In The Name Of God: Blind Faith Will Kill You
How strong is your faith?
You should have seen my aunt. She was taller than the average woman in our community. Her yellow skin glowed as if she had just dabbed it with Vaseline — but no, it was just how it shone-silky. Her eyes were as sharp as piercing and her voice — deep. It wasn’t the soft quiet voice of our women. If you met my aunt, it was undeniable — she was a beautiful woman.
Her oldest sister, the one before my mother, was married at thirteen to a man a few years younger than her parents. At fourteen, she was cradling her first child. At seventeen, when a man almost the same age as her oldest sister’s husband came to ask for her hand in marriage (as we say in our culture when suitors come knocking on the door), her parents did not hesitate to give their blessing. He was from a family two compounds over. He was good stock — they said.
There is a reason older men go after very young girls. I have yet to find a reason that did not include ‘predatory’.
From seventeen years of age, my aunt languished in her marriage for over thirty years. Five years ago, her husband died. Before his death, my aunt took ill. We thought it was going to be the usual headache or malaria. It wasn’t. She had cancer — breast cancer. Two years after the death of her husband, my aunt died. Slowly. Painfully. Young.
There is not a day that has gone by that I do not miss my aunt. A woman as gorgeous as she was belonged in a palace, not in the cold grave that now houses her.
And I want justice for her death.
When the diagnosis of breast cancer came for my aunt, the tests gave her hope — if she had immediate surgery to remove the affected breast. My aunt was willing to do this until her Pastor intervened with a vision —
This breast cancer is ogwu (Igbo language word for charm) done to you by your husband’s people. If you go in for that surgery, you will surely die. Your salvation lies in trusting God for healing. He said He alone will heal you. Hold onto God. Have faith.
If you are still reading this, Dear Reader, you already know that my aunt refused the surgery, that God did not heal her, and that she died — painfully.
I watched that woman die. A death that was as unnecessary as it was painful. I watched my aunt get taken advantage of by the woman who called herself a Pastor and preyed on the vulnerability of my aunt until she directly contributed to her death.
This will not be the first time a spiritual advisor has contributed to the death or destruction of a close relative and as I watch Africa…as I watch the close relationship built on fear, between poverty and religion, I see how Spiritual leaders wreak havoc on families in the name of God. I wish they didn’t and as one who believes in God myself, I wish I did not have to write this piece. But today, I must. I have to. I have to make some sense of the death of my beautiful aunt. And if I cannot make sense of it, maybe, just maybe, someone might save themself or their family member.
Daddy
Grown men and grown women call their spiritual leaders.
Mummy
They call the wives of said Daddy.
Daddy G.O (General Overseer) — when they tell us, non-members of their church, when they talk about them in conversations.
Few things sound more repulsive to my ears than these attributions.
I was a teenager when my mother’s best friend was diagnosed with glaucoma. A straightforward surgery — the doctor said, and she will recover her sight fully.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that woman has been completely blind almost since she got that diagnosis. Why?
God told her that if she went in for that surgery, she would most surely die. And if she were to go blind? That God laughed and asked her — do you not trust me? Am I not your provider?
I do not know how my mother has stayed friends with that woman. I couldn’t. I was enraged when this woman went completely blind because God told her she would die if she had surgery. I have asked my mother time and time again :
So what was the special assignment God wanted her to carry out as a blind woman?
My mother doesn’t know either.
Towards the end of her life, every time I saw her, my aunt would ask me:
Do you think I will die?
I did not see hope in what was before me but, how could I tell her that? How could I tell her that I was angry…angry at her? How could she let some woman just wake up and tell her that God said?
After the birth of my first daughter, the woman who lived below me came up one day to see me. She was so excited. According to her —
She was in the bathroom and the spirit of God gave her the name of my daughter — Hadiza.
Beautiful name, I told her.
So you would name her that? She asked.
Of course not, I told her. If God wanted me to name my daughter, Hadiza, He would tell ME not you — in your bathroom.
It seems simple and straightforward to me that God will discuss my business with me if I am to make a life-changing decision and that He will not threaten me with death to keep my eyesight or my breast. Yet, every minute in Africa, there is a Daddy G.O. who makes grown men and women kneel, strip naked, or take a beatdown — all in the name of: God said.
One of my relatives lost her daughter a few years back. It was interesting because the day before, she had invited and paid some prophets of God to come visit and pray over her and her family. The next day, her daughter was electrocuted in the same house. I wonder why none of those prophets saw a flash of vision about the unfortunate event that befell the woman mere hours later.
It was also in my teenage years when a preacher woman came by invitation, to my grandfather’s home and made them remove a unique bell that was attached to their gate that let them know when someone opened said gate. According to the woman:
Immediately she got to the house, the spirit stopped her and told her that that bell was summoning the kingdom of darkness… And some other bullshit she said.
There was not a bell like that that we children knew of. We loved that bell a lot and in my grandfather’s eye when the preacher woman gave the order and his children ran to remove the bell, I saw hurt. As quickly as it came, it was gone and in its place, I saw resignation. And amid all the adults there that day, including my mother, I swallowed many words — words I now regret not speaking out.
I understand the power of words over individuals, as an abuse survivor. I understand how we can be so cowered by fear over the words of another human that we go against our own interests and unto death.
So my aunt is dead. One of the most beautiful humans that ever walked this plane— gone. In her place, I see many others:
God said.
Spoken to them by humans.
Over and again, God chooses to not save them.
At their funeral, the same spiritual leader will tell us:
They have gone to a better place. Just last night, I saw them dressed up in a flowing white gown, dancing. Their face was filled with joy. I am convinced that when God said He will heal them, He meant- in the next life and that is what He has done and that is where they have gone — where sickness and death exist no more.
Thank you for reading.
