“Conning In the Name of God”

Not that I am unreligious, not that I fight “abakozi b’Imana” (God’s Workers), the problem is that, the Bible clearly states in Matthew 24:11 “And many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many.” Can somebody say Amen! God forbid, these should not be the last days; we still need to live much longer. Maybe that is why I am trying to fight tooth and nail to make sure that, the scriptures are not pre-empted to be fulfilled now but at much later decades or centuries to come. If the former happened sooner than later, our children are likely to perish before they begot their own! You may have begun developing cold feet as to the Villager turned “Pastor”, forget it, I am not one yet, Inshallah, I could be one! By the way, there are some very good Pastors and lots of “fake pastors” out there! First and foremost, I get perturbed by the numerous mushrooming “matorero” places of worship, you wake up to hear that, so and so have “seen the light” and then the next thing is that, they are Pastors or apostles and that, they are heading Church X or Y or Z. I would not have minded the least, if these people played their game or can I say, carried out their business according to strict and ethical lines! As a matter of fact, I got so many friends that are Saved and others that are “Saved”, the difference between the former and the latter, is that, the former are real whereas the latter are “people of the world”! Ok, let us expound on it further, the other day, it was on a weekend and I had visited my cousin sister who happens to work seven days a week; she sometimes works by day, on other occasions she works evening or even nights. On this fateful Sunday, she was to work on a Sunday afternoon. We met as she was leaving church for home and hence, I gave her a lift to her home. She invited me in for a Soda and I obliged. From nowhere, came a woman who claimed that, she was a “worker of God” (umukozi w’Imana) and that, she had been sent to come and preach to the two people she will find getting out of a car and entering a house! Like the story when Jesus sent his disciples to prepare for the last supper! My cousin being such a religious lady accepted to take the stranger inside her home for prayers. As soon as we got into the sitting room, the “worker of God” began unleashing her powers, she began by praying, on listening to her words, she was more than rapping and the words were flowing at about 1Mbps on the internet scale; she was even foaming at the edge of her mouth, she must have been possessed by some spirit, evil or holy, I could not tell! The straw that broke the donkey’s back was when she pronounced that, God had shown her that we had many sins and that, we should confess in-front of her so that our sins could be forgiven! This lady must have been a joker, how the hell did she expect me to confess before her! She was joking; maybe she did not know that, that was playing with Mfashumwana aka Villager! These days, I am even careful when going for the sacrament of penitence, not every Tom, Dick and Harry can hear my confessions. There is the story of the guy who went before the Padre for penitence, while in the presence of the padre, he uttered the sin he wanted the padre to forgive him. Then without warning, the padre asks him, “my child, you haven’t mentioned my oranges that you steal daily?” The guy tells the good padre that he is not hearing what the padre is saying. And so, they agree to switch places so that the padre can prove the guy wrong. The Padre begins confessing and the guy asks him, “Son, you have not confessed to “eating” forbidden fruits from my garden?” Guess what? The padre answers back, yes son, you are right, when one is here, he cannot hear anything! (To be continued) mfashumwana@fastmail.fm