KEEPING THEM IGNORANT (PART III)

“Cure for Ignorance”

By Akin Ojumu

Wherein the Scriptures say, “no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly,” the self-styled anointed demigods with special knowledge insist that unless you sow seeds, God will withhold from you all good things. 

They warn that your dreams will die if you don’t bring sacrifices and offerings to their ministries. The only way to pry open the windows of Heaven, they claim, is to bring your first fruits and lay them at the feet of the anointed man of God. 

And so, in terror of having dreams die, you empty your bank accounts, and sometimes enter into indentured servitude, all in a futile effort to satiate the unquenchable appetite of the man who has turned himself into a god.

While no one is being strangled or burned at the stakes for owning a Bible in the civilized world, the reality is that Christians all over have turned their Bibles into a bonfire of neglect and abandonment. 

It’s certainly true that the Bible is now in the hands of almost everyone, and freely available for self-study. In practice, though, it’s as if the Bible has been banished and taken away from everyone because nobody reads it.

Vast majority of Christians now rely totally on what’s preached on the pulpit as the source of their spiritual diet. Common among many Believers is the ironclad faith in what the man of God says.  “My Pastor says it, so it must be so,” is a universal chorus that Church folks sing. 

Having gotten accustomed to spiritual sustenance from the words that proceed from the mouth of their Pastors, many believers have quarantined their Bibles. They’ve stuck them in storage boxes deep in the attic where they gather dust. 

Consequently, severe malnourishment afflicts the Church. The Body of Christ suffers from a widespread epidemic of spiritual Kwashiorkor caused by living on an unhealthy diet of empty words and empty promises of the gods of men.

Having elevated the words of men above the Word of God, the Church is filled with Christians infected with the leprosy of ignorance. Because they’ve abandoned the Bible, a vale of blindness shrouds their souls. As spiritual lepers, they are banished to the outside of the gates of sound Biblical knowledge. Being spiritually blind, they stumble about in darkness of the truth of God’s Word. 

Their leprosy, being contagious, infects everything they touch. So also, their ignorance metastasizes in the darkness in which they dwell. Ensconced in the dark, they are beset with all manners of evil concupiscence and are held captive by their sinful desires. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life, lies, greed, lasciviousness, and idolatry are their ways of life.

Yet, all hope is not lost. There’s a cure for the spiritual leprosy. God has provided an eye salve for the spiritual blindness.

The sunlight of God’s Truth is the only effective disinfectant against the contagion of ignorance. The only cure for this consumption of the soul is the truth of God’s Word. Those who know the Truth are made free from the clutches of ignorance.

By all means listen to the man of God and endeavor to pay close attention to the messages that come from the pulpit. However, you must understand that another man’s truth will not set you free. In order for you to know the truth and be free, you must discover it for yourself. Like the Bereans, you must receive the message of the man of God with great eagerness, but you must also personally examine the Scriptures daily to find out whether what you’ve heard is true.

Until you take a personal voyage into the Word of God on your own, the scales of spiritual ignorance will not fall from your eyes. To find the truth, you must diligently seek it, and it is only those who find the Truth of the Word of God that are cured by it.