THINKING ABOUT AdventisM and BROTHERHOOD
21 November 2013
INTRODUCTION
I felt as though part of me was
being torn away as I read of the death of Chinua Achebe this past March. This eminent
Nigerian writer and scholar immortalised his name when he unveiled his widely
read novel, “Things fall apart,” in 1958. I presume that fellow literary
scholars, Wole Soyinka and J.P. Clark, were also in fraternal pain when they
dropped a short but memorable line, “We have lost a brother,” in an internet
blog as they responded to the news of Achebe’s demise.
Achebe’s “Things fall apart”
and Soyinka’s “The Lion and the Jewel” were part of prescribed reading for my
English class in the University of the Transkei (now Walter Sisulu University) in
1985. Kwame Ayivor, my Ghanaian English lecturer, gave me a generous mark for a
paper I wrote on Soyinka’s drama, which, in essence, captures the same social
dynamics that mark a traditional African community in transition and
discordance because of its affectation by a foreign culture.
The cultural transition that
has been the focus of many African writers is graphically illustrated in a
short incident Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1965, 1983:81), tells in his
celebrated novel, “The River Between.” In a meeting of a school governing body,
young man, Waiyiki, makes a proposal the school should be furnished with lavatories.
But an elderly man, Kaboyi, opposes the proposal, “saying that the bush was as
good a place.” Nevertheless, the young man’s proposal was adopted. A matter as
mundane and simple as this one illustrates what happens when the future
confronts a revered past. Kaboyi is detained in the “technology” of yesteryear
while a new society is emerging around him.
What initially impresses me
about the line, “We have lost a brother,” is the depth in the simplicity and
directedness of the Soyinka-Clark statement. The statement is a declaration that
juxtaposes the loss Africa has suffered from Achebe’s death with the
corresponding value his life has added to African literary scholarship, in
particular, and global human thought, in general. In his death, Achebe has
taken a portion of the continent and of the world to his grave. He belongs to the
same league of illustrious scholars and creative thinkers such the eminent Ali
Mazrui, Cheik Anta Diop, Leopold Senghor, Ngugi and our own Es’kia Mphahlele
and Njabulo Ndebele, to name a few.
Secondly, the statement also
points to the broad fraternal unity that African writers/scholars have
established among themselves on matters that affect the identity, status and
welfare of African people during colonial and post-colonial histories including
the history of Trans-Atlantic slavery. This
is one of the major lessons I have learnt from my study of African continental
and Diasporan literature – colonial and post-colonial. There are common threads
of ideological and thematic concerns that these men and women spend their minds
reflecting upon. Sadly, because of their incisive and expeditionary social
critique, political despots often treat these writers as enemies of peace and
order. They associate African patriotism with silent complicity in political
malice and corruption. On the contrary, independent thinkers and responsible
scholarship are not made of such flaky conceptual material.
Adventist Brotherhood
In recent days, I have been
thinking of the statement, “We have lost a brother” in the context of the
absence of broad socio-ideological consensus and low focus on matters of
development in the Adventist community in South Africa. What I note here has
nothing to do with the current tensions that are bothering the Trans-Orange
Conference. I am discussing a phenomenon that has been with us as a church for
decades in South Africa.
I have been telling some
Adventist congregations in recent months that my generation has failed the
youth of the church because of its failure/fear/reluctance/refusal to utilise
its energy on issues of sustainable development. Thus, few of us can seldom
declare, with clear and sincere consciences, when one of us dies, “We have lost
a brother.” You see, “brother” is more
and deeper than “fellow believer”, “member” or “friend.” “Brother” presupposes
a common genetic origin (biological, anthropological or religious) and enriched
life-contexted progressive social affinity and solidarity around valid causes.
“Brother”
stands for deep-cutting connectedness at a fundamental level of existence and
relationships; a social context in which truth (not imaginary self-contradictory
so-called “truths”) can be told without fear of grievance or
victimization. “Brother” stands for
collective action towards common goals with our God-given individual
peculiarities fairly respected and protected.
“Brother” also means that I must be prepared to see the validity in the ideas
that another expresses without resorting to prejudicial and insulting reactions
or language. “Brother” means that I should be willing to say that I am wrong
when I am wrong; that you are right when you are right; and that it is possible
for us to walk and work together despite our perceptual variances, since what
brings us together is greater and nobler than what separates and alienates us.
I had a “brother” in my father,
Pastor Absalom Soqothile Nkosi (1908-1990). On the first Monday of November
1990, when I learnt of his death, I recalled one fact about him that made me
weep with a mixture of comfort and courage in my soul. He never lied to me.
I shall always remember him for this. He never lied to me. I know many people
who knew him who can testify to the truthfulness of what I have just said.
Questions: When shall we stop
telling Adventist children/youth that public education is not safe for them
when, on the other hand, we build no Christian schools where they can be safe? Is
it fundamentally ethical for us to keep expecting young people to remain true
to the principles of Adventism when we continuously expose them to
institutional environments that house discourses that challenge the integrity
of the Christian faith?
For how long shall we tell our
children that it is God’s will for them to marry Adventists when they see
increasing family breakups in the church? For how long we will we spend time
talking “health and temperance” in the church when we live neither healthily nor
temperately? I think it was British
philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who once said that we have to make the world honest
before we can tell our children that “honesty is the best policy.”
More Questions: Why do we not
have forums/structures that advocate and model Christian brother/sisterhood and
solidarity in the church? What makes us fail to conduct successful long-range business
ventures with one another? What makes males fail to conduct Adventist Men’s
conventions when women go to AWM conventions in large numbers? Why is there
more positive interpersonal co-operation among women than among males in the
church? What happened to the ethic and spirit of “Brother”? If “Brother” is
simply a religious label for a male believer, then we need to find another term
for something weightier and more biblically and morally grounded than the term
“Brother.”
“Brother” is the stuff out of
which the famous four Hebrew young men have become known in the history of the
Christian faith. “Brother” is the essence of the classical integrity of a
Joseph confronted by exquisite feminine beauty, vocal and persuasive royal
power and privilege, and the joy of momentary pleasure underwritten by total
privacy and utmost confidentiality.
“Brother” is the moral
responsibility and exceptional patriotism that marks an Esther as her people
face the threat of genocide in the land of captivity. The ethic of “Brother”
embraces martyrdom without flinching in the face of ungodliness and possible
death. In the ultimate, “Brother” throws the consequences of right doing to the
wind as necessity calls for heroism.
“Brother” is not synonymous
with working and losing sleep on wasteful and divisive causes. The principle of
“Brother” keeps an eye on tomorrow and the future beyond tomorrow. “Brother” is
undergirded by the one’s willingness to sacrifice present pleasures for future
benefit, and let principle rule over passion.
In September, I asked an
audience of university students and other senior young people who attended a
Gospel Commission Conference in Cape Town if they were ready to be followed by
nonbelievers if this were to be the only method of evangelism the Bible and the
church would prescribe. I asked them, “Are you ready to be followed?” Where
would nonbelievers land if they followed us? Would they say that they miss a
“brother”/”sister” when we are not around them? What is your reputational quotient in
the eyes of fellow Adventists and your friends in the non-church world? Are you
worth following? What performance indicators mark your Christian life right
now? Mark yourself on a scale of One to Ten and see if you are a genuine
“Brother” or “Sister.”
MEDIOCRE ADVENTISM
There is a notion that I have
harboured in my mind for some years; that much of the Adventism that surrounds
us in this country and which we practise routinely severally and corporeally is
mediocre. Challenge me on this one if you will. I regard the absence of a known
master plan or longitudinal strategic design as the first failure of any
organisation or religious movement. In the absence of a formal design for action,
the church in this land, especially in the black ethnosector, can only stagger
into the future by means of adhocratic thinking and behaviour. When this
happens, as it currently does, cyclonic activity that claims to be forward
motion feeds on routine and monotonous repetition of the old when the new
stares us in the face for doing. This is why in the present annals of Adventist
thought and mission we are adding nothing significant. This is not what it
means to be younger “brothers” or ”sisters” of Jesus Christ.
There is virtually nothing new and
spectacular that has come from the black Adventist world in our land. Show it
to me, if the previous statement rubs you the wrong way. We are become a
virtual religious franchise, an assembly plant of the ideas and programmes of
other people. We are not creators and designers of newness. We are not a brand
in the broader scheme of Adventism. We are merely there for the purpose of
presence.
Before we disappear into our
graves, some (many) in my generation will need to shake the greasy dust that
has settled on our minds and do something before the harvest is over. Did not
Jesus tell the people of his time that his father, mother, brother and sister, were
those who did His father’s will and work? To be a “brother”/”sister” to Christ means to
think, pray, live and minister as he did. There can be no genuine
brother/sisterhood in the absence of mission to our contemporaries.
Mediocre Adventism is rooted in
spiritual consumerism that spends time and energy arguing about the sanctuary,
the identity, role and status of Azazel, among other things I see on Facebook
in recent weeks. Perhaps we need to
start a movement in the church called Spiritual Freedom Fighters!! I do not
know the colour of the berets we will wear!!
What
do you wish to be remembered for?
I have a friend whose family
runs a television station. One time he interviewed some prominent religious
leaders and ended each interview with the question, “What do you wish to be
remembered for?” Each of the interviewees would pause for a moment before uttering
a response, for this is a question that calls on a person to undress himself of
his dishonesty and pretense.
These days this is one question
that I am striving to find an answer to in my own life. The answer to this
question will determine whether – in the final analysis – when all has been
said and done - we shall be ready, individually and collectively, to meet our
“Big Brother” when He returns to lock the last gate in our earthly pilgrimage. I humbly pray to God that we all find a
sincere answer to this question; and that in our funerals somebody will be free
to say, “We have lost a brother” or “We have lost a sister.”
-thula m nkosi
