Jesus wants us to be rich!

By TONY MOCHAMA

I was reading a wonderful chapter called Jesus wants You to be Rich (this is tongue-in-cheek) in a wonderful memoir called Another Life by the legendary publisher and writer, Mike Korda.

A paragraph in this chapter goes: “There wasn’t an empty seat in the house. The audience was mostly white males in their 40s and 50s, with the slightly desperate looks of men who never quite made it in whatever job they had and believed passionately that there existed somewhere (in the universe) a formula that would change their lives.”

I was at the Hilton last Saturday for the talk by Cindy Trimm — and thanks to the magazines’ editor’s efforts, there was not an empty seat in the room.

The audience was mostly black females in their 20s and 30s, with the passionately enthused faces of folk who believe that somewhere (in the Universe) there is a formula for success — and, by God, they’re gonna get it!

After leaving the talk, I said in tete-a-tete to the Missus: “Ms Trimm was wonderful, and 20 per cent of the women who attended her talk will have their lives forever altered.”

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“And the other 80 per cent?” she asked.

I shrugged: “Their lives will stay exactly the same. It’s the 80/20 rule of the Universe.”

Every Sunday, you see parking lots in churches full to the brim. Maybe the preacher-person inside is giving a sermon on ‘good neighbourliness’.

But after the service, the church goers dash out to beat traffic, cars congregate and congeal in the church compound, folks cut each other off — and some people even curse the other — the talk on ‘good neighbourliness’ having gone in through one ear, and out of the (car) window.

Jesus may want us to prosper, but the days of manna from up yonder are long over. It is what Cindy T said.

“Success is an attitude that determines our thoughts, that determine our actions, that make our habits, that make our character that makes our Destiny.”

Nobody said ‘Amen!’

And I once read, in Standard Eight, a motivational book called The Secret of Mind Power that forever shifted my world-view.

Having said that, tomorrow at the ‘Storymoja Hay Festival’ at the Museum from 1pm, I’ll be passionately debating Bonnie Kim, author of The Power of Self Image’, at the ironically named ‘Discovery Hall’ on why Kenyans need to read more fiction, as opposed to self-motivational books, if we are to become self-actualised; as opposed to simply ‘successful.’