In Genesis, for two chapters we are given the account of the creation story. God calls forth the plants, animals etc. and they come into existence. When it got to the turn of man, God said ‘Let us make man in our own image and in our likeness…’. God indeed set out to create a being that would bear his image, his likeness and have dominion over creation. Genesis goes on to state a very important truth that we must bear in mind as we move on. It said ‘… male and female he created them’. This is interesting. It means no single sex owns the rights to the image of God. Not males. Not females. Both men and women equally bear the image of God. Therefore, none of us has the right to claim we are better image bearers of God or we bear God’s image in a greater measure than another person because of our sex. He made us all in his image.

The bible states that God is not a man. ‘Man’ here doesn’t necessarily mean male but human. Jesus also tells us that ‘God is spirit…’. One of the major reasons why God made the two sexes is, reproduction. We are sure of this because the first command God gave to Adam and Eve is to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…’. To the best of my knowledge, we are not told anywhere in scripture that spirit beings reproduce. Spirit beings are not sexual beings. So is it right to classify God who is spirit as either male or female?

The Incarnation of Christ

God made men and women in his image and this is a fact that cannot be disputed because it has been emphatically stated in scripture. However, the incarnation of THE WORD, Jesus Christ, poses a bit of a problem for us so far as this topic is concerned. Not only that but the fact that Jesus referred to God while he was on earth as his father. Also, the Bible describes Jesus as the express image of the invisible God, so if Jesus is a male then are we to assume God is a male too? This is what I have to say to that, sex (male and female) only came into existence when God created living things. The Bible describes God as the God who was, who is and who is to come. God existed way before he made anything material. He decided to come down as one of the two sexes and reveal himself to us as the father. That is it. However, how do we understand this truth in light of the already stated fact that women too are made in the image of God?

From the get-go, the Jews knew Jesus was going to be a male because of Old Testament prophecy. Isaiah said ‘unto us, a child is born, unto us, a son is given’. Jesus being a man is a fact that transcends time. For when he died he died as a man when he resurrected he did so as a man. A man who could be touched and felt. He even sat and ate with his disciples when he resurrected. Also, he is God. So we are very confident about the sex of Jesus. Concerning God, the first person of the Trinity, he has revealed himself to us as the Father. This is also a fact that we cannot overlook in this discussion. The Trinity is made up of three distinct personalities and we know that Jesus was incarnated as a man amongst the three. Therefore it is Jesus’ sex (both on earth and in eternity) we are 100% percent sure of. There is no contradiction in the fact that God made both men and women in his image, came down as a man and has revealed himself to us as the father. To state that this is a contradiction is to say God’s entire being can ONLY be expressed as a male. Or that God exhausted his entire nature in his coming to earth as a man. And this is rather a contradiction of what is stated in Genesis regarding God making both men and women in his image and after his likeness.  This tells us that bearing the image of God goes beyond sex and any human classification. To bear God’s image is to literally have his DNA and his imprint on you. Whether you are a man or a woman once you find yourself on this earth you are made in God’s image and likeness. So yes, we are sure of the fact that Jesus is male, God is revealed to us as the father and lastly, both men and women are made in the image of God. This is to say that men get their maleness from God and women get their femaleness from God.

The Idolatry of having a wrong image of God

“People are not allowed to make images of God because he already made images of himself – the Bible Project (Image of God)”

Paul makes a very important statement in his letter to the Corinthians that addresses the topic under discussion. He says in 2 Corinthians 5:16 that ‘Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more’. The new creation realities are in reference to the regenerated spirit, not the flesh. So when a man comes to the saving knowledge of Christ we say he is born again, not his body but his spirit. Therefore, we regard no man after the flesh but we know each man in spirit or we regard each person as spirit. Paul says if in the past we knew Christ after the flesh, we do so no more. Jesus is not a man that we have deified but rather he is God who came down to this earth as a man. There are people who raise who Jesus was on earth above his deity or they simply have little or no regard at all for his deity. Some say he was merely a moral teacher, others see him as a Jewish mythological character and some others see him as an ancient street magician. What a poor way to regard Jesus Christ!

Spoken Word poet Jackie Hill-Perry said ‘we have to understand God rightly to know him intimately’ and I agree with her. We have to endeavor to know God rightly to worship him rightly. Take for example someone who believes God listens to prayers only on Wednesdays. This person would have to wait until it is Wednesday to pray to God because perhaps according to his theology God is asleep for the rest of the week. But we know the truth because we are told in scripture that He who watches over Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers, meaning he is accessible all day every day. You can create a caricature of God and worship it because you are not well-informed and lack revelation of who he truly is. This is idolatry.

Apostle Paul said in Romans 1:23 that some men thought of themselves as wise not knowing they were fools and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds etc. The first stage of idolatry is to change the image of God into something else. The concept of idolatry is more nuanced than we make it out to be. Most times it is more mental, psychological, intellectual than it is spiritual and physical. For some of us so far as we don’t have a physical object in our rooms that we pray to in earnest spirituality, we assume we don’t engage in idolatry. When your understanding of who God is is far from the truth, however you are still devoted to that false image of God in worship, you are an idolater. We have to know God for who he is and not for what we want him to be or what we wish he was.

I say this because I’ve seen people raise concerns about the place of women in the Christian faith because Jesus came down to the world as a man and the fact that God has revealed himself to us as a father. I’ve also seen some people claim that men are superior to women because they believe men bear God’s image in a greater measure than women. Both groups of people do not take into consideration what is said about men and women being made in the image of God in the book of Genesis. Basically, the first group is trying to create God in their own image. The second is exalting males over females because God came down to earth as a male and has revealed himself to us as a father. By insisting on putting God into a human classification that we belong to and refusing to worship him until it is universally accepted as such, we are saying until God is made in our image, he isn’t worthy of our worship. Until God looks like us, we won’t worship him. That, my friends, is idolatry. It is not God we desire to worship it is our nature.

Exalting yourself above others because of your sex for any reason at all (including the misinterpretation of scripture) is sexism. This too is idolatry. When we do this, we worship our maleness and not God. This kind of thinking is based on a lie that the revelation of God as a father and his incarnation as the Son is a fact that makes men generally superior to women. Paul said, ‘…there is neither male nor female… for we are all one in Christ’. This doesn’t mean that there is no sex/gender in Christ, rather it implies that the unifying factor in Christianity far outweighs the physical, features that may distinguish us.

One thing that made me even more excited about the movie was the gender rhetoric that undergirded the entire story – in a somewhat subtle manner, yet very profound and powerful. However, that is the same thing that caused all the controversy concerning the movie. Ok, God is portrayed as a woman in The Shack. Do I see anything blasphemous about this? Certainly not! First of all, God isn’t male either. Indeed, anytime we see God manifest in the flesh, he does so in a male body but that doesn’t mean we should assume he is a man. This desiringgod.com article did a good job of establishing the fact that even in scripture God is given so many feminine attributes. You can check it out. We would have to agree on a few things before I proceed.

1. God is not a man, he is a Spirit (according to John 4:24)
2. He created man in his own image, male and female made he them (Genesis 1:27)

It is true that when God decided to come to the earth in a human form as Jesus he was a man (male). So it was when he appeared in the form of 3 men to Abraham. All these are still not enough proof that God is male. We might have gotten accustomed to seeing God appear in the flesh as a man to the extent that we think his portrayal as a woman in a movie is heretic and blasphemous. This is so wrong. If God created man in his own image and made them male and female, appears as a male in the flesh, why can’t he appear as female as well? I’m not saying he is obligated to do that to prove a point or anything. All I’m saying is, women were made in his image too, therefore, his portrayal as a woman in the movie shouldn’t bring about this level of controversy. When Jesus was being baptized in the River Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended on him as a dove. Is this blasphemous and heretic too? Besides, this movie is even a work of fiction to project a certain aspect of God’s character that is predominantly common amongst women, so everybody can chill and just munch on the essential message of the movie.

Now that that is out of the way, back to the movie. In the early parts of the movie, we see the family set off on a trip without the woman of the house. While seeing them off she made a comment that appears casual yet pregnant with so much information. She said to the kids “I have faith in your dad’s mothering skills”. This is by far the most important statement in the entire movie. Through the harsh seasons of our lives, how much faith do we have in God’s mothering skills? Nan made this comment because she wasn’t going to be with her kids on that trip hence they need not worry because their father doubles as a mother. This is a flamboyantly colorful feather in the cap of the man. Did he live up to expectation? We shall find out soon.

On their way, his two older kids begged him to stop by a waterfall. He refused the request initially only to barge at the end. While they stood on a bridge having a closer view of the waterfall, his older kids once again asked him to tell Missy, the little one, the story of the Indian Princess. The waterfall, therefore, appears to be a site he and his elder kids had been before, maybe way before the little one was born. So he goes on to narrate the story. From the story, we find out that there was an Indian Princess, who gave up her life for the sake of her people. The waterfall was therefore created by the ‘Great Spirit’ in memory of the Princess. It is a no-brainer that this Indian Princess is an allusion to Jesus Christ. Once again, we see God portrayed as a woman.

They finally got to their destination and it was a lakeside where other families camped as well. It seemed like a pretty cool and decent place to have a little family vacation. The following morning, the two older kids were on a boat not too far away from the shore and  Missy was by her father drawing with her crayons. All of a sudden, Josh fell off the boat after his sister stood up to get the attention of their father. Mack ran, dived into the water and swam all the way to the boat to save his son. They all came back to the shore only to realize that Missy was gone. She was gone. The police couldn’t find her anywhere. Later they discovered her bloody dress in a shack up the mountain, but her body was not found.

The death of the little girl tore the family apart. Kate withdrew from the rest of the family obviously because she felt it was her fault her little sister died. Josh had also become secretive. Mack also lost faith in God. I must say the little girl is almost the perfect character to die to arouse all the needed emotions and questions that often flood our minds when we go through hard times. She was innocent, sweet and very inquisitive. All these make it hard for anybody to understand why she should die. Or why she should die in such a callous manner.

Not too long after her death, Mack checked his mailbox and found a letter in there from ‘Papa’ inviting him to the Shack up the mountain. He looked but couldn’t find a trail of footsteps in the snow leading either to or away from his mailbox. Which was pretty strange. His family nicknamed God ‘Papa’ so definitely he knew who it was. He decided to honor the invitation and go to the Shack alone although his next door neighbor had wanted to go with him. The Shack was this old dilapidated wooden structure that appeared to have been abandoned for years.

While walking through the woods, he met a young Middle Eastern man who invited him to ‘his house’. All this seemed to happen in a trance because all of a sudden the mountain became a garden with beautiful flowers – especially the path leading to the stranger’s house. Mack arrived at the house only to be introduced to the entire Godhead. Apparently, the Middle Eastern man who led him to his home was Jesus, the Son. And here is another shocker, the other two members of the Trinity were women! How strange it would be to meet the Godhead only to realize two-thirds of the trinity is female. So Papa was a black woman and the Holy Spirit was a slender Asian lady. Mack’s interactions with the Godhead marked his journey to complete healing from the hurt he felt after his daughter died. In one of his earliest interactions, Papa told him ‘after what you have been through, I didn’t think you could handle a father right now’. Papa said this right after Mack questioned her gender. This is another amazing revelation in the movie. God revealed himself to Mack as a mother because he had had a rough childhood experience with his father. Therefore, his perception of who a father is was based on the kind of relationship he had with his earthly father. This is probably why most of us can’t have a great relationship with God because we are seeing him through the lenses of our earthly fathers and those lenses are giving us a poor image of who God is. It is amazing to know that God knows when to be what in our lives. Now when Mack accused God of always abandoning those he claims he loves, especially Jesus on the cross, Papa showed him his nail-pierced wrist. Indicating that while Jesus suffered on the cross, God did too. Which means God shares in our suffering; he understands our pain.

Papa did drop some nuggets in her interaction with Mckenzie. She said “You were created to be loved. Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings”. Then she went on to say that ‘this is your flying lessons”. ‘This’ here refers to ‘the Shack’ experience that the Trinity was taking Mckenzie through. The painful experiences are our flying lessons. We need them to first muster the courage to fly and that is how we experience the Love of God.

Mckenzie’s next interaction was with the Spirit of God. They took a walk through a garden where the spirit made a very profound illustration. She showed Mckenzie a twig that was poisonous. Then she mentioned that on its own it is poisonous, but combining it with the nectar from a particular flower produced a substance with incredible healing powers. This goes to show us how both the good and bad times in our lives are meant to come together for a greater good. When we single out the bad times, it may seem our lives are on the rocks, but having a holistic view of our lives – both the bad and the good times – can produce incredible healing anytime we need it.

By far my favorite interaction in the movie was between Mckenzie and ‘Wisdom’. He met Wisdom in a dark cave sitting on her throne. Wisdom told him he was there, in the cave, for judgment. No, not to be judged, but to judge just as he always did throughout his life. The conversation that ensued is probably the most powerful in the movie. It was laden with so much wisdom and offered answers to questions that I have been grappling with for some time now. Why does God allow evil to happen and not do anything about it? Why can’t evil people be condemned to hell immediately to rid humanity of all the hideousness? Wisdom made some profound statements worthy of note. She quizzed, ‘doesn’t the legacy of brokenness go all the way back to Adam?’. Anytime you want to judge somebody, make sure you judge everybody else in human history whose actions had an effect on the said person – all the way to Adam. That is when you can claim to have judged the person justly. The legacy of brokenness indeed goes all the way back to Adam.

The time spent with God was an exercise to heal him of all emotional and psychological pain. So one morning Mckenzie woke up and there stood papa in the doorway. This time not a black woman but an Asian man. Papa said ‘for what we have to do today, you are gonna need a father’. BAM! So you see, God is the complete parent, no wonder he made men and women in his image. His nature couldn’t be revealed in one gender alone. When he wanted to make a being in his image he had to make two of its kind, hence we have men and women, fathers and mothers. The task that day was to get Mckenzie to forgive his daughter’s killer. This exercise required the stern persuasion of a father. That is why Papa chose to reveal himself as a man in this scene. Mckenzie did forgive the killer, pretty much to my amazement.

There is so much I want to say about the movie but time and space are not my best allies now. I learned so much from it. The shack (where Mckenzie found his daughter’s bloody clothes) represents a place of pain yet a place where God is ever present. C.S Lewis said ‘… God shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world’. God is indeed loudest in our pains if only we can pay attention and listen.

This is clearly not worthy of celebration. In fact, I was appalled at this fact when I read it. Those were 60 million lives that could have been but weren’t given the chance. For various reasons women commit abortions. All kinds of women take this decision: married, single, rich, poor, abused etc. I am not outraged at them, but rather the system that allowed this. I am not quite keen on acquiring a tag but if this viewpoint makes me pro-life, then so be it. One thing I know is that nobody can be more pro-life than the fetus. Within a period of 9 months, what started as a clot of blood develops limbs and transforms rapidly into a full-blown human being in the womb. That is pro-life. Nothing can be more indicative of a pro-life stance than growth. Absolutely nothing. Always remember that humanity loses a pro-lifer after each successful abortion.

But it is an issue of choice, they say. It is an issue of what the bearer of the baby says. I’m really not here to debate that, but I just wanted to point out a few things I noticed from the ongoing discussion on social media. From what I know about abortions, especially the ones I have heard about, it was the guys who forced the idea on the ladies. In Lecrae’s song ‘The Good, The Bad, the Ugly’ he recounts how he forced his woman to get an abortion when he was much younger. He stated in the song that the lady went on with the plan because she loved him. But from all indications, he regrets that decision. I remember hearing a story about this macho man in the neighborhood I grew up in running after a lady with a glass of water and some pills in broad daylight. He was literally forcing her to terminate the pregnancy in the full glare of everybody around.

All lives matter; those in womb matter too. The life of a fetus matters no matter who takes the final decision to end it.

My main concern is the misrepresentation of the word of God in the ensuing debate. I couldn’t help but cringe at some opinions which were expressed based on faulty analyses of scripture. Two bible stories emerged in most of the discussions:

1. Onan spilling his seeds (withdrawing while having sex with Tamar)
2. God declaring that he knew Jeremiah before he formed him in his mother’s womb.

Onan’s story is quite an interesting one. He was the second son of Judah. His older brother Er was married to Tamar and he displeased the Lord so he was killed. As their custom was, Tamar was given to Onan to sleep with for her to bear a child to continue the lineage of Er. Onan knowing that the child wouldn’t be counted as his, chose to spill his seed. God killed Onan for what he did. NOTE: God didn’t kill him for merely spilling his seed, but for the implications of this act. Many times I’ve heard people use this story as the basis to condemn masturbation. Masturbation is indeed sexual sin but Onan didn’t masturbate. What he did was a deliberate act to discontinue his brother’s lineage. It is also worthy for us to note that this is the same Judah whose lineage became the tribe of Judah. Both David and Jesus came from this tribe. It is easy to tell why God had a keen interest in the affairs of this family. I can’t tell the exact reason but I am tempted to believe God’s decision to kill Onan had a lot to do with the implications of his actions on the tribe of Judah (According to Gen 38:9).

It is not right to liken what Onan did to masturbation or even abortion. A sperm is not a fetus. Therefore whatever means of birth control a man applies to prevent conception cannot be likened to abortion. Why? Because conception has not taken place yet. The male body is fashioned to naturally dispose of semen once in a while in the sleep of the said man. Is this abortion too? Does this apply to menstruation too? I get what this is all about, though. It is all because some ladies are of the view that any man who takes a stance against abortion is primarily attempting to take away a certain level of freedom from women. Also, there is this assertion that a man’s opinion is worth very little on the topic of abortion. Are we implying that one can only have an opinion on a topic when it directly affects him/her? Do we need to strip the proponent of a contrary view of his right to express it? Doesn’t that imply our assertions are weak in the face of opposition? Nobody’s view should be discredited because of his gender. That is sexism indeed.

The other bible story that has come up in this discussion is the story of Jeremiah. God told Jeremiah:

‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth of the womb I sanctified thee and, I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations’

Many have misinterpreted this because they have either misquoted the verse or have truncated it to suit their interpretation. God didn’t say ‘before you were formed in the belly…’ but ‘before I FORMED THEE in the belly…’. What difference does that make? A lot! The understanding that this verse implies God knows each sperm by name and therefore when a man ‘spills his seed’ he has committed abortion is false. God formed Jeremiah in his mother’s womb. God didn’t just know him before that, he ordained Jeremiah way before he formed him in the womb. This means, that verse up there is not about identity or identification but rather predestination. The verse doesn’t mean God knows each sperm by name. It means God knows which one would eventually fertilize the egg and in this case, it was Jeremiah. So before he was a clot of blood, God had already ordained him to be a prophet unto the nations. As simple as that. Therefore abortion is the termination of that which God has formed. As Ravi Zacharias said ‘We can’t talk about human rights without the right to be human’. If your human right terminates another person’s right to be human, how many humans will be left if everybody exercised that right?

There are so many push factors when it comes to abortion for eg. Poverty, stigmatization, unpreparedness etc. It is my hope that we wouldn’t lose sight of the real issue as we go on to fight these factors. Also, there should be counseling and therapy available for women who have already committed abortions. The trauma they go through is unmatched and therefore special care must be given to their psychological health.

We are all fallible. It is natural to want to deal with your mistakes lest they interrupt your plans for the future or because you can’t afford to live with the consequences. But is it right to end a life so you can live yours comfortably? I believe as many of us that read this post should try and answer this question and please share your views with me in the comment session. Thanks.

Tattoos. Body piercings. Cross-dressing. Are all these acceptable in the sight of God? It is stated categorically in the book of Leviticus that all these are (or used to be) unacceptable to God. Do these commands have a backing in the New Testament?

First of all, I need to state this: the Law does not in any way refer to the 10 commandments alone. The law is a dispensation. It is a mentality (which means it transcends time frames). It is a determinant of the relationship between man and God. The law is God giving men the chance to be acceptable in his presence. Therefore there are more laws the Israelites had to adhere to than the 10 commandments Moses took on Mount Sinai. These laws are outlined in the book of Leviticus and other Old Testament books. Jesus is described in the bible as ‘the lamb that was slain before the foundations of the earth’, meaning, he was destined to die for the sins of the world before creation. But we all know God works according to times and seasons. Therefore the Law was an interim measure to restore man to a shadow of the fellowship he had with God in Eden. It wasn’t time for Jesus to come and die for the sins of mankind yet so God put in place an interim measure to bridge the gaping chasm sin created between God and man.

Not every law given in Leviticus and Deuteronomy has a spiritual bearing. If this is all you would walk away with after reading this post, I would be exceedingly glad. God gave three kinds of laws in Leviticus: Ritual Laws, Laws concerning the Priesthood and Purity Laws. In this post, we will dwell largely on the purity laws. These laws didn’t only make a man spiritually acceptable in the sight of God, most of them, if adhered to, actually made man physically acceptable in the presence of God. This is because God used to manifest himself to these people physically so physical cleanliness was very important. The Law was put in place to reveal the imperfection of man. For if God gave man one law in Eden and man broke it, he clearly wasn’t expecting men to be able to keep many laws. The truth is, it was all in the build up to the arrival of the promised Messiah.

Ok so back to the laws. It doesn’t take much critical analysis to notice that some of these laws were simply personal-hygiene laws. They still fall under the purity laws anyway, because they keep the body clean just as adherence to sexual laws would make a man spiritually clean before God. For example, the law prohibited the Jews from touching the flesh of dead animals. The law also states in Leviticus 15 that a man who discharges semen (in his sleep) and a woman in her menses are both unclean. Both are expected to bath and wash their clothes and anybody who touches either the cloth or the beds they slept on is also unclean. In Deuteronomy 23, the bible says that the children of Israel were prohibited from easing themselves in the camp. But rather they were instructed to go outside the camp, dig a hole and afterward cover up their excrement. These are clearly hygiene laws.

Now here comes the controversial laws. In Leviticus 18:28 the Israelites were warned against making marks on their skin (tattoos). Deuteronomy 22:5 speaks against cross-dressing. The question then is, why do some Christians have tattoos on their skin and are bold enough to attend church services with their skin looking like the map of a swampy area? Why do Christian women wear trousers? Why do Christian men wear earrings? Are they ignorant of what the bible says about cross-dressing?

In Galatians 5:6, it says:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accounts for anything but only faith working through love.

Circumcision is the mark of the covenant the Jews had with God. It involved the physical cutting away of the foreskin of the manhood. Therefore, circumcision was pretty much a big deal in those days. Acts 15 addresses this issue too. Paul had come across a group of believers in Antioch who believed one would have to be circumcised to become a Christian. Hence he traveled all the way back to Jerusalem to meet up with the elders of the church to discuss this very issue. Some of the remarks of the elders were astounding. Peter asked ‘now, therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?’. He said this in reference to the issue of circumcision – which basically stands for keeping the law. He calls it a yoke! It means the very moment we choose to follow the law we have willingly thrown a yoke around our necks. James made a similar submission at the council. None of them implied that Grace is a license to sin. No! Far from that. What I’m saying is grace is a better reason to live right than the law. Grace empowers you to do the right thing other than following a bunch of laws.

From the verse we read from Galatians, it says that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accounts for anything. Which means whether you are circumcised or uncircumcised it really doesn’t matter. Whether you have tattoos or not, it really doesn’t matter. Whether she wears trousers or not it really doesn’t matter. It even amazes me that the people who say it is sinful to have tattoos don’t realize that the verse that speaks against tattoos is preceded by a verse that speaks against shaping your hair as a guy. I have shaped my hair by the way. Am I guilty of any sin because of this? Will I go to hell because of this? Can a mere hairstyle outdo and undo what Christ did on the cross? Certainly not! This is what happens anytime we try to judge people by the law, we end up implicating ourselves. Little wonder the bible says that whoever keeps the whole law but breaks one of them is guilty of all. As simple as that. So if you are going around judging men for piercing their ears, braiding their hair, tattooing their skin etc. yet you have shaped your hair, you are as guilty as you claim they are. You break the entire law by breaking one. If you have a toilet in your home, please know that you have broken the law (refer to Deut. 23). A lady who goes to church in her menses or a man who goes to church the morning after having wet dreams has also broken the law. This is tiring already! Even typing it out is tiring!

This is why Grace is the solution. After the death of Christ, we are totally changed from the inside out. We are born anew. Already acceptable in the sight of God on Jesus’ score. God is pleased with you. Therefore we don’t have to follow a bunch of rules to be pleasing in the sight of God. We don’t have to follow the law to attain righteousness. We are already righteous. Does this in any way mean we can do whatever pleases us? Definitely no! The only thing is, whatever we do that will ever please God should stem from his grace and not by works – so the glory goes back to him.

Going back to Paul’s epistle to the Galatians he told them they’ve been called to a life of freedom, nevertheless, they mustn’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Interesting. Which means we are at liberty to do certain things but we mustn’t do them because we want to please our flesh. At another place Paul says ‘everything is beneficial but not everything is helpful (edifies)’. A tattoo doesn’t mean you are of the devil. Piercing your nose doesn’t mean you are hell-bound. We are at liberty to do these things, but we mustn’t let it be a quest to merely please our flesh. ‘Oh facial tattoos are in vogue so I need to get one’. That is wrong!

Also, we are admonished to desist from such things for the sake of the weaker brethren in the faith. There are some people who aren’t mature enough to understand the gospel of Grace and the freedom it comes with. Such people would be compelled to judge when they see another Christian fully exercising his liberties without constraints. They might just tag you a sinner and it is not their faults but yours. You should know better.

Sometimes we need to understand these things also from a cultural point of view. I’m saying so because even in Acts 15, culture was at the center of the debate the disciples had. There are certain things that are acceptable in one culture and totally abhorred in another. In the ghettos in America, having tattoos is no big deal. Therefore when someone from this kind of background comes to Christ, he would be inclined to having even more tattoos. Let’s take for example Scottish men in kilts. They wear skirts because it is a cultural norm in Scotland. A man wearing a skirt is largely regarded worldwide as cross-dressing. Are we saying all Scottish men are not possible candidates of God’s grace? Can’t a Christian Scottish man wear his skirts to church and feel at ease to worship God? Why do we want to put a yoke around their neck (as Peter would say)?

I personally do not like tattoos and piercings. Nevertheless, not mine, but the will of God be done. In the New Testament, circumcision is of the heart and not by the law (Rom 2:29). So it is not about what you have written on your skin but how much of God’s word is inscribed on your heart. It isn’t about the number of piercings you have in your ears and nose, it is about how much you keep your eyes fixed on His nail-pierced hands. It isn’t about cross-dressing but it is solely about putting on the righteous garment you obtained by grace and keeping it clean. You can wear a crucifix with the cross hanging so low that it touches your knee when you bend, if you still don’t carry your cross daily and follow after Jesus, you are merely burdening your neck.

Often when this topic comes up for discussion, people make reference to the first couple in human history: Adam and Eve. Adam didn’t have the option of choosing a life partner for himself but God ‘recognized’ a lack in Adam’s life and decided to provide a solution for it. Let me veer off a bit to address a pertinent issue here: Eve was not an afterthought! Even the devil wasn’t an afterthought.  I can’t ever come to terms with the fact that God didn’t intend to create Eve initially. Especially when he created the male and female species of every animal and instructed them to be fruitful and multiply. He said that even to birds and fishes. Now, he gave the same instruction to Adam and Eve, which implies that that was his intention all along. How was man supposed to do that if Eve wasn’t created? The question is, why didn’t God create Eve right away? The lion and the lioness were created at the same time, so the lion was never alone. Why did God allow Adam to feel the absence of Eve before creating her? God is sovereign but never have I read in scripture that he abused his sovereignty. So anytime I see him exercise his sovereignty in any part of the bible, I know there is a lesson to learn.

Adam saw creation in its purest state before the fall. If you are impressed by the beauty of nature in our day and age or blown away by the awe-inspiring colorful display of flowers in any garden, I wonder how you would react at the sight of the garden planted by the Gardener himself. Eden had to be the most amazing place on earth at the time. To top it all, Adam had fellowship with God. It isn’t stated in scripture but I don’t doubt he might have had face-to-face encounters with God. So if after all these – the splendor of Eden and fellowship with God – Adam was still considered ‘alone’, by delaying in the creation of Eve, God was just showing off the value of womanhood. It is more like God kept man’s greatest asset away from him so man could feel how empty life would be without her. Then BAM! One day, here she is. Brother man didn’t know what to say upon seeing her. Knowing God and how he communicates to us sometimes, I believe the delay in the creation of Eve was all a set-up to reveal how man is incomplete without his suitable helper (Eve).

Here is the thing, God never told Adam directly that Eve was his life partner. In other words, God didn’t impose Eve on Adam, he just presented her to him. It is Adam who was so blown away by the beauty of Eve that he said passionately ‘… this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh…’. Nevertheless, it is clear Adam didn’t have options. He didn’t have Evelyn and Eva snooping around his relationship and ready to comfort him anytime he had issues with Eve. Adam didn’t have options, therefore it is logical to conclude God expected him to marry Eve.

Anyway, here are two key lessons from Adam’s story:

1. God will never force you to marry a particular person.

“Errm but God commanded the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute?” Well, of course he did. But at the end of the day the specific prostitute Hosea married was up to him. God just told him the kind of woman to marry and not which one in particular. In Adam’s case God presented Eve to him. God intended her to be a suitable help to him. However, God never imposed Eve on Adam. But because Adam didn’t have options, the union between Adam and Eve appeared to be an imposition. I believe God hasn’t changed since the incidence in Eden. Often people say ‘oh because Adam blamed God for giving him a woman that led him into sin God won’t force anybody into marrying a specific person’. While it is true that God won’t force you into marrying somebody, the reason stated above is rather a weak one. The main reason why God won’t force you into marrying a particular person is, He will never violate the human will. God will never ever violate the human will in any instance. That is what makes us human beings in the first place: the ability to choose to be what we want to be. If there was ever a reason for God to violate the human will, it wouldn’t be for an ephemeral and a trivial matter as who you marry. Now, a person’s spouse can make or break him/her but that cannot be compared to the salvation of the human soul. If God cannot force every human being to become a Christian, then he surely cannot go against his very nature and force his choices on you. This isn’t a sign of weakness at all, on the contrary, it proves to us that even in his sovereignty God allows us to willingly choose the right path.

2. There is such a thing as the perfect will of God which he has intended for all of us to willingly walk in.

From the story, we hear the thoughts of God concerning the singleness of Adam. God said ‘it is not good for man to be alone, I will make for him a help-meet’. Which means he had a plan for Adam concerning the creation of a suitable helper for him. This is God’s intention. We all know how that story ended but let’s assume Adam rejected Eve and didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Would God have force Eve on Adam? Would God have twisted Adams arms into accepting Eve? God will respect your choice though he has a better option for you. By respecting your choice I don’t mean he will honor it. He just steps back and watches as you make a mess out of yourself. In Jeremiah 8:3 God said ‘And death shall be chosen rather than life…’. Basically, life and death are the options, it is up to you to choose one. Though God would rather you chose life, he won’t impose it on you. If even in the matters of life and death God wouldn’t force you to choose life but rather leave it up to your discretion, why would he force a life partner on you? Nobody stumbles and falls into the will of God. It takes a lot of dying to walk in God’s will. It takes a lot of humility to do that. Until you intentionally ask God to assist you in taking a decision – especially concerning your life partner – do not expect his will to be done automatically in that area of your life.

So the point is made, God won’t force you to marry a particular person even though he has a specific person in mind for you. How then can one get to meet this person? By asking God to direct you to the person or let your paths cross. He can choose to give you directions via whatever medium. It could be prophecy. It could be in a dream. It could appear as a coincidence. Sometimes he will burden your heart with the specifications of a ‘perfect spouse’, so that you set out in search of such a person. Whatever it is, when you ask him about it, he will definitely show up and direct you. I believe God can speak through his servants the prophets concerning your future spouse. As has been discussed already, it doesn’t mean he has imposed the person on you. Just like all other prophecies, you will never get a detailed description of the person. At best you can be told the person’s name, physical features, career etc. just a ‘little something’ to help you identify the person. As you may know already, this is because prophets know in parts and prophesy in parts. There is always an element of mystery about every prophecy. So yes, prophecy can come in to guide you in the process of selecting your spouse. It doesn’t come to bind you and make you stiff-necked. Though a prophetic word has the power to create miracles, most of the times it comes in just to inform you about a future matter. It is up to you to subject your will to it for it to come to pass. When God says you will marry person A or B, it is still up to you to accept it as his perfect will for you or to choose your own path. If you go ahead and marry person G it is all on you.

This is a stern warning to the people – especially the brothers – who can’t woo a woman to save their lives and therefore resort to blackmailing them with so-called revelations and prophecies. Desist from that! If God revealed it to you that she is the one, be honorable enough and don’t go and tell her God said this and that therefore she should give you a chance. That is infantile. Prophecy is not a tool for blackmail. Will you walk into a bank and demand a million dollars because there’s a prophecy concerning an impending wealth hanging over your head? When God says you will be rich, it usually means you will work hard to get there. God promised the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey. He didn’t tell them about the giants they had to kill to get the milk and honey. Even if there were no giants, they would have had to milk cows to get the milk and rear bees to harvest the honey. There is no such thing as a land flowing with milk and honey in reality. But there is such a thing as a land filled with bees and cattle. When a prophecy comes, often there is a certain amount of work to be done by the person the prophecy is about. God said Sister Belinda is your wife … blessed and highly favored are you among all men bro. Now get up like the confident brother that God expects you to be, step up to Belinda, strike a conversation, start a friendship and develop it into a relationship. Faithful is he who has said it, he is more than able to help you work it out too. Believe in him.

The conclusion of the matter is, God has a perfect will for all of us even concerning the most trivial things in our lives. I once got a prophecy concerning the fact that I have been desiring to grow my beard for so long. I want to be ‘Beard Gang’ so bad! Though I deem it embarrassingly trivial to speak about it openly, guess who cares about it too: Elohim. The one who created over a billion stars in space and knows each one of them by name. God indeed has a perfect will for all of us concerning every area of our lives. Will we humble ourselves and pray about it? He won’t impose it on you but he will guide you to it so you make the choice yourself. Whatever your choice, there is either a blessing or a curse waiting for you. Pray about it and he will definitely intervene and lead you to the right person.

References: Hosea 1, Genesis 1 and 2, 1 Corinthians 13:9.

Sometimes showmanship is the evidence of the absence of legitimacy

You have to understand that this happened so many years ago – maybe between 2003 and 2005. I still remember the quote because I have applied it to so many areas of life and time and time again it proves to be so true. The reality the quote discloses best describes how I feel about sex tapes. Guy, if you were having legitimate sex, there wouldn’t be a need to tape it to show it to your boys as proof of anything. It is as simple as that. There is no point to prove when it is legitimate. There is absolutely no need to impress a third party if it is legitimate. Usually, people tend to show off when what they are doing isn’t permissible. I have a few married friends and they need not send me a video tape of what they do under the sheets because I already know they do it – rightfully and ‘legally’. There have been stories of married couples taking videos of themselves while at it. It doesn’t concern anybody what married people choose to do in their bedrooms. It only becomes an issue if they carelessly let it slip into the hands of a third party. Now back to the point I was making, since society has managed to deceive many into thinking sex is a precious thing only smart guys can steal from girls, why won’t boys want to show unquestionable proof when they do achieve that ‘feat’? I have heard so many stories of guys lying to their friends that they slept with a particular girl. Since the first of such stories was found out to be a lie, the brethren sat down to develop a new strategy: a way to produce evidence that would silence all doubts. Ladies and gentlemen, that is how sex tapes came about.  

‘Sex tape’ is a genre of porn. ‘Sex tape’ is guiltless porn. ‘Sex tape’ is an amateur home-made porn. ‘Sex tape’ is porn with familiar faces. ‘Sex tape’ is unscripted-porn – so it is probably more enjoyable because you know they are not acting. Sex tapes  invoke pity – usually for the lady – therefore people think it is ok to watch it in order to express how deeply hurt they also are by the actions of the guy.

Sex tapes are worse than porn. Sex tapes are evil!

The thing about porn is, usually, the people involved signed up for it. They actually hope and fervently pray the whole world gets to see them doing whatever – for the money. With sex tapes, one party’s desire for street credibility tarnishes the image, taints the reputation and scars the other party emotionally and psychologically for life!

Well, I know there have been a few cases where the lady in the video appears very much aware the act is being taped. Not to jump to the defence of such ladies, but even if she knew, I doubt she would agree to the idea of the video going viral online. I am yet to read about a sex tape that was initiated by a girl to tarnish the image of a guy. It is always the guy. Why? Biblically, guys are held to a higher sexual purity standard than women, per my understanding of the text. (I have spoken extensively about it in this blog). Therefore until we submit to divine standards for sex and purity, we will never see the end of this.

“[M]odern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction.” – Dr. Jeffrey Satinover

Addiction to porn is a field of study on its own. I’m hoping God will grant me grace to talk about it sometime soon. No matter how pious a guy is, I will not be shocked if he opens up and tells me he is battling addiction to porn or has done so in the past. What would shock me is if a guy about my age, says he hasn’t ever battled porn addiction before. It is that serious. I watched a TEDx video sometime ago that changed my perception about the porn industry. The speaker defines porn as ‘visualized sex slavery/ prostitution’. He stated that most of the girls in the videos are actually doing it against their own will. There is somebody benefiting tremendously while these girls go through all the abuse in full global glare. Hence, the speaker resolved to refrain from watching porn. I certainly cannot tell how long this resolve would last, but I found his speech quite remarkable. To some extent, this information may deter somebody from watching porn for a while, because it feels like you are endorsing, encouraging and financially contributing to sex trafficking. The abusive and appalling story behind the porn flick may deter you. But what if the story isn’t that appalling? Does it mean you can watch it? This is one of the reasons why people enjoy sex tapes and actually store lots of them in folders on their PCs. The story behind most sex tapes is that of payback or revenge – which makes it ‘exciting’ to watch. Some jilted lover’s attempt at getting back at his ex he still sleeps with. Some guys actually team up to do it. Yo, it is so not cool. The internet never forgets. One day it will all come back to haunt you.

• Let’s not share the videos when they come out. The director of the sex tape, the viewer and the sharer are all voluntary promoters of this genre of porn. You are very much a part of the problem if you watch and share the videos.
• Let’s not allow ourselves to be taped no matter how deeply we think we are in love. The lady in the first sex tape that was ever made, thought she was in love too.
• There is a reason why bathroom windows are small and way up the wall. In fact, it is not love if he/she is asking for nudes and perv stuff like that.

I can’t trust the conscience of a human being. It takes a higher power and force to keep us all in check. What can end this menace? I don’t know. One thing I know is, you have no business stripping before anybody who hasn’t vowed before the Lord to live with you till death. Safety first, stay pure.   

This scenario is way too familiar. A guy and a girl have sex illegitimately, but the girl is always held responsible or brought before the Pharisaical Court of Justice in public. Somehow we have managed to make sex look like a thing girls give to the satisfaction of the guys that ask for it. Therefore when a guy ‘manages’ to get a lady to sleep with him outside marriage, he is hailed as a champion and the lady is called a slut. Jesus himself had to deal with this very issue. Remember when they brought the adulterous woman to him? The woman was caught in the act of adultery: meaning she was involved with a guy. Of course, the patriarchy in that society was so prominent that the man was left off the hook and the woman was found guilty. Jesus looked on the woman with eyes of love and compassion and not eyes of condemnation. He knew that condemning people would only deepen the scars that the guilt had left in their soul. His aim was to bring redemption. Nothing redeems better than love. So he looked at the woman and told her ‘… neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more’. Jesus didn’t approve of the sexually immoral lifestyle here. He offered the woman a dosage of ‘no-condemnation’ to empower her to stay away from sin. Condemnation leads to guilt; guilt hardens the human heart; a hardened heart is a fertile ground for more sin.

This isn’t Jesus’ only encounter with a sexually immoral woman. At a well in Samaria, he spoke with a woman who had five ex-husbands and was at the time in a relationship with a man who wasn’t her husband. Did Jesus condemn her? Nope. He let his love rain on her to the extent that she was transformed instantly into an evangelist, going about inviting people to come and listen to ‘… a man who told me all I ever did’ – as she put it. That day many Samaritans came to believe Jesus because he chose to be compassionate towards a woman who didn’t deserve it by societal standards.

The double standard of sexual behavior is a moral code that permits sexual promiscuity in men but prohibits women in the same regard. This has deluded many guys into thinking that they can be sexually immoral and at the same time judge girls who are just like them. It doesn’t even make sense. It is like a rapist sentencing another rapist to prison in the court of law. I am all for purity … and yes, it is because the bible says so. Nevertheless, I think the bible isn’t partial in the standards it sets for the children of God (male or female). If we are to make that assertion at all, then it appears that the bible expects greater sexual purity from men than women. In Matthew 5:28 it says that any man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. The bible says men should stop sleeping with women in their fantasies. Can you see the difference between the sexual standard society sets for men versus that of the bible?

It is hard to go a day without having lustful thoughts, especially when the temptation to do so stalks you every step of the way. Guess what, God in his infinite wisdom wants us to deal with the problem at the roots: the thought-level. Our actions are more premeditated than spontaneous. Which means, once you keep thinking about an activity, it is more likely you will indulge in it when given the opportunity. So if you keep sleeping with women who you are not married to in your mind, the likelihood that you might do it in the physical is extremely high. The truth is, this isn’t what the bible even says. According to the verse I quoted above, once you lustfully fantasize about a woman, it is recorded as adultery. Guys, guard your heart. Watch what you think about. Kill sexual immorality at the roots and don’t cut the leaves and gloat over it just yet.

In Job 31:1 Job said he had made a covenant with his eyes not to look at a woman lustfully. The dude had to literally sign a contract with his eyes lest he lust after a woman. Job is an Old Testament character by the way. If he could do this, we who are enormously empowered by grace should be more than able to do same and even better. Let us be intentional about sexual purity. Let us not treat it like a thing that will fall onto our laps from heaven. Men need to train their hungers. I am not even talking about sexual hungers at this point. Really, you need to train yourself to eat and consume only that which is necessary for growth and development. Your being operates under one law of consumption. This law informs your decisions on everything you let into your system: be it music, movies, books or even conversations. Therefore, if you eat anyhow, everywhere and at any time because there is food, you tend to consume other things with like mentality. So you can sleep with any and every lady who appears appealing to your sight. If she resists engaging in intercourse with you, because you have little control over your fleshly desires you apply force to have your way with her – and that is rape. Train your hungers bro; tame your hungers. Though it is not stated categorically in the Word, I can boldly say that God rarely uses people who have a bad eating habit. Most people God used in the bible were ‘chronic fasters’ who ate to live and didn’t live to eat. Daniel ate greens when he was offered sumptuous royal food and meat. John the Baptist ate locust and wild honey while both of his parents worked in the temple which meant they had an ample supply of meat and food at home. Jesus fasted for 40 days before commencing his ministry. Moses also fasted for 40 days. The 84 year old prophetess Anna vowed not to stop fasting and praying till Jesus was born – and she did get to meet him. Train your hungers bro!

On the flip side, the people who couldn’t train their hungers brought calamity unto themselves and others around them. Adam and Eve were authorized to eat everything in the garden but two fruits. At the end of the day they ate one and that was the root of the sin Jesus had to come to die for. Esau sold his birthright and blessings to his little brother because he couldn’t train his hungers. The Israelites lamented that they were tired of eating manna; hence God sent them an abundant supply of quails. While the meat was still in-between their teeth as they ate, God struck them dead. Amnon raped his own sister Tamar and was murdered because of it. Bro, tame your hungers. As I said, a single law of consumption operates in your being. Therefore the way you eat is sometimes directly related to the level of control you have over your sexual urges. There are two major hungers in every human being: the hunger for food and the hunger for sex. The hunger for food is stronger than the hunger for sex. Therefore if you can master full control over your hunger for food, you are automatically transformed into an intolerant dictator over your hunger for sex. Of course it must be a spiritual activity marked by the reading of the word and prayer – not merely a hunger strike.

Solomon said it is better to have self-control than to conquer a city. Ironically, he married 700 wives coupled with a whopping 300 concubines. David, his father, slept with Bathsheba though she was married and he went on to orchestrate the killing of her husband. Samson was warned against having relations with women from Philistine. He didn’t heed to this warning and that was his undoing. I would like to state emphatically that, contrary to popular belief, the downfall of all these men wasn’t the women, but their lack of self-control. Here we have the wisest man who ever lived; the strongest man who ever lived; and one of the greatest warriors in human history and they all have one thing in common: they couldn’t control their sexual urges. By these three stories, God has illustrated to us that it doesn’t take physical strength, or wisdom, or even battle prowess to have self-control. Only the grace of God can give you complete control over your flesh. The grace is abundant in his presence; intentionally make the effort to dwell there. Pitch a tent; rent a room; chain yourself to a tree… whatever you can, please do it to stay in his presence. Do not rely on your wisdom, strength or battle prowess, if these could do you any good, Solomon, David and Samson wouldn’t have made those mistakes.

He who controls his spirit is mightier than he who conquers a city, as Solomon said. Only a superhero can conquer a city all by himself. Therefore, a man who has self-control is mightier than a superhero.

‘I have never seen the General vulnerable to any situation. He is always in control’

Fatima told me once. Well neither had I, until it was my turn on the duty roster to clean his house. I spent a week and some days doing everything he asked me to. He didn’t speak much. The sharp contrast between who he was outside his house and his personality indoors was staggering. I came to the realization that he was human after all; and that was like a groundbreaking discovery for me.

He always drove me out of the room when he received a telephone call.

‘Nobody is allowed to remain in the HQ when I am on the phone’, he would say.

On the last day of my assignment to the General’s house, he received a call by his bedside while I was sitting on the floor dusting the numerous pairs of boots under the bed. He knew I was still there but strangely, he received the call anyway. Whoever was on the other end of the line seemed far more powerful than General Abubakar. After saying ‘hello’, the General froze and stared out the window as if he was having an out-of-body experience. Then he attempted to speak a few times, but the words came out incomplete. It was clear he was being cut-off by the caller with  every attempt he made at speaking. Finally, as if given the go-ahead now, he started mentioning cities in the Northern parts of Nigeria and some figures:

‘In Kano, 20. Maiduguri, 12. Kaduna, 11….’.  He choked for a while and then went on to say ‘No, we are not wasting your money Sir, we haven’t been too successful in our latest attacks because the government forces have been a thorn in our flesh’.

Sir? The General had a boss? The whole conversation began to make sense to me at that point. Those numbers he was mentioning were the death tolls from their recent attacks. I had already heard the numbers; I had heard them from the stories the militants told us when they arrived at the camp after each invasion. So I knew. Had the death tolls been lesser, I wouldn’t be any less devastated than I was already. Apparently, ‘Sir’ wasn’t too pleased by the small number of people losing their lives to Boko Haram invasions in the past weeks. He should have been there to see the militants gloat over their kills like some village boys retelling the story of their snail-catching expedition.

I wanted to know who ‘Sir’ was. I wanted to know the person whose voice made General Abubakar stroll back and forth in his own room with less confidence than even I would. I wanted to know who it was that was throwing money behind the terrorists. I really wanted to know. Was he the same person behind those trucks that marched into the camp at midnight almost every fortnight to deliver guns and all kinds of weaponry to the militants? All those sophisticated machines and cameras stashed away in boxes inside the General’s house, who bought them?

The revelation I had after eavesdropping on that telephone conversation left me more petrified. It was like a door had been opened right before me, revealing who the real enemy was, only that he was faceless. The deception of terrorism is that we often loath the puppets parading themselves on the internet and on the news without thinking who could possibly be the puppeteer. ‘Sir’ could be taking a stroll on a beach at Hawaii. He could be walking in the midst of the horde on the sidewalks of New York City or jogging with his dog down a sandy path in Saudi Arabia. Whoever he was or wherever he lived, we should all be scared because he is faceless. If ‘Sir’ was that nasal voice on the phone that could make even General Abubakar look like he needed to use the bathroom, then we should all be really scared.  I just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that a worse-than-the-General walked freely somewhere on God’s green earth yet the General was in the news because he posted videos on YouTube proudly claiming responsibility for every Boko Haram invasion. They are fooling us all. What hope do you have in a war when you don’t know the real enemy? The guy who claims to be behind the evil acts of Boko Haram is actually a front. That is very scary!

Early the next morning after the telephone incident, the militants came into our tents to wake us up. They came wielding assault rifles as if preparing for a war or another invasion. We would have known if they were about to embark on another attack. Before they left the camp for any attack, they were always taken through a series of rituals. I couldn’t tell whether the rituals were for fortification or a preparation for death – seeing that their whole psyche was conditioned to accept death for a ‘holy’ cause. Then out comes the Babalawo from nowhere. None of us had ever laid eyes on him on any ordinary day in the camp. However, the day before every Boko Haram attack, he would appear and lead the jihadists through a series of rituals. The atmosphere was extremely charged by their chanting and dancing. Baba blew white powder over each of them while hopping and throwing himself about as if possessed. He had this eerie appearance. He was barely clothed by the animal skin he threw over his left shoulder. Anytime I saw him, I made funny mental pictures of his appearance, because I felt he was too small to be of any spiritual use. A beaded dark imp was what I often pictured in my head. His whole demeanor spelled evil. The beads on baba’s wrists and waist rattled abruptly with each step he took and that made it easy to notice his presence even while we were half-asleep. Sometimes at night we could hear him reciting incantations outside our tent.

So it was obvious the militants weren’t preparing for another invasion. I was amongst the 30 girls selected and forced to get dressed as quickly as possible. We were packed in the bed of one of the big trucks. The truck took off right after the General took his seat in the front. It was quite a nostalgic moment for me when we drove through the gates: I was reminded of how they brought us in. We were driven to a secluded part of the forest where the grass was ankle-height. The militants went about setting up cameras, hoisting their flags and posing with their guns in front of the camera. Within a few minutes we were all before the camera. The General gave a lengthy speech about selling some of us into slavery and how his aim was to establish a caliphate in the northern parts of Nigeria. Even the Boko haram militants were oblivious to the main reason why the General was making those claims in the video. But, I knew it. It was all just a ploy to remain relevant in world terrorism. He had to do something to salvage his fading image as a sadistic terrorist leader. He wanted to get into the good books of ‘Sir’ again. Pathetic!

Fatima crept into our tent that very night and slapped me on my back to wake me up. She whispered in my ears:

‘Isa, has agreed to help us escape. He will be here at 12 am. Stay awake. I’ll come for you’.

‘Ok’

I kept my eyes open for the next 5 minutes. I needed to stay awake to mentally process what had just happened. First of all, I was the one who was always talking about escaping. So if there was ever a plan to escape, I had to be the one to initiate it. The Lord knows how much I had to fight to maintain my relationship with Fatima because of the number of times I spoke about escaping. She simply didn’t want to hear it.

‘It wasn’t worth it’, she often said. I couldn’t blame her though. She had been a witness to the execution of so many girls and even militants who attempted to escape. The terror of those scenes had crippled her. To her, the mesh fence surrounding the camp was rather imaginary but the terror and confinement she felt from within were shackles she couldn’t shake off. This same Fatima was the one initiating our escape. How she got to convince Isa to be of help, I couldn’t tell. Isa was the water tanker driver; he sometimes drove into the camp with a truckload of drums filled with water too. I knew Fatima had an amorous relationship with him to some extent. She told me how he often expressed disgust at the activities of Boko Haram. Isa was driving the water tanker purely for the money and not out of principle. He was vehemently opposed to terrorism – but he needed the money. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that he was the one assisting us in our escape. What would make a man want to put his life on the line for two captives? We didn’t deserve any of this. I feared for his life because even if we were successful with our escape, he would be going back to the camp every other week to deliver drums of water. They might trace our escape to him and he would be executed. He of all people should have known this. And if the reality of that didn’t deter him, then nothing else would.

I must have dozed off. Fatima with her baby strapped to her back came calling again. I didn’t pick anything. We stepped out of the tent and there they were crowded around the truck. They were offloading the drums. I pulled at Fatima’s dress and told her ‘let’s go back inside, they will see us’. Apparently, she had a plan. We stood frozen in front of our tent, all that while Fatima looked away from the militants standing around the truck and focused her attention on the two conversing in front of the empty drums arranged a few feet away from the truck. I wanted to go back in. We would have been severely punished for staying up that late not to talk of standing outside the tent. When Fatima whispered ‘let’s go’ I knew it was time to run because of the urgency in her voice. The two militants had walked away so we ran towards the empty drums. The rest of them were standing at the opened end at the back of the truck. Our only option was to climb up from the side. Fatima let me go first. She unstrapped her baby from her back, handed her to me and then she joined us a while after. The two of us squatted in the midst of the empty drums while the militants packed more into the bed of the truck.

The engine of the truck started. The drums were shaking and knocking against each other. There was nothing to hold onto. Nevertheless, we remained still till the truck left the camp. Then Fatima stood up and span the lid of one of the drums open. In a single leap I entered the drum, Fatima handed her sleeping baby to me first and then she climbed into the drum slowly.  

‘Today is the happiest day of my life’

‘Ada, Me too oo’, Fatima responded.

She left the lid halfway open to let in some air. I thought of Mariama and the other girls and how I would miss them. But nothing could be compared to the sweet taste of freedom. We were crammed up in a drum, but we knew we were freer than we had ever been in the last few months.

‘It is their guilty conscience that keeps them away from Allah’s presence’

No, I do not agree with that! The cloths they loosely covered themselves with at night probably did a better job of pinning them to their beds and away from their maker’s presence than the guilt of their evil deeds – that is if there was even a hint of guilt in their hearts.

The heinousness of their actions was like a pungent smell attempting to choke you to death. So I feared the dawn and all the anticipation of daylight terror that it brought.  I was often either snapping out of a scary nightmare or in a limbo between sleep and consciousness, fighting gory images from the scenes I had seen the previous day and the stories I had heard told. Somewhere in between the fear of the known and the anticipation of unknown evil, I had made my bed. And that was how the dawn of every morning at Sambisa was like for me.

I remember vividly, the morning after our first night there, we were introduced to the ‘Boko Haram wives’. There were so many of them! Most of whom either had babies strapped to their backs or they carried them on one hip while slightly bending in the opposite direction. That was when I first saw her … Fatima. Fatima wore a long flowing hijab that almost touched her waist. The circle her hijab made on her face made her appear as one peeping at the whole world through a hole. Her facial skin resembled a stretched elastic material, the way it allowed pointy bones to protrude at the corners of her eyes and cheeks. Unlike the others, her countenance appeared heavy with concern and affection. Maybe we merely reminded her of herself. But you could almost feel the kindness radiating from her stare.

So when it was time for them to teach us how to wear the hijab, I walked straight to her. She told me her name was Fatima and I told her mine. We made a connection right there and then. Fatima didn’t bother teaching me how to put on the hijab … she just did it for me.

‘Stiffen your neck Ada, or else the hijab will slip off your head’. She said.

I held still and made sure my entire body was stiff. She nudged at my shoulders and upon noticing how stiff I was, she giggled. By that, what should have been a madam-servant relationship melted into a friendship. Formality dissolved into cordiality. I felt I could ask her anything. When she pressed her hand on top of my head to hold the cloth in position, I felt the weight of her palm. Not like a burdensome weight but as an act depicting ownership. I was hers from then on. The other girls were being knocked and smacked in the face for not following the exact instructions given them. But Fatima gently wrapped the cloth around my head and pinned it beneath my chin.

‘I want mine to be as long as yours’ I told her. She giggled again and said ‘Ok’.

Her friendship came in as a timely relief. Mariama and I had grown distant after we arrived at Sambisa. I often saw her emerging from one of the wooden structures close to the fence at the far end of the camp. And anytime she saw me looking at her, she’d quickly look away and feign ‘busybody’. Mariama wouldn’t maintain eye contact with me for more than 5 seconds. She sometimes worked with the rest of us but for some reason she was often excused from fetching water from the tank to the quarters of the General and his men. I couldn’t believe the rumors, but with the benefit of hindsight I can boldly say she was married off to one of the high-ranked militants in Boko Haram. According to Fatima, Boko Haram wives are forced to reduce contact with the other girls. The rest of us were just human bombs waiting to detonate at some market place or school at the command of General Abubakar. Girls like Mariama were married off to high-ranked militants. They were the hens destined to lay and brood over eggs that would hatch to reveal the much anticipated foul fowls: a new generation of Boko Haram terrorists. The rest were also sold to some human traffickers and rich herdsmen from neighboring countries. Fatima had been with the militants for 18 months and knew the ins and outs of the camp, so I believed her.

‘I am a widow’

She told me once. Her husband died in kano. He was one of the militants. Fatima still spoke of him with such fondness that you would imagine they had a fairy-tale kind of marriage. They didn’t. She chuckled sarcastically when she said:

‘Alidu was only there to ward off the other militants who attempted to rape and physically abuse me so he alone could do that to me’

Fatima was confident in her guts. She believed Alidu was scared that night before he went to Kano. General Abubakar summoned all the jihadists the night before they left the camp. When Alidu came back to their wooden shed, he couldn’t look at her or their son. His last words to Fatima were, ‘… take care of your son’. There was a surge of mixed feelings that ran through my heart when she spoke about how the trucks came back to the camp the following day with fewer men than they left with. At the gathering where the militants were telling their stories and various experiences at Kano, she looked everywhere for him but couldn’t find him. I imagined the scene was just like the day we came: too chaotic for anybody to care to tell her the whereabouts of Alidu. The surviving militants took turns in mentioning names of those who had passed on to paradise. That was when Fatima heard Alidu’s name mentioned. The mixed feelings that must have hit her: news of the death of her husband and abuser. From that moment on, her life changed for the worse.

She was raped almost every night since then by different men.

‘Sometimes two. Sometimes three. Sometimes I didn’t know how many, because I passed out in the middle of all the torture only to wake up in a tent full of stinking snoring men’.

When she said this I could feel the tears sting at my eyes. Then she told me she sometimes even woke up in a different tent from the one she remembered being taken to. At this point I lost the fight to my tears; warm tears came streaming down my cheeks. I was scared. In my fear I yearned to comfort her, but words failed me.  What do you tell such a person? That it was going to be alright? In hell? I couldn’t lie to her even if I tried. I wish I could uplift her spirit but mine was quickly sinking into an abyss of despair and in need of urgent rescue too.

‘You have been through hell’. I finally said.

‘Yes I have.’ She heaved a long sigh.

‘It may be your turn soon. When they come for you remember to keep your legs wide apart, eh?’ She pulled at her left earlobe with her left hand while saying this. ‘And close your eyes till they are done’.

That was it? That was the drill? How was that supposed to make it any bearable? All the time I spent with Fatima revealed one thing: though she never mentioned it, she had no desire to escape. She never called Sambisa home, but she pretty much was at home there. And I felt she was walking me down that road too. I didn’t like it.

As our custom was, before we went to sleep, one of us would share her experience with the rest. Often sad stories. Often stories of rape and abuse. That was one way we bonded as fellow Boko haram slaves. One night Hawa narrated her ordeal at the hands of one of the militants to us; it was the saddest story I had heard told. Whispering to nobody in particular, she narrated her story knowing that she already had our ears without asking. Hawa’s made us all scared. Fear hanged in the room. The fear was so tangible, you could touch it. She recalled being hit from behind with the butt of a gun by one of General’s men. The heavy knock rendered her comatose for hours. The very moment her eyes were opened, she felt a sharp pain at the back of her head and the militant’s heavy arm resting on her bare back. Hawa turned around and saw the heaving hairy chest of the beast next to her. She panicked, but mastered the courage to get up. Finally she covered her nakedness with a cloth, stepped out and took slow painful steps to our tent in the dark.

Hawa had always attracted so much attention from the militants because she had a fine body. For obvious reasons, she was always sent for to run some errand or clean their wooden sheds. She couldn’t find the words to describe the torture but we perfectly understood her cries and cried with her. When she said her head still hurt, three girls drew closer to comfort her.  With a soaked rug, one of them massaged her head where it hurt. As if rehearsed, she dabbed at the back of Hawa’s head after each sentence she whispered. The incident inspired more than sympathy in us  – we were all petrified! I thought it was a case of paranoia at first when she said she suspected the Boko Haram wives had a hand in it.  But she went on to tell us how she had always been harassed by them.

‘You want to come and steal our husbands abi? We shall see…’

One of them had said this to Hawa a day before her bitter experience.

And as she walked through the dark after the rape, a bunch of them saw her and immediately started scoffing at her.

For this reason and many more, I was always grateful for Fatima. Her love and affection kept me sane. Sometimes I felt she went through all the pain for my sake, that I wouldn’t have to taste much of it. She taught me when to feign period cramps to avoid being whisked away in the night. Her predictions were so accurate, it was as if she knew the times the libido of the militants peaked. Yet, she still assured me that a time was coming when that trick wouldn’t work anymore. A harsh reality I had to face. But who am I to complain? In the middle of a God-forsaken forest, I found a sister and for that I was very grateful to God.

Mariama tapped my shoulder softly from behind and asked in a whisper:

‘Are you afraid?’

Am I afraid? Is there anyone on earth that wouldn’t be? She looked deep into my eyes like one looking for a trickle of water in a dried up well. Perhaps it was hope she was looking for. Or strength. Whether my honesty would comfort her or worsen her fears, I wasn’t sure, but I had to be honest.

‘I am afraid!’

I whispered back at her. As if new revelation of our predicament had just dawned on her, Mariama let out a loud cry. Two girls who sat close to us threw their arms around her in an attempt to comfort her. It was just a few hours ago that we had a conversation about how Oshevire deserved to die in Isidore Okpewho’s Last Duty.

‘He deserved every single bullet that hit him,’

Mariama had said. I agreed. We had planned to dispute Mr. Martins’ interpretation of that scene in the novel during our next Literature class. It wasn’t logical to say Oshevire was a victim when at the request of the rebels, he could have just stopped, and saved his life. No, he wasn’t a victim of circumstance. But were we?

Our beds were next to each other, so we usually had such conversations before either of us fell asleep. In hush tones, we would talk about Mr. Martins; his passion for literature; our passion for his course (maybe because we liked him so much); and how beautiful it would be to marry a man like him: handsome, attentive to detail and a lover of African novels. Mariama loved him more. I only admired his fluency and special ability to recall page numbers and quotes from the various plays and novels we treated in class. It was just lovely. Plus, I always felt something flutter in my tummy anytime he mentioned my name: ‘Ada Nnaji’.

We hadn’t been asleep for long. I jerked up out of my sleep to screams and the glow of flames through the windows. There was chaos outside and I could sense it. Mariama wasn’t in her bed. As I lifted up the mosquito net to step out, she came running. She headed straight to the corner of the room, unzipped her suitcase and started throwing her clothes over her head without a care of where they landed.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Ada, they are taking all of us away’.

‘Who?’

Just then there was a heavy knock that broke our door down. A soldier walked in pointing his big gun at all of us and saying in a loud voice.

‘Out! All of you! Out!!’

We all ran out of the dormitory to the lawns outside. Then I understood better what was going on. Jubilee House was burning. Large flickering flames gutted the building. The soldier commanded us to kneel down. Before we could comply, he was already pushing a few girls around him to the ground. There were many others kneeling down before we got there. Many of whom were still dressed in their pajamas.

They were everywhere; I counted about 30 soldiers. Chasing after some of the girls and pouring fuel into the burning flames. One of them walked into our midst and spoke some words in a language that sounded like Arabic. A few girls got up to their feet and took slow feeble steps away from us.

‘These are the Boko Haram militants,’ I thought.

I knew it because I had heard stories of how they would separate Muslims from Christians before meting out mean treatments to the Christians. Before long the rest of us were being packed into the Military trucks they brought. I saw one militant emerge from the bushes behind the drying lines; he was this gigantic being. He had caught a girl in the bush. She made several attempts to yank her wrist from the grip of his big hands to no avail. Then, in a single swoop, he carried her and rested her belly on his head. She was shouting and wailing, kicking into the air but he just wouldn’t stop walking.  He walked straight to the side of a truck and tossed her into the bed like an empty box. The trucks began to move. The wails got louder. In a single surge, ours set off so quickly and roughly. Soon we were out of the gates and I could see the school’s signboard receding.

‘I will miss Government Secondary School.’ I let the thought linger for a minute in my head. When we were approaching the Catholic Church, some girls in the truck behind ours began screaming ‘Father!!! Father!!!! Father!!!’. A few in the other trucks joined in. I was too weak to even murmur. Their cries and calls faded away with the cold wind of the night.

‘Mariama, what were you looking for in your suitcase before the militant broke into our room?’ I whispered over my shoulders.

‘My tracksuits. The green one. I can’t run in my nightie.’

Mariama loves to dress for every occasion. I had never seen her inappropriately dressed to any school gathering. Not that she feared the punishment for doing otherwise; it is just who she is. But there was no time to dress for the occasion. None of us had the opportunity to change clothes before we were whisked away that night. It was a cold bumpy ride and our bodies weren’t fully clad by the attire we had on. My legs were warm enough because we had been crammed together in the bed of the truck. Nevertheless, I spent most of the time rubbing my shoulders and my arms.

It was almost sunrise. I could see the pale blue sky through the canopy of leaves above us. We were driving through a thicket. In our midst were two militants who paid no attention to us at all. Suddenly they appeared more at ease: laughing and bickering. I could sense it. We were getting close to our destination. As I pulled my head out to get a view of where we were approaching, I was greeted by my reflection in the side mirror. My hair looked like a piece of foam that had been pecked at by a cock. I didn’t care. All I wanted to know was where we were going. I could see the wire mesh gates; the fence was of wire mesh too. I saw two men dressed in military attire running towards the gate to open it. As our truck screeched to a halt like the others before it, all the militants except the drivers got down and continued on foot through the gates into what looked like a military camp base from my view.

‘It is a community here,’ I thought. There were small wooden structures scattered everywhere – as many as the army green tents that dotted the vast land. Our arrival seemed anticipated. As we drove through the camp, countless militants began emerging from their tents and wooden abodes to catch a glimpse of us. It felt like we were captives of a war arriving in the enemy’s camp. Soon a crowd formed and followed the trucks amidst shouting and clapping. Some were shaking hands and others pumped their fists in the air – as if to celebrate their victory. Victory over whom? It was never a war! We would have lost anyway… but it was never a war!

As the trucks stopped at what looked like the parade grounds of the camp, we were asked to get down, go on our knees and keep our hands behind our heads. By this time the throng had circled us. Then out came their leader. It was obviously him because of the fear-inspiring weight his presence exerted on everybody. The leader approached the center of the circle in the company of two escorts. He took slow steps while walking around us. He said nothing. He only inspected our body parts. I lifted my head to see his face. He had a turban wrapped around his head and the darkest shade of beard spread over the area around his ears to his chin. He was angry. He looked angry. Fear and tension were heavy in the atmosphere. The look on the faces of the militants spelled out fear too. One of them ran to him with a little transistor radio. The leader increased the volume and pointed at the radio set. A smirk cut through his lips then he said ‘Bee Bee Cee.’ The crowd of militants cheered loudly. Their cheers came to a halt when he raised his left hand.

‘… we are not quite sure yet, but it seems the Boko Haram terrorists abducted over 200 girls last night at…’. That was the penetrating voice of the BBC’s Nigerian correspondent from the radio set. The leader raised his right fist in the air and shouted:

‘We are worldwide!!!’

This received a thunderous roar from the militants. Some fired a few rounds of shots into the air while others rattled some words in Arabic. It was a really chaotic scene. We couldn’t be any more petrified, however, I was more scared then than ever before.

Once again, he motioned and the noise ceased. He turned to face us now.

‘I am General Abubakar. You are welcome to Sambeeza.’

‘Sambeeza… Sambeeza…’ The word rang in my head a few more times before I figured out he actually meant ‘Sambisa’.

‘This is hell,’ he continued, ‘it is hell for you. From this day, you are going to become Muslims. We will teach you the ways of the Holy Prophet (Peace be Upon Him) and the mothers of the believers. Jesus Christ can’t save you here. Mary is not full of grace here. Goodluck is a foolish boy for trying to fight us. Now you have to suffer.’

He nodded his head at the two militants he came with. They rushed out of sight and appeared dragging a prisoner to the center of the gathering. They pushed him to the ground. The prisoner landed on his bare chest because his hands were tied behind him. The two militants picked him up to his knees and handed a pistol to General Abubakar.

‘Do as you are told,’ he went on. ‘Don’t attempt to run away.’ While saying this he cocked his gun and pointed it at the prisoner’s head.

‘This is what happens to those who try to escape.’

Then he shot … it was a deafening sound. Birds on the trees fluttered away at the sound. The body of the prisoner dropped sideways. The blood gushing out of his head slowly crept underneath the carpet of leaves on the ground towards where we knelt.

‘Take them away,’ said General Abubakar.

‘Hail Mary is not full of grace here…. Sambeeza.’ These words echoed in my head throughout the rest of the day. We had been taken to different tents after the welcome parade. I didn’t even get to see where Mariama was taken to. It was like a scuffle the way they separated us and pushed us into our tents. Ours was a pyramid-shape tent. We were inside but the earth outside was still directly beneath us… no floor, just a couple of flat mattresses and mats scattered on the ground.  The scent of freshly cut grass filled the tent. One girl, a few mats away was still sobbing. The reality dawned on me at that moment: I was going to spend eternity here at the Sambisa forest.

‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…’

I probably didn’t finish reciting Psalm 23 before sleep snatched me away.