While I credit religious institutions and leaders for creating a semblance of order in our society, the very same institutions have fallen short of providing a tangible matrix for resolving the most hard-pressing of issues.
In the end, while the believers fumble with their troubles, religious leaders confuse them even the more by directing them to a God, who in my view does not work under pressure. In fact, I have come to realize that some religious men and women actually do not understand God’s ways.
Many a time, when patients are critically ill and about to breathe their last, many believers are caught in the habit of rushing to look for a priest to smear some ‘holy’ oil and pray in a last gasp of hope for recovery. And while on a few occasions, such patients may get healed, there’s no guarantee that they are actually any holier than the ones that don’t make it.
Truth is that you cannot live so irresponsibly and then attempt to use God as a shield for last minute survival. And even if one were genuinely sick not out of irresponsible living, one ought to have made God a personal priority during their good times; whereupon falling ill, that very God would blamelessly know what to do and at the right time. This is the message religious leaders ought to give to believers in a spirit of sincerity and not to act as if they were magicians.
In the last few weeks, one Catholic priest, Fr. Gaetano, was featured in the news apparently staging a fast to plead to God, to work through First Lady Janet Museveni, to urge her husband Yoweri Museveni not to contest in the 2016 elections. This is the craziest anyone can go in terms of misunderstanding God’s ways; and for such to come from an ordained priest, is very absurd to say the least. I am a Zillion Percent convinced that Fr. Gaetano’s move is in vain, and if Mr. Museveni is still President come 2016, this gentleman should never stand before the altar to preach again. Yes, religion is such an integral part of our human life that its leadership ought to be entrusted in the right persons, otherwise we risk having a confused generation.
Well, even away from the likelihood of Gaetano’s prayer yielding results: I have written again and again, that if anyone dreams of unseating Mr. Museveni, they must have carefully planned and done their homework several years back. The official time allocated by the Electoral Commission for campaigns is too little for any candidate to effectively market themselves to the entire electorate. Compare this with an incumbent who on top of having been on the scene for 29 years, is heavily endowed with state resources, and will actually still be Commander in Chief on election-day. So anyone, priest or no priest assuming that Mr. Museveni after being given a unanimous node by his party to contest; will be lured least of all by his wife, not to contest, is utterly unserious.
I have challenged this religious melodrama before, and will still vehemently challenge it until we learn to be sincere not only to ourselves, but to the people we serve. In previous elections, Mrs. Janet Museveni herself alleged that she had been sent by God to lead the people of Ruhama Constituency before unseating then MP Augustine Ruzindana.
I wrote then to guide that given Janet’s status as a First Lady, God or no God, she had whatever it took to win the election. She would later be appointed minister in her husband’s cabinet against the obvious misdemeanour of conflict of interest. Now that she has announced that she’s not contesting again in 2016 after her two terms, one may say that well, God again has asked her to rest; and therefore since she and her husband serve the same God, the husband could follow suit. This is childish arithmetic, because Mr. Museveni and Janet are completely different people.
On another occasion, renowned Pastor Robert Kayanja proclaimed publicly that God had told him that one of the Presidential candidates during the 2006 elections would die; and obviously this did not come to pass. I have since lost any grain of respect for this controversial pastor.
On Sunday, I had a deep reflection about the prayer for Mother Mary passionately said during the month of the rosary and indeed daily by us believers. At some point, it says
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death”.
For starters, why must we always presume ourselves perpetual sinners? And after all the sinning, we expect Mother Mary to ‘convince’ our Father God to forgive us our sins! This imagery of Mary and God likens them to our own earthly parents. So someone is busy imagining Mary seated at the right hand side of God pleading for one’s sins-crazy. Each one of us is personally liable for our sins and with a contrite heart; we can sort ourselves before our God. Little wonder that one like Fr. Gaetano from this school of thought assumes that Janet being the closest to Museveni, can convince him not to contest. That’s crazy!
If we believe that change of government must be through the ballot, let those interested show up early enough, present themselves before the electorate and try their luck. Others elsewhere have tried non-democratic means like was the case in Burkina Faso and our very own Museveni of yesteryears, and still gotten power. In my personal view, whatever the case, God is always at the helm of it all. So let no one be troubled should Mr. Museveni contest again and emerge a winner-otherwise if Museveni’s leadership were not ordained by God, then Uganda would be a doomed country being headed by a leader that draws power from the devil.
Let us desist from putting God under pressure and let each one of us carry his own cross.