I remember vaguely that
she was lying on the bed reading a book with many pages. She seemed to be
concentrating. I asked her, “Aunty what is this book you are reading”? She
replied “the Bible”. “What is the Bible”? I asked. It is “God’s word” she
responded. I must have been 8 or 9 years old at the time. That was my first
conscious encounter with religion.
All previous encounters had been passive,
unconscious, and insignificant. I took personal interest in this Bible and
began to read it. I was deeply fascinated as I found a new transcendent
consciousness which I never really experienced before. However, I was soon to
abandon this new found interest being a child. I picked it up again at the age
of 12 when my foster parents began to couple their attendance at an orthodox
church (Catholic) with a Pentecostal church. A new wave of Pentecostalism was
sweeping Nigeria, gaining a critical mass since the late 1970s through the early
1980s. In the year 1989, I became a born again Christian, a brand of
Christianity that grew in power and numbers like wild fire in the dry season in
Nigeria. Having a simple and sincere disposition I followed the teachings of
this religion.
When I attained puberty I struggled with sexual desire, feelings
of guilt, and self-repression. My impression was that the human was vile and
corruptible, as was reinforced by repeated sermons. I pursued morality without
a basic awareness of what is, but to please God in order to get a reward, which
was immediate blessings and ultimately heaven, and to avoid punishments or
curses, with the worst being eternal damnation in hell. As I began to grow
older, approaching adolescence, I sought for my own personal experience of the
stories I read about in the Bible. Miracles of the age to come, the
supernatural, and eschatology became obsessions. I knew that I had no
experiential knowledge of these things. I wanted evidence to validate my
dogmatic reality--a reality that was capricious and based on only what I had
read and heard from humans like myself. I had to. I had no alternative. It was
the only worldview I had and it was becoming unstable and troubled with doubt.
But how could I doubt it? How dare I reject my worldview? Instead, I looked for
evidence to support and reinforce it more.
