I did not worship at my Church on Sunday.
Instead, I took in the programming on our local television station, beginning at 9:00a.m.with EMPACT and ending with Morning Joy at 10:30a.m.
For two full hours I watched and listened to messages that ran the full spectrum, from fire and brimstone; to condemnation; to the value of Kingdom living; to retribution and revenge; to faith and hope; of vindictiveness; and finally to love and forgiveness.
Small wonder, the Church is so ineffective in marshalling a social and moral revolution in our country. Their individual messages often time are conflicting, confusing and devoid of modern day relevance.
Add to this the compromising lifestyles of any number of pastors, and we have a social and moral catastrophe on our hands.
With the exception of the Anglican and Catholic Churches, all and sundry seemed stuck in the Old Testament methodology of revenge: an eye for an eye, leaving almost all of us blind.
The average child in The Bahamas during my time (the 50s and 60s) was sent to Sunday school, usually twice on Sundays.
During one of my classes, I can remember being taught about the Jewish prophet Jonah, who was gobbled up by a big fish and subsequently spat out.
The scenario is fantastic for kids hungry for adventure, intrigue and danger. For the believers, it is an account of
God’s punishment, providence and His ultimate deliverance. And for religious skeptics, it’s a crazy concoction that defies biological explanation.
But the most important point coming out of the book of Jonah is one man’s belief that some people should not be accepted by God.
And this tradition of parochialism has certainly filtered down even to this generation.
Believers of different denominations, but supposedly serving the same Christ, still set up religious barriers, preach confrontational messages of fire and brimstone, and spend more time tearing down each other than addressing the social and moral ills crippling our country.
Jonah was more interested in preserving Jehovah as the God of the Jewish people, procuring for Israel a special and exclusive salvation.
The prophet was, in Bahamian parlance suffering from ‘serious bad mind.’
If Jonah refused to go to the city of Nineveh because he felt that his life was in danger, it would have been a perfectly human response.
When the fear factor takes over, we tend to revert to the axiom about self-preservation being the first rule of survival.
But Jonah, the mouthpiece of God, had the heart of the devil when he would rather Nineveh to be destroyed than experience a spiritual revival.
Listen to what the scripture says: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
And he prayed to the Lord and said, ‘I pray thee, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?
That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and repentest of evil’.”
Jonah thought he had the copyright, trade mark and deed on who God was, who He should include and who He should exclude.
And isn’t that how some ministers and church members behave?
In our country, the devil is having the last laugh.
We have to get beyond the name-calling and finger-pointing, especially in our politics.
Even our Christian folks are consumed with dogma and defending the church than engaging in constructive KINGDOM-BUILDING. We need to give God more credit in his ability to preserve His church.
So many members arrogate to themselves the power of condemnation and excommunication because persons have slightly different doctrines or their lifestyles are not up to our standards.
Jesus is pretty lucky that he is in heaven already or else some Christians would not give Him approval because of his radical beliefs and the immoral characters who were his close friends.
I am moved to congratulate the producers of the television programme Morning Joy.
It is, in my view, an exceptional production.
The narrator, Mr. Kenny Carroll was superb!
By Jerry Roker,
Letter To The Editor, The Nassau Guardian
