Religion/Faith Doesn’t Work? -By Rev. Father John Oluoma

Preacher: “How long have you been drinking beer?”
Man: “40 years”

Preacher: “how much is a bottle of beer?
Man: “About 500 naira.”

Preacher : At #500, you’d spent #182,500 on beer in a year. Multiply it by the 40 yrs you’ve been drinking, that’s 2 billion, six hundred million and five hundred thousand naira. You see, you would have been a billionaire now if you haven’t been drinking.

Man: Do you drink?
Preacher: No, never.
Man: so, for the past 40 yrs you haven’t spent money on any bottle of beer?
Preacher: Not a dime.
Man: Okay, can I see your #2,664,500,000?
Preacher: 🙁🙄( walks away)

This would also be my response to those who are increasingly accusing religion of the backwardness in Nigeria or Africa as a whole. There is a new clique of self acclaimed atheists, agnostics and skeptists who lampoon our faith for all the ills of poverty and under development.

My response to them would be: if you hypothesize that religion is the reason we are not progressing, show us the progress you have made as non religious. You see people praying and you gleefully throw jeers and jabs at them saying countries that are working are not praying and countries praying are not working.

It is mental indolence or mischief to say religion or faith is the reason third World countries are not progressing. This implies that progress will come once we jettison religion.

Now listen, religion is not a clever accidental invention of man. It’s part of man, no matter how scientifically advanced humanity becomes, the spiritual hunger which is expressed through religion will always be there. Religion is as old as humanity and will be as long as humanity.

Secondly, very few scientists are atheists or non believers. Majority of scientists have one religious leaning or the other. That means that most of the scientific inventions we have today that have made life better are from believers like you and I.

Even the most advanced countries are religious or peopled by religious adherents. Religion cannot be an excuse for intellectual laziness and scientific apathy.

Religion or faith or spirituality works. It works where it should. The only time faith or spirituality doesn’t work is when it’s forcefully used for things it weren’t suited for.

It’s not the work of faith/ spirituality/religion to create jobs, produce millionaires, stop bandits, end poverty or joblessness, create wealth, provide security against robbers, kidnappers and murderers etc. Though faith or religion can contribute significantly in solving these problems.

Faith or spirituality is not the only place God is present in human history. As God uses the religious to remind people of the eternity dimension and provide the necessary spiritual nourishment every human being needs, same God uses politics and government to provide the material needs of the people, he uses security forces to safeguard lives, uses education to improve our intellect, uses science and technology to materially enrich our world.

What I do know is that God does not use religion to do what technology will do. When it comes to constructing roads or bridges, God doesn’t use intercessors or prophets, he sends the engineers and others capable in that area.

We have never seen bridge emerging over a river because intercessors spent endless nights fasting and praying. It emerges by the work of engineers.

The work of making the nation prosper financially is for the political class and civil officials. God is not more in the religious than He is in the political, academic or scientific. He uses or wants us to use all of these for the betterment of humanity.

If people decide to be stupid, let’s treat their stupidity and stop blaming religion. Stupid people are stupid with or without religion. Dubai, China, USA all have religions and believers too. Religion is not the problem, human beings are.
Happy easter joor.