Jesus, the ancestors, or both?

After she won re-election, she went to her cultural shrine to ‘pay homage’ to the ancestors. She felt obliged to thank them for guiding her through the hotly contested race for Speaker of Parliament in a country that neighbours our own; it was captured on a video clip that made the rounds and provoked all kinds of reactions that, on the balance of opinion, were downright hostile. It was worth a thought. The Anglican Church felt cheated by the Speaker’s belonging to it and to a ‘rival’ faith at once. The Archbishop voiced strong condemnation. The Speaker’s actions, the bishop intoned, have created “confusion” and are likely to lead “others to stumble. Moreover, the Speaker had betrayed and confused many Christians who had “rejoiced when the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ opened doors for her to serve […] again.” He urged all bishops and clergy to “use this opportunity to proclaim the sufficiency of Christ” to their congregations. Similar condemnations were in the offing. Most were particularly disturbed by the Speaker’s apparent hedging between the church and the ancestral shrine, their spirits and the blood of Jesus Christ. One of her own, a parliamentarian, said she had “bound parliament to the devil” with her “demonic” actions for which she need to “repent.” But what’s really at stake? Unfortunately, mob action against the Speaker is unhelpful in trying to grasp what’s really at stake. It may function as a psychological boost to one’s ego but that is about all. What’s at stake is an identity crisis that afflicts us all. It is a constant search for a value system that is representative of who we are. Its man’s quest for meaning that is made worse by a society that is in conflict with itself. In a book by the same name, Viktor Frank argues that ‘man’s deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose.’ For us, this desire is undermined by our identity crisis, the reason we enter into this conflict within. The Speaker’s actions are a manifestation of what W.E.B Dubois, in the American context, called the “double consciousness” or existing in two worlds at the same time. It is the reason, for instance, we are unsure whether to submit our primary allegiance to tribe or country. Or, whether our loyalty is to the shrine or to the church, to the ancestral spirits or to the holly spirit. The result is a warped citizenship and a warped spirituality, respectively. More problematic, however, the identity crisis produces, in turn, a crisis of confidence. This afflicts the ordinary person and those in leadership alike, due to a loss of belief in the self, a crisis of confidence. Outcomes are ascribed, not to our agency, but to metaphysics (beyond the physical realm), in this case the spirits of the ancestors. And so, we have a generalised “confusion.” As noted above, at the individual level this “confusion” is manifest in a crisis of confidence. At the societal level, however, it becomes a generational crisis, the inability to craft a dignified value-system that invokes a sense of respect and pride from its beholders. At both levels, the consequence is the penchant to pursue the trivial, a rat race to the bottom: the tribe, the bribe, intrigue, and the like. A warped value system that trivializes and bastardises man’s search for meaning. A lifetime of trivial pursuits necessarily produces a life of dissatisfaction and frustration. Generational crisis When human beings get frustrated, we tend to transfer that anxiety to someone else who must carry that burden for us, something that psychologists call projecting. This is what we have done with our failure to construct a meaningful (less trivial) value-system to proudly pass to the younger generation. This is why we say the youth are “confused.” It is also why we get all worked up when the youth have a dance at the clubs, some (protected) sex, or wear a mini skirt. We quickly climb the proverbial high horse onto the moral high ground from where we hurl self-righteous admonitions that the youth have condemned our culture to the dogs – ngo urubyiruko rwatakaje “umuco.” In fact, all we are doing is projecting our own ineptitude. Which values, exactly, are they supposed to emulate? Which about yourself are you so proud of that you wish you could pass into someone else? It is because they don’t listen, right? Wrong. The silence is contempt for the hypocrisy of misplaced self-righteousness. There is no moral high ground on which to stand and preach. That falling from the mango tree is not a guava. The frustration, therefore, is borne of the realisation that there is nothing to pass onto the young. It must be frustrating, if not humiliating. It is a psychic emptiness. A deep void of an empty soul. An anxiety of self and society. It is a warped value-system that suggests that we are neither here nor there; a harsh reminder that we exist in a psychological no man’s land, uncertain and indecisive. It is a terrain, therefore, that favours the development of instincts for hedging. In other words, “confusion” about this or that. Whether it is about Jesus or the ancestors is but a slice of the bigger pie code-named confusion. To attack the Speaker for hedging is to project our own inner conflict.

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Jesus, the ancestors, or both?