Get off your knees and work to solve problems

Society relies too heavily on the church system.

When children are suffocating in marriages, we instruct them to pray. When our sons are being choked by illicit drugs, we instruct their exhausted and wailing mothers to kneel down and pray. When our children terrorise the population as criminals who snatch handbags, we are still told to help those families by praying for them.

All we do is pray for every problem we could physically solve.

I’m taking nothing away from the power of prayer but if we really believed prayer is indeed a problem solver, why did we not pray the problem of apartheid away? Why didn’t we pray Jacob Zuma away?

Have the prayers of the landless gone unanswered? When do we take responsibility for our shortcomings and when do we genuinely engage the church to fix the country’s mounting problems?

Because of this heavy reliance on the church system, pastors rise up to manipulate the beliefs of congregants – congregants who pay for holy water, anointing oils and prayer lines.

Why would someone blindly believe the answer to their problems lies in a solution sold on a church’s Facebook page? Why believe a mere sticker on you car’s bumper would be unending protection?

Without demeaning the faith of others, South Africans need to stop being so gullible that people can use their minds and desperation as a get-rich-quick scheme.

Simple question: if the priest can sell you items of protection, why does that very same priest have six big men as bodyguards?

Why does he not have a plethora of bumper stickers and protection oil?

I understand that when you are desperate you want to have blind faith, but don’t bankrupt yourself and be blinded by the gimmicks of wolves in sheeps’ clothing selling dreams that will never come true.

Yes, there are pastors who are true evangelists, living off monies that they have made in a way that their God does not look down on – honest hard work!

While our children are dying, while society is failing, we are praying … It is, after all, less effort than the actual hard work of taking responsibility.

Kekeletso Nakeli-Dhliwayo.

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