By Oreva Godwin
I am a full African woman and also a born-again Christian. I am rooted in culture, and at the same time fully rooted in the Word of God. Yet it saddens me how people shy away from calling the church to order for fear of the wrath of God.
Traditionalists are equally afraid to question traditional beliefs, terrified that the gods will strike them dead.
Then I ask myself: if you truly believe you have access to God or a deity, why can’t you hold a conversation with them? Why can’t you question them? Is your role only to listen like a puppet, suppressing your curiosity and conscience?
Questioning God is not rebellion. Any being worthy of worship should be able to defend its name. The God I know is a God of integrity. He does not panic when questioned; He stands by His word. So why are we afraid to speak to the One we claim is our Father?
This is not just an African problem, it is a global one. Religion has eaten deep into us. We have lost our sense of reasoning.
Yes, Jesus said we are gods on earth, but we forget that we are still mortals. We are made in His image, not as His equal. God gave us knowledge so we can make wise decisions, yet we abandon that gift and become slaves to religion.
How does someone go to a juju priest for deliverance from a water spirit, only to be taken back to the same water, the very domain of that spirit, to bathe, sacrifice, and appease it? Did the spirit suddenly forget the value of its vessel? Or is the person unknowingly being covenanted to the spirit, with full consent extracted through ignorance?
How does a religious leader command followers to kill, to destroy, all in the name of belief? How do you take a life to please a doctrine? Religion should make us better humans. It should bring peace, not bloodshed.
What kind of religion supports an old man marrying an adolescent? A child with a bright future robbed of it. A child forced into motherhood? I write this with a bleeding heart. Do we no longer have conscience? Have we surrendered our minds entirely to tradition or to religion?
I remember my good friend, Fatima. Young. Brilliant. She was just eight years old when she was betrothed to a man over fifty. She came from a middle-class home and loved knowledge deeply. She begged her father to let her finish secondary school before marriage. He agreed.
Fatima was academically exceptional. She would proudly show her father her results, hoping he would reconsider and allow her to continue her education. We studied together; I saw her hunger for knowledge. But when Fatima was fourteen, in SS1, her father broke the agreement and married her off.
I can never forget the last day she came to school. She told me it would be her last. We held each other and cried. As I write this now, tears fill my eyes, the memory is still fresh. We clung to each other for what felt like an hour. I walked her home.
Her father stood at the entrance. In that moment, I saw him as a monster. He looked uncomfortable, perhaps sensing the hatred in my eyes. I ran home in tears and told my mother what had happened. She said, “It is their religion.”
I was furious. I cried to God that night: “Why did You allow Fatima to be born into a Muslim home? Why not a Christian one?” I cried myself to sleep.
Two years later, I saw Fatima again, with a child. I was in my school uniform. What she had dreamed of wearing was what I had on. Shame filled her eyes. I greeted her and asked about school. She said her husband did not permit it. I smiled at the baby, but when I saw her old husband approaching, I left. I was too angry to greet him. A bright future gone, all in the name of religion.
Now let us talk about Christianity. One God, yet countless churches, each with rigid rules and doctrines. A church that forbids blood transfusion is not just misguided, it is dangerous. If your faith is truly rooted in Christ, why is the blood of Jesus not enough to save your members without killing them?
This madness, disguised as doctrine, is murder, and I say that unapologetically.
I remember a classmate in secondary school who lost her mother during childbirth. The doctors needed blood to save her. Her father refused, citing church doctrine. He rebuked the doctor, insisting that accepting blood transfusion was forbidden and would lead to their family being shunned.
The doctors’ hands were tied. The baby survived. The mother died.
She narrated this story calmly, as though it were normal. We were not yet fifteen, but we knew it was wrong. We told her plainly: “Your father killed your mother.”
If children can recognize murder, why can’t adults? Where do these doctrines come from? Certainly not the Bible. When did Moses or Jesus preach against blood transfusion? God gave humans knowledge to ensure our survival. Why do we reject that knowledge in the name of faith?
That a supposed pastor will tell you not to go for surgery that God will remove the cancer or tumour, and you’re in pain for months and years. Who told you that God is wicked and enjoy to see you in pains. Can’t your God go with you to the surgery room?
Why do people abandon HIV medication because they believe God will heal them? Yes, God heals, but why do you think He cannot heal you while you responsibly take your medication?
Why has religion convinced people that surgical childbirth is against God’s will for mankind? Does safe delivery not glorify God more than death?
We use the scriptures upside down. Give birth like the Hebrew women of old. That Scripture has made a lot of Christian women not to accept surgical childbirth, all in the name of faith. Risking their lives and that of their babies. There is no religious award for rejecting surgical birth.
Have we lost ourselves to ignorance? Are you knowing God for yourself, or knowing Him through how others sell Him to you?
It is time to wake up. Time to break free from religious chains. You are not a puppet. You are accountable not to religion, not to prophets, not to priests, but to God. Be ruled by your conscience, by morality, by discernment.
We are not defined by religion, but by our choices. Religion is not the problem. Our blindness to knowledge or truth is. Our lack of understanding is a major predicament.
Stop suffering in ignorance.
*Oreva Godwin, The Southerner
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