The miracle supermarket with some give-and-take

The most delicious grilled beef (nyama choma) I have ever tasted in Kenya was in Narok, in 1996. So, you can imagine my sorrow and sadness at recent reports that Narok cattle are being poisoned by effluent from gold refineries.

I certainly would never rate gold above my cattle. I may not be a native of Narok, but I know you cannot drink or eat gold. But a glass of milk or a platter of nyama choma, that is a different proposition altogether.

In any case, most sensible people have always known this, as may be seen in the Greek oral tale of King Midas, he of the proverbial “golden touch”. Do you remember the day he asked the gods to give him the gift of turning everything he touched into the love of his life, gold? When the gods obliged, his joy was immense, but it only lasted till lunchtime.

It was great for the plates, cups and glasses on his table to turn into solid gold at Midas’ touch. But when the soup, the salad, the potatoes and even the chicken drumsticks followed suit, the sad truth dawned on the king that one cannot live by gold alone. You know the climax to the story, do you not? If not, I am sure you will relish the joy of exploring and finding out.

But to get back to our cattle, my neighbours and relatives in Uganda seem to have had some shenanigans with theirs as well. Their herds were recently struck by a strange disease, apparently unmanageable by any of the drugs on the market.

As is increasingly common in the country these days, the cattle owners decided to seek the services of an intercessor. Now, an intercessor is a kind of prayer broker, believed to have the ability to invoke God’s power to intervene miraculously in human affairs. Such intervention is sought in all sorts of need, like illness, poverty, barrenness, lack of love or marriage partners or threats from witchcraft. Cars, jobs and visas are also common subjects for intercessory prayers.

Renowned intercessors are often attached to some of the hundreds of prayer, deliverance and other “spiritual” centres dotted all over the country.

Myriads of Ugandans flock to these centres for overnight prayers, especially over weekends, in search of “their own miracles”. Unable to satisfy the

demand at congregational sessions, the centres are sending their intercessors for outreach prayer services.

But things might be getting out of hand, as I heard from an eyewitness to the session of the broker who came from one of the most famous charismatic centres to intercede for my neighbours’ ailing cattle.

It has always been a Christian tradition to accompany prayer requests with a donation to the “church”. The trouble arises when it comes to quantifying such donations and specifying the conditions under which they are made.

PINNACLE OF THE PROBLEM

How much for example, should one donate along with a prayer request to have a child? My friend Muthoni Likimani hints at this in her mind-boggling

book, My Blood Not for Sale, which delves into the murky world of fraudulent miracle claims and ruthless child trafficking. Similarly, how big a “donation” qualifies one to have one’s sins forgiven?

The pinnacle of the problem is summed up in the oft-encountered demand for “seeding” in many of our new-fangled, prosperity gospel, “fire”

churches, usually centred on self-proclaimed charismatic pastors, apostles, prophets — or intercessors. It is claimed that the bigger the “seed” you plant, the richer will be the harvest you reap.

Thus, if you want to reap a humongous four-wheel road-holder, you would do well to “plant” that little two-door dudu of yours into the church kitty, and the miraculous prayers will do the rest.

In the case of our bovine intercessor, I was told, when he was handed the “envelope” containing the donation and the prayer request for the salvation

of the cows, he immediately and harshly exclaimed that the envelope was not “heavy enough”. After lengthy consultations, the original one hundred

or so thousand shillings in the envelope were raised to the “weight” of three hundred thousand (about ten thousand Kenya shillings) and the prayers

for the cows began, in the name of — what I don’t know.

There, however, was another rider to the deal. The cow-owning faithful had to donate a crate of sodas for the intercessor’s people at home “to also

have something to direct towards their mouths”, as it is put in “Ugenglish” (Ugandan English). I am yet to learn if the cattle were miraculously healed

by the intercessor’s costly prayers.

But a lot of other disturbing questions arise out of this prayerful pastoral exercise. That intercessor actually came from a centre that is affiliated to one

of the so-called mainstream churches, to which the cattle-keepers, and I, also belong. Moreover these are well-educated citizens, some of them

graduates and even school heads and owners.  

Did they not wonder if the church centre that authorised this intercessor to come to them allowed him to bargain on their donation? Did they not

know that “selling” divine favours is a sin, called “simony” (derived from Acts 8: 18) and it was one of the main causes of the most disastrous splits

in Christianity in the 15th and 16th centuries? It appears as if our manic obsession with miracles is blotting out reason and blinding and deafening us

to all the dictates of logic and genuine scriptural revelation.

I strongly believe in miracles and I have witnessed quite a few in my own life, the latest being one which I was granted at the JKIA in early December

last year. But true faith is not about miracles, surely. God loves his people and he will do good things for them, if they believe him, trust him and, above all, love him.

That is the Gospel according to Pastor Bukenya. It is about love, not about miracles and heavy envelopes.

As for my JKIA miracle, we will save it for another day.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and Literature. [email protected]