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God needs no bells
A man praying. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The Muslims don’t need bells and certainly modern Christians don’t need them either.
The just concluded Russia – Africa summit has revived debate across the African continent about its mission to achieve total independence. In St Petersburg where the summit was held, they found in Russian President Valdimir Putin an ally they could count on to advance the discussion.
One Thursday afternoon, after I had sent to sleep the hunger-pangs that scratched my stomach, I sat within John Lennon’s voice and with him imagined there is no heaven. I rather found it a corollary to imagine what if God could be made silent just like hunger. That would be a pathetic god and most certainly not God, I thought.
Is it true that God is or can be made silent?
This question of God’s silence has troubled many, not sparing Jesus’ disciples themselves, especially when the storm almost had their boat capsized as Jesus slept in silence. Wasn’t this question the same trouble that made Jesus cry out;
“My God, My God! Why have you rejected me?” (Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachhthani?)
This same question, of God’s silence, once gave my faith enough troubles until I came across Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s and Peter Kreeft’s answers to the question;
“Where was God in the Holocaust?”
Peter Kreeft explained that when God first came to Auschwitz they stripped naked… and He was gassed.
Rabbi Sacks said, “I just broke down. I wept. And I asked myself, God, where were you? And words came into my mind; I am not claiming they were divine revelation, and this is what they said; I was in the words ‘you shall not murder.’ ‘I was in the words you shall not oppress a stranger. I was in the words that were in the words that were said to Cain after killing Abel; your brothers’ blood is crying to me from the ground.’”
Doesn’t this premise give sense to the idea that we, humans, are God’s images. And when have reflections existed in the same position with what they reflect? Doesn’t this premise encourage me to think that the silence of God is rather loudness; the loudness of his images, you and me? Does it give leverage to Jesus’ words?
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Doesn’t this premise give me the courage to claim that God is not silent; His loudness can be heard in the cries of the dying in Ukraine, the suffering in the hospitals, the hunger in the slums and ghettos and the unhappy electorates.
Is it about the decline of Christianity in Europe? How about the closing churches? What of the idle and almost jobless foundry workers?
These are rather tricky questions to answer due to the fog of faulty assumptions that covers the eyes of the questioners’ minds.
Simple logic tells me that the closure of churches in Europe has nothing much to do with the desire not to go to heaven just like the closure of nearly 2,400 stores across the US has nothing to do with the desire not to make money. That is not to say that heaven is equivalent to money but the desire not to go to heaven is not a genuine intellectual reason for one to go or not to go to church. If going to heaven was the only reason to go to church, I would not have gone to any church on any including the last Sunday. But this is a story for another day.
The decline of Christianity in Europe can be attributed to a number of sociological factors which include the influx of migrants from Africa (most especially the Islamic North Africa), South Asia and Middle East which has increased the number of Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. and Buddhists. The failing birthrates among Christians in Europe could also be considered another factor since one of the ways of growing the population of a religion it is through giving birth. This technique has been well mastered by the Moslems a point that made Peter Kreeft observe that;
“The Muslims tried to conquer Europe by force of arms a number of times. They always failed. Now they’re doing it by a much more powerful force-namely, mothers- and they are succeeding.”
The Muslims don’t need bells and certainly modern Christians don’t need them either.
It was traditional Christian denominations like the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches that used bells but most of these churches have been replaced by modern evangelical churches which use social media instead of bells.
However, it is rather prudent for one to observe that much as there are many evangelical churches in Africa, there are still many traditional churches that need the bells which keeps the foundry workers busy with African orders.
On the other hand, I also find it rather enlightening to note that it is not true that third world countries are the only ones running from God.
China is certainly a first world country and over the past four decades Christianity has been growing in china more than anywhere else.
Nicholas Musinguzi Jnr.
X-Account; @Niclasthought
