Pastor, Don't Teach Me Nonsense: Against Theological Violence. Part 1
The first half of the title of this post is my adaptation of “Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense,” a 1986 studio album by Fela Kuti and the Egypt 80. Yet I borrow, adapt, and amend this title to describe, resist, and challenge theological violence that has pervaded all aspects of Nigerian Christianity.
Theological violence is when you use scriptures and doctrine to blame people for calamities that are the result of structural, systemic, and infrastructural deficits and leadership ineptitude. Someone had an accident Monday; the theology of violence says it's because they didn't wait to share the church's benediction on Sunday. It is not because of the drunken driver or a dangerous pothole but because they did not pay tithe. Theological violence does not attribute accidents to a lack of traffic signs that give inaccurate direction; rather, it is because they did not pray before leaving the house. This theology of violence revictimizes and gaslights people.
A version of this violent theology was parroted during COVID-19; they said that God was frustrated with the world, which is why he created a pandemic. God was furious with those who established the power structures and systems that led to the creation of the global racialized capitalist system, yet he felt compelled to inflict suffering on the already impoverished and oppressed in order to target the wealthy. I couldn't understand a God whose passive-aggressive tendencies would make him punish the already victimized poor of the world because of the greed and evil of its rich, for which the poor also suffer consequences. This God-transferred aggression, which they warn people not to do to others, is what is a forte of God that is supposed to be good.
Where are all the people crying to the altar during the pandemic, believing that God is about to destroy the earth and Jesus is coming the next second? Someone I respect once said, "True spirituality does not exist at the expense of humanity," and I resonated with that statement.
When my sister-mum and I had an accident in 2021, a different version of this theological violence was spewed everywhere, from the “God of the commission” fighting me to the God of the man of God showing me pepper for choosing to exit what was fracturing my mental and emotional health. If the god of their pastors is responsible for my calamity, who has sustained me since then?
The same theological violence is why Jesus sent you a message on WhatsApp that if you don't send 30 people a banana, igi ewedu, or whatever falls, you.
My PoP said something years ago that never left me: "When your missionaries, who are your masters, are your teachers, your theology will be flawed and skewed" because they never teach you any tools with which you can destroy the master's house.
Now they say Jesus hates the poor.
