THE LONG WALK TO TRANSFORMATION - IV

"He who inquires about a matter seeks to know more about the topic. The traveler who continues to ask for directions will not miss his way." - Yoruba Proverb

Tell me, when we were students, how did we learn? The teacher teachers and where we lack comprehension, we asked questions until we gained clarity. The same it is with life. You should never stop asking question, or else you might be missing your way entirely without knowing it. The reason why Man is created as a social being is so that he can draw knowledge from those around him, and one way to know is by asking - whether human beings or books or on the internet.

THE QUESTIONS

It is the umpteenth time I am saying that I have always had questions. Recall that as a child, my questions were in a bid to fathom who God is. By the time I clocked age twenty, I was questioning doctrines and certain things they said that the bible said. Why couldn’t females wear trousers? Why no earrings? If attachment is a sin, why? And how come rubber thread or wool is not a sin? Why can’t girls wear shirts? Why no wine or alcohol? This line of questioning might amuse you, but can you blame a girl who had spent twenty years of her life under the repeated sounding of these regulatory doctrines?

As you know, after graduation from the university, the next thing, naturally, would be to go for service, and the thought of it worried me. How do I go and serve, knowing God would be angry with me for wearing trousers, which wasn’t my idea and more so, when I was left with no choice. So, I started asking older colleagues and my peers questions.

“What do we wear when we go to camp?”

“Skirt shorts.”

“OK,” I said. That sounded familiar. “What of outside camp, to CDS, for clearance and stuff?”

“You will have to wear your khaki. Some of us put our trousers in our bags and wear skirts. When we get to the venue we change and change back into skirts again after we are through.”

A-ha! That stress? Not for me. Certainly not. So, I asked the next question.

“Why is it a sin to wear trousers, though?”

The book of Deuteronomy was quoted.

“Okay, but what happens to the female naval officer, policewoman, soldier, nurse and doctor? They are banished to hell already?”

“No, no. God understands it is because of the nature of their jobs and they don’t have any choice.”

“I see. God makes excuses for sin then?”

“It is not like that. As long as that is not what they are always wearing. It is just on the job.”

“Hmm…”

“God will understand when you are wearing your khaki. He knows it is because that’s the rule not because you chose to wear it.”

I could say, in that moment, that response sufficed but like I do say, the soul will always go in search of its own answers.

When we finally went to camp and khaki and white shorts became the only things we wore, my questions came back. This time, I asked no one. I imagined within myself that Jesus suddenly decided to ask one of his angels to blow the trumpet because he was ready for his second coming. Here I was on the field, training for parades in a pair of white shorts. Would Jesus leave me behind or would he excuse me and the others from our church because he knows it’s the federal government’s fault that we wore what we knew he did not like? I did not think so. At least the bible makes us understand that God would take no excuses for sin. Sin is sin whether great or small. And that took me to the next question.

Did God really create hell fire? I doubted this theory although I did not have an answer and of the many times I read my bible over, I must have read the book of Revelation only once. The description in that scroll is scary. I could not imagine a man of love subjecting his creation that he called ‘good’ into fire. Seeing I couldn’t find a ready answer for that one, I focused on other areas and this time I decided to read the bible all over again, void of bias, sentiments and every pre-existing doctrine. I jotted all of my questions and in August 2015, the quest began. As I studied, more insight opened onto me. It was fascinating. True to that passage in the bible, the truth indeed sets free. I was delighted at what I found.

Now, while I will not be the one to tell you that it is okay to wear or do certain things (these were discoveries and convictions I found by and for myself), one thing stood out for me and I have held on to it since then. It is that the bible is a flexible book. Just about anybody can open it and use it for whatever mission they want to accomplish. The same bible that the church I grew up in uses to convince you that you would be damned to hell should you wear trousers is the same bible that another church will use to prove to you that God indeed doesn’t mind you wearing earrings and yet another church will argue with it that you shouldn’t wear slippers to church. Those are extremes, maybe.

This same bible will approve of Saturday as the Sabbath day and also allow others to go to their places of worship on Sunday. Why do we then stress? It is the same bible I read and I knew that certain doctrines I had been fed with in the church I grew up in were not God’s problem. All he asks of us is to love. I figured that the ten commandments are a vivid sample of what our love should look like. If you steal from someone, you would be putting them in pain. Would that be love? No, because you have hurt someone physically, financially and emotionally. You can take a moment to analyse the other nine.

When I was through studying, my face lit up and my world changed. That was the first level of physical change. At the sight of my new look, people went agog. I was unsure as to the particular reason for their reactions.

A picture of my "first sudden change".

Was it because I left the church where I had been raised or the fact that I now wore jewelry and trousers and also permed my hair? The most amusing part for me was when some people offered to set up individual prayer teams in order to intercede for me to come back to Calvary. It is one of the memories that get me laughing whenever I remember because if only they knew. And if only I knew...

See part V.😉