to that effect and meaning those words when you say them and believing that what you are saying is possible. If you do that, your life will change wonderfully, your sins will be washed away by the blood of the lamb and you will be white as snow!

Obviously Christianity is all about the supernatural. It deals with matters that are completely outside the realm of the world we live in.

The question is: how do Christians determine what is true and what is not since everything they believe in is truly all in their imaginations?

If you tell them that there is such a thing as reincarnation, they say no way, yet they believe in rising from the dead when Jesus comes again.

I think that Christians interpret the Bible too literally. The words of the Bible are not meant to be taken and made to fit into our lives. Our lives are meant to be changed by the words of the Bible. We Christians take the Bible and literally apply it to our lives as if what it talks about is real life yet the Bible talks about spiritual concepts.

There is a limit to how far our imaginations can take us and the limit is the Bible. The Bible is the reference book when it comes to understanding God and the supernatural.

I have written about spiritual identities and been criticized for it as not being in conformity with what Christians believe. I wrote that the spiritual identity of Jesus is passion. Does the Bible talk about spiritual identities AT ALL?

Of course it does! Does the Bible say that GOD IS LOVE? What is love? Is it not a spiritual identity? If God is love, and Jesus is passion, and the Bible tells us that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and no-one goes to the Father except through him, doesn’t that mean that without passion, you cannot find love? And is that not a fact of life?

Is it easier to believe that Jesus is the Son of God than it is to believe that Jesus is passion?

I think that a passion filled life is a life with Jesus. And spiritual identities are essential to a greater understanding of God.

Jesus said that if you have faith the size of a miniscule mustard seed, you can move a mountain. I am yet to hear of someone who has moved a mountain by faith alone. Does that not tell us Christians that we might be going wrong in our understanding of Jesus and who He really is?

If I will ever find my missing ‘something’, I must be willing to see things differently and to find logic in Christianity so that I can find a means to apply Christianity into my life as the spiritual being that I am, created in the image of a spiritual being identified as Love.

Chapter 72

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 72

Today I discovered something very interesting that left me more enlightened than anything else I had thought of previously.

I came to a realization that whereas intellectual growth teaches us new things about ourselves and our world, there is nothing new in spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is about learning the obvious about your life. It is about learning simple truths which surprise you by how obvious they are and make you wonder why you could not have seen them before you took the time to think about them.

I had been asking myself for a few days why it is that we break God’s commandments with such impunity that they have become almost meaningless. The answer I got to this seemingly complicated question was a very simple one. We break God’s commandments with impunity because we do not think about the devil. In all honesty, I do not remember a time when a thought of the devil has actually registered in my mind and been assessed for longer than a few seconds. I realized that I think about God several million more times than I think about the devil. In fact, it seems that I am afraid to take time to think about the devil. Almost as if I think that thinking about the devil will cause something evil to happen to me.

Does the devil deserve serious consideration in our lives? Could not thinking about the devil prevent me from finding my missing ‘something’? The answer to these questions is a big YES!

Why is it important to think about the devil? About Satan? Because he is the reason why you break God’s commandments and he plays a vital role in preventing you from following Jesus.

But how can one take time out to think about the devil? It does not seem to matter whether or not you believe in the devil. It is the belief in God that matters. The devil is such a despicable character, thinking about him makes me feel like I am polluting my mind. It took me a long time to find a way of convincing my mind to accommodate any thought of the devil for longer than a few seconds.

Questions were many in my mind. What do you call a person who believes in the devil or one who doesn’t? Is a person who believes in the devil called a Christian? Is one who does not believe in the devil called an atheist?

I could not run away from the fact that as a Christian, I have to accept the role of the devil in my life. Accepting the devil as part of my life was like accepting that I was infected by a life threatening illness like HIV and I did not want to think of telling anyone about the devil’s role in my life. People are always testifying about what Jesus has done in their lives and declaring how great and wonderful Jesus is. I have never some across a person who has testified about what the devil has done in their lives. We all assume that when we are breaking God’s commandments, we are acting on our own volition in the absence of God. We think that it is our choice to sin. Is it really our choice? Are we not inherently sinful? Is it not true that when we sin, we are choosing to follow the devil? I think so.

I think that in this life, we do not truly have free choice. We are not free to choose for ourselves. Our choices are influenced either by the devil or by God. Never by ourselves.

To enable me to think about the devil and ensure that I recognize his presence in my life at all times in an effort to avoid his influences and act in accordance with God’s commandments, I went back to the concept of spiritual identities. In considering the question of the devil, I came to a fuller understanding of the importance of spiritual identities. If Jesus is passion, what is the devil’s spiritual identity? It’s a simple truth, an obvious one that surprised me and made me wonder why I did not recognize the devil before in my life. The devil is SELFISHNESS.

Money is definitely not the root to all evil. Whoever said that was thinking shallow. Money is a thing, it cannot cause us to do anything. It goes without saying that indeed, the devil is the root to all evil. Selfishness is the root to all evil. What was making me refuse to give way in traffic or in the lifts? What makes me refuse to give when an opportunity presents itself? What was making me refuse to forgive or to believe in God? It was selfishness. How? Selfishness was making me love myself more than others.

Passion makes you act in the best interests of others while Selfishness makes you act only in your own best interests.

The source of jealousy, envy, hate, hardheartedness, pride, fear, all the demons that prevent us from finding our trees of life and pursuing our passions is selfishness. I have decided to turn away from selfishness as much as I possibly can. I have come to a realization of how powerful the devil really is. Selfishness is a formidable force to reckon with. If you take the time to think deeply about the devil, you will realize (like I have) that everything unpleasant in your life has been brought about by selfishness i.e. acting only in your own best interests.

You will also realize that resisting selfishness and choosing to follow your passion is what spiritual warfare is all about.

A simple obvious truth.

Chapter 71

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 71

What do you really want in life? Someone told me the other day that we all want money. That’s all everybody wants. Money.

I disagreed strongly. Nobody wants money. We all need money but no-one wants money. The only thing ALL of us want is to be ACCEPTED by ourselves. That’s all! Sounds silly doesn’t it? Its true. Think about it. What do you want? You just want to accept who you are and get on with your life. What others think about you is irrelevant because you are the only one who knows who you really are.

It is in trying to accept ourselves that we deceive ourselves about what we really want. Money is a means of achieving the status that one thinks s/he requires in order to accept himself or herself. We look at the lives of others and wish ours could be the same.

We are commanded by God not to covet our neighbours possessions. We covet our neighbour’s possessions when we are unable to accept ourselves and think that our neighbour has a better life than we do. The worst of it is that we think that we cannot accept ourselves as we are. It is not until you drive your dream car, live in your dream house, shop in our dream city, holiday in your dream getaway, work in your dream job, etc, that you will accept yourself, isn’t it? Why? Why can’t you accept yourself as you are right now this minute without further delay?

Achievements do not make a person. You are already the person you will always be regardless of what you have achieved in life. Death makes this concept crystal clear. A university degree will not earn you a peaceful death or eternal life! Neither will a posh car or a come-and-see house! When on your death bed, what will matter most is whether you can accept yourself as you are at that time even if you may not have achieved all your goals. You can die any time. So shouldn’t you accept yourself as you are right now? What are you waiting for?

Coveting your neighbour’s possessions can lead you to commit murder like King David did when he coveted the beautiful wife of Uriah, Bath-sheba. King David was King of Israel yet he was unable to appreciate what God has blessed him with and to understand that if God had blessed him with all that he had, God could bless him with much more. He did not have to kill another man in order to have a wife like Bath-sheba. God could have provided him with such a wife.

You too are a child of God and God is capable of giving you everything you desire if you appreciate what God has already done for you instead of looking at what you think God has not done for you. I have come to a realization that I cannot find my missing something until I accept myself.

Do not allow yourself to think less of yourself and more of others by coveting your neighbour’s possessions. Remember that in God’s eyes, we are all equal. Let God bless you with what is yours. Do not cut yourself off from your blessings by coveting someone else’s.

Do not allow yourself to put more value in possessions than in life by coveting your neighbour’s possessions. Remember that you take nothing with you when you die. You are the only one who can give yourself what you really want in life. Do not prevent yourself from achieving what you really want in life by coveting your neighbour’s possessions.

Accept yourself now and pursue your own blessings.

Chapter 70

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 70

What about killing? Killing is nowhere close to being as common as stealing. I have often wondered to myself whether I could ever be capable of killing someone. I cannot imagine killing even someone who has killed a loved one of mine. But then again, perhaps given the chance, I would! I am certain that I can never make a conscious decision and execute a plan to kill someone, anyone, of my own free will. In fact, if I was threatened with death and asked to kill someone, I would just let myself be killed.

In my country there is a group of errant youths who gathered themselves together into a sect. The sect members were unleashed into the society with a mission of establishing a parallel government and collecting taxes from all and sundry using threat of force. They are akin to the Mafioso, just not as sophisticated. The sect grew into an organized gang and some people said that it was funded and perhaps initiated by some powerful politicians. These sect members were ruthless in their demands and spared no-one. At the height of their power, the sect members instilled the fear of satan in everyone who encountered them. Eventually our government got tired of the menace the gang was creating and it is said that they formed a police squad to eradicate the menace. Soon enough a story was told that bodies of young men were being discovered in forests and mortuaries with bullet wounds in their heads inflicted at close range!

Someone told me that as far as he was concerned, that was the only means by which those rogues could be dealt with. And I asked myself, is it really? Is killing allowed if the person you are killing is a baaaaaaad man? Not according to the Bible. There are no exceptions. It just commands that you shall not kill. I thought that assassinating the young men was not a solution to the problem at all. In fact, it only enlarged the problem. The question that should have been asked in an effort to solve the problem of this gang of ruthless sadists was: “What is their motivation?” “What attracts the members to join such a group instead of joining organized society and living within the limits of the law?”

I thought that part of their inspiration must have been the fact that one of our cabinet ministers was himself training a private army of his own youths. Other cabinet ministers were even linked to the creation of the sect! The larger part of their inspiration is of course unemployment, illiteracy, poverty and other problems which require a lot of money to solve. I suppose our leaders were not prepared to consider the possibility of forming a body that could address the problems of these young men and perhaps create for them a quasi-army institution where they could be rehabilitated. Imagine killing all those young men? Did they really deserve to die? Are there any consequences to those who killed those evil young men?

The Bible contradicts itself on the issue of killing. Killing during war was allowed and God permitted the leaders anointed by Him to kill off a whole city of people who did not know Him. David killed goliath! So why should we not have killed those demons of sect members?

My understanding is that you can kill in self defence. In war, you can kill because you are defending your life. God will understand if you kill someone who is threatening your life. Even the law recognizes self-defence as a defence to a charge of murder.
Were those sect members killed in self-defence? Yes, they threatened our lives and did kill some innocent people. But the circumstances in which they were killed was not one of combat. The people who killed them ambushed them, overpowered them, rendered them helpless and killed them. Differentiating sect members from ordinary young men trying to fit into society was no easy task for the assassination squad. Some innocent young men were killed in the process. These were someone’s father, son, brother, cousin, nephew or uncle. Their heads were blown off for the sake of eradicating an uncontrollable sect. I wonder if those left grieving for their loves ones can understand that the killing was for a good cause and accept that their relative was a martyr!

I also wonder whether the killing of these young men is a crime attributable only to those who actually pulled the triggers. I read the story of King David and Uriah in the Bible. King David organized for Uriah to be placed at the front line in battle without back-up so that he could be killed by the enemy and King David could have Uriah’s beautiful wife, Bath-sheba. God held King David responsible for the death of Uriah even though King David only issued a directive. It seems then that you don’t have to be the killer to be affected by the killing. And the punishment God dealt on King David was that his son died.

DO NOT KILL. IF YOU DO, YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE YOUNG.

From this experience of the attempt to eradicate the sect, I have a better understanding of how terrorist gangs invade a country and plant bombs to kill the citizenry! I am quite certain that the sect has not been eradicated and soon enough, they will have their revenge. And when they kill our children, we shall know who the real killer is. It is us for supporting leaders who are murderers.

Chapter 69

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 69

Stealing is an interesting thing. Why do we steal? And don’t bother denying it. You know you have stolen something from someone at some point in your life. We all have. We just choose to interpret the act of stealing as something like: making a profit or contributing to the philosophy of Robin Hood and leveling the playing field. Some of us tell ourselves that anyway, the person we are stealing from will not notice so it’s not really stealing. Question is, why not just ask for it then? Others who steal from government will say that the money belongs to them anyway since they work so hard for the millions who depend on them. The basic rule about stealing is:

“There is nothing wrong with it as long as you don’t get caught.”

Employees are the most numerous thieves around. Criminals who rob and steal are very few compared to employees who steal things from the houses or offices in which they work. For them, taking something from their employer without permission is not theft. Its leveling the playing field. “ My boss is so much more better off than me, how can s/he be harmed by me just taking a t-shirt or some stationery?” That’s what they ask themselves and of course they do not bother to think any further about the answer to that question. I have thought about it and come to a rude awakening about what stealing really does to someone. The act of stealing transfers the thief’s blessings to the thief’s victim.

Have you ever wondered why those mean heartless rich bosses just go on getting richer and richer as their employees come and go and others stay on without progressing an inch in their finances still running after unreachable money? Those bosses survive on the blessings of the employees who steal from them. The more you steal from your employers, the more you bless them! If you want to be blessed, do not steal. Run away from any situation that tempts you to steal because in the end, you are transferring your blessings to someone else.

Employers all know that employees steal from them. This is why employers endeavour to put in place systems to prevent or discourage theft. Citizens evade tax hence the need for taxation regulations to ensure that taxes are paid. What should an employer do with a thief of an employee?

First, DO NOT be offended by the theft. THANK GOD for giving you enough for yourself and for the thief. Then, take away from the thief any right or responsibility that tempts them to steal. If this is not possible, then you must separate yourself from the thief.

Stealing does not only transfer your blessings to the person you have stolen from. The consequences of theft can be fatal. Leaders who steal from the poor cause untold suffering to millions of people who become impoverished and die from poverty and disease. The suffering caused to the person you steal from is also transferred to you and your children. Most of the time, you are oblivious to that suffering and when you begin to experience all manner of tragic events in your life, you are unable to connect them to your theft and tell yourself it is God’s will!

DO NOT STEAL. IF YOU DO, YOU EXCHANGE YOUR BLESSINGS FOR SUFFERING.

Chapter 68

Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta

Chapter 68

I was wondering about the ten commandments and asking myself what significance they really have on my life. The one about having only one God and not worshipping idols makes sense as I discovered when I converted from my atheism. What about the other ones?

When I look around me and the society I live in, I see that obeying the ten commandments is regarded as an impossibility. Something that any sane person would not bother trying to do. Stealing, coveting, adultery, murder, perjury all these things are common place.

The commandment that caught my attention and made me think deeply about its significance is the one about honouring your mother and father. That commandment struck me as unduly oppressive since parents are usually very difficult people to deal with. Their needs are insatiable and their sins are unforgivable! Yet we are commanded to honour them. There are no exceptions or conditions to this commandment.

I thought about the beginning of a relationship between a parent and a child. This starts with the child being born. This is how we come into this world. We are born. Some of us believe that once we come into this world, there is nowhere else to go. This is it. Is it really? Have you ever wondered what it is that causes a heart to start beating? Is there a scientific explanation for that thing? The trigger. The one that starts you growing into a person and keeps you alive until death? Am I just this body I am in and when I die I rot and become part of the soil and remain here on this earth? Something tells me that there is more.

Assuming that there is more, how is it possible for me to continue into another life after I die in this one? The logical answer is that I will have to be born into that other world just like I was born into this one.

If I do not obey the commandment to honour my parents, is it possible then, that I cannot be born into the other world and I will be stuck here in this one forever?! Is that why the commandment to honour my parents is a commandment and not just a directive or a suggestion?

I will need parents to give birth to me and bring me into the new world I go to when I die in this one. If I don’t honour my parents in this life, what are the chances that I will have parents in the next one and not be stuck here? Christians believe that when Jesus comes again, the dead shall rise. If that is so, how can it happen without parents? I have never ever met anyone who came into this world otherwise than by being born. I therefore cannot imagine the possibility of a continuity in my life unless I honour my parents.

The commandment contains a promise. The promise is that if you honour your parents, your days will be long. I must admit that obeying this commandment is the main reason I try so hard to find ways and means to forgive my parents for their wrongs and to understand them and to be take care of their needs. I must get to Heaven. I cannot imagine myself in Hell. The enlightenment I have experience thus far is a wonderful feeling. I can only imagine how blissful the enlightenment in Heaven must be.

Every good thing you do in this world always has to have a benefit for you otherwise there can be no motivation for doing good. Unfortunately, the rewards are invisible and most people cannot understand how something like honouring your parents can be a rewarding experience.

I understand that honouring my parents will buy me a ticket on the next train to Heaven. Those who think that we are here to stay are right to the extent that if you don’t honour your parents, you are stuck here forever!

The meaning of the word HONOUR is: to venerate or to revere or simply, to hold in high respect. So I am commanded to hold my parents in high respect. Imagine that! I thought high respect is for presidents and kings and queens and billionaires. In the presence of anyone who fits these titles, most of us who don’t would squirm with reverence hoping and wishing that that person could so much as glance in our direction and should s/he shake our hand, well ………… we would feel honoured. Funny huh? Yet the people who gave us this life so that we could feel honoured by being noticed by some rich nobody cannot so much as instill a shiver in us when we see them!

The simple fact that you are alive. That you have a life. Is because of your parents. As you read this chapter, you should let that fact sink deeply inside of you and come to a realization of how important your parents are to you. Those eyes, that mouth, those fingers, that body of yours and everything that is in it which you got for free would not be yours were it not for your parents.

So next time that you dream about meeting the president of your country or some CEO of a conglomerate or some super star or the winner of the next Big Brother series or whoever it is you revere, know that those people are nowhere close in significance to your parents who gave you the ability to recognize those people.

Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land that the Lord your God gives you.