THIS CHRISTIAN RACE
Greetings my kith and kin, friends and fans. For a whole quarter I will be running thirteen episodes of this weekly serialised memoir which I titled ‘This Christian Race'. Feel free to read, share, like and comment as the interesting novella reads on. Thank you and I love you.
Episode One – Born Again, Again and Again
When asked my salvation date, I easily reel out 22 April, 1994. I'm sure many will clap for me and quickly add, “Eh, it’s people like you that have genuine encounter.” Thank you Sir. I can’t agree less. We are expected to know our salvation date like our birthday if something tangible and remarkable really happened to us that day. But my own story is not that straightforward.
That date is one of my born-again dates! I adopted this because it was the one that lingered most: maybe because I wrote it with chalk on a corner of our rented “face-me-I-smack-you” apartment then. If I can remember vividly, that date had to do with Nigeria doing something in solidary with South Africa's Mandela that involved us students going to Asero stadium then. Meditating on the theme of freedom became the spark that got me “re-born again.”
No, I’m not joking. They say a cat has nine lives. My salvation, covering the period of my secondary school days, has more than nine dates.
I used to be a nice boy that grew up to follow my mother who had us, five children, in her custody and care having been separated from our four-and-a-half-wifed father after many rivalry world wars, to a white garment church. I mean I was nice. I had only one girlfriend, Bernice. She used to be Basirat but a convert from a non-white garment Christian denomination christened her such on assuming the duty of taking us the young ones Sunday school. Bernice was a tall, fair-complexioned, beautiful girl with inviting smile always playing around the corners of her mouth as if she had some food bit there. I think a pair of dimples completed the profile of her beautiful face.
My girlfriend being one was not the main thing that gave me the impression that I was nice. It was my keeping sex out of the whole affair. But I was not totally innocent: I craved and sometimes created occasions that our walking together would lead us to some dark corner or another so we could quickly play a fast one about necking and petting before any hapless passer-by interrupted.
With respect to sex, I used to tell her: “You know I’m a child bred well in the norms and nuances of the elders, I will not want us to taste the forbidden fruit until we are married.” And she would smile her concession. Though I usually had a feeling that if I had demanded illicit sex she would have oblige me.
Between you and me, my presented reason before her for the abstinence was not the whole truth. The other part was partially fear – I’ve never done it before, what if pregnancy results, God's anger factor – and partially an unconfirmed concern that my manhood size then might be a disappointment. Of course, I kept that to myself.
In the midst of that relationship, I got born again. But the cord was too strong for me to break. When the passion got the better of me and I could not resist this beautiful face, our necking and petting episode involuntary played out. My grief became great thereafter. It became great. Really great. Its conclusion: the end of a born-again period. Days or weeks after, when another altar call opportunity came, that was the forum for me to enter another born-again phase. Ignorance or deception, I wouldn’t know: I felt rededication would not be potent enough.
I actually tried some means to separate from this beautiful temptation. I created distance. But I can’t deceive you. Rather than her matter waning in our away period, it would actually ferment. And when we eventually met, this lust would brew to overflowing. An end to another born-again era was in sight.
My understanding opened and I discovered I am bereft of God's word and uplifting fellowship with brethren. I discussed with Mom to let me be attending a Bible-believing church. Of course I got the red light hey presto. She said: “You can’t leave ..., it's a glorious church”. It was a glorious church indeed. Service starts on Sunday by ten ‘o’ clock. Many of us will turn in by eleven, that is, we the early comers. That was because my mother was among the faithful ones: we put our white garment on from home, meaning our bare feet were spoiling for punishment from the heating macadamised road covering the greater part of our twenty-minute walk from home to the base of the church mountain. Some others would wait till they had scaled the one-hundred-and-twenty-three-stepped stairs' hurdle of the church mountain before they got to remove their shoes and transformed from mufti to the “holy garment.”
Yes. We resumed service ten ‘o’ clock and the worship could extend to two or three in the afternoon. A lot of items found their ways into the programme but top on the list was singing and dancing. Even outside the denomination we were known for that. We are singers and dancers. When praises are high and mood follows in the trail, spontaneous visitations from the realm of the spirit become the order of the day. Prophetesses and prophets are sighted here and there jumping up, raising one leg, rolling on the floor, gyrating backwards and displaying many other manifestations of the spontaneous spirit possession. Our service did even accommodate chairmanship competition. Well, that was a creative way of raising money for the church. A male is invited forward and seated on one side as the “chairman” and a female is equally invited forward and seated on the other side as the “chairwoman”. Ladies and gentleman, it is now time for flexing of financial muscles between the menfolk and the womenfolk of the church.
Not that we do not have a time for sermon. But the content and context of such sermons have not been able to convict or convince me in my spiritual pilgrimage. But Mom could not see that. I didn’t expect her to. She was an unrepentant faithful that always saw the best in the church; a prophetess of repute.
Do we really hold Bible study? Honestly, my memory is a pitch blackness on that. So, I continued wobbling and fumbling in my Christian race. The only place of real spiritual contact for me being once-in-a-week school fellowship; not the general all-comers fellowship during the school hour. This fellowship was after the school hours and few of us with thirsty souls were being ministered to weekly by a mature Christian brother that looked a deeper lifer. That was the place of altar call opportunity I earlier referred to.
My instability continued through my secondary school days.
Another aspect of struggles in those days that cumulatively severed my born-again claim off from time to time was my sharp mouth...
See you next week for episode two – Me and My Big Mouth.
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