This
expression remains one of the commonest and most used clichés in modern day
christianity. For us Christians, it is believed that without accepting Christ
Jesus as our Lord and personal saviour, one would be damned for hell and suffer
eternal damnation.
This
idea has often been knocked into our heads like burning data into a DVD that we
Christians now feel like the lucky few while those ‘outside the shed’ are all Hades
bound on a first class flight ticket.
The
question then is this; what if the first contact of Christians in the Southern
part of Nigeria was with Persians or Turkish merchants. What if the Chinese
monks had taken it upon themselves to spread the Budha and Tai Chi far and wide
across West Africa and had settled in Opobo, around the River Niger or Lagos? Most
certainly we would have been made to imbibe their religion and much of their
'Eastern' as against Western culture. Thus we would have been Muslims or Buddhists.
Sunday services would have been Jummats
in the mosques and visits to the Temples. The likelihood is that we would have
adopted Arabic or Mandarin/Chinese as our major language, eat with chop sticks
rather than spoons, drink herbal tea in place of hot choc and probably adopt martial
arts training as part of our normal life
The
truth is that most of us-the Christ oriented elements follow Jesus Christ today
because we were BORN into it, not because we CHOSE to be. For those amongst us who
chose Christianity later in their lives, chances are that they did so because
of the inner conviction or persuasion they had of/by another Christian who was
born into it. So in the end, it all arises from what we find around us and
hardly down to our making. For those who claim to have been "called by
God"....hmmm, I could also switch to Islam and CLAIM to have been called
by Allah, the most merciful.
The
simple conclusion to all this is that if we had been colonised by any other
group of persons with other religious inclinations but Christianity, we would
have been anything but Christians. We would not have had the Conviction that 'Christ
is the only way'. It follows therefore that we would have been on a ‘wrong way’
(possible on no way at all because there is Only one way-Jesus Christ). Would we
all have been on the side of those doomed for hell because surely we wouldn't
have taken to Christianity?
The
Holy Bible, the most revered book ever states in the book of Acts 10:34-35 that;
34: "....now
I understand that God is not partial,(35)but in EVERY nation, the man who fears
him and does what is right is acceptable to him" (emphasis mine).
Need I say more?
#A
peek into the Diary of a Recluse….
Onyeka Ehiwuogwu
