by Adaobi Okwy
I was at the Sunday school Bible some time ago where we were talking about faith, trusting God, having no doubts…you know, going the whole nine yards with God. It was flowing until… “do not worry about the economy. Don’t listen to them…God is the one in charge of our tomorrow…”. I held on. Waiting for the open session where I can tell everyone that Christian or not, we should care and care very much, about our economy. We should care because whereas America’s inflation is at 1.5/2% and China’s is at 2%, Nigeria is at 10.8%. I wanted to tell the church that this means that the naira loses its value every year and even if we all were to be savers and had a million naira each in the bank, every year, its value reduces by 10% and so in five years, we would have a five hundred thousand naira equivalent or less, even though our account still reads one million naira. And this should not just make the church care, but be angry even!
I held on. Waiting for the open session…
Then the “case study” which the church would use to open the floor: a certain righteous man who works at the Nigeria’s Customs and who never took a bribe all his life inspected a container and discovered that some illegal items (unlisted on the invoice), were included in the container. The righteous man seized the container. The owner called on him and asked him to accept a 2.7 million naira bribe and release the container but the righteous man refused. A week later, the son of the righteous man took ill and was hospitalized and for him to be treated, the doctors needed 1.7 million naira. Seemingly locked in a hopeless situation, what would the righteous man do?
Beating me to speak first, an elegant ‘mother’ of the church took the floor and vibrantly encouraged all Christians that this was where their faith in God was been tested and that the righteous man was not to cave in and accept the 2.7 million bribe but to hold on to God who will provide (as he has always done) for the righteous man and his family. And if God did not provide the money and instead wanted to take the child…then who were we to refuse? God giveth and He taketh!
My God, the elegant ‘mother’ was on a roll. This was my chance. I reached for the microphone but then, the coordinator apologized that we only had time for that one comment and that “our mother in the Lord has said it all”. I was flabbergasted.
Said it all? How? What exactly did she say?
In their book, “Decisive” Chip and Dan Heath” made an even more elegant argument that we should beware of either/or solutions. I am not a parent yet but, I do not think that all my options are stuck between taking the bribe and waiting on a possible(or not) answer from God. Let us back up a bit…
What items are illegal in the container? Guns? Drugs? Expired food? Or items for home use that the importer just added into his container? If I determine that nothing in the container harms Nigeria, I would let the container in but must insist that the man run it through my superiors. I take no joy in the knowledge that millions worth of items would be destroyed…no, this is not true…. I take no joy in the knowledge that millions worth of items would be looted by customs officials just because the man did not include laptops in the invoice.
Beyond the importer, what about the righteous man taking a loan? Mortgaging his land, car…even his life to save his son?!
The Holy Book says that we perish because of our lack of knowledge and I believe this to be true in every way. If God does not want us interested in OUR economy, why did Jesus pay tax?
If God wanted that child to just die because it was either between His providence and the importer, what does that make him? Our temptation?
A certain ignorance permeates the church and we should be wary of this. We should care what happens in our economy and our society and our lives. We shouldn’t fold our hands and wait on God. Faith without works is dead. Work, care and leave the ones you cannot do to God. This is LIGHT!
——————–
Adaobi Okwy blogs at Adaobi Okwy.com
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
Leave a reply