ON DADDY ISSUES, RELIGIOUS TRAUMA AND CHOICES I MADE BECAUSE OF MY KIDS

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Some weeks ago, gunmen entered a Church in Owo, Nigeria, and poured bullets into the bodies of worshippers, turning what was supposed to be a glorious service into a gory service. Grief-stricken beyond words in my bed in Newcastle, England, I tried to imagine what went through the mind of those people as doom descended on them. They were in a Church and I was sure they would have called on the name of Jesus, only to be met with what he gives best during situations such as this — silence. The next day, however, a gospel artist asked that the name of Jesus be spread as a fragrance over the nation. I was bewildered seeing people on my WhatsApp list post a banner with the name of Jesus, a few hours after he refused to save people who had called on his name. The insensitivity to those still grieving their loved ones who were slaughtered in a Church aside, what struck me most was how their reaction was close to Stockholm Syndrome.

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I once told my sister that she has a toxic relationship with Jesus. A form of Stockholm Syndrome. And I think this sums up the relationship most people have with God. They pray, and their prayers go unanswered. And they have an explanation for this. It’s either because they’re praying wrong, praying outside his will, they don’t have enough faith or God wants them to persevere the more. And when the things they are praying for eventually come through because they have worked and put in the effort, they attribute it to God.

Of course, it’s not my place to tell a man who to give credit, but how folks cannot see these things as a fruit of their human efforts beats me. Thinking about this, I realized that man will always be blamed for every action and inaction of God.

Why did I tell my sister that she has a toxic relationship with God? Well, it’s because she was born with sickle cell, and there are nights when, during a painful crisis, I prayed my heart out to God to please, please stop the pain, heal my sister or at least, transfer a bit of the pain to me. She has prayed many times herself; God is yet to answer either of us, including my mother, who adds fasting to hers.

Sometimes, I made bold declarations of faith. Aren’t we supposed to be able to heal the sick in the name of Jesus? But my sister hasn’t got healed.

One thing that is interesting to me about faith, though, is that those who love God the most are those who go through trials like this. People like my sister and mother, people with unwavering faith in God, despite, in spite…

Not me, though. There came a time in my life when I couldn’t live with my cognitive dissonance anymore, where I couldn’t reconcile the idea of a loving God, a loving father, who wouldn’t answer a selfless, loving prayer like ‘heal my sister’.

In retrospect, I think one reason why I had issues with faith and the idea of God as a loving father was because my relationship with him was transactional. I had expectations of him as much as he has of me, and if I do my part, diligently following his commandments, I expect reciprocity in the form of answered prayers.

I didn’t even want much from him. I didn’t expect everything in my life to fall into place every time I prayed to him as if he is waving a magic stick. But there are nights at home or at Merit Hospital where I could have really done with a ‘yes’ from him.

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It was this year that I learned that there is such a thing as ‘Religious Trauma’ (RTS) and that I was suffering from it. During introspection, I realized that there is a culmination of hurt I carry because of unmet expectations from ‘God the Father’ and that when I broke away from organised religion, what I thought was depression was actually RTS.

You see, for most of my life, religious teachings have defined and formed my worldviews and identity, so when I tore myself away from it, the trauma set in. I explained this to those who might be experiencing it under the subheading, The Confluence of Truth and Existential Crisis session of this article.

Someone I respected read that article, and then he messaged me on WhatsApp that he was broken for me because I have allowed knowledge to be a chain around my neck and I am on a foolhardy road to debasement.

His presumptions about my person aside, why religious people think one needs religion to be moral, is farcical. In my 27 years on earth, I’m yet to see the moral difference between religious people and irreligious ones. I have met good religious people and I’ve met bad ones. People, religious or not, make terrible decisions and commit awful crimes. Only religious people, Christians especially, believe they are special because they can do things and get away with it. After all, God will forgive them. Their motivation to do good is the promise of heaven and escape from hell.

The reason I wrote such articles he reacted to, however, was because there is religious trauma and there is a need to deal with it. The constant mention of faith and trust in God we see and hear daily triggers those horrific memories of seeming bypass and neglect we once experienced.

There are still times when I think about how my life would be now if I were still in Church. Those existential struggles, having to suspend my sensibilities for the sake f faith. And most especially, living a lie and being insincere with myself, struggling with sin and going to church to raise holy hands to God as if I hadn’t fornicated the night before.

I know people who live this way, this life of disparities between dogma and behaviour, and how they keep up with such acts amuse me. I couldn’t. I can’t.

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DECISIONS I MADE FOR MY KIDS

One other reason I left religion is that I don’t want to bring kids into this world and have them indoctrinated into the teaching that they were born with the nature of sin like I was. It’s deeply disturbing and disrespectful to their humanity. So many losses of personality can be traced to this, to the teaching that nothing good is in you, hence, deny and crucify yourself. It’s why many people are on an unending quest to become something other than who they are, for they’ve been taught to aspire to another nature. They live double lives, troubled by the discord between their beliefs and actions, and ever sorrowful (for those who’re sincere) that they’re always falling short. They’re taught the concept of sin, and their whole life becomes a struggle of denying themselves of natural desires and longings, for the sake of right standing with a God who is indifferent about their life, if at all he exists.

It’s amusing that despite the flood of knowledge available to deliver people from the shackles of ignorance, people still choose to hold on to inaccurate, fictitious beliefs that make their life a walking struggle.

I didn’t leave the church because I loved sinning, no. There are things you come across that make you question the premise upon which you’ve built your worldviews and your life. This was what drove me to write this article on cumulative error and evaluation of belief.

For one to live with complete inner mellifluence, a harmony of beliefs and actions, the foundation of one’s beliefs has to be solid. And so, I first questioned the idea that I was born a sinner as a result of the actions of Adam and Eve when I found out that those two weren’t, in fact, historical figures but characters from Jewish myths. But assuming that they ever existed, the possibility of the whole human race being descendants of a single couple is zilch, as evidenced by genetic research. This Christian scientist wrote about it here.

Having eliminated the possibility of us descending from some Adam and Eve, how then could I have inherited sin from them? Why then would I have needed salvation? Salvation from what?

It gets interesting. When the story of Adam and Eve was written, neither the concept of the Devil nor an Original Sin and The Fall have yet been invented. They both came about much later. The allusion to the devil as the serpent didn’t happen until some 600 years after the creation story was likely written. The concept of the fall and original was only introduced by St Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and formalised as part of Roman Catholic doctrine by the Councils of Trent in the 16th century. And isn’t this sad? A whole life built on this foundation of straws; relationships ruined because of it?

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As much as I write to persuade, I have come to understand that it’s almost an impossible thing to do. Apart from me still having my own blind spots and can’t claim that my views are absolute because absolutes are fickle, what I’m trying to do is tell people to review a worldview that has shaped most of their life and influenced every choice they’ve made. And, for one to be persuaded by an idea, it must be congruent with their idea of self and the values they hold dear. If not, they’d antagonise the idea instead.

Already, there is a bias, people find evidence toward what they believe instead of against. Some are scared that they might actually find out their entire belief system isn’t as solid as they thought it was. They fear the decisions such revelations might force them to make, the relationships they might lose, and having no faith to recourse to when life hits hard. Some might choose to stay with faith, anyway.

But I still write, anyway. I will keep writing about this. Because if people can be persuaded by the reasons they discovered by themselves rather than ideas that come from others with the overt aim to convince them, then it is my duty to put the reasons out there, hoping someone somewhere, in their quest to live a wholesome life of complete harmony of actions and beliefs, will come across them.