The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena
Moses the prophet had a terrible time in the desert. He became victim to, perhaps the worst form of human scepticism, stubbornness and cynicism. The same Israelites who directly witnessed God’s wonders and miracles, the ones who saw the sea opening up to allow them passage and closing up to swallow the pursuing armies of Pharaoh were the worst non-believers.
Some of them continued to build idols and false gods with sand and stones; others threatened Moses with physical violence, demanding to be taken back to Egypt, even after eating manna from Heaven. Doubting the gods, questioning their works and suspecting their messengers, it seems, is a human habit that is as old as religion itself.
Miracles and wonders are not enough to foster belief and faith in the hearts and minds of human beings. Theology began because man and women require more than blind faith to know and understand gods and other supreme beings.
Theology began in the world as spiritual meditation on the nature of the gods, supreme beings and divinity. In the twelfth century it was developed into a science whose specialty was in interpreting religious texts and scriptures.
While religious faith encourages blind belief in the gods, theology encourages reason and rational reflection on things sacred and spiritual. When Thomas the disciple asked the resurrected Jesus Christ to show the scars in his hands as proof of the resurrection, he was being deeply theological. Theology as a study and interpretation of religious messages and spiritual activities has throughout the centuries helped human beings to make sense of religion and to rationalise the otherwise irrational spiritual and metaphysical realm. Around us, present religious developments, to do with prophecies and prophets, especially in Africa show that our theological senses may have fallen into a deep crisis if not a total paralysis.
The Age of the Prophets
In recent years, throughout the world but especially in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria among other African countries there has been a rise in prophetic activities and an upsurge of prophecies. Pastors and prophets have been preaching congregants into various states of hypnosis and then commanding them to do strange things like drinking diesel, eating grass, chewing and swallowing snakes. Other pastors and prophets have provided miracle gold and money to the faithful, throwing believers and non-believers into a vertigo as magical and miraculous activities never heard of before begin to be commonplace.
Officially, Paseka Motsoeneng of South Africa has denied the allegations but rumour continues to spread that at Easter he was lifted up to Heaven where he enjoyed the company of Jesus Christ and that of the angels. In Heaven, Motsoeneng who is popularly known as Prophet Mboro is alleged to have photographed angels and taken selfies of himself with paradise itself as the background. In Zimbabwe, August 2013, one 73-year-old Khulu Reinfirst Manyuka died of hunger and starvation 30 days into his fast that, in imitation of Jesus Christ, was supposed to last a good 40 days and 40 nights. In other wonderful incidents, women are reported to have conceived and delivered miracle babies in the true fashion of the Virgin Mary.
Thanks to some prophets and other men of God, even the dead have here and there been reported to have been raised back to life. The fortunes of countries and deaths of important people, natural disasters and plane crashes have been foretold, yes and even outcomes of soccer matches have been predicted by the prophets. In the case of Shamiso Kanyama of Muzarabani in Zimbabwe, the prophet died of suffocation after asking his followers to bury him alive so that on the third day he could rise in glory.
In the dramatisation of faith, believers have allowed pastors and prophets to walk upon their bodies as carpet and some ladies have been reported to have allowed prophets to bless their wombs and anoint their bodies in a multiplicity of strange and perverted but evidently sexual ways. By the foregoing, our age may be called the age of prophets and the era of prophetic happenings, but is it?
Reason before Faith
A close observation of the Abrahamic faiths, that is Christianity, Islam and Judaism shows that earlier in the ages, reason and critical thinking went along with faith. God or the Supreme Being was not known only through spiritual revelation or the display of miracles and wonders, but also study and critical scrutiny. The Bible reports that in Judaism and later Christianity there were Pharisees, Sadducees and Rabbis who studied and interpreted the religious texts on the basis of reason. Paul of Tarsus, he who got converted to Christianity through a Damascene spiritual revelation, later debated Christianity with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers of Athens at the Agora; the learned men began doubting him as a “babler” but through his reasonable and robust intellectual engagement they promised to listen to him again. In Islam there is the time tested habit of Il al-kalam, which refers to rigorous debate and interrogation of the scriptures of the holy Quran to squeeze out satisfactory meanings and interpretations that are intellectually defendable and believable.
Unlike today, in the earlier ages predictions and miracles were not the pre-occupation of prophets. Prophets and Apostles were not strange holy men, but knowledgeable wise men who risked their lives fighting for social justice and spiritual salvation of their followers. When Amos the prophet declared that “but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream” he was being more prophetic that he was political. These days to be a prophet is to predict things and to perform miracles, to do strange things that belong to the bizarre and the magical realm.
Among the prophets and men of God of these days there is stampede of the extent of the Olympics themselves to outdo each other in predicting the future and performing wonders.
Prophets are no longer thinkers, sober and meditating mystics but performers and dramatics who turn church services into the circus itself to attract followers, and yes, to get clients.
It may not be, in my view, the problem of the pastors and the prophets, but a crisis of our theology. Theology as the art and science of questioning things religious and spiritual, of satisfying our reason about the truth of prophets and other claimants of the gods and religion has suffered a crisis.
Magic and witchcraft itself has taken centre stage in the churches as, in search for the elusive gods, the faithful are willing to believe anything and anybody swimmingly without thinking. The reason why religious preachers of the earlier ages taught in parables, allegories and proverbs is that religious knowledge is supposed to be wisdom itself, and that religious belief must necessarily involve deep thought and consideration.
A living and genuine religion or the Supreme Being itself should under normal circumstances not be afraid of being questioned, interrogated and even suspected.
The Israelites who doubted and questioned Moses in the desert, even if they were mistaken, were after all a deeply religious people. Reason before blind faith is permissible.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena is a Zimbabwean academic who is based in South Africa.
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