Our Fleeting Sanctimony In The Face Of COVID-19 -By Saliu Momodu

Along with this COVID-19 epidemic came sanctimony.

At the nasent days of it’s outbreak, one could hardly carry a productive conversation with some strands of Christians who would endlessly interject with the phrase “end-time”. Same was true with their Muslim counterparts who would hurriedly add “too much evil everywhere”.

All these from a people neck-deep in prosperity religiousity on the one hand, & political spirituality on the other. As a Muslim, my believe in a fast & ever approaching end should be exemplary I think: contributing not to evil, but speaking up against it always.

Our Christian brothers too should help tune down on those prosperity sermons in favour of celestial values, COVID-19 OR NOT.

Even as we speak, the true place of our allegiance is now clear for all to see for we have already abandoned those ‘end-time’ slogans while yet in the heat of the pandemic. Let’s not turn religion into a mental problem; let’s not make hostages of things that were freely gifted to us pure and sacrosanct.

Nothing can truly heal our world of it’s malady except those genuine virtues you find well espoused in faith and religion; love, compassion, justice, charity, chastity, modesty, patience and sacrifice. So exemplary is the character these would fashion out in a faithful that a beholding world would, without words, heal and take heed- a feat never remotely attainable by an entire lifetime with sanctimoniously oft-repeated evil-decrying slogans, or of cliches about an imminent end by COVID-19 and whatever it is that may come afterwards.