Happy new year Nairalanders. Saw this nice piece and thought to share with all of us Pls read and think on it. Thanks “The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of hypocrite is itself hypocrisy,” William Hazlitt.
We are a very religious society, maybe not a very spiritual one. Religion deals with the rituals, formalisms, traditions and systems of reaching out to God—or gods. Spirituality is the inner dimension that connects us with God in spirit and truth. The spiritual touches at the heart and core of our beliefs. It is from this core that springs the force of truth, conscience and righteousness.
As almost everyone has acknowledged, this has not been a very righteous society. Rather, this is a society substantially trapped in religious dogma, rituals and appearances but lacking the life-changing substance of truth and righteousness. We’ve lived with the sad paradox of more religion, but less righteousness.
There is perhaps no time the emptiness of religion is more in display in our country than the New Year eve. With the New Year around the corner, we are going to see a lot of drama. In those bygone years, on the last night of the Year, the houses are swept clean, sweeping out evil relics of the outgoing year—sicknesses, poverty, failures, bad luck, infertility, everything bad. In a manner of speaking, the outgoing year is the villain, the all-purpose scapegoat for all our failings, while the in-coming year is heralded in glory.
I recall that in those primordial years, leftover foods in the night were warmed for breakfast the following morning. But on the New Year eve, no food prepared the outgoing year was allowed to survive into the coming year, lest the people be infected with the ills of the outgoing year. Clothing, pots and crockery were cleaned out to welcome the New Year.
I would hardly be surprised if some families are still sustaining that tradition. As in the past, you are going to see a lot of ceremonials tonight—the rituals and formalism of religion, chasing away the bad year and ushering in the good year, the New Year, 2014. Watch out for a lot of drama: powerful religious people are going to rehearse the same exhortations and New Year homilies.
Meanwhile, churches are going to be full, at times, beyond capacity tonight more than at any other time of the year. It’s time for crossover service. Many who had never entered a church would show up to pray away the bad luck of the dying year and pray in good things for themselves. Some of these attend churches only once a year for a crossover service. It is perhaps, one of the few occasions the nether part of heaven is assailed by prayers of repentance as people renounce their recurrent sins and pledge fidelity to God in the New Year.
So, New Year resolutions are entered, but soon broken or forgotten afterwards. Powerful resolutions backed with fervent prayers. It is possible that God’s attitude to the New Year drama is just a bored celestial yawn! Here they come again! He saw all these coming when He aptly noted in Isaiah 29:13, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”
That’s religion, Nigerian style particularly! Tonight in our holy places including the chapels in our various seats of power, so many carnal souls will fill out the spaces, jostling for vantage seats, television cameras and photo opportunities; reading out lessons for the day and invading heavenly places with the noise of their ritualistic supplications. But for many of those too, their hearts may be far away from God. If anything, their hearts are focused on the next juicy contracts and powerful connections which such gatherings offer. Or even plotting their next debauchery or political chicaneries.
Whether tonight or any other day, God is seeking for true worshippers who come to seek God in spirit and truth, not in false and feigned piety that will be drowning the nation’s space at the various crossovers tonight and tomorrow morning, only for everyone to return to their old ways.
Will our leaders turn a new leaf? I wish I can say yes, but I doubt it. That is why I fear for the New Year, 2014. Take just one indicator. The new national budget has come, but the provisions indicate that even the budget has become a ceremonial ritual rather than substance.
If you are expecting a better year in 2014, please pray for it, plan for it, work for it—outside the budget. But don’t build your hope on the national budget unless you wish to fetch water with a basket. I agree with those who say that the 2014 budget is a budget of re-election campaign rather than national development. The labyrinth of sundry provisions may turn out to be mere conduits for slush campaign funds.
One tiny item in the budget is perhaps symbolic of why the whole budget may turn out, as always, to be a sham. Tucked into the budget is the provision of a sum of N34.5 million for two animals in the Aso Rock zoo! In the context of N4.6 trillion, what does N34.5m matter? That is the old accountancy trick—to dissipate huge sums into so many tiny subheads until an elephant may be swallowed by a gnat!
According to Punch newspaper report yesterday, N14.5 million is the cost for the animals and N20 million is for “trackers”. This is the point: assuming the provision is really meant for these animals, the annual cost of these two pets is more than the annual salary of a university professor! That perhaps would explain why ASUU’s strike lasted so long.
A dissection of the entire budget provision would open even more padded can of worms, not the least perhaps is the provision for acquisition of additional aircraft into the presidential fleet which already had ten aircrafts, ranking us among the few countries in the world with a large presidential fleet. In the budget, N2.4 billion will go into the foreign trips of the president and the his deputy, meaning that if the budget is to be believed as a statement of real intention, then in a crucial year like 2014, the president is going to spend much of that year in the air! Perhaps, on this score, he may be chasing former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s record who by Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s calculations, spent about a year of his tenure outside the country! The weird logic is this: when national revenue goes down, then travel more!
The tragedy of the New Year ritual is that many people tend to believe that what happens to them in the coming year is going to be shaped solely by the fervency of their prayers in the crossover night. Well, yes, and no! Yes, because prayer works, but no because many simply slip back into the routine of their old lives afterwards, expecting the miracle of a changed circumstance without a changed input.
But, that’s not the deal. Year 2014 or any year for that matter will always be for DOERS and not hearers only, who deceive themselves into illusionary expectations. Join the doers and it shall be well with you. Source: http://sunnewsonline.com/new/back-page/reflections-new-year/ 1 Like 2 Shares |
