BITTER PILLS - Updated Every Monday

Main Menu

Facebook Fan Box

J Twitter

BITTER PILLS - Updated Every Monday

News - Latest

Written by sensor

Sunday, 04 April 2010 18:02

Let There Be Peace
‘A bad peace is better than a good war'.
-Russian Proverb The Bible, the greatest compilation of human understanding and interpretation of divine ordinance, as revealed to the ancients, records that God created the world and all the things in it in six days and on the seventh day He rested. In spite of the fact that some scientists have tended to doubt this six-day creative force, there is very little discrepancy between the biblical and scientific chronological accounts. In fact, I even think that science has corroborated the sequence of the creation story in the way it has dated some of the relics and great millennial occurrences in history. By sheer coincidence, the time sequence may not have been in the work-a-day format we are used to because as the bible points out, a thousand years is like a day in the eyes of God.
We can grant that the writers of the books in the Bible may have been limited by the fact that today's modern chronemic expressions of time sequence which sometimes are rendered in millions of years were beyond their imagination. These recorders of divine messages were not interested in the logic of today's scientific theories but in simple didactic expressions meant to edify, advice, warn, inspire, educate or even mortify us for our behaviours.
Yet these simple explanations about our faith have led to almost an endless run of commentaries by bible scholars, pastors, preachers and even fake religionists. So many books have been written about the bible and the Christian faith that the whole world is suffused by all kinds of interpretations and translations. More are still being written making the Bible the most reviewed book in the world.
This great source of wisdom has also been a source of great misunderstanding with each pastor and founder of new churches claiming to know the mind of God than God himself. Thus you have all manner of opinions on every issue in the Bible with many attempting to show the anthropomorphic nature of God as perhaps something they themselves worked out on the morning of their own creation.
Some Nigerian commentators have claimed that after God created man he rested but when he added a woman he never rested. Some Nigerian jokes, borrowing from our fabled nack for the unorthodox and the ludicrous have even told us that even God created the Nigerian separately, and that since Nigerians were created God has not rested. Feminists will find the earlier claim about women intolerable or insulting. But the truth remains that everywhere man is busy creating God in his own image. Nigerians are second to none in their capacity for myth making.
We are familiar with the popular thinking that peace does not mean the absence of conflict or war. Indeed war and peace have engaged the attention of humankind to the extent that many have become disillusioned by their failure to find an answer to them.
Even the British statesmen, Neville Chamberlain was so frustrated in his unproductive peace effort that he bawled out. 'You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful.
Writing about his own frustrations, the English novelist D. H. Lawrence said, 'I am so mistrustful of it: so much afraid that it means a sort of weakness and giving in'.
So how do all these relate to Akwa Ibom people? The search for peace in the area has been an agelong quest which started right from the days when the area was part of the Old Eastern Nigeria. But how far have we been successful in this quest? The experience everywhere in the world has been frustration all over. Then does this mean we should give up on peace? Certainly, not.
I would rather say, like the late American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr who said at his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize: 'I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for peace was also a commission a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for 'the brotherhood of man”. This is a calling which takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war'.
Akwa Ibom needs peace. Where are all the courageous citizens of this land who could bring all the warning factions together in a non-partisan way? Who will bell the cat? We can play our politics, but we can do so without killing each other or maiming and causing the disappearance of others? There are retired, credible citizens who can do this, this Easter. I do not wish for an assemblage of hypocritical clansmen, warlords and sour-faced partisans but honest and God-fearing Akwa Ibom elders to do this. God bless you all as you try. A Happy Easter to you all.

Bookmark with:

Comments

No Comments, be the first to Comment

Add new Comment

< Prev		Next >

Last Updated on Sunday, 04 April 2010 18:50

Polls

Which would you prefer?

	Working for the Government alone
	Starting your own business and do contracts for Government
	Work for Government and own your business
	Run your business and don't have anything to do with Government