lost

THINKING ABOUT AdventisM and BROTHERHOOD

21 November 2013

Editorial Note

·       The original version of this paper was authored and distributed by the writer in the evening of 18 November 2013. I sent the paper to fifty-seven persons. Five persons of this number were unreachable. I have been blessed and deeply touched by the appreciative and constructive responses I have received from some of the readers. I have been enriched by their comments. Thank you, friends. What you have in your hand now is a slightly expanded version of the first paper.

              

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