Religion has fast turned into something similar to a fast-food franchise, especially in Africa and our dear Warm Heart of Africa is not spared. The product being sold is blessings mainly in the form of wealth or fast cash. The ones running the franchises are very clever and smart businesspeople dubbed prophets. The marketing strategy is to prey on people’s gullibility. One of the outstanding tactics is false advertisement.
And people are falling for this real deep.
The religion of glorifying pastors and expecting miracles is retrogressive. The problem with these religious franchises is that it is the actual prophets that are worshipped and not the Lord. They become idols. We start worshipping our fellow mortals and expect them to sort out all our problems by the mere fact that we have become their loyalists and fanatics.
We have fast forgotten that being a Christian or being religious is not about accumulating riches. Spiritual growth has nothing to do with riches. Blessings are not synonymous with riches. Grace is not equal to wealth. The Lord blesses people in many ways that we fail to appreciate because we think blessings can only be equated to instant riches. The quest for riches is actually turning normally level-headed people into ungrateful pricks who are not grateful for what the Lord has blessed them with.
We have talented people in music. We have intelligent people who write good books and invent things and mentor others. We have happy families that enrich our life on earth. We have people that are so empathetic they dedicate their life to serving others in ways others would not even dream of. We are given good jobs that actually make a difference to society. We are given art to paint, create and model things. But maybe we feel so entitled that we do not see that these are blessings in their own right, instead we turn and demand wealth through prophets.
The culture of expecting miracles is not getting us anywhere. It is instead leading us to become lazy dummies that are yoyoed about by false prophets that are getting rich from exploiting our gullibility. I t is gullible for a person to wake up and expect that their family will prosper by vehemently screaming amen to the prophetic chants of another mortal at church or by typing amen on a Facebook post. It is profoundly ridiculous.
We need to wake up and make up our minds to act and get things running instead of waiting around for miracles from another mortal. Penapake let us be serious with the way we live our lives and realise that in life you have to act to get things done. Businesses, projects, strategies and the like cannot function through ‘miracles’.
We need to discipline ourselves to focus on what is meant to be achieved instead of easily giving up and expecting someone to work miracles on our behalf. Our main problem is not that we do not know what needs to be done; our main problem is that we lack the discipline and character to follow through what needs to be achieved. This lack of discipline and character usually tempts us to take the easy way out leading only to destruction. The rampant corruption is one factor that stems from the desire for instant riches that have not been laboured and sweated for. We think swindling money and resources not meant for us is some blessing in disguise because being wealthy equals being blessed. The irony.
Work hard. Hard work pays. All the people that are looked up to will tell you they suffered and endured on the way up. They did not wake up one day to find a stash of cash in the backyard. They worked hard and they made a lot of sacrifices that were investments for the future. The founders of big companies and corporations, the inventors of gadgets and applications, the entrepreneurs and investors that we envy literally did not sleep to get where they are or still do not sleep to get to where they need to be. They work hard.
I rest my case
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