Vincent Owino

I AM A SOBER CHRISTIAN

I am lost in the thought of being a good Christian. Don’t dress casually, don’t drink this, don’t eat that, don’t do that, don’t watch this, don’t listen to whatever you want. So what if I do? God will reject me?

For all the lukewarms out there, good news, your actions cannot save you, but they can destroy you. Christianity and Christians are two different things. You can only follow one. If you choose to follow Christians, then be prepared to give up your life for whatever the hell they want you to be. Christians are like stars that you can’t possibly fathom into a constellation. One wants you to do this and the other wants you to do that. But if you choose to follow Christianity, then be prepared to listen from God’s own heart and to believe with your entire body, soul and mind.

Time has disappeared with true religion. There is no church anymore. There are only churches, ‘united in faith, divided in doctrines’. True religion only exists in the heart these days. Every church is faulty, every faith impure. There is no way to be saved if you want to weigh and find a reason to go to a particular church. As it turns out, every church (‘Pastorpreneur’ churches not included; those are not churches, they are businesses) has its own flaws and none is better than the other, if not for the content of what they present as the ‘gospel’.

I don’t want to struggle with the thought of being a good Christian anymore. I now know that if your reason outweighs your faith, you will become an atheist, and if your faith overcomes your reason, you will become an extremist. Every Christian knows that salvation is not earned, it is received, as a gift, through grace, not merit. If you want to attach meaning to everything that happens in the church, you are unsalvageable.

The first time I heard someone say he is ‘a sober Christian’, I was amused. “What a nice way of defining hypocrisy!” I thought. But I was wrong. I have come to learn that the supposed sobriety of a Christian is not an indication of hypocrisy, actually, it’s like the opposite. Clearly, some Christians are not sober. They are overdrunk with religion. And some are overdrunk with reason. A sober Christian is the one who believes as much as he reasons, none outweighs the other.

Besides the sober Christians therefore, Christianity is filled with two categories of people. Those who believe too much and reason too little, and those who reason too much and believe too little. To the former, I don’t think we could ever be in agreement no matter what I say. But if you are the type that does not question whatever is said be it by the pastor, priest, bishop, evangelist, elder or preacher, you are in that category.

I have seen people get deceived so much by ‘pastorpreneurs’ in the name of prophets just because they don’t question their ways, motives and messages according to the Bible, or just even according to the most common sense. They only believe. Somebody calls an 8-year-old child an ‘angel on assignment’ just because he is a good actor who can perfectly manipulate their faith. A child, who can’t even distinguish wrong from good deceives fully bearded men and women past menopause. Really? Is that how much we are supposed to believe? If we are supposed to believe, then we should believe in God alone, and make personal efforts to know Him and His will.

To the latter, you are not far off from atheists. You see, atheists think that they reason better than others when actually they believe much less than others. It is faith that is lacking in them, not reason in others. If you want to attach meaning to everything in the faith, then you will find the faith constraining, and slowly by slowly, you will be losing your way into the world of atheism. It is difficult to change the mind of an atheist [but not impossible, of course], but those who still have a little faith can still give it a chance before time runs out.

The sobriety of a Christian is very important. Without it, religion will become just like ‘kalongolongo’, children’s game. Everyone can reason and everyone can believe. So, for me, I don’t see a reason why we should have atheists or extremists. Surely, the fact that many are carried away by false religion should not be a reason to fight true religion. And the fact that hypocrites rule the world should not be a reason to fight sound-mindedness in the church. And by the way, is the reason we are talking about here same as carnal-mindedness? I’ll leave that for you to solve, just don’t ask your preacher. Goodbye!