Lie detector at church weddings scatters flock

BY MARK MUTAHI

A pastor in Nairobi County is counting his losses after his church membership dwindled drastically when he introduced lie detectors at weddings. The pastor had good intentions though, for all he wanted to do was weed out people who had no intentions of keeping the vows. He also wanted to save their spouses the trouble of painfully discovering the bad news by themselves.

Gadget

The offending lie detector was designed in such a way that it would make a loud beeping sound, whenever the bride or bridegroom lied during vowing. For instance, if one promised to forsake all others for their life partner, when in actual fact they had all intentions of continuing to stay ‘in circulation’ the gadget beeped.

Trouble started when the worship leader and choir master of the church, known to have been singing love ballads to other women during his engagement period, got thoroughly embarrassed on his wedding day.

During his wedding ceremony a loud beeping sound was heard during his vows forcing him to plead with the pastor that the gadget was faulty. There and then, everyone in the congregation realised that if the gadget did not even ‘respect’ such a devoted hypocrite of the church. It was, perhaps, easier for a pregnant whale to pass through the eye of a needle than for any of them to pass the honesty test. And that’s when they decided to vote with their feet.

To make matters worse, there was even talk that the pastor was intending to introduce the gadget to courtship process.

“That’s just party pooping; obviously if the girl I am dating listens to the misguided pastor and arranges a lie detector test, she will discover I already have a wife.

“Why should I stick around in such a church?” dismissively posed a former member of the church, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Terrorists

The biggest criticism being levelled against the pastor was that he had got his priorities wrong.

“I think the best thing would have been to put something like a fence all around the church, and a state of the art security system.

“Not to prevent terrorists from gaining access; but to fend off scorned men or women from interrupting a wedding in progress,” suggested a man who only recently had been in the news, when a woman he had ‘only lived with for just a few years, and had several teenage children with’ interrupted his wedding!

Wolves

But the biggest fear hailing from the pastor’s actions were that he might influence spouses, who were not trusting of their spouses to buy a home lie detector. And force their spouses to be taking the lie test randomly and unannounced.

This resulted following rumours and speculation that the pastor had intentions of renting out the particular lie detector, when not in use, to households and in the process supplement the church income.

High-tech

Following the drastic decline in church attendance, the pastor has slipped into a depressive mood. Because to his shock, his congregation consisted of wolves in cheap clothing made in Asia. Of particular concern is what use to put the expensive gadget to so that it doesn’t lie idle. It is said the lie detector was so high-tech it was even waterproof.

This was to ensure that in case the individual taking the test developed cold feet and started sweating profusely, the body fluid drenching the machine would not destroy it.