DR KENEZ ARGUES THAT GLOBAL PEACE IS POSSIBLE IF, AND ONLY IF, ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE RATIONAL ENOUGH TO JETTISON XENOPHOBIA, RACISM . APARTHEID,AND COLONIALISM.

Dr Kenez Second Trilogy on

A N G E L I C   V E R S E S

 

T h e    W o r l d ’s     H o t e s t    C a k e s No. 2

 

No. 2:THE AETIOLOGY OF ETHNOCENTRISM

                                        

                                           Baked By:

CHEFS  JUDE, JIDEOFO  & KENEZ

E-mail:  saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk

 

THE INTEGRATIONAL SPIRITAN MOVEMENT, (ISM) founded in 1990 is an interdisciplinary socio-cultural organisation for modern scientists who desire a

self-fulfilled life spiced with spiritual devotion.                                

Our motto speaks volumes for itself;

 ONE ALMIGHTY CREATOR,

ONE CREATED UNIVERSE,

ONE HUMAN FAMILY!

ISBN: 987……………  -

COPYRIGHTS   ©   2002

 Chefs JUDE, JIDEOFO & KENEZ 

Kihol   Productions   Limited

Umuelechi Umuezeawala

Danis Family Villa,

P.O.Box 139

 IHIALA,

BIAFURU AMAMIFE ND’IGBO

Kenez International Humanitarian Organisations Linkage

 http//: www . kenez @  kihol . org

AMPLIFICATION OF TITLE

 

James Drever’s ‘A DICTIONARY OF PSYCHOLOGY’, revised by editor Harvey Wallerstein in 1952, defines ‘aetiology’ thus: “Investigation of the causes of a given phenomenon or a series of phenomena; medically, the investigation of the cause of a disease or disease.” p.88, Penguin Books, England. He further defines ‘ethnocentrism’ as; “exaggerated tendency to think the characteristics of one’s own group or race superior to those of other groups or races.”  p.88 ibid.

On the other hand, Nancy Roper, in her ‘POCKET MEDICAL DICTIONARY’, 13^th edition, simply defines  ‘aetiology’ thus: “ A science dealing with the causation of disease.”     p.8, ELBS 1970.

A.S. Hornby’s ‘OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNER’S DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE’ as currently

re-edited by the trio of Jonathan Crowther, Kathryn Kavanagh and Michael Ashby in 1995 define ‘ethnocentric’ as “adj.; -making judgements about another race and culture using the standards of one’s own; ethnocentric assumptions” p.293.

Armed with these concise definitions, we urge our readers to explore the nuances that the term ‘ethnocentrism’ has garnered over the centuries. That will enable them become well informed to follow our discourses on the sub-themes of this delicious cake. It reveals the origins of apartheid, slavery, serfdom, syncretism, sectarianism, partisanship, segregationism, parochialism, fanaticism and lastly but not finally religious bigotry.

Chefs Jude, Jideofo and Kenez are truly very shy individuals in their private lives! Nevertheless, they are courageous enthusiasts sharpening their wits in order to face the challenges posed by a tumultuous computer age compounded by its attendant socio-political dynamics that negate world peace, equality and brotherliness in the cosmos.

If you are not conversant with their methodology, then it only confirms that you have not seen nor read “ANGELIC VERSES—VOLUME: ONE  -- THE GENESIS OF HUMAN FRAILTY”! Please get a copy and peruse it if you want to benefit from this one. Without doing so, you would like ‘taking breakfast without brushing you teeth’! Moreover, that’s very unhygienic! Please don’t!

This instalment promises to be ‘too hot-to-handle’, but very juicy, thought-provoking besides being very revealing about the origins of class distinctions!

                          

                                C O N T E N T S

Amplification of title………………………..………

Dedication ……………………………………….….

Prologue ……………………………………….……

Foreword………………………………………….…

.

CHAPTER 1: Were all men created equal?…..……….

CHAPTER 2: Aberrations in nature, whose handiwork

CHAPTER 3: Biblical foundations of ethnocentrism…

CHAPTER 4: Racial superiority is unscientific……….

CHAPTER 5: Syncretic religion, the bane of racism…

CHAPTER 6: Wise men think internationally…..…….

CHAPTER 7: The Panacea For Ethnocentrism……….

EPILOGUE: The Religion of the Soul……………….

APPENDIX: A Cross-Cultural Harmonisation of

                      Youth Counselling and Development.

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           DEDICATION

To all rational thinkers, freedom fighters, human right activists and civil liberty organisations around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yours sincerely:

Chefs Jude, Jideofo & Kenez

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

 

PROLOGUE

As young philosophy students in the late 1960s, our lecturers referred us to a great Greek sage named ‘DIOGENES’.  I hope my spelling is still correct! In addition, I equally hope that my narrative resembles what I read decades ago! Pardon me if I fail you! It was documented that this great thinker abandoned his wealthy lifestyle, the luxury and comfort of civil society, his well-furnished palace and made his home in an empty wooden wine barrel in the bushy outskirts of his hometown. I can vividly recollect the diagram we saw in that ancient book translated from the Greek original. The old man looked haggard or unkempt by our modern language and literary descriptions.

He had no tables, no chairs, no blankets, no pillows, no bed, no cups, spoons nor plates and finally he brought along no cooking utensils. He lived off the ground, the tress in the forest and drank from a nearby stream. His study consisted in observing nature and his relaxation was the music provided by birds, crickets and other vocal animals around his hermitage.

 

However, he was such a reputable sage that priests, judges, rulers and kings from far and near came to the wine barrel to find accurate solutions to all sorts of problems plaguing their communities. His own King or traditional ruler was reported to have asked him to come to his palace so he could be rewarded for a crucial political solution he had provided when the kingdom was at a point of insurrection, revolution and disintegration.

Could you believe that he rather invited the young King to come to his own ‘palace’ out in the meadows, for he had vowed never to enter palaces or buildings for life. So the Royal family and the entire cabinet made their way to the wooden palace of Diogenes. On arrival the following dialogue ensued and we beg you to pay attention to each word and sentence:

King:” My dearest sage Diogenes, I greet you together with my royal court here present. My late father advised me to always consult you whenever I had serious problems that deeded timely and effective solutions. This I have done for five years now—and I have come with my royal entourage to show our gratitude for your wise and efficient counsels all these years.”

Diogenes: “That’s thoughtful of you. May your reign last for long. You have done what your father never did throughout his reign even though he equally benefited as you do now. He never thanked me. So, that shows that you may after all be a wiser king than your late father was. This has demonstrated, at least for now that your subjects might see better days in future and really hope for a responsible and responsive administration in the years ahead.”

King: “ Thanks for the compliment” (He, then moved very close to the wine barrel and leaning over its small entrance had a handshake with the occupant. After this he unwittingly cast his bulky shadow over the frail figure of the fragile old sage, thereby blocking out the sun’s rays that bathed the dark hollow of the barrel.

“Now,” he continued, “What favour can His Majesty grant you in appreciation for all your wisely counsels that has kept our kingdom in unity and peace so far.” 

Diogenes: “ Could your Majesty shift his frame a bit so that nature’s daylight can fall directly on me…I need fresh air and the sunlight that your frame is now blocking—that’s my request, Sir, and nothing more.”

King: Is that all!

Diogenes: “Yes, that is all Diogenes can ever need! Or can your Majesty ever have any greater gifts than the ones I requested for just now?”

King: (After shifting himself to allow more sunlight and air into the wine barrel) “I had thought you might need a blanket for the cold seasons, a bed with a nice mattress and a pillow. I have even built you a new house, fully furnished to taste and I have provided two servants to attend to all your needs since we benefit so much from your wisdom!”

Diogenes:  “That’s interesting, - so your late father also deceived into the error I warned him against..

By the way – did he not tell you why I abandoned royalty and wealth to come out here to enjoy nature? Your Dad was my classmate. He should have known better! If he really advised you to always consult me whenever you needed existential solutions to any or all of your problems, then he failed you woefully by not intimating you on how I came to live in this empty wine barrel!

King:  He didn’t, Sir, but he warned me of pride, lust, wine and women.

Diogenes: (Climbed out from the barrel assisted by his walking stick and the younger man. He invited the King alone to a nearby graveyard) “Please order some of your servants to dig up the bones of any noble that you can locate accurately.”

King: “ No, rather than desecrate another person’s tomb, let me go and dig up my father’s, I can re-bury him later with all the dignity that he deserves.”

Diogenes: “Another sign of a great future for you. You are wiser than your peers, - Okay, do so. Meanwhile, give me another servant to assist me dig up the bones of a relation of mine over there…(Pointing towards the west of the graveyard)--- near that vine tree.”

King: “Okay, but have two servants so that you can finish in about thirty minutes while I do same over there at my father’s site.” (They part company.)

Diogenes dug up the bones of a slave he was sure served the late king, with the assistance of the two servants and carried them to where some servants were digging up the late king’s remains. He laid them out in a perfect symmetry as would a sexton or a morbid anatomist if it were today! He equally supervised the laying out of the late king’s skeleton in another perfect symmetry beside the first set of bones. He covered the two sets of skeletons with white cloths and beckoned on the young king, who had all along been in his royal chariot conversing with his beautiful queen. A few noblemen followed the Royal pair. Diogenes slowly unveiled the two sets of skeletons meticulously making sure that the bones were not disorderly. He straightened up, with his walking stick bearing up his frail frame; he then invited all to move nearer.

Diogenes: “My Lord, by looking at these two sets of bones, please tell me which is your father’s skeleton?”

King: “ How can I…Heh...Come here, my court jester, and you noblemen of the royal cabinet, assist me, you all knew my father much better than I did. After all, you were his attendants or confidants for over thirty years he was on the throne. Which is it?”

                          (Of course, they were caught pants down. They all panicked, conferred and consulted each other, and at the end picked on the wrong set of bones. The servants who had assisted Diogenes arrange them had the laugh of their lives but suppressed as much as they could. )

Diogenes:  “Which is the royal skeleton, my Lord? You are the one I need an answer from.”

King: “ Of course, the other one!” (Trying to be smart, since the other had caused laughter.)

Diogenes: I hope you learnt something here. You are wise. However, the other set of skeleton that looks exactly like your dad’s skeleton is truly that of his slave who had served him for twenty-five years. He really inherited that slave from your grandfather!

OUR DEAR READERS, YOU ALL CAN APPRECIATE THIS PROLOGUE. THE LESSON IS VERY CLEAR. ALL MEN ARE EQUAL AT BIRTH AND DEATH!

FOREWORD

When neophytes in religion eulogise ‘prophecy’ or ‘inspired words’ mistakenly referred to as ‘revelation’, the informed minds/souls begin to wonder where all these fanatics get their indoctrination. Could it be that Karl Marx was right after all? “Religion is the opium of the masses” he once propounded. And so many adherents of various denominations and sects confirm his assertion, hundreds of years after his death!

So one is bound to ask, can anyone really write a sentence without inspiration or intuition? A corollary of which is, what exceptional claims had the bible writers that we venerate what they wrote as being ‘revealed words’? Moreover, what does ‘the word of God’ really mean? Where do the words of men stop so that those of God can take over or vice versa?

John Macquarrie states:

“Revelation as a doctrine, is the self-communication of God; that is, God's disclosure of divine being or divine will to human beings. Most of the major world religions affirm revelation in some sense as a basis for their doctrines and practices. Revelation may be in the form of a vision, often accompanied by words, or may consist only of words. In the Old Testament, Moses saw a burning bush and heard God's voice proceeding from it (see Exodus 3).

 

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, heard a noise like a bell that resolved itself into words. As recounted in the Hindu epic the Bhagavad-Gita, Prince Arjuna saw his charioteer Krishna transformed into his true form as a divine being. Historical events may also be understood as revelation—for instance, the exodus of Israel from Egypt, or the life of Jesus Christ.

 

General revelation refers to the knowledge of God communicated through the order of nature, a conception that is found in eastern religion and in some romantic poetry, such as that of the English poet William Wordsworth. Special revelation refers to the knowledge of God that comes through specific experiences, such as visions, dreams, or events. The two kinds of revelation may be complementary.

 

Christianity and Islam both teach that the natural order is revelatory of God, but their emphasis is on the special revelations communicated by their founders.

In Judaism, too the special revelations given to Moses and the prophets that are described in the Bible are fundamental to the faith. In all revelations, the primary element is the encounter with the divine, which it is the task of religious doctrine and of religious tradition to interpret and convey.”

 *Ref.  John Macquarrie. Microsoft 98 Encarta Encyclopaedia.

How does one differentiate inspirations from God, angels and good spirits from those from the Devil, demons and evil spirits? Will Christendom ever be purged of myopic interpretations of hallucinating schizophrenics or visionaries masquerading as prophets? Some of these and other questions are discussed by the three young men in this exciting discourse, otherwise called ANGELIC VERSES.

 

 This volume two simply asks this fundamental question, when does Moses speak on behalf of God, and when does he speak as a Jew? Again, could the Almighty God be the author of racial discriminations as evidenced in Bible narratives? Who labelled Hagar and Ishmael ‘bond mother and bond son’? Who introduced the terminology: “circumcised and uncircumcised”, “ritually unclean”, “purification” and finally the almighty “Jew and Gentile”?

 

Was it right for Jacob and his mother to disinherit Esau? Did God, the Supreme Justice, condone such deceit and the other ones that were perpetrated by Jacob “the deceiver”? Next, it is very repulsive to imagine that he eventually became Israel and the great ancestor of the Jews enslaved for four hundred years in Egypt, and thus the great grandfather Moses who later invented such hateful words as shown above. Read on but ensure it is with an open mind!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C  H  A  P  T  E  R     O  N  E

ARE ALL MEN BORN EQUAL?

Jideofo: May I welcome all our readers back to our confectionery and another session of sampling our hot cakes christened “Angelic Verses”. After a well deserved recess from the appetiser,” The Genesis of Human Frailty”, you will enjoy this second course in our appetising delicacies, entitled “The Aetiology of Ethnocentrism”

Jude: We only hope they enjoyed the holidays with their loved ones, as the Americans would say.

Kenez: Well, both of you are beating about the bush. What you should ask our readers is this,-- DID ANY OF THEM HAVE INDIGESTION OR CONSTIPATION FROM EATING OUR FIRST CAKE?

Jideofo: You are quite right there, but let us welcome them this way…. A nation on this planet has the following at the opening paragraph of her constitution:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

Kenez: What a subterfuge! Who said that?

Jude: The great leaders of American independence, of course, are you pulling off one of your tricks so early into this discourse? They set off on a good note.

Kenez: No, my dear Jude. No tricks yet...you said that they set off on a good note, that is very true, but ever since then their posterity have been singing bad notes; flats here and sharps there. In fact, no musician can predict the keys they will sing for each stanza or even the chorus of any song, so much so that their national anthem is a thesis on hypocrisy. Now, tell me this, --- who were the slave traders?

Jude:  If there were no sellers, there wouldn’t have been any buyers.

 

Jideofo: There he goes again as always. First answer the question before making any comments, Who enslaved millions of your forebears and forced them to work on sugar cane plantations?

Jude:  The same Americans I concede, but note that they also put an end to it, thanks to the great William Wilberforce and his friends, all sons of America! They saw the error of their parents and redeemed their names and honour, unlike some other foolhardy racist nations of today that suffer from xenophobia!

Jideofo:  You have again begun throwing big words around. Simply commend them for righting the wrongs of their erring ancestors, that is all they deserve.

Kenez: The statement you are both crediting to the founders of America, were in fact applicable to only Caucasian males, not even their women folk. So, they never meant all men. Women suffrage came much, much later, not to mention Black suffrage which Martin Luther jnr. sacrificed his life for.

Jideofo:  Thank you, my magister!

Kenez:  Honore´ de Balzac, a 19^th century French novelist said “EQUALITY MAY PERHAPS BE A RIGHT; BUT NO POWER ON EARTH CAN EVER TURN IT INTO A FACT”! So many years after, the saying is true – all nations except Israel and Germany agree to that, yet even those nations with equality engraved in their constitutions have never realised it. Many people feel instinctively that class distinctions are eternally wrong and inhuman, yet all human societies; developed and developing, civilised and uncivilised, ancient and modern; all are still divided into numerous social classes; the rich and the poor, the serfs and the lords, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’!

Jideofo:  I agree, but the issue we are here to discuss is: WHY? Can it be that the Creator invented it? Where did it all start? Can we place it in a time or historical perspective? What is the genesis of inequality in humans?

Kenez: Start the ball rolling Jideofo, or do you want Jude to take the credit of exposing the hypocrites?

Jideofo:  Of course not, my queries are rhetorical, a prelude to a deluge! We owe it all to that drunkard we dissected in the first volume of ANGELIC VERSES: Noah, the first vine planter and dresser. Remember the contents of Genesis, Chapter 9, verse18 - 28. If the three sons of Noah who survived the flood were born equal, at least they were siblings of same parents, then their descendants ought to have been equal—yes—But Naoh in a fit of rage, changed all that,------- He cursed Canaan, -- not even the culprit Ham, his own direct son.

Jude: Now I remember. That was one of the last points of our disagreement in that epic debate in Volume 1 of Angelic Verses, entitled “THE GENESIS OF HUMAN FRAILTY”. Noah introduced inequality, slavery, apartheid, racism and ethnocentrism.

Kenez:  Are both of you not jumping to conclusions too early in the discourse? How come, both of you who always disagreed on most issues are suddenly turned into friends on this one topic. I do smell a rat here, Yeah, a common hatred for debauchery, yeah, that’ it! At this juncture I suggest that you let our readers know the exact meaning of the big words both of you have been bandying about so far.

Jideofo:  I will pick up the gauntlet. ‘Inequality’ as far as our discussion now is concerned is limited to: “a. Lack of equality, as of opportunity, treatment, or status. b. Social or economic disparity: the growing inequality between rich and poor.[1]

 Again the term ‘slavery’ is this dictionary definition: “1.The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household. 2.a. The practice of owning slaves. b. A mode of production in which slaves constitute the principal work force.”

Jude:  I make bold to emulate my pal, ‘apartheid’ in this discourse will be restricted to:

1. An official policy of racial segregation practised in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.

2.  Any policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.

3.     The condition of being separated from others; segregation.”

Whereas we shall adopt ‘racism’ to mean;

1.  The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

2.  Discrimination or prejudice based on race.”

My dear Kenez, we hope that our readers are at breast with us now. Jideofo thanks for the reference we used.

Kenez:  It is only normal in an academic discussion such as we are having now, to follow the tradition of philosophy. It is called ‘limiting oneself to a universe of discourse’ such that others do not quote you out of the context you want to operate.’

Jideofo:  Jude I hope you heard that from the horse’s mouth, we always quarrelled over it in the past. Now our magister has spelt it out unabridged!

Jude:  Let’s make progress. Let me refresh your minds by reading from the NIV: Genesis 9,vs 18;

“The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were;

Shem, Ham and Japheth (Ham was the father of       Canaan).

v.19:These were the sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.

v.20: Noah, a man of the soil proceeded to plant a vineyard.

v.21:When he drunk some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 

v.22: Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside.

v.23: But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness.

v.24: When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him;

v.25:  He said; “cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers!

v.26:  He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God  of Shem, may Canaan be the slave of Shem.

v.27:  May God extend the territory of Japheth, may Canaan be his slave”

v.28:  After the flood Noah lived 350 years.

Kenez:  And both of you can’t smell a rat in that narrative! Open your eyes. Can’t you see some illogicality in what transpired there? Could an omniscient God permit such an injustice? Did Noah pray to God the Creator? The Almighty Father or to some lesser god? Were his prayers answered?

Jideofo:  As far as I can decipher – God answered his prayers, no- I mean his curses, because those were no prayers in the first place, - however I consider all of them unjust, parochial, satanic, undeserved and malicious. He, Noah was the originator of the sin of drunkenness, of immorality or better still of blatant exhibitionism. He was the one that planted a vineyard, plucked the fruits and brewed the wine. He was the one also who first drank beyond his limit and therefore became intoxicated. So, he should only have cursed himself, his vineyard or the wine he brewed rather than Ham or even Canaan!

Jude: Wait a minute…Now I can smell the rat Kenez was referring to. How come Canaan was in the drama? Was he born by then? We were told that only ‘eight people came out from the ark namely; Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives’ … so how did Canaan jump into the picture…more so when, to-date, we are equally informed that he was the youngest? – See v.24. Who is fooling whom? Did he have children before Shem and Japheth, and if so was that in the ark? Moses and his cousins have a lot of explaining to do here! Christendom needs an authentic scripture!

Kenez:  Good thinking, good questions, … very good reasoning. I knew we would yet make a rational thinker out of you the previous fanatic. What you did just now is what I call ‘scientific analysis, keep it up!

Jideofo:  Kenez, you are now a miracle worker, the blind can eventually see! Congrats my dear Jude! My intuition; though often unreliable; tells me that story was then fabricated. One smart guy, a racist Jew must have tried to justify slavery by cooking up the whole event. Who wrote that fable? Surely the Almighty did not reveal that nepotic concoction! God did not, does not and will never create evil, originate evil nor ever condone or support evil. My friends, someone else must be found who is the culprit, who alone could have re-introduced the very crimes, sins or immorality that the Good God wanted to eradicate by killing all living things by the forty days and forty nights of flood…that’s it… an evil genius.

Jude:  If you are suggesting Noah, never forget that “Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord”, see chapter 6,vsers s 6 – 10.

Kenez: True, - but it did not state that either Noah or his wife was not a descendant of a marriage between a fallen angel and a daughter of a human being. That’s exactly the point. Refresh your minds with verses 1-7 of the same chapter you have just quoted.

Jideofo:  Are you saying that Ham was the result of a genetic load from that generation of wicked giants who corrupted the world?

Kenez:  No, - not at all …all I want you to do is to focus your minds on the issue under scrutiny and I beg everyone else reading us to concentrate on….WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF MANKIND?

In other words, the differentiation into a class serfs or slaves and another class of lords or nobles? Or in this context why did Noah curse an unborn grandson?

Jude:  Blurt it out, come straight my friend, don’t dribble us around before scoring your gaols. You are fond of putting words into people’s mouths.

Kenez:  Give me an example, - or shall we say that someone also put the wicked words of the curse into Noah’s mouth?

Jideofo:  The possibility is not farfetched…after all Noah had prayed to different gods in that his curse, ‘the lord of Shem’ that would ensure that Ham became his slave and that of Japheth, see verses; 25 –27!

Jude:  But the whole Bible is the word of God! And there is no falsehood in its narrative.

Jideofo:  He is gone blind again, the untutored fanatic in here once again. Talk of failed signs and wonders.

The earlier miracle I credited Kenez has just backfired!

Kenez:  Don’t be hard on him, let him read to our hearing those verse I just quoted in Chapter 6…revert to our favourite text—the GNB edition for clarity.

Jude:  vs. 1: When mankind had spread all over the world, and girls were being born, some of the heavenly beings saw that these girls were beautiful, so they tool the ones they liked,

Vs.3: Then the Lord said, “I will not allow people to live for ever; they are mortal. From now on they will live no longer than a hundred and twenty years.

Vs.4: In those days, and even later, there were giants on earth who were descendants of human women and the heavenly beings. They were the great heroes and famous men of long ago”

Vs. 5: When the Lord saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time,

Vs.6: He was sorry that he had ever made them and put them on earth. He was so filled with regret that he said; “I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and the birds, because I am sorry that  I made them.”

Vs. 8: But the Lord was pleased with Noah.

Jideofo:  I disagree with the wrong adjectives used there. Verse 5 in both KJV and RSV negates the connotation of ‘heroes’ and ‘famous’ inadvertently used here in GNB translation!

Kenez: That’s a cogent point but not the only error in the narrative. If you take a closer look at verse 4, you can not still be seeking for the origin of inequality in human beings, nor for the genesis of endemic human wickedness to date! No one was exempt – for verse 5 states in clear and unambiguous manner what the Lord saw that grieved his heart – not guesswork – so I begin to wonder how “Noah found favour with the Lord” or “The Lord was pleased with Noah” crept into the Bible! Did it imply that his genetic endowment and/or that of his wife had no links with the ‘cross breeding events’ narrated in verses 1 – 4? Ask geneticists of today and you are sure to be told that Noah himself definitely got his share of those genes. And unless his wife was extremely ugly she could have slept with one of them and so their sons must have inherited some of the genes of these wicked ‘sons of God’ that came down and married ‘beautiful daughters’ born to men!

Jideofo:  So my magister, what you are saying is that the genesis of ethnocentrism is the marriage of these heavenly beings that were attracted to those beautiful daughters of men!

Kenez:  No! That is only a part of it! What grades of  “sons of God” would abadon their angelic pedestals and seduce primitive damsels just because they were ‘beautiful’…if not the disciples of Lucifer, the Satan who before now had impregnated Eve the bethroded wife of Adam? Review our thesis in the first volume of ANGELIC VERSES; chapter 6, copyrighted in 2002!

Jude:  ‘Non sequittor’ - I disagree, there are no connections, the logic does not follow…

Jideofo:  Save your breath, religious fanatic. What do you know about logic, syllogisms or even the Latin language that emboldens you to challenge the erudite scholar, Kenez? Oya – tell us what you believe should follow, -may be according to what you were spoon-fed by your half-baked pastors and impotent evangelists! Is it that your great grandfather was cursed by Noah, that God approved his curses, and so you are a truly a descendant of Canaan, a cursed great grandfather, who was a slave to both Shem and Japheth?

Kenez: That’s too much, … he may have better ideas.

Jude:  Let’s jump over to Chapter 11, verses 5–9; may reveal something you might cherish:

Vs.5: Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built, and he said, “Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want.

Vs. 7: “Let us go down and mix up their language so they will ot understand one another."

Vs.8: So the Lord scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city.

My argument is that ethnicity started from there, one language being the first unification tool for all ethnocentric ventures. Artefacts, norms and mores come later to make up the list of anthropological or sociological traits of the unique culture that really distinguishes it in a comity of nations.

Jideofo:  ‘Bene cucurristi, sed extra viam.’- meaning –‘you have run well, but outside the way’ which on Olympic parlance translates that you cannot win a race when you have run outside the official tracks. You ran outside your recognised track in the race, and even if you outran every other athlete, you are disqualified and so cannot get the gold medal. 

Jude: I can’t see your analogy…

Kenez:  Because you not grounded in basic logic. You have forgotten the topic under scrutiny, which is; “ARE ALL MEN BORN EQUAL?” not do all men speak the same language. We shall delve into the principles of racism or ethnocentrism later.

Jideofo:  Speaking scientifically, we may assert that at birth all babies are born equal – by that I mean - we all came into the world naked, helpless, we cried, we depended on our mothers and relatives to survive – to that extent, we are born equal but I doubt the equality of creation. All men may be equal anatomically but not so physiologically. Creation is a different kettle of fish. The genetic endowment of a dwarf is definitely not equal to that of a giant, nor is that of a genius same as that of a moron, nor that of a sprinter same as that of a cripple, though their anatomy may look very similar externally! On this level I can safely posit that  ‘All are born equal…but not created equal.’ QED

Kenez:  I will endorse your proposition only on one premise, it is nurture that amplifies nature. Parentage introduces inequalities –yes – but has any baby more then 46 chromosomes at conception? The answer is NO! By God’s creative power, the gonads through the process of meiotic division reduce the somatic cell structure of 46 to 23 chromosomes to form the spermatozoon in the male and the ovum in the female. During sexual intercourse fertilisation occurs and the diploid number of 46 chromosomes is re-established, thereafter giving every foetus a gestation period of nine months plus or minus a few weeks before the birth of a newborn human being! Any deviation from this will not give a normal human embryo. Either 45 or 47 would result in what all natural, social and medical scientists regard as a birth defect; the commonest abnormality in the literature being TRISONOMY 21, wherein an extra chromosome results in the baby having 47 chromosomes.

Jideofo: Yes, so you agree with 100% that all men are only born equal physiologically but not all are created equal biologically! Mutations and accidents are part and parcel of the creative power of the Almighty, just as fraternal and identical twins are! So, my thesis holds tightly. QED! I rest my case here!

Jude:  Okay, class dismiss- but note that equality at creation remains to be cracked. I still hold that God does not create a defective being, see Genesis 1 verse 31, in NIV or KJV or RSV: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.” I did not add or subtract; “very good” does not suggest birth defects! Moreover, GNB our preferred version renders that verse this way; ‘ God looked at everything he had made ands He was very pleased.” Could he or anyone else be pleased if the product was/is defective? No! So, my dear friends, we need a recess and when next we meet, we must adduce evidence to establish any inequality in creation!

Kenez:  I accept the challenge. I hope to do some real homework, consult my seniors or visit some libraries. Jideofo, do not go to sleep yet - the nut has not been cracked conclusively. It’s never over until it is really over! For example, take this teaser as we disperse, - These birth defects that we observe in humans, do they also occur in other species of creation, like in bacteria, viruses, ants, reptiles, amphibians, birds, fishes, herbivores and carnivores?

Jideofo:  I accept the challenge – our next title shall then be phrased in this way: “THE SOURCE OF BIRTH DEFECTS IN HUMANS.” Or put it in a much simpler phraseology: “Are some humans predestined to be more equal than others?”

Jude:  That’s begging the question, I suggest “THE ORIGIN OF DISABLILTIES IN NATURE” so as to truly examine the other animate beings suggested by Kenez. Alternatively, “who messed up God’s creation?” or better still “Aberrations in Nature, whose handiwork?”

Kenez:  Good day gentle boys, since you are not yet men! More insight as you go home!

Jideofo:  There goes the chief of all clowns, the court jester par excellence! At age forty, he still wants to be mistaken for a twenty-year-old. Congrats my dear! But any sycophant won’t fool me, more so when it happens to be a learned comic, a lapoonist of the first class order and a satirist all rolled into one guru, often mistakenly called --- Kenez!

                C H A P T E R     T W O

 

ABERRATIONS IN NATURE, WHOSE HANDIWORK

Jude:  Good day gentlemen, are we ready to solve the vexed problem of inequalities in men? If anyone has an answer, let him table it for our breakfast! Or else..

 

Jideofo:   The little I know is that all children are not endowed equally from the moments of their births! That is to say, some are disadvantaged right from their first second, first minute, first hour and their first day on planet earth! Before educated couples marry these days they usually go to medical laboratories for blood screening. This is followed by genetical counselling---why all the trouble? They want to have real answers to questions like these: Can all be well for our offspring if we go ahead and marry? Shall we give birth to sickle cell anaemic children? Will they have cleft palates, or be deaf and dumb?  Bo--oh, the questions are myriad but let me state just a few I read from a booklet entitled “AM I QUALIFIED FOR MARRIAGE” a Kihol Publication of 1995 pages 14 – 16. For want of time I will only quote verbatim the first paragraph on page 5: 

             “ The point to note, however is WHY the rule excluding blood relatives in marriage is enforced. It is to exclude all those genetically inherited diseases that children born by close blood relatives often have. Some of these congenital illnesses, defects or diseases are: albinism, cleft palate, clubfoot, colour blindness, Down’s syndrome, dwarfism, harelip, haemophilia, Huntington’s chorea, hydrocephaly, Klinefelter’s syndrome, leukaemia, Marfan’s syndrome, microcephaly, mongolism and Mongolian idiocy” etc.

Let’s stop here for now. I am fully supported by very erudite scientists, and I believe I have made my point!

 

Jude:  That’s not the end of the list then, but definitely these are only due to gene mutations which is known to occur naturally.

 

Kenez:  Wrong –I disagree there – an error, a mistake, an accident, or a defect is never a natural occurrence – even the English Language recognises that – otherwise these words should never have been invented in the first place.

 

Jideofo:  Credo – in aeternum – my magister. Jude thinks that illnesses are natural, yet he goes to a doctor when he is sick. Why not wait until nature cures you! Why complain at all? If all I have listed are natural, why does science seek for their remedies? And as long as theologians posit that God is an Omniscient and Infallible Creator, then birth defects are no accidents!

Kenez, are you still here with us?

Jude:  The instinct of self-preservation, which again is natural – ‘survival’ is the name of the game, friend! See what Job said in GNB, Chapter 14, verses 1-6:

1.     “We are all born weak and helpless,

      All lead the same short, troubled life,

2.     “We grow and wither as quickly as flowers,

       We disappear like shadows.

3.     “Will you even look at me, God,

      Or put me on trial and judge me?

4.     “Nothing clean can ever come

      From any thing as unclean as man

5.     “The length of his life is decided beforehand.

       The number of months he will live,

      You have settled it, and it can’t be changed

6.     “Look away from him and leave him alone

Let him enjoy his hard life - if he can.”

Kenez:  Congrats Jude , thanks for reminding me of that passage – It’s very pertinent here…

Jideofo:  Pertinent? That’s an understatement. It’s evidently the final nail on the coffin of our argument on the inequality in creation. Even the blind can see that! Can anyone give some other counter?

Kenez:  Wait a minute – re-read only verse one – that’s proof enough of equality!

Jideofo:  Yes, but equality of birth not of creation – you must separate the two! Diogenes knew that much, so also did Joshua, the son of Sirach and King Solomon – who in his Book of Wisdom, (found only in the complete editions of the Bible with apocrypha) stated in Chapter 7, vv. 1 - 6:

1: “Like every human being I am mortal. I am a descendant of that first man who was made from the soil.

2:  “I was conceived from the sperm of a man, in the pleasure of intercourse. For nine months my flesh took shape in the blood of my mother’s womb.

3.  “ When I was born, I came into the world like anyone else. I began to breathe the same air we all breathe; and like everyone else, the first sound I made was a cry.

4.  “ I was wrapped in cloths and cared for.

5.  “No king ever began life differently.

6.     “For all of us, there is one way into life, and there is one way out.”

And having heard from the wisest man that God ever bestowed with stupendous insight, just for the asking-- he only prayed for it and his request was granted—

I rest my case that equality is only at birth!

Jude:  But for want of time and space, I would have requested you to go ahead and read out to our hearing Sirach 33,vv: 10 – 15 as well as Job 14, vv: 1 – 22, so that we compare notes. Dear readers, make out time to peruse the two references. Search for or seek out the complete Bible edition with deuterocanonical books, and get the full message of wise men hidden therein!

Kenez:  Jideofo and Jude, have you studied the book of Ecclesiastes credited to the same King Solomon that you have just quoted? Will someone be kind enough to read out Chapter 9 in its entirety or for brevity concentrate only on verses 7 – 12:

Jude:  I am reading from GNB version;

v.7: “Go ahead-eat your food and be happy, drink your wine and be cheerful, it’s all right with God.

v.8:  “Always look happy and cheerful.

v.9:  “Enjoy life with the woman you love, as long as you live the useless life that God has given you in this world. Enjoy every useless day of it, because that is all you all you will get for all your trouble.

v.10: “Work hard at whatever you do, because there will be no action, no thought, no knowledge, no wisdom in the world of the dead – and that is where you are going.

v. 11: “I realised another thing, that in this world fast runners do not always win the race, and the brave do not always win the battle. Wise men do not always earn a living, intelligent men do not always get rich, and capable men do not always rise to high positions. Bad luck happens to everyone.

v.12:  “You never know when your time is coming. Like birds suddenly caught in a trap, like fish caught in a net, we are trapped at some evil moment when we least expect it.”

Kenez:    The raison d’être for my requesting this very passage is to call our attention to the fact that LUCK or call it FORTUNE or MISFORTUNE is part and parcel of nature.  Therefore, ill health, disease, birth defects – could equally be due to the game of chance.  Who knows when, where, how and the methodology of death?  Only God programmes and executes death!

Jude: Thank you Kenez – even our good friend has failed to realise that life itself is useless in another bible translation – Solomon uses the word ‘VANITY OF VANITIES’ – even our privilege of rationalising on this knotty discourse proves Solomon right when he said in Chapter 12 verse 12:

   v.12 “My son, there is something else to watch out  for.  There is no end to the writing of books, and too much study will wear you out”.   

Kenez: I disagree with that.  It does not come into the picture of what we are doing now – we are enjoying ourselves – using our God given talents to decipher the origin of ambiguities in nature, and verse 10 – of the passage I quoted says;    

  v.10 – Work hard at whatever you do, ….

Jideofo:  Thank you my dear Kenez – you rescued us. I thought Jude was bringing our delightful discussion to an abrupt end.  Let’s see Sirach, since all of you now want to become masters of the sacred writings of Jewish Scholars – who composed a lot of legends, folk tales and ballads and left same to us as revealed truths: See Sirach 33 verses 10 – 15:

v.10: “Every human being was made from the  

earth, just as Adam was

v.11: “But the Lord, in His wisdom made them all different, and gave them different tasks.

v.12: “He blessed some, making them honoured and holy, keeping them near Him.  Others He cursed humbling them and removing them from their positions.

v. 13: “Just as clay is in the potter’s hands for him to shape as be pleases, so we are in the hands of our Creator for Him to do with as He wishes.

v. 14: “Good is the opposite of evil, life is the opposite of death. And sin is the opposite of devotion to the Lord.

v. 15: “Think about it.  The Most High has made everything in pairs, each thing the opposite of something else.”

My interest in that passage is verses 12 & 13 – so we are created unequal but born in the same way!  Being born equal, as Solomon depicted, does not, has not, and will never equate to being created equal in all respects.  Some are born blind, some are born lame, some are born deaf and dumb, So … you….

Kenez:  Wait a minute – you have struck a chord there – William Shakespeare also has this:

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them”.

I think that settles the matter!

   

Jude:   No, it doesn’t – in literature, the artiste or dramatist is only reprimanding the society with sarcasm, thereby cautioning or philosophising some negatives in life. He did not write those lines to praise anyone – but to state that some leaders did not merit their positions – except the second classification – namely the achievers.

 

Kenez: Suppose I prove that inherited illnesses dispose of those assertions – will you surrender?

 

Jude + Jideofo: Yeah – just perform the feat!

 

Kenez:   You remember I promised to do some homework at the end of our last session! Well I hope both of you and our dearest readers will have the patience to listen to two Professors of Paediatrics enumerate some of the chromosomal abnormalities that are well documented in medicine. This I got from a current publication entitled “ATLAS OF PEDIATRIC PHYSICAL DIAGNOSIS” Ó 1999, Mosby Book Inc. USA.

 

But first what is a chromosome?  “It is a thread-like helix of gene carrying DNA that carries the important information for inheritance from parents to offspring.  The normal number is 46 in every cell of the parent, but this is halved at meiotic cell division to reduce it to 23 in the sperm and 23 in the ovum so as to have the diploid number 46 regained at conception.  Any error or defect in this normal procedure definitely results in chromosome abnormalities.”

Jude:   Why should abnormalities occur at all, the arithmetic is simple: 23 + 23 = 46. So where does the problem arise?

Jideofo:   Don’t interrupt the lecture – exercise some patience as a mature philosopher and reserve your ‘bullets for the battle’ after the goods have been off-loaded.

Kenez: Yes, let us consult Professors Basil J. Zitelli and Holly W. Davis of Pittsburgh School of Medicine first, later we pick up our gauntlets!

“An abnormality in chromosome number less than an even multiple of 23 is called ANEUPLOIDY – when 45 or 47 occurs – which maybe due to incomplete division in gametes i.e. meiotic division, non-disjunction or anaphase lag.  With subsequent pregnancies, the risk for more chromosomally deformed offspring is increased to 1 – 2%.  The source of the problem is obscure yet the couple needs antenatal diagnostic counselling.  Mixed chromosomal state is called MOSAICISM and cannot be inherited because it usually occurs after conception i.e. during later mitotic multiplication of cells – not a meiotic division.

 

At least 25% and perhaps as many as 40% of all pregnancies terminate in spontaneous abortion.  Most of such abortions are so early in gestation that pregnancy is not even recognised.  On the average, in 50% of all spontaneous abortion, the embryo is chromosomally abnormal with TRIPLOIDY (69 chromosomes), TRISOMY 16, and 45 x 0,  being by far the most common findings.  Stillborn and perinatal deaths take care of the rest” pp 3 – 4 ZITELLI & DAVIS, 1999.

 

Now that we can understand problems in chromosomes, let us see the various birth defects in medical literature.  I hope you are not already getting bored?

 

Jideofo:  Who cares – if Jude has ever read any medical science – then he could be, but I am certain that all you are quoting are first hand information to him – and an elaboration for me – Fire on – my dearest magister!

Jude: Well, I grant him that assertion.  I am eager to know more these abnormalities – please carry on!

Kenez:   So, my friend ARE WE CREATED EQUAL? By the end of the enumeration of the myriad of birth defects, which result from these chromosomal abnormalities, we shall have enough data to conclude the argument.  On  pp 5 – 15, Zitteli & Davis list these:

1.     “DOWN SYNDROME:

The world-wide incidence of Down syndrome among liveborn is 1 in every 700, with 45% of affected individuals being born to women over 35 years of age with MENTAL RETARDATION, TRISONOMIES 13 & 18 etc being major features e.g.

CRYPTORCHIDISM in males; malformed, prominent occiput, cleft lip and/or palate, micrognathia, microphthalmos, coloboma of iris, short sternum, rocker-bottom feet, congenital heart disease, scalp defects of skin, flexion deformities of fingers, polydactyly, hypoplasia of nails, hypertonia in infancy, apneiic spells in infancy, midline brain defects, persistence of HgbF, and horse kidneys being the commonest physical abnormalities.

                                  NB: A total of 23 possible combinations!

2.     KLINFELTER SYNDROME:

Another abnormality, which at one extreme has the EUNCHOID MAN with a small penis and GYECOMASTIA at the opposite extreme, is the virile MESOMORPH with a normal penis.  The KARYOTYPE is XXY in 80% and 20% in MOSAIC type XY/XXY – chromosome error in ooegenesis or spermatogenesis being the main deficiency.

 

 

                               NB: Another group of five possible abnormalities 

 

 

3.  MOLECULAR CYTOGENIC SYNDROMES:

 

 (a) Fragile X syndrome; - long wide and protruding ears – in some specimen, elongated face and/or flattened nasal bridge; in others, MACROCHIDISM in some adult men caused by interstitial testicular oedema.   

 

(b) Imprinting Syndromes; -classically represented by PRADER-WILLI and ANGELMAN syndrome marked by obesity with excess fat distributed over trunk, buttocks and proximal extremities, small hands and feet, in addition to hypoplastic penis and scrotum.  Maxillary hypoplasia, large mouth (often with protruding tongue) and prognathism.

 

 

                                NB: Another set of twelve abnormalities!

Are you all still following the references from the paediatric encyclopaedia? And finally to round up this inexhaustive list, we have;

 

4.      CHROMOSOMAL-LIKE SYNDROMES: –

 

(a) SMITH-LEMI-OPITZ – Such as anteverted nostrils, low set ears, small chin and clenched hand; or HYPOSPADIAS, CRYPTORCHIDISM, or AMBIGUOUS GENITALIA.

(b) CHARGE – association – as represented by small left eyes with ptosis; low set posteriorly rotated anomalous auricles; and small chin. Another demonstration is a child born with broad forehead, widespread eyes with narrow palpebral fissures, hypoplastic right nares, low sit ears and bow mouth.

(c) VATER – association.

(d) CORNELIA de LANGE syndrome – as seen with heavy eyebrows with developing synphrys, long eyelashes, small upturned nose, long philtrum and small mouth with thin lips, or a child with small hands, hypoplastic proximally placed thumbs, and small fifth finger with mild clinodactyly.

(e) NOONAN syndrome – which shares many clinical features with TURNER syndrome as represented by children born with LYMPHEDEMA of the hands and feet and later in infancy develop a webbed neck… and lastly, for now,

(f) FOETAL ALCOHOL syndrome – which occurs in children born to alcoholic parents which manifest with poorly formed philtrum, folds and mild ptosis; hirsute forehead; short nose and relatively thin upper lip.”

 ©1997: For all these medical references we remain grateful to MOSBY- YEARBOOK INC., 11830 Westline Industrial Drive, St. Louis, MISSOURI 63146, U.S.A. An encyclopaedic colour book for paediatricians with over 2248 illustrations

Another summation of more than 20 abnormalities, although one can argue that the last one has a known origin, namely ALCOHOLISM.

Jideofo: Congratulations, my dear Kenez, - all you have done so far, thanks to Professors Zitelli and Davis, is to support my the thesis. A summation of 23+5+12+20 possible birth defects gives a grand total of sixty observable birth defects in infants alone. When you add this to other genetical deformities due to radiation and mutations, all go to support my assertion that all of us are not created equal despite the fact that we may be born in the same manner! QED

Jude:  I beg to disagree - the issue here is WOULD AN INVENTOR DELIBERATELY PRODUCE A DEFECTIVE PRODUCT? Why can’t we just rationalise and pin down the source of these abnormalities now, rather than ascribing all of them to the Infinite Good; an All –Knowing, Powerful and Benevolent God! I still stand firm on my thesis that GOD DID NOT, HAS NEVER and WILL NEVER CREATE A DEFECTIVE BEING!

Kenez:  My dear Jude, I share your anxieties, but the facts before us suggest the opposite. See SIRACH we had quoted earlier, he contends that we are as clay in a potter’s hands – so how valid is his statement? Your Christian faith compels you to accept it as the Word of God, doesn’t it? So, may be we all should tag along with the sage!

Jideofo:  Valid 100%! The wise grandson of King Solomon’s secretary translated his memoirs accurately. It is only God, who creates, and therefore newborn babies are his brand new creatures. In addition, if they are defective, then He chose to create them that way, and we humans can not query Him nor change it. All we can attempt is to decipher why – or else hold our peace, period!

Kenez:  My dear Jude, can we conclude this session of our youthful exuberations and disperse to engage in some other more enterprising business, shall we?

 

Jude:  No! Come along with me to Luke 13: 10 – 17, and please take a special note of verse 16; (GNB edition);

v.10: One Sabbath Jesus was teaching in a synagogue.

v.11: A woman there had an evil spirit that had made her ill for eighteen years, she was bent over and could not straighten up at all.

v.12: When Jesus saw her, he called out to her, “Woman you are free from your illness!”

v.13: He placed his hands on her, and at once she straightened herself up and praised God.

v.14: The official of the synagogue was angry that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, so he spoke up and said to the people “ There are six days in which we should work, so come during those days and be healed, but not on the Sabbath!”

v.15: The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Any one of you would untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and take it out to give it water on the Sabbath.

v.16: Now here is this descendant of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen years  should she not be released on the Sabbath?”

v.17: His answer made his enemies ashamed of themselves, while the people rejoiced over all the wonderful things that he did.”

Kenez:  Excellent Jude, give me your hands, you are a good fighter! I love that spirit! However, did you note that Jewish leaders saw his miracles as ‘work’! In other words, Jesus was a healer working on a Sabbath to earn money or applause! This wicked generation called the Jews; can they ever change?

Jideofo:  Kenez, you disappoint me. You are asking for the moon. Change? How can? They were created that way from Adam! To date, they call Jesus their brother and we, foolish idolaters worshipping their cousin while they worship the true God in heaven!

Kenez: Of course they are very correct there, but let’s not digress…Joo-oh…Jude’s quotation only reminds me of another miracle that truly states unequivocally that Satan or his demons are responsible for ill health, deformities and all diseases. Read Matthew 17: 14 – 21, also corroborated in Mark 9: 14 – 29 and then confirmed in Luke 9: 37 – 43; subtitled:

JESUS HEALS A BOY WITH A DEMON

v.14 When they returned to the crowd, a man came to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said “Sir, have mercy on my son! He is an epileptic and has such terrible fits that he often falls in the fire or into water.

v.16: I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”

v.17: Jesus answered, “How unbelieving and wrong you people are! How long do I have to put up with you? Bring the boy here to me!”

v.18: Jesus gave a command to the demon, and it went out of the boy, and at that very moment he was healed.

v.19: Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked him, “Why couldn’t we drive the demon out?”

v.20: “It was because you haven’t enough faith”, answered Jesus. “I assure you that if you have faith as big as a mustard seed, you can say to this hill ‘Go from here to there!’ and it will go. You could do anything!”

Jideofo:  Very nice quotations, sure, but why are cripples, blind, deaf and dumb people still around us today – what are all the crusade preachers/pastors waiting for? On the other hand, are they fakes and/or Satan’s disciples in garbs of lions?  If Satan and his demons make all diseases, then God’s creative monopoly is in real trouble! In addition, what is the need of seeking help from medical doctors in teaching hospitals or clinics?

Jude: Relent my friend – even Chris did not heal every one in his days, only those who had faith in him were healed!

Jideofo: You are begging the question – the issue here is – what is the source of birth defects, chromosomal abnormalities or genetically inherited and incurable diseases? Not miracles. Mind you, just like the healing of the woman of 18 years spinal cord paralysis, the raising of Lazarus in John’s gospel; both are not corroborated anywhere in the whole bible. No, not even in the other gospels or in any of the epistles! Theologians are to date, querying the authenticity of the narratives. There are many such examples!

Kenez:  My philosopher friend and colleague give up your pride. Read Genesis 1: 26 – 31 which Jude had quoted and read out to our hearing before, and take particular note of verse 31:

v.31  “and God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was good" (NIV, KJV, and RSV rendition)

but in GNB it is rendered thus:

v.31: “God looked at everything he had made, and He was very pleased.”

Both quotations do not suggest any defectiveness or sub-standard products. Therefore, our readers and our very revered pastors should offer us solutions. We must find out, fathom or decipher the origin of defects in nature, rather than ascribing everything to God, the Almighty Everlasting and Ever loving Father, who could not have created defective beings!

Jideofo:  So whose handiwork are these defective live births, these chromosomal abnormalities, ulcer, polio, epilepsy, stroke/paralysis, mental illness, venereal diseases and the most current pandemic HIV and its cousin AIDS?

Kenez:  Genesis 3:verse 15 states clearly the origin of deformities, diseases and the perennial enmity between the offspring of Eve and the offspring of the Snake. And if that is not proof enough for your heretical appetite then turnover to Genesis 6: 1 – 8, noting specifically verse 4 which points out the source of mosaic chromosomes, mixed genetic inheritance.

       It was and still is the unholy marriages between the sons of Satan, and the beautiful daughters of men. Those fallen sons of God (Job 1: vv. 6 - 7) were very lustful angels and so corrupted the gene load of the human race hence the deleterious effects are still on in our own generation!

     Finally, move fast to Job 1: 8 – 12, and turn over to Job 2: 1 –10; noting specifically verse 7, and you learn that God permits Satan to tempt us and that he actually brings on physical sores, leprosy and such other deadly diseases on mankind.

   

Jude:  Well spoken, my dear Kenez – Jideofo needs to learn that Satan is a Prince! He is a divine son of God who has been given the portfolio of causing distress on us all, inflicting diseases and birth defects on the offspring of Eve – who ate the forbidden fruit and got us all into these problems!  

 

Jideofo:  So, what two of you want me to believe is that GOD CREATES and SATAN RE-CREATES.  Who created Satan?  Who allowed him to live?  Whose son is he?  In addition, who permits him to cause us all this problems?  The buck stops at God’s table -– my friends – just surrender and accept what the sage Sirach said “we are like clay in the hands of a potter” “and He does whatever He likes to the clay.” PERIOD!  ALL MEN ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL, QED!

*NOTA BENE:

 THE CHEFS THAT BAKED THIS HOT CAKE DO NOT HOLD BRIEFS FOR ANY RELIGIOUS OR PHILOSOPHICAL ORGANISATIONS, BUT ARE ONLY RELAYING INFORMATION GATHERED OVER THEIR SHORT SPANS OF LIVES IN A CONFUSED WORLD COMPETING IN RELIGIOUS CRUSADE, JIHAD AND PENTECOSTALISM BEREFT OF RATIONAL DIALOGUE, THUS INVITING YOU TO STEP OUT OF THE CROWD OF FOLLOWERS AND THINK FOR YOURSELF!

C H A P T E R   T H R E E

 

BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ETHNOCENTRISM

Jude:   Welcome to another round of discourse, friends; but I must not fail to state that I suffered intellectual indigestion after our last bout of argumentation. Jideofo, assuming you won the last session, would you suggest that God approves of APARTHEID, RACISM, SLAVERY, or simply call it ETHNOCENTRISM?

Jideofo:  Are you setting a trap for me? And if so, you have the ‘wrongest’ person in the world! If I get you right you are asking, ‘why do we have racial and ethnic prejudices?’ Is that it? I shall not be a prey in that debacle …hmn…

Kenez:  Shall we say then that you are afraid to justify your last thesis, since it is only a follow-up!

Jideofo:  There were no such implications during the last debate. This is illogical. I am only being wary since only fools walk where angels are afraid to tiptoe!

Kenez:  Then you agree that we need to x-ray the origin, development, maintenance and the propagation of racist ideas, notions, thoughts and its ‘pros’ and ‘cons’; in order to settle the topic for today’s debate, namely: THE BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ETHNOCENTRISM.

 

Jideofo:  Oh yes, God did that too. Why did He choose a particular race to be his favoured children? He didn’t stop there but went ahead and pampered and over-protected them although they behaved like prostitutes all the while?

Jude:  It is only a claim that the Jews make, however, mind your language!

Jideofo:  Whose words were recorded in Jeremiah Chapter 3, verse 1: sub-titled thus in GNB edition:

                    UNFAITHFUL ISRAEL

v.1 “The Lord says; ‘If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife, he cannot take her back again. This would completely defile the land. But Israel, you have had many lovers, and now you want to return to me?”

 

Jude:  No one called Israel a prostitute in that passage…or am I blind?

 

Jideofo:  What is an unfaithful wife? Okay, see vv.19 and 20 of the same chapter:

v.19:  “The Lord says: ‘Israel, I wanted to accept you as my son, and give you a delightful land, the most beautiful land in all the world. I wanted you to call me, Father, and never again turn away from me.

v.20: But like an unfaithful wife, you have not been faithful to me. I, the Lord have spoken.”

Jude:  ‘An unfaithful wife’ is neither a ‘prostitute’ nor a ‘harlot’… so where is your condemnation?

Kenez:  Jude, my dear, stop your sophistry, I am quite sure you understood what Jideofo has been saying. It’s a matter of loose translations, call it variations in different bible editions. Now, read from KJV or RSV, and you shall find the term ‘harlot’ used severally. And a harlot is a prostitute. Moreover, a promiscuous wife is also a harlot! To confirm my judgement of this issue, read 1^st Esdras Chapter 1, verses 48 – 58 and witness the various reasons why God referred to Israel as a prostitute!

Jideofo:  Thank you – my magister – once again for coming to my rescue. The problem with all religious fanatics is that they quarrel over what they are neither sure of nor are they ready to listen and rationalise! Now, Jude read out the reference that Kenez has just given, please.

Jude:  I will gladly do so. Hand over the RSV bible to me. Jeremiah 3:1; “ If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s wife will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the harlot with many lovers; and would you return to me? Says the Lord.

And verse 20 states thus: “Surely, as a faithless wife leaves her husband, so have you been faithless to me, O house of Israel, says the Lord”

And KJV translates the same passage in this way:

v.20: “Surely as a wife treacherously departed from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the Lord.”

Jideofo:  “Thank you Jude, whereas RSV uses the term ‘faithless wife’ KJV changes that to ‘treacherous’-both refer to infidelity, don’t they? The point I am making is that despite God’s love for Israel, they were more disobedient, more foolish and more idolatrous than other nations God ever dealt with! Yet, THEY WERE THE ONES THAT INTRODUCED SEMITISM, the mother of ANTI-SEMITISM which gave birth to all racial prejudices. Adolph Hitler amplified its theory and delegated Adolph Eichmann who implemented its practice. Therefore, Israelites manufactured ‘racism’ when their leader Moses introduced the twin terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Gentile’. Have I not satisfied your demand, Kenez?

Kenez:  You have, more grease to your kneecaps!

Jude:  So, where does all these vituperations lead to?

 

Jideofo:  To the fact that God introduced the idea of a special breed of mankind, ‘a chosen race’ which led to the dichotomies we now have; slaves and owners, white and black, nobles and serfs, majority and minority groups, ethnic prejudices and jealousies, apartheid and racism! The list is inexhaustible. We owe it all to segregationist concepts and practices introduced by the Israelites who claim that God authorised them all!

Kenez:  Let us read Genesis 12:1–3: subtitled;

GOD’S CALL TO ABRAHAM

“v.1: The Lord said to Abram; “Leave your country, your relations, and your father’s home, and go to a land that I am going to show you.

“v.2: I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will b a blessing.

“v.3: I will bless those who bless you. But I will curse those who curse you. And through you I will bless all the nations”.

Jude, our dear ‘theologian’ and ‘defender of the faith’ or ‘the bible scholar’, please explain to us the import or implications of those apartheid statements credited to the Almighty God by Jewish scribes, authors or writers. Take cognisance of verse 3 in all its ramifications, please be objective!

Jude:  I had never thought about nor analysed the contents of that verse before, but now, I will give it my best shots!

I.                   Abram was to exile himself – avoid his own blood relatives and sojourn wherever the Lord led him to settle.

II.                Out of him, the Lord will raise or breed a whole nation that would be famous and pleasing to Himself (the Lord).

III.             The Lord will bless those who blessed this nation – the descendants of this Abram – and equally curse those who may lift a finger against that nation.

IV.             The Lord needs the fulfilment of this plan of His before He will bless all the other nations through the favour obtained from Abram’s blessing.

Kenez:  So you see, my friend - the seeds of racial prejudice were sown at the call of Abram, according to your belief system that accepts everything in the bible as the word of God! You may now understand what Jideofo was trying to state earlier.

Jideofo:  Let him also read vv. 6 – 7 and later verse 17 of the same chapter and you will see that God had already started implementing the uncalled-for racial discrimination!

Jude:  I am reading from the GNB;

v.6: When they arrived in Canaan, Abram travelled through the land until he came to the sacred tree of Moreh, the holy place at Shechem, (at that time the Canaanites were still living in the land)

v.7:  The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him; “This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants” Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Jideofo:  Please continue down ---read verse 17

Jude:  “v.17 But because the King had taken Sarai, the Lord sent terrible diseases on him and on the people of his palace.”

Jideofo:  Can’t you see the injustices perpetrated in those narratives? Please let someone tell me that this Lord is not God the Creator, or else explain

I.                   Why a whole country was decimated to make room for the descendants of the favoured Abram. Read Psalm 135, vv. 8 – 12. In addition, witness the red carpet welcome for returnee slaves from Egypt.

II.                What was wrong in a King marrying the beautiful sister of a stranger who had just arrived in his country? See the dowry he paid in verse16! Is it a crime to aspire to becoming an in-law to Abram?

III.             Why should ‘a terrible disease’ be sent to an innocent King and the entire royal household who thought that he was legally married to the sister of Abram, the deceiver!

So, why should and how can I believe that ‘what’ or ‘whoever’ appeared to Abram was the very same Almighty God the Creator of Heaven and Earth – the Most Benevolent, Just and All- Knowing Father and the Greatest Good?

Kenez:   Good question! I never thought of it that way. Really, there could have been a deliberate confabulation in the historical records handed down. Now, let’s see. The last part of verse 7 says;

“Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.”

Again, verse 6 emphatically stated that a place was ‘holy’ and a tree was equally ‘sacred’ before the arrival of Abram! So I wonder – if “a sacred tree of Moreh” existed before Abram arrived, and “the holy place at Shechem” preceded Abram’s arrival, what or who made them ‘sacred and holy’?

Jideofo:  God the Almighty Creator did, the One who spoke to Noah, made those places holy and sacred; not the egocentric and parochial god that appeared to Abram which his descendants claim ownership of! Jewish writers who misappropriated the Almighty and confused us with their skewed history had all along confused the issue!

Jude:  Yes now I can appreciate your line of reasoning. How can the Almighty God who blessed Adam and Eve – and all the things He had created, turn around in Chapter 12 of the same Genesis and curse or punish the household of a descendant of the same Adam? The King was also a descendant of Adam through a great grandson Noah; so how can he be punished unjustly over a lie told and lived by Abram, whereas he had paid the required dowry to marry ‘his sister’ legally?

Kenez:  You have a point there, and welcome to the light of reason. Fanaticism doesn’t pay, you know. Jideofo had all along been very persistent that some mischief was lurking around. Now we are beginning to see the value of his probing mind. Philosophers are good at making us query some traditions or false legends we have swallowed or accepted without the benefit of rationalisation! Let us try to assist Jideofo.

I.                   Who was this god that appeared to Abram?

II.                Was Abram not a pagan or ‘a gentile’ at the material time?

III.             Had there been any convenant or circumcision before this appearance ordering a sojourn to an unknown land?

IV.            If Abram’s father was Terah, a descendant of Shem, at what point did he become blessed?

V.               Was building an altar not a pagan rite to this personal god to demonstrate a dedication of self and so ensure protection?

VI.            Could the Supreme God of Infinite Justice patronise Abram’s deceit and punish an innocent King who paid a dowry?

Jude:   You do not need to monopolise the questions my dear Kenez, let me come in here;

I.                   Can this ‘god’ of Abram be the same as the One all human beings pray to today?

II.                Did other nations pray to that ‘god’ of Abram or to God the Creator?

III.             At what point did the God of Adam, the God of Abel, the God of Enoch, the God of Noah and the God of Shem, Japheth and Ham transfigure or transform into  ‘a god of injustice’! One that could exterminate the owners of a land in order to give it to his choice worshipper?

IV.            Can this god who could disinherit a whole nation, nay nations, destroy all men, women, children and animals in order to make room for a pampered, over-indulged and rebellious descendants of his chosen Abram be the same as the God that we pray to today?

Jideofo:  Thank you my dearest and enlightened friends. Read Genesis 9:1-17 and you will note that God the Creator did not need a pagan ritual of splitting into halves any animals to make a convenant! Unlike the ‘pagan god of Abram’ that demanded paganism in Genesis 15: 1-21. Is the Almighty Creator a scavenger that eats decaying meat as the narrative suggests? No! In summary, therefrom, it is crystal-clear that dogmas and doctrines have deceived us, the so-called Gentiles, for too long. We have been imprisoned all our lives by early Jewish forgeries and fables cleverly sandwiched into the bible! It is time to wake up! Good Morning to all rationalists. Babylonian captivity of the Israelites many years later was right then, since Abram’s descendants were naturally taken back to where he migrated from!

Jude:  Correct, Ur was the hometown of Abram, a town in the province of Babylon. Remember that ‘Babylon’ is derived from ‘Babbles’ the ‘mixed tongues’ that scattered human beings all over the face of the earth. You can at this point refresh your minds by re-reading Genesis 11: 5 – 9! In addition, it was the last known habitation of all peoples of the earth that descended from Noah after the flood. And the first and last place where all humans only spoke and understood one language, had equal rights and were united in executing many projects, the last of which was the ‘Tower of Babel’!

Jideofo:  So my friends, was it the same Almighty God who took care of Noah and his three sons that later turned into a “personalised god” of this pagan Abram?  Alternatively, shall we say that God Almighty became human and then made the same human errors of judgement as Noah made when he wrongfully cursed the descendants of Ham his youngest son?

**For details of the demerits of that one act in a fit of unwarranted rage, readers who have not had the singular opportunity of reading ANGELIC VERSES – VOLUME ONE will not benefit much from this volume. Get a personal copy and digest it, that was where we did a thorough job on the injustice of a drunkard cursing an innocent grandchild, not his own son who was the ‘culprit’. We discussed who truly were the descendants of Ham!

Kenez:  I cannot comprehend how a narrative of the whole creation was hijacked by a small fraction of a race of humankind who could not even fight their own battles. They went ahead and turned a genuine record of human history into fables, lullabies and legends of idolatrous Israelites, who were ex-slaves for four hundred years in both Egypt and Babylon.

Jude:   And that’s not the end of the story, my dear Jideofo and Kenez! The same wicked race murdered the ‘Only Son’ of the very ‘God’ they claimed and still claim that delivered them from so many wars. Do you realise that they are still expecting a Messiah/Saviour, having rejected Jesus the Christ!

Jideofo:  Why do we believe the legends of a minority group and universalise, propagate and glorify a native religion that the originators have denigrated publicly, repudiated internationally and thrown overboard? It makes me crazy when I remember they refer to Jesus as a fake saviour and that those of us who worship him are idolaters, whereas they worship the Almighty who created the world.

Kenez:  Now see Genesis Chapters 16 and 17. The contents will assure you that the Bible actually laid the first ever foundation for apartheid, ethnocentrism and racism. In fact for me, The Story of Creation and its relevance to human history ends in chapter 11! All the rest of the bible down to the Book of Revelation is the history of the Jewish race, as patented by their myopic writers and copyrighted by their parochial authors. As a literature textbook, it remains the most excellent compendium of every branch of knowledge, but it is not factual!

Jideofo:  It’s same feeling over here! However, we can learn the morals contained in the narratives of that great literature. Can all humankind benefit from reading the bible? Yes, I know we can!

Jude:  Of course, the bible is not a Jewish literature only, it is the ‘THE WORD OF GOD’ not the words of God! From that perspective, we devoutly refer to it as the original manual for a self-fulfilled life. Just as inventors of machines produce a handbook showing the operational instructions, the Great Inventor of the universe has given us the Bible as His operational guidelines necessary to live a meaningful life here on earth so as to merit being with Him forever in heaven hereafter!

Jideofo: Well said – The Bible is a two-edged sword. Even the devil quoted it while tempting Job and much, much later, the Lord Jesus! Demonic pastors and secret cults, brotherhoods and mystic religionists, all use it to date.

Jude:  So, what other area of the story of the Jews proves that racism emanated from the bible? 

Kenez:  We have not analysed what happened to Abram, Sarai, Hagar, Ishmael and lastly Isaac, so have some patience – we are not yet done with the sub-title BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF RACISM.

Jude:  Let’s refresh our minds then with Genesis 16:

HAGAR and ISHMAEL

v.1:  Abram’s wife Sarai had not borne him any children. But she had an Egyptian slave-girl named Hagar, and so she said to Abram, “ The Lord has kept me from having children. Why don’t you sleep with my slave-girl? Perhaps she can have a child for me. Abram agreed with what Sarai said."

Jideofo:  Stop there for now. We may not bother to read every sentence to establish our thesis. This is the first time the word “slave-girl “ is mentioned in the bible narrative as well associated with Abram! Can anyone tell me where Hagar was consulted in all this?

Now go ahead and read verses 11 &12, please…and you will see salt added to injury, utter injustice, ha ba,

Jude:  v. 11: “You are going to have a son, and you will name him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your cry of distress.

v.12: But your son will live like a wild donkey; he will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. He will live apart from all his relatives.”

Jideofo: It is now crystal clear why I doubt that “the lord of Abram” is the same as “the Most High Lord” that created the world we live in, or the “God” used in other places in the narrative of the old testament! What offence did the innocent and unborn Ishmael commit that he was cursed even before his birth? This “lord of Abram” must be unjust and very wicked! Kenez, are you asleep?

Kenez:  Not yet, Jide. Indeed, I am now your disciple! Could an All-Knowing, All Merciful God issue such a blatant prediction of injustice? No! Could Hagar be blamed for getting pregnant? Again No! Did the foetus in the womb commit any crime similar to that of Cain who murdered his only sibling? Again, the answer is a capital NO! So why and on what basic law of equity did this irresponsible ‘lord’ pass his unjust judgement, which was as severe as that of Cain, who planned and committed a premeditated homicide?

Jideofo:  I wonder! It is similar to curses in Psalm 58 vv. 3 – 9 and the worst verse in the whole bible is v.15 of Psalm17! Even our revered Joshua, son of Sirach fell back to this cultural hatred for other ethnic groups in Chapter 36 of his book. See vv. 1 - 17. And to sum it up see Psalm 105 for a summary of the injustices meted out to other nations in order to indulge a pampered race! The similarities prove only one and only one fundamental truth; namely - those Jewish writers to justify their congenital wickedness and hatred for other races manufactured ‘this lord of Abram.’ Now, does any of you know the two chief mourners at Abraham’s burial? Read Genesis, Chapter 25: verses 7 and 8. Ishmael, whom the wicked ‘god of Abram’ cursed, was right there beside his younger half-brother Isaac! Did you know that Abraham had a third wife? Read vv. 1 - 6. Do you know the earliest descendants of Ishmael? Read vv. 12 - 18. 

Jude:   It’s funny! It looks odd that for all these years, we the ‘gentiles’ have been very gullible and fanatical about our brand of Christianity. We, the rejected Gentiles have been swallowing fables of the Israelites believing every word and sentence in their legends as the revealed message of the same Almighty God that created all races of mankind in his infinite love and kindness! Talk of Revelation, could such apparent injustices as Jideofo has just pointed out be revelations? In addition, if so, by whom, and for whom? By a demon, of course, and for his worshippers! Thanks to both of you for opening my eyes to these dark areas of the bible!

Kenez:  Has anyone thought of why Sarai was barren for many years – and why, according to her  “ The Lord has kept me from having children” in the verse we have read, or even why the same ‘lord’ did not oppose her suggestion to Abram to commit adultery?

Jideofo and Jude: L Tell us p-l-e-a-s-e!

Kenez:  I don’t believe in spoon feeding , for it retards progress in the acquisition of knowledge. Search your mind and come up with an educated guess before I supply mine of twenty years meditation!

Jideofo:  That’s the problem with all natural scientists, their creed is deductive reasoning, whereas we philosophers fasten our grip on inductive reasoning.

Jude :  You are not helping matters by skating round the problem, please. Suggest a veritable explanation for Sarai’s barreness, that’s where we are right now.   

 Jideofo:   Is that a challenge? Coming from a puerile neophyte? They were blood relatives, that’ all. They indulged in incestuous relationships because of their xenophobia. And then credited their foolery to the ‘lord’ they created and his divine injunctions!

Kenez:  That’s a medical perspective. It’s not original. Try harder. May be the Christian has a better guess?

Jude:   I believe it’s due to frequent indulgence in the act of copulation by those concerned. Remember that Sarai was exceptionally a beautiful woman, if the reports in the bible are true. So what could Abram be waiting all night long?

Kenez: That’s more like as educated guess, my dear Jude, try once more. You are nearer the target than Jideofo.

Jideofo:   Spill the beans, and stop tantalising us with your insight. It is only a gift from the Almighty meant for educating all humankind. It’s neither for egocentric pride nor for mesmerising your less endowed friends!

Kenez:   Well, ‘the lord of Abram’ may be just and fair after all! However, it seems more plausible to propose that the punishment of Abram and his wife Sarai came from the Almighty God, the best of judges, All-Good and All-Righteous. He allows the personal ‘gods’ and ‘lords’ to err before He takes the final decision on which acts were right and wrong or which merited His approval or His sanctions!

Jude: You are skating around the issue, Kenez.

Jideofo:   Oh yes, my friend. While natural scientists hold deductive reasoning as their creed, we ‘pagan’ philosophers cling on to inductive reasoning, whereas you, Jude and your kind; religious adherents hold fast to the creeds, dogmas and doctrines manufactured by your priests, pastors, imams and gurus. You have to do your own thinking for now my dear, or else allow him dribble us for as long as he wishes.

Jude:  But his talent of insight was given to him to benefit all peoples of the earth, neither for bragging nor for mundane applause. Moreover, we are his friends who should share his know-how/information.

Jideofo:  Stop the rhetoric, my magister, please. After all Jude is correct, what have we that were not given to us from above?

Kenez:  Then, both of you have missed the point. I had a motivation for wanting you to search your mind, exercise your thinking faculties before I provide my own views, which could be wrong, after all!

Jideofo:  That is why I love natural scientists. While they capitalise on deductive reasoning as the bedrock of their investigations, we philosophers cling fast to inductive reasoning as our ‘modus operandi’. For you, fanatical adherents to the myriad of religions all over the globe, you depend on creeds, dogmas and doctrines manufactured by half-baked pastors who fleece their flock and then smile to their banks.

Kenez:  Jideofo, you are not coming close to the target at all. No one would pray for you nor claim to have healed anyone else if we all started meditating deeply on the exact meaning or import of the events in the bible. A good diagnosis is half the therapy. If both of you remember the narrative we referred to earlier, then the reasons for Sarai’s barrenness fades, no, will surely disappear. Re-read the contents of Genesis, Chapter 12, vv. 10 –20.

** Here, our readers are included. Take a recess and ruminate on the details of the narrative in the reference quoted above, before you continue to read this page. It will benefit you more. 

Please always read from Good News Bible edition, for maximum benefit!

If you have done that, now see verse 13: “Tell them that you are my sister; then because of you they will let me live and treat me well.” Now, my interpretation:

The “lord of Abram” permitted the plot to tell lies and deceitfully gain “flocks of sheep and goats, cattle, donkeys, slaves and camels.” This ‘lord of falsehood and pretences’ further allowed Sarai to be a queen in Egypt for a while and then “sent terrible diseases on him and on the people of his palace” but the Almighty God, the Supreme Justice, came to the rescue of the innocent descendant of Noah. He was given wisdom to see through the deceit of Abram and he immediately made restitution and ordered Abram out of his country, see verses 17 – 20. Furthermore, Abram and Sarai had to pay a greater price for their evil. Their ability to procreate, which belongs to the Almighty Creator alone, was put on hold!

 Eventually the same evil ‘lord’ masterminded Sarai begging Abram to sleep with her slave girl, Hagar.

She was one of the illegal benefits accruing from the period of her queenship in Egypt. That singular action marked the introduction of slavery and a greater crisis in their marital relationships culminating in Hagar and Ishmael being chased out against Abram’s wish into an arid desert. In its wake, the maximum racist policy was introduced into human history! 

Jideofo:   So, what you are imputing is that Jacob, the deceiver, inherited his trait of craftiness from his grandfather Abram, in addition to the genetic load from his maternal lineage; from Bethuel son of Nahor and Milcah, as aptly demonstrated by both Laban and Rebecca.

Jude:   A bolt from a blue sky! Where is the real connection, my mad professor of the Old Testament!

Jideofo:  Read Genesis Chapters 24 –32 and you will realise that Jacob’s personality traits obeyed the Mendelian Laws of Genetical Inheritance!

Kenez:  Jude, my dear that is the value of being a voracious reader. Jideofo is 100% correct there. I would have said the same thing had he not pre-empted me! The grandfather of Jacob set the pace of falsehood and obtaining favours by treachery or subterfuge. Whichever you’d like to call it, the genetical trait was transmitted through Isaac as a genotype but manifested full blown as a phenotype in Jacob!

Jideofo:  It is the ‘lord of Abram’ that truly introduced deceit, incest and racism. Almost every nation has a god that speaks to and controls it. It is only Almighty God that uses good angels as his messengers. If you doubt me, read all the chapters in the Book of Daniel, but specifically digest Chapter 10; in which verses 11 – 14 emphatically buttresses my assertion.

     Another proof of this proposition is right there in Genesis 21: 9–21. Read only verses 17- 21, for these:

·        God, the Almighty Creator, corrected the unjust punishment heaped on Hagar and Ishmael.

·        Again, the nomenclature ‘slave’ was dropped.

·        Finally, the term ‘lord’ was never used at all; only ‘God’ was used several times.

Jude:  I am reading from our preferred GNB edition:

v.17: God heard the boy crying, and from heaven the angel of God spoke to Hagar” What are you troubled about, Hagar? Don’t be afraid God has heard the boy crying.

v.18: Get up go and pick him up, and comfort him, I will make a great nation out of his descendants.

v. 19: Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well. She went and filled the leather bag with water and gave some to the boy.

v.20: God was with the boy as he grew up; he lived in the wilderness of Paran and became a skilful hunter.

v. 21: His mother found an Egyptian wife for him.”

Jideofo: Thank you, my dear Jude. “God” is used five times in that narrative! You will also observe that nowhere was the word ‘lord’ used in that passage, as well as in all the other editions and/or versions of the Bible. Check it out. Prove me wrong, if you can!

My concluding thesis therefrom is,

All bible readers and other scholars must be discrete whenever they meet the word “Lord” anywhere in any scripture whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu or etc, for an angel is a ‘Lord’ as well as the Devil or any other demon! But only the ‘Most High’ is God Almighty, and He operates via loyal intermediaries, not fallen angels! The God who made the whole world could not have introduced ethnocentrism. I confidently rest my case on this factual statement. QED.

 Kenez:   Well spoken! You deserve a pat on the back. Any one that reads 1^st Esdras Chapters 3 & 4 will come to the same conclusion, and realise that women were the remote causes for the term being introduced to the lexicon of the human race in general, and in Jewish literature, in particular! 

Jude:  Thanks Jideofo and Kenez, my super-learned friends for waking me up from my perennial slumber. ‘Don’t be afraid God has heard the boy crying.’ This time it is Jude here who desires divine enlightenment!

Shall we then say we have concluded this discourse? We now know the true origin and development of ethnocentrism and all its cousins! The demonic ‘lord’ or ‘lords’ in the bible laid the foundations long before Ishmael was born.

***Bye–Bye for now and may God Almighty, our Good Father so enlighten your mind

That you may realise and appropriate the truth these young professors of confectionery have baked in this trilogy,

A masterpiece of theosophy. ***

C H A P T E R    F O U R

RACIAL SUPERIORITY IS UNSCIENTIFIC

Jideofo:   History is replete with various repetitions of dramas which so mimic earlier ones that one is forced to ask, - Do we humans ever learn any lasting lessons from histories of peoples in other parts of the planet?

Kenez:  This opening remark is ominous of some sinister thought that must have crossed your ever mischievous mind, my philosopher friend, so why not let us share the mischief!

Jude:  Don’t mind him – He is only being true to type. If you have known him long enough as I have, you would know he fakes Aristotle, Plato or Socrates whenever he pleases! Most ‘thinkers’ speak with their tongues in their cheeks. A sage, atimes, spends one hundred words embellishing a straight forward assertion- and does it so gracefully that you’d think that all the royalties, professors and theologians never reasoned the way he does. It’s a trait in all philosophers! Observe it whenever you are opportuned to listen to any old sage at village meetings or a real professional metaphysician or legal luminaries deliver a lecture or a funeral oration.

Jideofo:  A case of a black kettle accusing a pot of being black! Watch out for your folly. For instance, count the number of words you have used to say the same thing that Kenez said in only one short sentence.

Jude:  And so what, is he not a scientist, a pragmatic and existential one at that. He does not need to beat about the bush to state the facts of nature he observes nor the data he obtains from his experiment!

Kenez:  Okay let’s settle the matter. Can any person tell us why we are gathered here once again? Get straight to the point.

Jideofo:  To finish an unfinished business, - namely - the etiology of ethnocentrism!

Jude:  The origin of racism or apartheid is racial prejudice, as social scientists say- and it is a disorder that beclouds the mind and renders it incapable of honest reasoning thereby precluding rational dialogue or discourse.

Kenez:   Excellent intros, my dear Jude, now break it into pieces so we can masticate it. Educate us on how prejudice is formed, may be among ethnic groups which I assume is the prelude to racial superiority feelings or attitudes.

Jideofo:  Before he does, my friends, let me ask this pertinent question. Does anyone know of a group of human beings that feels inferior to another and then accepts it as normal, without ever doing something about it, i.e. trying to rise above that status quo?

Jude:  No! Not one in all the history that I’ve read since my primary school days. Rebellion has always been a consequence of any such social status being forced on any group. Even common artisans and labourers do not need someone reminding them of their low-income bracket – not to mention women whom championed their suffrage in parliaments and today we have those that query male dominance of political horizon. They want to liberate themselves all the time, although I do not see where, when and how women have ever been imprisoned!

Kenez:   That’ where you get it all wrong. If you refer to Genesis Chapter 3, especially verse 16; the last phrase subjected women to men eternally and even in love, emotion and physical prowess, the Creator established male superiority forever. So excise “women liberation” out from our discussions from now on and face the races of mankind. Why is there segregation among equals, or rather where did ‘masters’ and ‘servants’, ‘lords’ and ‘serfs’, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ and all the other dichotomous nomenclatures in human lexicon emanate from?

Jude:   No one accepts an inferior status in life. There is always the desire to move above one’s status at birth, its called SOCIAL MOBILITY - and it’s a law we all obey. Thus a child becomes an adolescent and progresses to adulthood. The regressed or stagnated are currently classified as ‘adenescents’!

Jideofo:  Don’t get me more confused by those long phrases in social psychology. The relevant topic or question is this: DO SLAVES HUNGER FOR FREEDOM? DO THE OPPRESSED SEEK TO OVERTHROW THEIR OPPRESSORS?   In other words, who instituted the social hierarchy in human society in the first place? Was it God or ‘gods’, men or women? Was it right or wrong? How did people born equally as human infants grow up to subjugate their ‘equals’ and thus enslave them?  Why has no one ever thought in the opposite direction, that is, in favour of equality?

Kenez:  In other words, how did racial segregation begin in the human family? Who introduced it? How was it accepted, maintained, developed and propagated? Did it appeal to different communities of mankind as enviable, or worthy of imitation?

Jude:  I know one author who devoted more than two hundred pages in favour of equality of the different races of mankind, but who borders to read him? I once came across a tiny hard cover with over 100 coloured and black-and-white pictures entitled “THE RACES OF MANKIND” but I can’t easily remember the name of the author, e-mm—h

 Kenez:  Right, was it authored by a Russian?

 Jude:  Yes, a scientist in biology or…h--mho-

 Kenez:  Then it is the one authored by Professor M. Nesturkh, a renowned anthropologist. Another Prof. of history wrote its ‘Foreword’,

Jude: Now I recollect, it was by another prizewinner, Professor Cheboksarov. Everyone needs to find that diminutive book and read it and surely racism would end if the contents were implemented.

Jideofo:  The book was translated from the original Russian language to English by George Hanna, and published in Moscow at the Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Jude:  Amazing, it looks like we all have seen that book then. If only we could summarise its contents for the benefit of our listeners/readers who may not be so opportuned, we can then easily go ahead to find the breeding ground for racist policies, slavery, apartheid and the biblical segregation that we have already proven in our last discussion. Later, we shall seek for solutions to obliterate them!

Kenez:  When was the book published? - So, our readers can at least locate it in a library.

Jideofo:  Sorry Sir, It remains the only book I’ve read where the publishers forgot to put the year it was copyrighted! This has generated a lot of controversy as to its authenticity!

Kenez:  Someone must have forgotten to put a date on the translated version that’s all! Or it is an indication that a racist was involved in the printing, and did that deliberately just to cause the controversy you have mentioned! At any rate, what does it say?

Jideofo:   At the risk of missing out many salient points, it posits the following:

  i.  The races of mankind are, in actual fact; only geographical differentiations or territorial variations historically conditioned; of a single physical type- namely, MAN the Homo Erectus.

ii. After many years of varying climatic conditions, adaptations to their regional and environmental survival strategies, this has resulted in minor changes in the texture of their hairs, the colour of their skins, the shapes of their eyes, heads and trunks, but

iii.   Basically, a man and a woman from whatever race do mate which results in a pregnancy that lasts for about nine calendar months culminating in labour and the delivery of a new offspring that is human! Nothing else had ever, has or will ever result! So, in essence, the author is saying that Whites marry Blacks, Yellows marry Whites or Blacks and vice versa severally, and at birth their newborn babies are human and similar in all respects!

Jude:   That only expounds what the Bible said thousands of years ago. Did the three descendants of Noah not give rise to the three racial groups that biologists and anthropologists come up with? Read Genesis 9: 19, to confirm it.

Kenez:  Enough of your dogmatic theology, let’s first exhaust all empirical evidence adduced in Natural

Sciences namely; biology, zoology, anthropology, etc before we return to the bible to seek for the origins of that parochial legend you have again quoted. Will you ever learn to stop relying on Jewish fables?

Jideofo:  That has always been his problem! Like his fanatical brothers, he claims that everything found in the bible must be true, factual and final. They are often puerile upstairs! Only a thin line differentiates them from lunatics!

Kenez:  I remember that Professor Nesturk discussed the following topics in the chapters of the book:

a.     Racial Characteristics found in all men.

b.     The Negroid Race now called ‘the blacks’.

c.      The Europeoid Race, called ‘caucassians’and

d.     The Mongoloid Race also called the ‘yellows’.

Then he compared common features in all these sub-classes of mankind to demonstrate their similarities, then conclusively delineated the archeological basis of their adaptations over the centuries thus:

·        Fossil Men as found by archeologists.

·        The Earliest Man- AUSTRALOPETHICUS OF AFRICA, the Ancestor of the Neanderthal.

·        The Neanderthal Man- CROMAGNUM OF EUROPE, the Ancestor of Modern Man.

These he backed up with anatomical details found in the fossils that show convincingly that all races are offshoots of one single origin by comparing their Brains, Faces, ands and Feet. But what interests me most is where he discussed Races and Racism, which he subdivided into the following essential subheads: A.  The Essence of Racism.

B.     Race and Language.

C.     Race and Mentality.

D.    Equality of Race and Nations.

As if he anticipated this our youthful debate, the last section of his analysis is what concerns us. So, may I still ask, what were or are the notions that still feed the embers of ethnocentrism to date?

Jideofo:  I would say skin colour, texture of hair, dialect or language, artifacts or culture, mental levels of development, religious practice and social attitudes.

Jude:  Well spoken, but I still feel that racial prejudice is the number one notion that set all the others in motion.

Jideofo:  I agree, but please define this word you have so often used, so that we may benefit posterity by operating on the same frequency or as it is stated in formal logic, in the same ‘universe of discourse’!

Jude:  Since I am neither a racist nor a linguist, I will refer you to authors that have wrestled with some of the concepts under scrutiny. “Ethnic ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’ are synonyms that were manufactured and nurtured by some men belonging to a social class.” states Vander J.W.Zanden in his book “AMERICAN MINORITY RELATIONS”.  “Whereas ‘prejudice’ describes a system of negative ideas or conceptions, feelings and action-orientations regarding the members of a particular group, which could be positive or negative; ‘discrimination’ refers to the real actions indulged in by the members of a social class who feel superior to another by which they accord themselves pride and arrogant airs; behaviours depicting superiority while others are treated in unfavourable manners based on religious, ethnic or racial membership”

Kenez:  That’s and excellent introduction to the origin of social attitudes that eventually lead to ethnocentric anomie and racial superiority.

Jideofo:  I disagree, -- the real greatest catalyst of all ethnocentric behaviour is RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY which usually gives birth to a triplet rightly christened thus; sectarianism, syncretism and parochialism!

Jude:  All these jaw-breaking words will never get us to the solution of the origins of the ethnocentrism.

Kenez:  I dare say Jideofo is right once more. But we need to share your definitions of those big words Jude complained of, before I state my own proposition or opinion that it is the formation of dominant groups and subsequently minority ones, that constitute the building blocks of all ethnocentric edifices.

Jude:  The issue is not only defining concepts but the etiology of ethnocentrism globally, its mode of attack, infection, hibernation and development. And lastly its window period before the full blown manifestations as emotional outbursts, verbal confrontations and racial antagonism that eventually lead to ethnic cleansing, violent crusades and fratricidal wars!

Jideofo:   Another round of  ‘jaw-breakers’ if I can borrow Jude’s earlier accusation. However, let me sanitise myself first. “Religious Bigotry” covers all the terms I used earlier and as defined by A.S Hornby (1976) it “refers to an obsessive belief and practice system whereby a person (or a group of people) has strong and unreasonable opinion of his origin, supernatural beings and his obligations due to this his belief system. And consequently will not listen to or accept any contrary views or other religious opinions of anyone who disagrees.”

Jude:  Excellent, that super reference, my philosopher friend! It nails the coffin on the Jews and Judaism, then Syncretic Christians and Fanatical Moslems!

Jideofo:  Let me do a ‘Homo Faber’ translation of what you said so that our readers will be carried along. It behooves us to state that Judaism and Jews are the first and the greatest offenders. Followed by fanatical sects of Islam, then assisted by charismatic Pentecostals who are overzealous and parochial in the practice of the new brand of Christianity!

 Kenez:  Give me your hands both of you. The eagle has landed. However, let me add the socio-political dimension to complete the tripod.

Two sociologists; Marden and Meyer, in their book “MINORITIES IN AMERICAN SOCIETY”, published in 1967 by John Wiley stated thus: “a dominant group is one within a national state whose distinctive culture and/or physiognomy is established as superior in the society and which treats differentially/unequally other groups in the society with other cultures or physiognomy.”

Again, Williams (1964) another sociologist, in a similar publication, did provide the opposite or should I say a mirror image when he offered a composite or an erudite definition of MINORITY GROUP thus:         

“ A culturally or physically distinctive and self-conscious social aggregate, with hereditary membership and a high degree of endogamy, which is subject to political, economic or social discrimination by a dominant segment of an environing political society.”…You will find this in KRAUSS.S (editor) “ENCYCLOPAEDIC HANDBOOK OF MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGY” published by Butterworths, London.

Jideofo:  That again nails the final peg on the tent of the prolonged servitude of the Jews both in Egypt for 400 years and later in Babylon for another 400 years, and yet they have the effrontery to claim being “a special race”.

 

Kenez:  Compensatory ego-massage, an ego defence mechanism, psychologists would call that!

 

Jude:  They are-surely – the descendants of Abraham, no one denies them that much, but Abram himself was a descendant of Noah through Ham, whose yet unborn child was maliciously cursed by the drunken Noah in a fit of rage. See Genesis 9: 20 – 29.

 

Kenez:  Yet, to date, the Jews are still trying to pull wool over our eyes, deceiving all that care to listen that Shem was their ancestor! So proud are they that they murdered ‘truth’ when they went ahead and crucified Jesus, the Christ in their spiritual blindness and self-conceitedness.

 

Jideofo:  I have a ready-made answer for that. As a youngster I crammed the opening sentences in Chapter 4 of Professor M. Nesturkh’s classic “THE RACES OF MANKIND” where he discussed ‘The essence of man’ and repudiated all ethnocentric concepts thus: 

“The races of man, having developed from a single stock, the ‘PRIMITIVE MAN’- are from a strictly scientific point of view, biologically similar subspecies divisions. As far as their evolution is concerned, none of the races stands higher or lower than the others in its level of physical development. It is precisely the oneness of their origin that accounts for the races being basically identical, not only in the specifically human peculiarities of their physical structure, but even in many tiny details. When compared with this overall similarity, the few racial differences that exist are of less than secondary importance from the standpoint of biology or in the anatomic-physiological sense and in many cases serve merely to identify members of the same, or a related, tribe.” p.96.

Jude:  Exactly what the Bible summarised in one simple story and a concluding sentence—See Genesis 9:v.19:

“These three sons of Noah were the ancestors of all the people on earth.”

Shem, Japheth and Ham with their wives—gave birth to all humans after the flood—just like all the other animals that Noah took into the Ark did on their release to from the boat. To date, most animals do not discriminate, segregate or feel either superior or inferior to other animals of the same species. Only MAN, the animal supposedly endowed with intellect, emotion, language and culture does. Not only that, man has gone ahead to manufacture, develop and propagate racist ideas and words that shape the attitude of its offspring long before they mature as adult members of society that leads to social prejudice.  Moreover, man is the only animal that has developed war machines for killing its own kind. All said and done, my dear friends, we have proven that we, the Homo sapiens, constitute the problem in the world, it is neither God nor animals!

Kenez:  I do agree with you – for if Noah was the father of the three primitive ancestors of all men after the flood, then they were and are supposed to be equals anatomically and physiologically as well. And this is in fact what it has been and will ever be. So, who, when and how did inequality creep into human language and behaviour? That’s what we must now find out!

Jideofo:  We are only going round and round in circles- or haven’t we concluded earlier that racial prejudice originated/started from the call of Abram? Subsequently the psychopathic ‘lord of Abram’ infested the human race with the viruses of ethnic pride, ethnocentric bias, racial discriminations and personality stereotypes. The virus became endemic and congenital when Hagar and Ishmael were driven out to make room for Isaac to be the only heir to Abraham the wicked of ‘the lord of Abram’ decreed.

Jude:  Wrong, - we were told that Abram’s wife Sarai acquired Hagar as a slave girl in far away Egypt, - so racism was already in practice before Abram travelled to Egypt! We, therefore, have to look further…

Kenez:  Excellent, Jude. I agree 100%. Where did it all start? We need an answer that will satisfy everyone, at all times, in the present and in the nearest future!

Jideofo:  In that case we may as well blame the first vine planter, who later brewed wine and got himself drunk. Exhibitionism or striptease followed which an innocent adolescent reported to his elder brothers for a mature remedy. Again, in his primitive state of mind- instead of accepting his misdemeanour and beating the blame of taking off his clothes, he turned around to reprimanding a naïve and inexperienced son. To crown his animalistic injustice, he cursed a yet-to-be born grandchild rather his direct son the ‘culprit’. That’s the height of human foolery, mischief and wickedness!

 Jude:  You are talking of slavery there, but before the curse something else happened which we all seem to be overlooking!

Kenez:  Oh yes, it has been falling on the blind spot of us all, that’s THE TOWER OF BABEL, and its eternal consequences. Jude, am I on target?

Jude:  Sure, I knew that you would pick it out before the sophist here! Yes, that is the original beginning of racial segregation, the very first divisions in otherwise united descendants of Noah. This led to movement away from each other. Groups that spoke the same tongue migrated to differing parts of the earth, thus resulting in cultural differentiation, that later fuelled social prejudice, superiority versus inferiority, as well as the formation of majority versus minority political classes. All this led to current day ETHNOCENTRISM.

Jideofo:  Wonders will never end. So my erstwhile fanatic has shed his myopic perspective of swallowing every biblical fable and now can think rationally. This is the ‘Greatest Feat’ that our youthful exuberance has performed. Thank you, my magister! Congratulations, my dear Jude.

Kenez:  Jude will however have to explain to us who were responsible for the “ confusion of tongues”. I am of the opinion that it was surely not God the Creator who could have been jealous or envious of the unity of purpose and the determination of humans to construct ‘a tower that would reach the heavens.’ The Creator knew they could never reach the heavens, so another lesser god or demons must be fingered for the desire to stop the unity of human beings.

Jideofo:  Your logic is very innovative besides being interdisciplinary and watertight. I never thought along that line of reasoning. Why? This god had the subtle aim of destablising the harmony among Noah’s offspring and so prevent them from making peace with God their Creator! That’s very crafty, the objective was the “divide and rule tactics” that is still practised today by all sadists. The demonic ruler of this material earth was out again to outwit the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve like he did before in the Garden of Eden. And thus it has entrenched mundane principles and mischievous traditions that would forever preempt any peaceful co-existence in our world by eternally aborting harmony and good neighbourliness among human beings.

Jude:  I get your drift, and so we shall call it a day here. We invite our listeners or readers to meditate on the points we have raised in this chapter. They’re only catalysts meant to spur you on to find more existential answers, all by yourselves!

Kenez:   Do you think we have resolved the issue? You are in for a shocker! What role does religion play in the marginalisation of others? Take that home as your assignment till we meet again. Good bye!

C H A P T E R    F I V E

SYNCRETIC RELIGION- THE BANE OF RACIAL PREJUDICE

Jideofo:  Last time we dismissed on a discordant note, namely was any divine or demonic entity involved in the confusion of tongues as recorded by Moses in the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel?

Jude:  Yes, I asserted that Moses once more showed his preference for “the lord of Abram” rather than “God, the Creator” – hence he imputed a negative personality trait of ‘jealousy’ onto the Almighty Creator.

Jideofo: Congratulations my friend, so you are saying that some syncretism is involved in that portion of Bible story.

Jude:   I dare say so. It is self-evident, isn’t it? Can God be jealous of human beings he created or of their unity of purpose in achieving an engineering feat?

Kenez:  So, let us unravel the role of sectarian sentiments, dogmatic syncretism and parochial nepotism in the evolution of religious bigotry, and then how all these inflame the inferno of racism or ethnocentrism, no matter whose ox is gored. That’s our objective this time around!

Jideofo:  Of course; mysticism, occultism and fanaticism are the triplets that fan the embers of ethnic hatred based on irrational religious doctrines, dogmas and syncretic practices, which when mixed in the right proportions result in RACIAL PREJUDICE.

Jude:  Softly, softly, - the grammar and vocabulary are becoming once more too high for me, not to mention our cherished audience, Daddy and Mummy!

Can our numerous belated readers and or admirers comprehend our line of arguments if we confuse them with these big words?

Kenez:  “Syncretism is a term applied to a type of thinking, found particularly in young children, where accidental association takes place of logical or casual connexion” See ‘A Dictionary of Psychology’ p.291, 

by J. Drever (1952) last reprinted in 1972.

“ Bigot, a person who holds strong religious or political beliefs and opinions and is intolerant of anyone who disagrees- thus BIGOTRY- IS A BIGOTED BEHAVIOUR OR ATTITUDE.’ p.106 ibid.

“Sectarian – showing a lack of tolerance or concern for those outside one’s own sect, class……. And thus;

“Sectarianism – a tendency of split up into sects; tendency to be sectarian”, p.1142–3 Hornby S (1989).

Jideofo:  Let me help you out with some, Kenez, e.g.

“Nepotism – practice among people with power or influence of favouring their own relatives, esp. by giving them jobs” p.830 ibid.

“Parochial – attribute of or relating to a church parish – (derog.), showing interest in a limited area only, narrow: e.g. a parochial person, attitude, event, or he is rather too parochial in his outlook…parochialism, n. [u] parochially (adv.)” p.898, Hornby A.S. (1989).

“Prejudice – opinion, or like, or dislike of somebody or something that is not founded on experience or reason: colour/racial prejudice, i.e. prejudice felt or shown against members of other races (or religion or politics) ibid. p. 976.

Jude:  I think that is enough for now, as we can’t always be spoonfeeding our readers. I hope our audience can now join us in our heated arguments!

Jideofo:  Are you then saying that our audience should look up FANATICISM, MYSTCISM AND OCCULTISM.

Jude:  Yes, for now-- let’s return to the topic under scrutiny namely, ‘the role of syncretic religious practices in fuelling racism and/or ethnocentrism’, - and its being the bane of racial prejudice which led to the earliest enslavement of fellow humans, - am I in order, friends?

Kenez:   No! We must first locate how this notion of sectarianism first came into the human vocabulary, later we can discuss bigotry and his cousins!

Jideofo:  It is not only puerile but also futile for any person or group of persons to impute any human motives or mundane thoughts to the Creator of this Universe. Even if human fathers and mothers show partiality towards some of their children, The Almighty Father is not human to descend to such low levels to choose only one race as a special breed. That a minority community of human is a “CHOSEN RACE”  is childish in concept and parochial in execution. If you doubt me, read and digest completely books I & II of Chronicles, and you will be convinced.

Jude:  I concur, how could the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth and all that is in them reduce Himself to the god of the descendants of Abram alone. He would rather become the God of Adam and Eve or by default, the God of Noah whom He used to save all his creatures when He tried to sanitise the sinful earth with the forty days flood?

Kenez:  That’s the relevant question. How can any sane historian or wise storyteller ever conceive that out of all the human beings that left, ‘in very many different directions’ after the Tower of Babel project was abandoned, - only a nomadic pagan would be called out of Ur in Babylon to father ‘a chosen race’! Read the whole of Chapter 15 of Genesis and you will not have any doubt that this ‘lord of Abram’ was not the same as The Almighty God the Creator. This lesser god demanded paganish sacrifices and rituals when Abram demanded a signature over the promises made to an old nomad that had no child of his own. Verse 9 alone confirms our thesis that ‘the lord of Abram’ is a pagan ‘god’ demanding animal sacrifices!  And not only that, was he, a descendant of the cursed generation of Ham to breed so many children to fill the whole earth at the expense of all the descendants of Shem and Japheth who were blessed by Noah? Were these other grandsons of Noah not very busy populating the whole earth as they migrated east, west, north and south?

Jideofo: A parochial mind is a diseased mind infected with ethnocentric virus, my dear Kenez! Mischief, thy other name should be Sectarianism or Xenophobia! Forgery is never an easy business. It is an art fraught with loopholes that are easily recognised and picked out by erudite and perceptive students.

A frustrated leader of a rebellious people did the great forgery as they were stranded in the desert, in a spirited attempt to stop them from returning to Egypt or worshipping idols like they had learnt during their forty years of serfdom!

Moses was forced to whip up sentiments, denigrate all other races, and eulogise the Israelites in the desert in order to win them over to continuing on the long and hazardous trek to ‘the Promised Land.’ What options had Moses? A rebellion stared him in the face “were there no graves in Egypt that you have brought us here to perish in the desert?” Put yourself in his predicament and see whether you would no cook up a story of your community being a special breed that should not mixed with inferiors. What better option was there than whipping up sentiments to counteract the rebel leaders in their midst?

Jude:  I have got your line of reasoning. So let me tag along and you judge whether I am on track. Moses claimed that God Almighty was the supreme God of gods. And whereas God was neither an Israelite, an Arabian, a Babylonian, nor an Egyptian, he had to claim HIM as ‘the personal god of his people’ to avert the tide of rebellion. Moses was fully aware that God the Creator was neither White nor Black nor Yellow, but in his survival tactics to remain relevant and retain his leadership role, he did the inevitable. I bet that he didn’t envisage that his tactical story to stem a rebellion would snowball in Semitism that in its wake gave birth to anti-Semitism. That single fable remains the mother of all-ethnocentric concepts and political theories woven around religion to date. Details of the sectarian formation of Judaism are clearly seen in the entire chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy!

Jideofo:  Yeah, Jude, you are not a slow learner! Now let’s look at the nuances of the derogatory term:

gen·tile

gen·tile (jèn¹tìl´) noun

1.    Often Gentile . One who is not of the Jewish faith or is of a non-Jewish nation.

2.    Often Gentile . A Christian.

3.    A pagan or heathen.

4.    Often Gentile . Mormon Church. A non-Mormon.

adjective

1.    Of or relating to a Gentile.

2.    Of or relating to a gens, tribe, or people.

3.    Grammar. Expressing national or local origins.

[Middle English gentil, from Late Latin gentìlis, pagan, from Latin, of the same clan. See gentle.][2]

Jude:  Moses wove the story of a special call out of Ur for Abram in Babylon—the city from where all the races of mankind moved outwards to all the other parts of the world. This much he must have learnt from his tutelage at Pharaoh’s court, remembering a barren princess, a niece of the reigning Pharaoh, adopted him! Moses was trained in the art of mundane leadership and applied it gracefully there! He used what he had to get what he wanted, - a pacified and docile followership by the Israelites! The stories, commands, orders, and rituals he instituted in the Book of Deuteronomy best exemplify this. 

Kenez:   And as if that was not enough, the Jewish writers of the Bible went on to state that the Almighty God wiped out whole nations to make room for this pampered generation of ingrates. A nation that neither could fight its own battles nor paid total allegiance to the God who delivered them from the enemies. They disdained the prophets the same God of their fathers sent them and finally crucified His only Son! That was their version of gratitude to a  ‘god of Abram’ who catered for them all through their slavery in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Babylon!

Jideofo:   They deserve a pat on the back for they have succeeded in hoodwinking the rest of the whole world for centuries. We are branded UNCLEAN GENTILES, and unfit to call on the name of the Almighty God! Their novelists had outwitted the rest of us who claim to be literate, and forced us all to swallow their fables, legends and lullabies as divinely authored. Lastly their collection of sectarian histories and poetry is regarded and referred to as the best literature in the whole universe!

Jude:  What a fool we have all been! Come to think of it, how could the same helpless Moses who grew up in Pharaoh’s court turn around to brand all Egyptians –GENTILES! Read 1^st Esdras 1: 23–32, to appreciate the point I am trying to make. There you will note that the same Almighty God sent the Egyptians to fight to protect the Israelites, see specifically verse27! In other places in the Bible the Almighty used Kings the Jews referred to as Gentiles to punish ‘the chosen people’! Was ‘the god of Abram’ on vacation at those times?

Kenez:  Is that all, he also committed the sin of parochial nepotism by killing an Egyptian and fled to

Midian where he married the first of Jethro’s seven daughters; called Zipporah. Was Jethro not referred to as a High Priest, who later during the Exodus visited Moses, his son-in –law and taught him one or two lessons in political administration? Exodus 2: 11-22.

As at that time, were Jethro and Zipporah worshipping false gods that he later blacklisted his father-in-law and all the relatives of his wife: GENTILES?  Was Moses normal at the time he branded all other races Gentiles, including Zipporah who saved his life in chapter 4, verses 24-26? Had Moses divorced Zipporah at the time he wrote his parochial stories or was he just an ingrate?

Jude:  What of Joseph, did he not marry an Egyptian princess named Asenath who bore him Ephraim and Manasseh? See Genesis 46:vv.19-21.That definitely proves that the funny injunction forbidding marrying “gentiles’ was concocted by Moses. Definitely Moses was/is the author of sectarian religious practices and he clearly demonstrated that Israelites were ingrates, and to date that genetic trait or cultural behaviour has not left most Jews. Refer to Shakespearean dramas!

Jideofo:  What of Abram who traded his wife Sarai for protection and wealth? If the rule was existing then could he have done that? If a Patriarch of the status of Abraham who never disobeyed God could allow his cousin become an Egyptian queen for some nights, where were those laws about UNCLEAN RELIGIOUS RITES AND RITUALS PEOPLE OR GENTILES by then?

Kenez:  The whole Bible is replete with so many inter-ethnic marriages without the cumbersome, obnoxious and syncretic observances before Moses invented his books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy! Check it out in the records of the greatest Jewish historian, Josephus! 

Jude:  So what we are all saying is that RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY was and still is the brainchild or invention of Moses which he inadvertently introduced while leading a rebellious people out of slavery. And that ‘the lord of Abram’ was definitely not the same as God, the Creator and Father of the human race!

Jideofo:  That’s a new Jude, the logician! Welcome to the club of free thinkers and rationalists! Now witness this simple inductive reasoning:

·        The descendants of Shem, Japheth and Ham inhabited different parts of the world long before the ancestors of Canaanites occupied all the area around Rivers Tigris and Euphrates down to Egypt and Libya. See details in the genealogies of Noah’s sons as recorded in Genesis, Chapter 10 & 11.

·        These were the few/earliest men and their families protected by God from perishing in the flood of forty days, that is, the pre-apartheid humans that survived the deluge.

·        Then, how were their genealogies so muddled up that one is bound to be suspicious that some later historians tampered with it and messed up an otherwise straight-forward record as probably dictated by Patriarch Moses?

Jude:  You are at it again, my dear Jideofo. Why not cite concrete examples instead of insinuations?

Jideofo:  You want proofs, and that’s exactly what you will write down now.

·        For example, - read Genesis 10: 21-30 and compare it with 11: 10-26. It is clearly evident that subterfuge was at work there! If Abram was called out of Haran which is in Ur, a province of Babylon (see 12: 4), how come Abram was not a great grandson of ‘Nimrod who built the city’ as stated in black and white in all bible translations? (10: 6-11).

·        The crafty author that doctored Genesis Chapter 11 deliberately made up another lineage for Abram to exclude him from being recognised as a true descendant of Ham! Why?

·        Another confusion in the cookery can be seen clearly at Genesis Chapter 10, verse 31: “These are the descendants of Shem living in their different tribes and countries, each group speaking its own language.”

·        This contradicts the narrative in Chapter 11 verse 1,which follows immediately, entitled: THE TOWER OF BABEL “At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words.”

·        This is daylight forgery. It is, to say the least, very illogical as it definitely puts a question mark on all the other contrasting genealogies sub-titled ‘THE DESCENDANTS OF NOAH’ as recorded in Chapter 10!

Kenez: Thanks Jideofo, you are definitely a critical analyst with a keen sense of perception hard to match. Now read that same Chapter 10, verse 6; and compare it with verses 13 &14. Observe and note what it says:

v.6 : “The sons of Ham – Cush, Egypt, Libya and Canaan were the ancestors of the people who bear their names” Now let’s look at verses 13 and 14:

v.13:“The descendants of Egypt were the people of Lydia, Anam, Lehab, Naphtuh

v.14: “Pathus, Casluh, and of Crete, from whom the Philistines are descended.”

Now, can any of you answer the following questions:   

A.   Why did Abram migrate or resort to Egypt when there was famine in his ‘promised territory’ shortly after his arrival there? (Genesis 20: 10)

B.   How did Joseph, sold into slavery, land in Egypt of all other countries around Canaan? (37:28)

C.   Why did Jacob, the Deceiver ‘send ten of his sons to Egypt to buy corn when famine hit the whole world’ (41:53-57) and (42:1-7).

D.   Why did Patriarch Jacob again retire ‘to Egypt with all his household’ when Joseph was rediscovered? (46:1-30).

E.    Why did King Solomon, the Wise, make an alliance with the King of Egypt by marrying his daughter? (1^st Kings3: 1-3).etc, and finally,

F.    In the New Testament, why was Joseph, the Carpenter, and husband of the Virgin Mary who gave birth to the Son of God directed by an angel of the Most High to flee into Egypt to save the infant as King Herod wanted to kill him?

     (See Matthew 2:13-14).

The same reason runs like a thread through all those narratives, but is perceptible only to keen analysts and good thinkers! Who wants to decipher the puzzle?

Jude:  A trial will not harm a student. I believe its God’s design and his will that was being implemented all the while.

Jideofo:  Religious fanatic! Why can’t you ever think? Why do you always ‘believe’? Is there any pious injunction that forbids Christians having their own opinions on any topic concerning religion? 

Kenez:  Then make guesses. Tell us what your power of rationalism dictates to you here and now!

Jude:  The Israelites were nomads and so had to travel to Egypt often to sell their livestock as they were sure of a better bargain in the bigger city there.

Jideofo:  That’s better. I think it was because Egypt was the nearest urban city for business as you pointed out but their choice of it was more of, that it afforded pleasures of life more than the rural areas where they hailed from.

Kenez:   The correct answer was clearly given in the narratives I referred to in Genesis 10, 11 & 12. They were related by blood. They were/are the elder brothers of the Israelites! Verses 6 – 14 states in plain language that Cush, Egypt, Libya and Canaan were blood brothers, doesn’t it? But God restored Abram’s name to its original ‘ABRA-HAM’ which meant(s) descended from ‘HAM’ which literally translates to a either ‘a branch of ‘ or ‘a grandson of Ham’. But, trust the Jewish writers who wanted to hide the effects of Noah’s curse on their great grandfather Ham. They quietly complicated the genealogies in Chapter 10 and wrote it backwards! If Shem was the eldest of the three sons of Noah and naturally had children earlier than both Ham and Japheth, why was his descendants listed last, whereas Japheth’s were listed first? Forgery isn’t a simple business, my dear. Even if Abram hailed from Ur in Babylon, Nimrod who is credited with its construction was still a descendant of Ham, (10:6-12). So, no matter how you look at it, the Jewish spirited attempt to run away from the truth about their origin can’t deceive everyone!

Jideofo:   That’s true! There is this axiom: “You can deceive some people, some of the time; you can deceive all the people, some of the time; but you can’t deceive ALL the people, ALL the time!”  

Jude:  Kenez, please land now, you have been flying this your kite for too long. I’ll burst with anxiety! Is that what you want?

Kenez:  No. Not at all! This is the only genuine answer; Egyptians were the closest relatives of the ‘Israelites’ as their ‘god’ or God later called them, (Genesis 32: 22-32). Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and much, much later Jesus felt safer in the territory of their great grand cousins. Why? Simply this: they were both descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham whom Noah cursed for looking at his drunken father’s nakedness, (9: 18-28).

Therefore the forgeries in Genesis 10 & 11 became necessary to divert our attention from the truth, and that was the real genesis of hatred for other races. It’s part and parcel of the survival system of a socio-political group and each one of us; called ego defense mechanism in psychology! It began with ‘Moses’,a name given to him by an Egyptian princess which literally meant, “rescued from the river”. He tried to bury or camouflage his Egyptian upbringing in Pharaoh’s court as ‘an orphan’. His ‘transfer of aggression’ after his flight into Midian to avoid execution for killing an Egyptian slave driver led him into coining terminologies to denigrate all other races. The end result was/is the nomenclature “UNCLEAN GENTILES”, the great grandmother of all racists ideas, prejudices and policies to date! QED!

Jude:   The whole thing looks so clear as A, B, C, that I can attempt a summary now. Those Mosaic forgeries were cover-ups that preceded the ‘syncretic religion of Judaism’ as was patented by Moses and later marketed by all the descendants of the Jewish race. Sure, that was the beginning of Semitism which, got as a response Anti-Semitism. Nature abhors a vacuum, and no one sits around when insulted. The roots of all social prejudices have their bases in the fabricated stories Moses wove around his race in the desert. So, that’s the genesis of all racist concepts and language that gave birth to ethnocentrism! Thanks to Kenez, I can now think more accurately. What really happened to my reasoning ability all this while? Blind faith?

Jideofo:  Fanaticism, colonial mentality and crowd behaviour, - that’s what happened to you, and your fellow Christian brothers and sisters. None of you looks before s/he jumps. You swallow a bait and get intoxicated by adulterated doctrines and dogmas manufactured by ‘school drop-out pastors’ who whip up your emotions at crusade grounds. That’s religious sentiment at work, and some are even ready to die defending they know not what!

Kenez:  It doesn’t end there! They are so busy trying to escape being called GENTILES that they often quarrel over minor religious rites that were copied from the very Jews who call them Gentiles, for example, circumcision and baptism by complete immersion or by sprinkling of water. It’s mass hypnosis at the crusade grounds. Another ego defense mechanism at work, named ‘holier than thou attitude’!

Do you remember that it was Cornelius and his entire household that introduced Apostle Peter to the basics of worldwide evangelism? (Acts 10:9-16 to 11: 1-18).

Take a critical look at verses 44-48:

“THE GENTILES RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT

“v.44: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who were listening to his message.

v.45.  The Jewish believers who had come from Joppa with Peter were amazed that God had poured out his gift of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles also.

v.46:  For they heard them speaking in strange tongues and praising God’s greatness. Peter spoke up:

v.47:  “These people have received the Holy Spirit, just as we also did. Can anyone, then, stop them from being baptized with water?”

v.48:  So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay with them for a few days.”

That event proves our thesis that Moses manufactured the terms ‘unclean’ and ‘gentile’. Here, the Most High, the Almighty God, once more corrects the error of human categorization made by a man he chose to lead ‘his people’ out of slavery.  Before His Presence every human being is acceptable who obeys the natural laws He put into creation. The gift of and the reception of the Holy Spirit then is the only valid proof that God has accepted anyone as his child, not the baptism with water nor the rite of confirmation administered by our so-called ‘pastors’ or ‘bishops’!

Jideofo:  For any ardent religionist to comprehend what Kenez just said, he or she needs to read the background to this epic event, by reading the whole of Chapter 10. Look critically at Acts 10: 9-21. It was God again manifesting his divine powers by sending angels to both Cornelius and Peter, synchronising the appearances to erase the error of religious bigotry initiated by Moses!

Jude:  It all boils down to same thesis I had earlier posited; “The great wrong done by the ‘lord of Abram’ was repeated in the case of Moses, if what he wrote down Leviticus were actually dictated, but I seriously doubt it.” Can an Omniscient God make such grave errors that will later need being repealed. Does God repent for any sins? No! Notice the choice of words in Acts 10 verses15 & 16: ‘The voice spoke to him again, “Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean.” This happened three times, and then the thing was taken back to heaven.” Only what came from heaven where the Almighty God resides can be taken back to heaven! 

Jideofo:  I think we have done justice to this topic of the origin of racism and/or ethnocentrism. That most religions of today are syncretic, parochial and sectarian is an indisputable fact. This is what we need to address now. Suppose the early descendants of Noah all lived together and built an indivisible government as they intended at the Tower of Babylon, could they have dispersed and formulated the variety of belief systems and divergent religious practices we witness today? 

Jude:  No! They couldn’t have done that! All the sons and daughters of Shem, Ham and Japheth would have been handed the tradition of the events of the Ark and the forty days flood. This would have engendered in all of them the spirit of oneness and pious reverence for the God that saved their parents and grandparents.

And that was exactly what happened before a jealous god, not God, came down and confused their tongues that was the genesis of partitioning of humans into races based on language. 

Jideofo:  Your statements prove that you are still very naïve in analysing any issue. Could God the Creator not know that no matter how long they struggled they could never build a tower reaching the sky?

Jude:  God the Creator knew their folly. It was an unachievable project, which, today’s science of astronomy has confirmed so succinctly…

Jideofo:  Therefore it looks childish and evidently psychotic for anyone to suggest that God the Creator could have been ‘jealous’ as Genesis 11: 5-9 stated. This definitely conforms with our earlier definition of SYNCRETSM as a psychological term applied to “a type of thinking found particularly in young children, where accidental association takes place of illogical connexions”

Definitely, the writer or better still, the composer of these contradictory stories found in Genesis 8,9,10 & 11, was intent on providing basic reasons for ethnic cleavages that would form the rationale for his introduction of parochialism, an acceptable prelude to his avowed intention to formulate sectarianism! This he found in this fabulation to explain away the origin of different languages and subsequently go scot-free or unchallenged when he later introduced racist concepts, words and language. Very crafty and ingenious indeed, but he forgot that the likes of Kenez and Jideofo would eventually be born to expose his forgeries!

Kenez:  Excellent uses of hindsight reasoning there, my dear Jide. However you forgot that if Moses wanted to entrench a new mode of worship for his fellow Israelites recently liberated from 400 years of slavery, he needed a credible argument to back up the reasons why they must forget the Egyptian language and culture! The first point of attack was language, child-rearing practices and lastly the rituals of worship they had gotten use to! He targeted the polytheistic belief systems and religious modes of worship of other nations at the same time! And the best way was to label them ‘unclean’, ‘pagans’ and finally ‘gentiles’!

Jude:  So, what you are asserting is that Moses was well grounded in politics, military tactics and diplomacy he had studied in Pharaoh’s court and the best of Egyptians schools and was only applying this knowledge to serve his objectives!

Jideofo:  Not only that, my dear Jude, haven’t you read the sixth and seventh book of Moses?

Jude:  No! What’s that again?

Jideofo:   That’s why I always call you a simpleton, a neophyte and a fanatical Christian. Moses was well grounded and profoundly educated in the three core sciences of Egyptian royalties at that epoch, which were: metaphysics, mysticism, and black magic. To date, his sixth and seventh books are mandatory for all performing magicians!  Remember he was brought up as a prince of Egypt, and he was older than the real prince was!  He could have been a Pharaoh, had he not killed a slave driver and fled for his life. Another Israelite who studied the arts and crafts of Egyptian royalty was Joseph. See Genesis 44:15. He was so versed in occultism that some theologians posit that most of the events described as the ten plagues of Egypt were actually his conjectures which he had perfected while he was a refugee cum son-in law to Jethro the High Priest of Midian! If you remember well, some magicians in Pharaoh’s court did replicate some of his performances, although we were quickly reminded that his snake swallowed the others!  

Jude:  Are you serious, Jideofo? Your mouth will run you into trouble one of these days!

Kenez:  What he has said is common knowledge and your priest and pastors know this very well. They even study those books before they start performing the signs and wonders you witness at crusade grounds. Some go further, and add African power. Call it inculturaltion or indigenisation, if you must baptize it. Its part and parcel of the art of marketing Jesus the Christ!

Jude:  How did both of you acquire all this vast knowledge? I admire your guts! Where can I find these books to read?

Kenez:   You know where. Stop deceiving us. Make an effort. Go to libraries. Moreover, now is the age of the Internet, so surf or browse voraciously, and surely you will become wiser.

Jideofo:   Kenez, I propose that we tie up the loose ends of our topic without the delay Jude is causing us. How do we resolve the remaining contradictions concerning syncretic religious practices, which have built ‘Berlin Walls’ that separate so many religious groups, besides the minor denominational differences that create frictions within nuclear families today?

Kenez:   I am really disappointed with all of us, the so-called Christians. What has happened to our philosophers and theologians? Are we all now reduced to tape recorders regurgitating what we have read from Jewish literature without asking questions like these?

1.     Does it mean that from the time of Adam & Eve to the time of Moses & Aaron there were no rituals or modes of worshipping God, the Creator?

2.     What religious prescription did Cain violate that ‘his sacrifice was rejected’, which eventually pushed him into committing the first ever recorded homicide in human history?

3.     Were there no norms, mores, commandments or regulations before the Mosaic Ten Commandments given at Mount Sinai?

4.     What codes of conduct did ‘the giant children of the mixed marriages between fallen sons of God and beautiful daughters of men’ violate that so offended God to the extent that ‘He regretted having made man’! What made Him so furious that He went ahead to plan with Noah, the only one who found favour in his sight, the destruction of all living things in the world with the forty days flood?

5.     What was the religion of Seth, Lamech, Enoch etc down to Isaac, Esau and Jacob?

6.     What rules did Joseph, the slave, who later turned into a Prime Minister in Egypt observe when he was next in command to Pharaoh, even before the birth of Moses?

7.     What religious duties and rules did Jethro, the High Priest, his daughters and son-in-law Moses observe for forty years while he waited for the death of the Pharaoh that knew him?

8.     What monthly ‘fire spectacles in the mountains’ did Moses witness before the final “burning bush” that heralded or ushered in his divine rescue mission into Egypt?

9.     Was Mount Sinai in the territory of Israel, the promised region of Canaan or in Midian? Which takes precedence in the salvation history, Mount Sinai or Mount Zion? Or is the latter a Jewish translation or synonym of the former?

10.          Which preceded the other, “Jethro, the High Priest” or “Aaron, the priest of the lord of Moses”?

Under whose tutelage, where, when and for how did Aaron learn the skills of priesthood?

Let me not worry anyone about the very sudden appearance and abrupt disappearance of Melchisedek, that might have been a figment of the imagination of Moses! In short, what I am asserting is that there must have been a standard code of conduct or a common way of observing morality among all the primitive sons and daughters of Noah before Abram arrived in the scenes created in the Mosaic stories at the ‘Desert of Sin’! Here, I rest my case!

Jude:  My eardrums or tympanic membrane will soon burst. But these revealing questions are very existential and relevant in finding eternal solutions to spiritual dilemmas. What we should do, as a matter of urgency, is to arrest all theologians, pastors, priests, evangelists both itinerant and sedentary versions, fake or genuine, anointed or self-made, lock all of them up in one hall until they resolve the questions Kenez has just raised! In the same vein, all that claim to be Bible scholars should be detained until they tell us WHICH GOD ALL HUMAN BEINGS WORSHIPPED AND HOW THEY DID SO, BEFORE THE TOWER OF BABEL!

      In a summary, what religion did the descendants of Adam & Eve practise, as recorded in Chapter 5 of the book of Genesis? In other words, what rules of moral uprightness did Enoch, the father of Methuselah, obey so piously that merited his being transported to heaven alive to be with God eternally. (Genesis 5: 21-24; & Sirach 44: verse16)

Jideofo:  Just like the original language that all humans spoke in Genesis 11 verse 1, this religion we are seeking predated the syncretic ones of today namely: Paganism, Animism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zorasterianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam etc. God the Creator had religious laws before these later ones. There lies the UNIFICATION OF ALL RACES OF MANKIND. Anyone who finds it will save all of us the headaches and heartaches caused by ethnocentric attitudes in religious worship worldwide. We must endeavour to find it. The search is worth a million dollars!

Kenez:  Until we discover that ‘Ancient Religion’, the “primus originalis”, - I beg to stop this discourse that has led us into a vicious circle by paraphrasing our conclusions thus:

·       The bane of ethnocentrism emanated from Noah’s curse on Canaan,

·       This was followed by the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel,

·       Which degenerated to ungodly treatment of Hagar and Ishmael by the ‘lord of Abram’,

·       The introduction of slavery into the human society which resulted in inter group hatred and suspicion,

·       And finally the prejudiced classification into Jews and Gentiles by Moses.

If anyone knows better let him or her speak up now or forever be silent. We shall call it a day here for me to attend to my patients. Good day gentlemen!

C H A P T E R    S I X

WISE MEN THINK INTERNATIONALLY

Jude:  Welcome my friends after another recess…if I do remember correctly, Kenez sought to decipher the original religion that predated all other nuances of religious worship today. I did some research reading– and you may not believe it, THE ANSWER IS RIGHT THERE IN THE SAME BIBLE!

Jideofo:  Really? Where, how did you find it?

Kenez:  He must have read some portions of the bible, which were written by the Wisest Man that ever strode on planet earth.

Jideofo:  By that you are once more returning to Jewish authors again and their hasty despatch of Jesus, he Christ - ‘Son of God’ – if that is it, forget it, I’m not interested!

Kenez:  No, a hundred times –no!  Jude knows I’m not

Talking of Jesus, unless we all agree that he was only a man! But if we believe, as most Christians do, that he was ‘half-man, half-God’, then he does not fit my description. I said “the wisest man that ever strode this planet” not “the wise God-man that strode this planet.”

I thought you’re a philosopher, or are you employing sophistry here to throw me off balance?

Jideofo:  No, I meant every word I said. Suppose Jesus was unequivocally human, are you saying that someone predates him who was wiser?

Kenez:  Yes, for God gave that testimony, not me nor my ancestors nor any other created being!

Jideofo:  So, what you are saying is that someone else spoke about this pristine religion you have been alluding to long before Jesus, the Christ was born?

Kenez:  Yes, an emphatic–y-e-s, this time around. He described the authentic religion many years before Christ was even prophesied to be born by a virgin.

Jideofo:  Enough of the taunting, both of you, please make it plain. What were this pristine religion and its prehistoric announcer?

Jude:  That’s good news, no, sweet music to my ears! So there are things our learned philosopher is yet to learn? And those from a ‘simpleton’, to use your own terminologies, ‘a fanatic’ and ‘ a gullible adherent’ like me, ‘a robot that swallows Judaic cookery, hook, line and sinker!

Jideofo:  Please, I never claimed that I know everything on earth. Rather I seek to learn only those things that are rational, practical and applicable to all cultures and creeds!

Jude:  Okay, since you are honest, and humble this time around, you may even qualify as a grand student of this sage we are referring to. Seek out the complete version of the Bible, and read Chapter 9 of the book: THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON!

Jideofo:  Sorry to disappoint you. And who do you think that had all along molded my way ot thinking all these years? He is the one you have just referred to his writings. I can quote at least ten passages credited to him offhand, any time, any day, and anywhere. For example where you have just referred me to, is only talking about his prayer for wisdom! Am I wrong?

Jude:  Haba, you are not…my dear Jideofo. You must be a termite, to have chewed all the relevant portions of the Bible!

Jideofo:  No,-no, no—if you have been through my type of training and difficulties in life, you’d come up the same! That book was one of the controversial ones Martin Luther and his protesting followers rejected as apocrypha. However, I marvel at their flimsy reasons for dumping the most intelligent writings that was ever scribbled. I guess they were blinded by hatred for anything Jewish meeting such a high standard of excellence! As far as I’m concerned all the books credited to King Solomon or his secretaries remain the best writings I have had the singular privilege of reading in my youth!

Kenez:  Identical feeling over here! Give me a handshake my dear. There is a way we eulogise the sage, we say: “There are only two books in the Bible, - Ecclesiastes and the rest!” He remains the only author in the whole Bible whose statements transcend times and space. His wise sayings are intercultural, interdenominational, interdisciplinary and finally international! And his name ‘King Solomon the Wise’,

says it all. Are you looking for his disciples, then one of his fans is right here in front of you….that’s me, Scholar Kenez!

Jideofo:  Look at two of us Jude, and tell me honestly, who is older, Kenez or myself?

Jude: You may look older, but how am I sure it is not because you burn your candles at both ends. Since I knew you, can you claim to have ever slept for more than five hours either at night or during the day? Who are your trusted companions if not books, books, and books?

Kenez:   That’s unfair Jude, answer only his question.

Jude:  No, you don’t know this man more than I do! Remember he introduced you to me as someone to arbitrate for us over our perennial arguments long before he met you! He is a bookworm, not a human being! And I have read it somewhere that even keen biologists can’t calculate the age of any bookworm, so how do you expect me to tell his age?

Jideofo:   Since you have successfully dodged the question, tell us your view of Solomon.

Jude:   I knew that both of you would invariably love Solomon, the very first day I met either of you. His wisdom would fascinate anyone who loves truth, justice and knowledge for righteousness. He may hold the answers to our search for the prehistoric religion that was practised by the descendants of Adam and Eve!

Kenez:  I am enthralled by his books, as found GNB version, in the following order of priority:

·        WISDOM OF SOLOMON,

·         ECCLESIATES,

·         SIRACH, and lastly

·         SONG OF SONGS.

But, I must quickly add that there is absolutely nothing that entices or impresses me about the last one in the list. May be it was the romance with the Queen of Sheba that gave rise to it anyway—and that made Solomon succumb to ‘the way of all flesh’ and lured eventually him away from God, the Creator who gave him the greatest intelligence on earth! How could he earn the displeasure of his Benefactor and join them in worshipping idols? 

Jideofo:  That’s why I loathe everything in skirt. They ensnare you to follow their first very lover(s)—the demon or ‘Snake’ that deceived their real great° grandmother Eve! As for your not finding the love song interesting, that’s your cup of tea. It is the best poetry ever written on the type of true love that should exist between a husband and wife—and Lutherans or rather all protesting Christians admire and accept it as being revealed!

Kenez:  That’s exactly the contradiction! Anyone who accepts “Song of Songs” as revealed and at the same time rejects the “ Book of Wisdom” or again the “Books of Maccabees and Esdras” must be crazy and needs his/her head examined by a combined team of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and moral theologians. It’s an absurdity. It’s like throwing the baby out and retaining the bath water!

Jude:   Aren’t we now derailing? I presumed we all wanted to find out the international wisdom both of you credited to King Solomon. Can someone then read Chapter 9 that was cited? 

Jideofo:   With all pleasure, GNB Wisdom 9: 1-18:

“SOLOMON PRAYS FOR WISDOM

“v.1: God of my ancestors, merciful Lord, by your word you created everything,

v.2:  By your Wisdom you made man to rule all creation,

v.3:  to govern the world with holiness and righteousness, to administer justice with integrity,

v.4:  Give me the Wisdom that sits beside your throne; give me a place among your children,

v.5:  I am your slave, as my mother before me. I am only human. I am not strong, and my life will be short, I have little understanding of the Law or how to apply

it,

v.6:  Even if a man is perfect, he will be thought of as nothing without the Wisdom that comes from you.’

v. 7:  You chose me rather than anyone else to be the King of your own people, to judge your own people, to judge our sins and daughters,

v. 8: You told me to build a temple on your sacred mountain, an altar in Jerusalem, the city you chose as your home. It is a copy of that temple in heaven, which you prepared at the beginning.

v. 9:  Wisdom is with you and knows your actions; she was present when you made the world. She knows what pleases you, what is right and in accordance with your commands.

v.10:  Send her from the holy heavens, down from your glorious throne so that she may work at my side, and I may learn what pleases you.

v. 11: She knows and understands everything, and will guide me intelligently in what I do. Her glory will protect me.

v.12:  Then I will judge your people fairly, and be worthy of my father’s throne. My actions will be acceptable.

v. 13:  “Who can ever learn the will of God?

v. 14:  Human reason is not adequate for the task, and our philosophies tend to mislead us,

v.15:  because our mortal bodies weigh our souls down. The body is a temporary structure made of earth, a burden to the active mind.

v.16:  All we can do is to make guesses about things on earth; we must struggle to learn about things that are close to us. Who, then, can ever hope to understand heavenly things?

v.17:  No one has ever learnt your will, unless you first gave him Wisdom, and sent your Holy Spirit down to him.

v.18:  In this way people in earth have been set on the right path, have learnt what pleases you, and have been kept safe by Wisdom.”

Kenez:  The golden eagle has eventually landed!

 (He claps vigorously and dances briskly in a circular form)

In all my life I have never read anything more intelligent, more factual and exceedingly wise! Admire the humility and the beauty of the expressions in verses 5 & 6 – oh how insightful and educative they are; then drink in the wisdom wrapped neatly in verses 9–12. I marvel at their eternal validity! Don’t you? Why else are we searching?

Jideofo:  But it is only verse 13-18, and then the whole of Chapters 11 & 12 that intoxicate me! Look only at verse 14 for example:        

“v. 14:  Human reason is not adequate for the task, and our philosophies tend to mislead us,”

For the same reason, I agree with Martin Luther that the grandson of Sirach, Eleazar must have erred in his translations of what was recorded by the palace secretaries of King Solomon! If you read in detail Sirach 24: 30-34, jump ahead to 39: 32-35 and conclude with 50: 25-29, you will observe the errors of human judgement. The narratives are again muddled up with the sagacious words of King Solomon, another evidence of Jewish writers interfering with the original texts found in the papyrus!

Jude:   Aren’t we forgetting something? We never prayed for wisdom like the ‘Young-Boy-Solomon’ did. That explains why we are here debating and arguing endlessly. Having said that, I agree with Jideofo that verse14 explains why we are warned to be careful how we interprete the holy book for it is a double-edged sword and can equally cut short a person’s life span!

Kenez:  Is that a threat? Are you suggesting that the three chefs baking the three theosophical hot cakes, christened “ANGELIC VERSES” could be martyred, stoned or crucified? I dare any authority on earth, person or groups of persons to even try, and then they will witness the fireworks, not hot cakes! You can cage a lion but no one has ever gagged a lion! I owe it as a duty to speak the truth at all times, seek the truth, defend the truth, propagate the truth- and if the need arises die for speaking the truth anyday, anywhere, anytime and anyhow!

Jideofo:  Well spoken, it is this cowardly attitude that has held all of us bound to swallowing the syncretic idiosyncrasies of Jewish scholars in the name of religion and thus made us captives for centuries. The jinx is hereby broken for all times! It is the last bus stop for the tyranny for Mosaic laws! They have for too long privatised God the Creator as their personal property whereas what they meant was ‘the lord of Abram, Isaac and Jacob’!

Kenez:  Can someone return us to the topic we have at hand, for we have been derailing for long now.

Jude:  Which was the pristine mode of worship of the Almighty God by early men women and their children before Judaism and the other major religions of the world arrived on the scene? What commands of God did Adam and Eve obey, or which sanctified Enoch in Genesis 5:21-24. And I propose to set the ball rolling this way; THE ANSWERS WE ARE SEEKINGARE RIGHT THERE IN VERSES 2, 3 & 4 OF THAT QUOTATION FROM KING SOLOMON, SPARKLING LIKE A DIAMOND,  viz:

v.2:  By your Wisdom you made man to rule all creation,

v.3:  to govern the world with holiness and righteousness, to administer justice with integrity,

v.4:  Give me the Wisdom that sits beside your throne; give me a place among your children.

To those add Chapters 6, 7 & 8 of the Book of Wisdom, take special note of verse 10 of Chapter 6!

Kenez:  That’s interesting. You pretended not to have admired Solomon all along. You would observe that in all the recorded wise sayings of the sage there was no mention of anything like discrimination, neither was there any classification into races of mankind, nor categorisation of dialects, languages or cultures! The Wise King Solomon never mentioned ethnicity! He uses the generic term ‘man’ to refer to all mankind, not Jews or Gentiles, not blacks or whites, not lords or slaves, and finally not literate and illiterates.

 Jude:  What interests me is the wordings of verse 3, which dictates the duties and responsibilities of all men all over the planet, east, west, north or south of the globe, namely these:

·        “govern with holiness,

·        with righteousness and,

·        administer justice with integrity.”

That’s the international golden code of conduct or by default the pristine religion we have been seeking for!

Jideofo:   Hurrah! Or shall we say a double ‘Eureka!’ The first for arriving somewhere and the second for the fact that it was the fanatic that eventually found it. Therefore, my dear Jude, you are equally saying that verse 4 then is a prayer—enunciating the needed qualities or skills that all men need to fulfill their individual roles and duties on this planet during their short periods of earthly existence!

Jude:  Yes that’s a good summary. Your ability at concise statements has never been in doubt! Now enjoy the wisdom in verses 16-18, a second time:

v.16:  All we can do is to make guesses about things on earth; we must struggle to learn about things that are close to us. Who, then, can ever hope to understand heavenly things?

v.17:  No one has ever learnt your will, unless you first gave him Wisdom, and sent your Holy Spirit down to him.

v.18:  In this way people in earth have been set on the right path, have learnt what pleases you, and have been kept safe by Wisdom.”

And our search has come to a very rewarding end!

Kenez:  The crux of the matter is that the code is written in every one’s heart or mind or soul! Call it whatever you like, God the Creator ensures that every newborn comes into the world with the golden rule inscribed in his or her psyche! We only suffocate and stifle or lose it as our parents and relevant others begin superimposing the cultural norms and mores peculiar to one’s ethnic group.

Jideofo:  Yes, you’re quite correct there. If everyone obeyed his or her conscience or abides by all rules of physics in nature, all men and even animals can live in harmony. This is the existential truth! And that’s what natural theology teaches as “ETHICS” –simply defined as ‘the science of morals’.

Kenez:   I agree 100%! ‘Obedience to Natural Laws’ is another name for the same code of living a God-approved life. That’s what raised Patriarch Enoch of Genesis 5: 21-24 to sainthood, and as a reward the Almighty God took him away from sinful people to enjoy eternal bliss with Him in heaven! Some simple examples will illustrate our position:

i.                   Every stone that is thrown into the air, no matter how far up in the sky must naturally fall to the ground.

ii.                 Water seeks its own level, as well as flows from higher grounds/levels to lower ones.

iii.              Air fills all empty spaces, and gases occupy the entire vessel they are pumped into.

The list is long, so please refer to your notes of lessons in primary or secondary schools.

Jude:   True! Even simpletons like me know some of these! The biological mother or sibling sisters do not sexually excite any rational man or boy!

Jideofo:  Wrong there! Some of the earliest cases of incest are right there in the Bible. So also is the natural law that Cain violated, namely; ‘killing his sibling brother!’ Homicide, suicide or murder of any description is unnatural! Homicide is as a result emotional misjudgment, which could have been initiated by jealousy, greed and/or anger, which invariably precede all spilling of blood. Wars between persons, communities, factions, groups and nations are always fuelled by the same triple emotions in a variety of ascending proportions. This is further lubricated by ego-trips or national pride wrongly labelled ‘patriotism’.

Kenez:  In other words, we have established that before Buddha, Confucius, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed etc, there were international prescriptions and proscriptions embedded in nature! These are what we need to explore, document and abide by if all men will ever live in peace! And the ability to discern and follow these natural laws was guaranteed by our gift of conscience at birth. God created us as moral agents not immoral beasts! 

Jude:  In every nation to date, the Creator still sends good leaders, both spiritual and temporal, even though we may not easily identify them. If today, any nation discovers theirs and accord them respect, they can equally document their wise counsels, management stratagems and the remarkable events that make up the history of the nation. Surely, they will produce or have chronological records / books more magnificent than that of the Jews!

Kenez:  Thank you very much. That’s what we have all failed to do. And really, its never too late to start!

Can anyone stop non-Jews from writing their history?

 Jideofo:  If a group of historians are dedicated, generation after generation, to writing down only the truthful events about their own people and God’s interventions in the affairs of the people, in less than a century they would have a super history book! In addition, if they careful to follow King Solomon’s golden guidelines, they would evolve a mode of social life and worship close to the pristine religion we described above. This will be possible if, and only if, they have in their midst wise leaders, not politicians, who can interprete God’s benevolence to the nation accurately.

Moreover, the Almighty would confirm their honesty by giving them prophecies and methods of averting dangers. The problem with us today is that everyone reads and quotes the Bible written by Jewish scholars, often misinterpreting the contents for selfish reasons and yet claiming to be speaking on behalf of God!

Jude:  That’s the ninth wonder of the era. Any demagogue can start a church even in a warehouse and smile to the banks by fleecing unsuspecting and gullible adherents that he/she can bamboozle. And the novel American magic in the guise of Pentecostalism complicates matters. Then there are various forms of RELIGIOUS IMPERIALISM!  What stops the Pope from translocating to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ and ruling Christendom from there?

Kenez:  I agree with you completely. If dedicated sages documented what happened in Biafra during the civil with Nigeria, by now we would have been talking of how the Lord of Biafra fought on our side at various sectors of the battlefront. In the same vein, we would be discussing how some leaders sinned, by indulging in nude parties in their bunkers while poorly equipped youngsters died in their hundreds. Such commanders thereby brought down the anger of our God, such that we lost some battles. Those may actually be the reasons why we lost the fratricidal war altogether!

Jude:  Same on the Nigerian side, or more recently in the ‘Desert Storm’ where coalition forces rescued tiny Kuwait from the jaws of the “Sad Man’ of Iraq! Kuwaitis could have documented how the lord of their ancestors ensured that Americans and the allied nations came to their rescue, thus evolving a separate Islamic version of worship and a genealogy of their own heroes, deifying some and castigating others!

Jideofo:   We must advise all Presidents, Prime Ministers or other National Leaders to have a daily journal of events in their countries, evaluate and interprete those that indicate obedience to natural laws, elevation of national psyche and enrichment of community conscience. After a period of a hundred years, a compendium of all the relevant occurrences can be given religious interpretations at a United Nations Summit and thus evolve A PRISTINE WORLD RELIGION. This one shall have all nations as signatories. The end result shall then be a non-sectarian, non-partisan and non-syncretic religion for all humans irrespective of skin colour, language and social status! The objective this international project being proposed is neatly wrapped thus:

“THAT FROM NOW ONWARDS, NO MAN SHALL BE A WOLF TO ANOTHER, UNDER THE CLOAK OF:

·         RELIGIOUS FANATICISM,

·         RACIAL PREJUDICE,

·         ETHNIC SENTIMENTS,

·         POLITICAL IMPERIALISM NOR

·         IDEOLOGICAL SECTARIANISM!

Jude:  Let’s not lose sight of some other wise men and practical leaders in the bible who did not think religiously—at least some of their sermons and letters depict international views, i.e. they thought and wrote interculturally. For example; Job, Jesus the Christ, James and Saul of Tarsus. 

Jideofo:  I vehemently object to those names for now— why —we have an unfinished business. Definitely, we have not exhausted the benefits of Divine Wisdom and the Natural Laws that form the foundations of the PRISTINE RELIGION we have just discovered. At home peruse Chapters 1-6 of the Book of Proverbs in their entirety, but for now, will someone please read Proverbs 6: 16 – 19;

Jude:   From our favoured version, GNB I’m reading:

“v.16:  There are seven things that the Lord hates and cannot tolerate;

·        A proud look,

·         a lying tongue,

·        hands that kill innocent  people,

·         a mind that thinks up wicked plans,

·        feet that hurry off to do evil,

·        a witness who tells one lie after another,

·        and a man who stirs up trouble among friends.”

There goes the list of God’s practical norms for living a holy and blameless life like Patriarch Enoch did! Add on to this what Joshua, the son of Sirach enumerated in Chapter 25: vv.1-12 and surely you have the worldwide religion we are seeking for! We advise our admirers to peruse both lists, make posters of them and live by them. Surely those who abide by them will not only witness a new self but will begin to enjoy family contentment with internal happiness now and forever!

Kenez:  It is vital that we remind everyone that the whole of King Solomon’s ECCLESIASTES is a sermon on this pristine religion. Chapter 3: 1-22; beautifully paints a panoramic picture of the wisdom of living by all the natural laws that govern existence.

“v.1: Everything that happens in this world, happens at the time God chooses—

v.2: He sets the time for birth and the time for death,  the time for planting and the time doe  pulling up.

v.3: The time for killing and the time for healing,

 the time for tearing down and the time for building,

v. 4: He sets the time for sorrow and the time for joy,

the time for mourning and the time for dancing,

v.5: The time for making love and the time for not making love, the time for kissing and the time for not kissing,

v.6: He sets the time for finding and the time for losing, the time for saving and the time for throwing away,

v.7: The time for tearing and the time for mending,

 the time for silence and the time for talk,

v.8: He sets the time for love and the time for hate, the time for war and the time for peace!”

If one meditates on the import of each line, then one realises that we must share in other people’s burdens and joys. One ought to bear another’s shortcomings or inappropriate behaviour once in a while and equally exercise some patience over certain calamities that befall us as well as rejoice with others on their good fortunes. There’ll be no room for envy, jealousy or bigotry if every individual accepts and practises these simple injunctions!

Jude:  In that case only Jesus, the Christ, has the sermon on love and brotherly conduct that best meets the standard you have just recommended. See the compilation of his moral instructions in the gospel of Matthew Chapters 5, 6 & 7, very often referred to as “THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT’. For now let’s look at the eight beatitudes only, from the RSV edition:

“v.3: Blessed are the pure in spirit , for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

v.4:  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

v.5:  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

v.6:  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

v. 7:  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

 v.8:  Blessed are the pure inn heart, for they shall see God.

v.9:  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

v.10:  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

v.11:  Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,

v.12:  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

That’s what I call the ‘Manifesto of Jesus’ or his inaugural address! Read all the verses from there till the end of chapter seven and you will accept that he spoke interculturally and internationally like King Solomon did! He precisely enunciated UNIVERSAL VALUES, which are the best foundation stones of all ethics that ever existed, exists or will ever exist! In short his sermon cuts across racial, socio-cultural, geographical, political and religious boundaries. His analogies are circumspect, ‘salt of the earth’, ‘light of the world’etc. He spoke on anger, law, vow, adultery, divorce, revenge, charity, prayer, fasting, enemies, riches in heaven and finally God and possessions! These are international codes of conduct that engender holiness and good neighbourliness for all men at all times and in all places! So why have so many selfish religious leaders refused to preach these? We must correct their deliberate negligence, propagate these sublime injunctions of Jesus, the Christ and thereby unify or bring world peace and one world religion? That’s our task. And that’s exactly what I.S.M. would do in the nest hundred years from now! 

Jideofo:  Thanks for all that, but if you had read GNB version where the word ‘happy’ was severally used instead of ‘blessed’, how can one be happy in all those extreme emotional states? Are those his instructions humanly achievable or were they merely spiritual motivators or ideals we should aspire to?

Jude:  I would choose the latter - they are meant to motivate us to bear the problems of life as King Solomon enumerated in Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes and what Job also admonished in Chapter 9 and 10 of his book. However the best portion of Job’s utterances that applies to the topic at hand can be found in verses 1-22 of Chapter 14, and I am reading from GNB:

“v.1:   We are all born weak and helpless,

All lead the same short, troubled life,

v.2:  We grow and wither as quickly as flowers,

we disappear like shadows,

v.3:  Will you even look at me God, or put me on trial and judge me?

v.4:  Nothing clean can ever come from anything as unclean as man!’

v.5:  The length of his life is decided beforehand-

the number of months he will live,

You have settled it, and it can’t be changed.

v.6:  Look away from him and leave him alone;

let him enjoy his hard life- if he can.

v.7:  There is hope for a tree that has been cut down;

it can come back to life and sprout.

v.8;  Even though its roots grow old,

and its stump dies in the ground,,

v.9: With water it will sprout like a young plant.

v.10:  But a man dies, and that is the end of him;

He dies, and where in he then?”

Read on and on to benefit most from the wisdom of Job, for he is the only one who has demonstrated the resilience, the endurance and the fulfillment of all that King Solomon enumerated as the changes in seasons!

Jideofo:  The summary of Job’s teaching is; “All men, everywhere you find them, are the same, having similar problems and therefore should revere God and love their fellowmen since we all have identical beginnings and will end up the same way—that’s all!

Kenez:  We may have to stop here,-for all the riches in Psalms 1-150 are gold mines of ethical behaviour, except for a few parochial ones where Mosaic/Jewish egocentric emotions are once more expressed. Has anyone observed the psychological insight of Saul of Tarsus in Chapters 5,6 & 7 of his Letter to the Romans? I’m mostly impressed by verses 14-25 of Chapter 7, sub-titled “THE CONFLICT IN MAN”. Again study Chapter 8 of Proverbs, meditate and live by them, and you would have inherited the wisdom that made Patriarch Enoch a living saint among sinners! Our listeners or readers, ‘man no be wood-oh!’,  - we must stop here for a recess, for we are only humans like all of you and do get tired. Are you not yet bored like us? Good bye friends!

Jideofo:  Are you sure of what you have just said? Are you speaking on our behalf, and if so, who authorised you? Who said I was bored? Did I signify so..oo..

Jude:  Yes, we are. I support him. I second his motion for adjournment! Good bye for now!

C H A P T E R    S E V E N

THE PANACEA FOR ETHNOCENTRISM

Kenez:  For so long, I have allowed both of you to open up our discourses. Not anymore, for I need good answers to these stupefying questions: 

1.     How can you stop the sun from shinning?

2.     How can you prevent moonlight at nights?

3.     Can anyone count the stars and name them?

4.     How can one stop a man from loving a woman?

5.     How can babies be prevented from crying?

6.     Whoever arrested yawning, sneezing or coughing?

7.     Whoever delayed urinating for a whole day?

8.     Who can ever postpone defecating by ten hours?

9.     How can one withhold rainfall when it starts?

10.         Who can stop a carnivore from ‘killing to eat’? And to sum it all up, now that I am thinking, can anyone, no matter how powerful, stop me?

Jude:  Wait! Wait! Kenez, what’s eating you up?

Jideofo: You simpleton, can’t you see that only one string links up all his questions? No one can do even only one of those demands. Open your eyes and understand a simple rhetoric! If no one can do any of those ‘impossibles’, then why are we mere humans segregating based on racial prejudice, ethnic parochialism and myopic sectarianism? Kenez, have I hit the bull’s eyes?

Kenez:  Thank you –jooh, my philosopher friend! Shall we attempt answering just one of those questions and therefrom realise the folly of ethnocentrism –that’s all I demand!

Jude:  You do not need many words to state in simple, clean and concise manner what Solomon had already resolved long ago. Read Chapter 6 of his Book of Wisdom and note specifically verses 12-21. They give in a nutshell the problem with us all, which is--‘we have refused to be wise’!

Jideofo:   Have I not said it before, times without number, that any problem on earth has a solution and that all we need is a mastery of the thoughts expressed by Solomon, Jesus and Socrates can provide palliative remedies in the least if only we could apply them consistently! For now let me read where you quoted:

“v.12:   Wisdom shines bright and never grows dim; those who love her and look for her can easily find her.

v.13:  she is quick to make herself known to anyone who desires her.

v.14:  Get up early in the morning to find her, and you will have no problem; you will find her sitting at your door.

v.15:  To fasten your attention to Wisdom, is to gain perfect understanding, If you look for her , you will soon find peace of mind,-

v.16:  Because she will be looking for those who are worthy of her, and she will find you wherever you are! She is kind and will be with you in your every thought.

v.17:  Wisdom begins when you sincerely want to learn, To desire Wisdom is to love her;

v,18:  To love her is to keep her laws;

To keep her laws is to be certain of immortality.

v.19:  Immortality will bring you close to God.

v.20:  This desire for Wisdom can prepare you to rule a kingdom.

v.21:  So then, you that rule the nations,

If you value your thrones and symbols of authority, honour Wisdom, So that you may rule for ever.”

Jude:  Have I made my point? Take note of verses 17 –19 and then v.20 for the are the answers to problems with personal lives and rulership. If only world leaders would obey, there would be no more wars in any part of the globe. But no one is wise, nor is any one ready to learn, see the fist line of verse 17! ‘Being close to God’ will definitely ensure ‘immortality’. Now we are sure of how Patriarch Enoch of Genesis 5 achieved sainthood. THE LOVE OF DIVINE WISDOM AND OBEDIENCE TO NATURAL LAWS OF GOD, that’s the secret formula! Eureka! At last we have found it!

Kenez:    Then another miracle has just occurred. Again, it is the simpleton that uncovered the formula for holiness! That’s why I will always love or worship King Solomon, his sayings are not only wise always, but interdisciplinary, intercultural but international!

Very unlike Moses who for selfish reasons, brought about the introduction of ethnic cleavages, sectarian sentiments and corrupted an otherwise harmonious human family with his virus of ethnocentrism! His sole aim was personalising God the Creator, whom he referred to as  ‘the lord of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ and at other places  ‘the god of our ancestors’, thereby converting the Almighty Father of all creatures into a Jewish god! Heretical, that’s what it was/is!

Jideofo:   Besides that, King Solomon explains in simple and unambiguous words what philosophers fine difficult to comprehend let alone explain to another person. See for instance Chapter 9 of the golden book of Ecclesistes, verses 1-18 but for brevity go straight for the jugular by reading only vv. 1 & 2 and jump over to vv. 11 & 12:

Jude:   Why the staccato referencing, it’s quite unusual for you, or is it to save time?

Jideofo:   Let our listeners/readers make the required effort at learning how to find scriptural quotations by themselves. In fact, they should read the whole book to better appreciate our debates.

Jude:  Now I get your intention, GNB edition states:

“v.1: I thought long and hard about all this, and saw that God controls the actions of wise and righteous men, even their love and their hate. No one knows anything about what lies ahead of him.

v.2: It makes no difference. The same fate comes to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the bad, to those who are religious and those who are not, to those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. A good man is no better off than a sinner; a man who takes an oath is no better off than one who does not. One fate comes to all alike….”----------Then down to:

v.11:  I realised another thing, that in this world fast runners do not always win the race, and the brave do not always win the battle. Wise men do not always earn a living, intelligent men do not always get rich, and capable men do not always rise to high positions. Bad luck happens to everyone.

v.12:  You never know when your time is coming. Like birds suddenly caught in a trap, like fish caught in a net, we are trapped at some evil moment when we least expect it.”

Kenez:  Congrats! Jideofo! You have hit the nail on the head. You have stumbled on the existential answers to all my furious questions. Verse 11 is very worthy of special mention here. It merits reflective meditation by all wise, unbiased and liberal human beings. It states that there never should have been any racial superiority or social stratification if properly understood by all and sundry! 

Jideofo:  You can say those a hundred or thousand times on the rooftops, who borders to listen? Human beings are that stupid that they care less about wisdom and its benefits. Have all our pastors, priests, imams, gurus, evangelists and miracle workers not read that passage all their lives? We all must digest verses 3-10, which I deliberately omitted, if we aspire to internalising OBEDIENCE TO NATURAL LAWS. No one, who comprehends the import of that passage, needs another lecture! If you realise you can’t control the commands of God the Creator nor modify the motions and emotion He put in nature, then you relax and live life one day at a time!

Jude:  Put it in a simpler way; All racists should read and digest the following passages of King Solomon:   

Wisdom 6:12-21, 9: 9-18, and 7: 1-30, to disabuse their minds on the futility of racial discrimination! Anyone who fails to accept equality of all races of mankind after studying those passages is ignorant,

a confirmed bigot simply being deluded by puerile hedonism or egocentric conceitedness!

Kenez:  I want us to appeal to human reasoning and beg that we leave out the sacred scriptures for now. Let’s use our native intelligence to discern these natural laws and the need to obey them. Can’t everyone now see I asked those million dollar questions at the beginning of this discourse?

Jideofo:  Of course, yes. I guess you marvel at the foolhardiness of all segregationists and racists, - who cannot stop the native elements that rule the universe from showering their benefits to all alike, irrespective of colour, creed and geographical location! The rain falls for the rich and the poor alike, for animals in the forest and ‘civilised humans in the cities, at the same time for the whites and the blacks and the yellows as well. The sun shines on the kindhearted, the wicked, criminals and robbers as well as the good citizens in any community. Moonlight does not select whom to bathe/shower with its cool rays at nights!

Jude:  Left to the segregationists, they would have stopped the rain from falling in the homes and on the farms of the less privileged!

Kenez:  Yes, you are quite correct. The sun shines daily without fail, both for the honest and the dishonest, the rulers and the ruled, for leaders and the led, the rich and the poor. The same in applicable for slaves and lords, for urchins and for kings, for the brownish and for the chocolate and definitely ‘FOR THE JEWS AND THE GENTILES’. It is clearly evident that there is no favouritism or discrimination as far as our God is concerned.

The Almighty Creator showers his moonlight on all His children irrespective of colour, creed, social status or geographical location on any part of his universe! The logic is very simple: I created them all, I gave them life and love to procreate, and therefore I have to keep them equally in existence. Thus all sectarians, segregationists, bigots and racists are not children of this Almighty Father. They must have a lesser god, who indoctrinates them to label some, denigrate others and enslave the remnants! And this father of racists is a congenital liar, for there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells lies, its natural for he is only behaving true to type. He was/is a murderer and there is no truth in him. He is the father of all liars. If you doubt me, will you also doubt the Lord Jesus Christ? Read and interprete John’s gospel Chapter 8: 31- 37 in GNB edition.

Jude:  So, definitely, the Evil One id their father, hence he engineers them into the name-calling, blacklisting, denigration and apartheid policies that they practise and propagate! Yes, I agree with you!

If we share the same atmospheric air, drink the same water a by-product of rainfall, walk upon the same solid ground of earth, obey the same laws of gravity, respiration and excretion why the categorisations then?

Jideofo:  Ask their original demonic father who started it all. We have the identical anatomy and physiology, same blood plasma, similar groupings and have white and red corpuscles, why the classifications, why the social prejudices, why the racial or religious discriminations, why the sectarian sentiments?

Kenez:  whites marry blacks and produce human infants, blacks marry yellows and produce the same human babies and yellows marry whites and equally produce human babies, not apes, chimpanzees nor gorillas, --so why the cleavages. What makes one race superior to others? What classifies one as a majority group while the other is a minority group?

Jideofo:  In sports we have the final answer! There was a time when whites dominated all the various sporting events in the world. It was even reported that Adolf Hitler closed down a World Olympics in his country because a black sprinter, Jesse Owens of America beat all the white athletes in both the 100 and 200 metre races. To save the racists at the white dominated Olympics further embarrassment, he shut down the sports festival and ordered all the contingents back to their home countries. Of course, the American sprint team dominated by blacks was poised to add the gold medals for the 4X100 and 4X400 metre relays to their kitty. That was then! Today, it is a well-known fact that blacks are superlative in not only the sprints but also the middle and long distance races. Hitler would have committed suicide were he to be alive to date!

Jude:  There is no nation today that does not employ black athletes in sports and games of different magnitudes. Despite all the muscle flexing and apartheid policies of yesteryears, persecution and partisan politics in games did not prevent blacks from showing their God given talents in sporting activities, no, not even in ‘bedmatics’! 

Kenez:  In other words, What you are saying is that in athletics; be it gymnastics, weight-lifting, boxing, wrestling, high jump, discuss, javelin and hammer, every competitor is subjected to the same laws of gravity, of heat, or cold. Or as we learnt in our early study of the behaviour of gases “under normal temperature and pressure”! Every athlete has to obey the rules of the game by observing the official lines, curves, corners, rings while playing or competing on sloppy or level ground. And impartial referees enforce discipline dispassionately by being just and fair to every athlete! In short, excellence by any athlete is dependent on his/her individual skill and mastery of the laws of nature, as well as the rules of the game. That one performs better than another is purely as a result of effort, neither on favouritism nor on nepotism on the part of the officiating referee(s). 

Jude:   Not only that, they have to train and train for so long that they would have built up enough stamina for the event. In addition, they stumble and fall or crash-land each time they disobey the laws of gravity. They must also study the game under the strict supervision of qualified coaches, subdue their animalistic instincts by mortifying their bodies so as to win the laurels at the end of the competition! In order to excel, those who subject themselves to tougher exercises and practise for longer hours, usually gain better mastery of the game by obeying the laws of dynamics; whether hydro- or thermo- or even aero-;

 as dictated by nature during the actual competitions!

Jideofo:  That’s very interesting, so Jude at last has started peaking the language of nature rather than the myopic language of imported religion! Surely, this is another miracle, to borrow the earlier expression by Kenez!

Kenez:  Don’t borrow anything. Speak your mind. Jude will not swallow you; it was a compliment you’ve just made! All animal understand the laws of nature, our problem is humans have complicated them by child rearing practices that confuse their offspring. We modify them when we give them racial, ethnic or religious colourinations and then go ahead and baptise them “civilisation”, “modernity” or “ current fashion”. Basically, we are only deceiving ourselves by not submitting to natural laws, in the name of being regarded as civilised ‘homo sapiens’! So long as we don’t obey the eternal laws the Creator embedded in His created universe, we hurt ourselves. That’s an incontrovertible fact!

Jideofo:  It is time, we threw off our chauvinistic pride and learnt to live our lives according to the dictates of nature. Whereas other animals are at peace with nature because they obey them, human beings are forever at war with everything they do to date. We, even have rules on how, when and where to urinate or defecate. We cannot express sexuality naturally, rather we have drawn so many rules on who marries who, at what age, at what place or season!

Jude:  We are our own worst enemies. We scream international standards all the time whereas what we mean is “standards that suit my own people”. How long did it take women to win suffrage in those ‘so-called’civilised democracies? Could Tiger Woods be declared champion of Golf if it were in those dark days of slave trade and recent apartheid policies in sports? Could the reigning queens of lawn tennis ‘The William Sisters” or “Miss World” emerge from coloured people were it not for impartial refereeing following the dismantling of racist policies in sporting activities? Let’s have a clean break from ethnocentric and nepotic marginalisations of our fellow human beings, co-heirs of the Almighty Father, who creates each of us in his benevolence!

Jideofo: In sports no one wants to know your religion or denomination, serf or lord, rich or poor, white or black, and definitely neither Jew nor Gentile! Your performance is what every entire spectator, fan or referees is interested in. You get the accolades for beating other athletes based on your talent, skill and the ability to keep all the rules of the game while doing so!

Kenez:  Thanks, my dear Jide, I never thought of that, but wait a minute, do you now realise that racists are either actually ignorant or are subhuman. If they can accept these international standards in sports, and even allow whites blacks and yellows to become top class FIFA graded referees, why do they still resort to racial prejudice and segregation once they leave the vicinity of the games?

Jude:  The answer is simple: ETHNOCENTRISM IS A CONTAGIOUS VIRUS THAT IS MAN-MADE. It has no drugs because it attacks the brain cells and renders the victim incapable of dispassionate thinking or objective reasoning. And like all man-made institutions it, too, has an expiring date! But God’s laws have no length of time, they are eternal, have no expiring dates, and finally they are beneficial and live giving. For example: falling in love, sexual arousal, mating, pregnancy, gestation, labour and childbirth! These are divine gifts that last forever and ever in all living things, human or animal, literate or illiterate, rich or poor, tall or short, dwarf or giant!

Jideofo:   Which means we have gone a full circle-and like the seasons; summer, autumn, winter and spring, w have once again made a cycle back to the original debate on equality at birth!

Jude:  Everything that has a beginning naturally must have an end! All men are born equal but various psycho-socio-political manipulations make them feel superior or inferior. It is all due to environmental conditioning. But the truth remains that in certain skills, blacks are better than whites and in others the reverse is the case. Both blacks and whites also are not as good as the yellows in other facets of life!

Kenez:  Is that all, -- what of in love making, in singing, dancing and the negatives of life—like drug peddling, robbery, 419, and homicide? The point we are trying to make is this “human relationships must not be built on ethnocentric discriminations nor should excellence be based on group-pride nor on social prejudice! Rather, we are recommending that:

*ALL MEN AND WOMEN BE GIVEN EQUAL AND FAIR OPPORTUNITIES TO PROVE THEIR METTLE BASED ON INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS OF EVALUATION THAT ARE SCIENTIFIC, OBJECTIVE AND FACTUAL! *

Jideofo:   In other words, Let us all obey the natural laws in existence as the Creator wants us to! Be loyal, kind and friendly to every other person on earth, since we are equal co-heirs to his kingdom! The United Nations needs to adopt this as its mission statement!

Jude:   We are back to the two greatest commands:

i.                   Love the creator of living and non-living things, the almighty god with all your senses and,

ii.                 Demonstrate this by extending fraternal love to the immediate neighbour you meet at every momment of your short span of existence in this mundane world!

Deuteronomy 4: 1-2, states in unambiguous terms that Moses is the one teaching the statutes that originated ethnocentrism and vv. 6 – 8 confirms his objective—to impress others! Then read Mark 7:14-15 and 21-23 to see how Jesus, the Christ condemned ethnocentric customs, dogmas and rituals of Judaism! Good Bye!

Kenez:  Not so abrupt, my dear friends. Let’s attempt a resume of the entire debate, for the benefit of our fans, listeners and readers, under the caption:

PROPHET MOSES  versus  APOSTLE PETER

The deductions of this Volume 2 of “ANGELIC VERSES”

Jude:  If anyone cares to research into the origins of ethnocentrism, let such a one compare the narratives in Chapters 3 & 4 of EXODUS with those of ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, Chapters 10 & 11, then 15 to confirm all!

Jideofo:  Why do you want us to study these your references, -Jude – are you again sponsoring another fanatical exploration? Or is it a revelation?

Kenez:  No, read first, later digest what he says. Let us listen to him – he must have observed some sinister or crucial conclusions he wants us to share in, remember he is more theological than both of us are. Let’s hear him out.

Jude:   No, that’s not true, only that I wonder which God appeared to Moses in Midian that commissioned him to lead out the Israelites.

Kenez:   And also, which God appeared to the great Apostle Peter at Joppa that commissioned him to lead the Gentiles into Judeo-Christianity? I admire your insight! The events are contradictory to say the least, and a super contrariety!

Jideofo:  Oh – ho! So at last, we have arrived at the end of this long debate – eh?  For Jude to have asked that question proves only one fact, which is ‘we now have a new convert to rational religion’. Welcome, big brother Jude. This only goes to prove the assertion that wise men often disagree vehemently over emotionally laden issues at first, only to resolve the cantankerous issued later. Just like over this long foray we have made into the genesis of racism or the aetiology of ethnocentrism. They may so agree firmly on the issues that a new resolution to right the wrong notions is the end result.

Jude:  Exactly, my dear friends, - I meditated on some of the questions or call them issues about the dualism of ‘lords’ and ‘gods’ in the Old Testament narratives. It occurred to me that our youthful utterances might have hit a very important nail on the coffin of Judaism. And that crucial question is this: WAS IT THE SAME ALMIGHTY GOD THAT APPEARED TO PATRIARCH MOSES AND PETER, THE APOSTLE?

Or are they two very different gods? If the later, then we, the maligned Gentiles have all been deceived for so long that we are definitely blind Christians!

Jideofo:  The answer to both questions is a capital NO!

What have I not done to convince to think for yourself when it comes to religious issues? Almighty God, the Creator, never appears to humans. He has special angels He sends; refresh your mind by reading in full Chapter 13 of the Book of JUDGES, and pay particular attention to Manoah’s declaration in verse 22 and the convincing response by his intelligent wife in verse 23! It is the same with the entire Major and Minor Prophets in the Bible, from Issaiah to Daniel and lastly to John ‘the Beloved Apostle’ that enabled him write the Book of Revelation! The angel usually appears ‘in the form of a man in shinning white apparels that dazzle like lightning’!

Jude:  If that is the case, then the angels that appeared to Moses and Peter contradicted each other.

Kenez: Not at all, the issue is that Moses gave his own version of the encounter with ‘the lord of Abram, Isaac and Jacob’ an emotional coloration to achieve his own political/religious intention! Peter, on the other hand, narrated in his simple fisherman’s language what actually transpired in the vision. God the Almighty Father was once again sanitising the errors of Judaism!

Jideofo:  Therefore, it was not, is not and never will be the will of God; to consider any animal he created to be referred to as ‘unclean’!  The vision at Joppa agrees completely with Genesis 1: v.31, whereas Moses erred in his ambition to codify a ‘Syncretic Religion’ in the desert and so labelled some animals ‘unclean’ and some humans ‘gentiles’! That was the greatest disservice to God, the Creator and contributed to the Anti-Semitism, which climaxed in Adolph Hitler and Adolph Eichmann exterminating more than six million Jews during the 2^nd World War!

Kenez:  To better appreciate that, read Deuteronomy 10: 11-22, compare and contrast it with Peter’s speech at the home of Cornelius as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles 10:34-43 and then observe his defence in Chapter 11: 5-18:

Whereas Almighty God directed universal ecumenism and impartiality in religious matters, ‘the lord of Moses directed Jewish syncretism and segregationist bigotry!

Timothy, Paul’s young assistant had a Greek father and a Jewish mother, and that’s how it should be!

Jude:  That’s how God wanted human love to operate! Moreover, this is the conclusion of the matter! On the other hand, has anyone a better closing remark?

   

Jideofo:  Yes, I have — let all men, women and children learn that God, the Creator, is our Father, King, and Provider! He does not discriminate. He is not a human father that could prefer one child to the others. His divine love is equal in all respects. He never chose any race, nor preferred any ethnic group to all the others. Our listeners or readers must realise that some human leaders and prophets often do have vaulting ambitions and ulterior motives for inventing illegal cleavages in modes of worship, myopic dogmas and parochial doctrines! But at the end of the day, which is invariably at the cessation of our individual lives   *ONLY OBEDIENCE TO THE ONE GOD, THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR IS WHAT MATTERS,

**AND TAKING CARE OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IS THE ONLY TRUE RELIGION!

Kenez:   I’d prefer we rephrase it this way:

*GOD THE CREATOR IS AN ALL-KNOWING GOD,

**SO HE CANNOT CONTRADICT HIMSELF,

***BEFORE HIM ALL HUMANS ARE EQUAL, therefore;

OBEDIENCE TO NATURAL LAWS IS HIS DICTATED RELIGION FOR ALL HIS CREATION!

ANGELIC VERSES FOR VOLUME TWO

*(A continuation of reflections from volume one)*

·        Take a good bath, dry yourself with a nice towel, walk up in front of a full size mirror, and look at the full length of the naked man or woman you see in the mirror. Don’t blush!. You may not have done it before! Admire what you see. Observe the curves, the beautiful lines that etch out the lips, mouth, nose, eyes, ears, head, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, breasts, stomach, then twist around to admire the most sculpturally designed object on earth, the buttocks, waist line, and hips. Now return to your former frontal position and complete the inspection by admiring the scientifically structured navel with the triangular organ located below it that determines your gender, then the thighs, knees, legs and finally the fingers and toes! Every King or Queen, Lord or Slave, Giant or Dwarf, Black or White or Yellow species of the human race ‘Homo Sapiens’, possesses the same anatomical design you have just seen! It denotes and demonstrates the inevitable equality of all human beings!  

·        No sane male eyes has ever seen or will ever see anything more attractive and exciting than a beautiful and naked female body, and vice versa for any sensible female eyes! You are not in control of the natural current running in your veins when that erotic pull erupts! You may due to repeated practice control your response to a nude body, but the enlargement of your pupils and the excitement you feel are definitely beyond your conscious control! Did you notice the hairy pendulum dangling between your thighs if a male? And the dome-shaped breasts standing majestically on your chest, if a female? Those are similar in all human beings and ensure that you replenish the race before your individual death!

·        Yet, some humans can afford to hate others to the point of killing them based on racial prejudice or due to nepotic belief systems. What one can never create, let alone make it breathe, move, eat, sleep and wake up – one is not afraid to hate, malign, discriminate against, and caricature based on culturally learned and environmentally conditioned response sets!  Ask yourself this question: What special qualities have I that those I dislike do not have that could warrant my ethnic segregationistic policies towards them?

·        Observe the texture of your hairs, the colour of the pupils of your eyes, the network of red veins that criss-cross the white eyeballs supplying blood! Can anyone by sorcery or magic ever mould or construct anything similar to these? Has any group of scientists produced a finished image comparable in sleekness, vibrancy and virility? No, a million times, NO! Yet racists have the effrontery to label, catergorise and stigmatise fellow human beings based on their diseased mentality! So, let us learn that we have neither creative powers nor the authority to implement apartheid policies!

·      Since human beings can’t control pregnancy, gestation and childbirth, the United Nations should commission morbid anatomists, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists to examine the brains and if necessary the whole nervous systems of all dead racists! We may be surprised by the information they could unearth regarding some dysfunctionality responsible for their ethnocentric behaviour! Has anyone any cogent reason to dislike or hate what one cannot create? Surely, some unique deficiency may be found that motivates their congenital hatred for people of other races! If not, we suggest they be classified as subhuman and declared psychopaths!

·      Thanks to the Organisers of Miss World and Mr. Universe contests, we now know that the three races of mankind can produce Queens and Kings despite the differences in the colour of their skins, the pupils of their eyes and even the texture of their hairs! Their heights and body builds are quite similar in all respects; hence impartial judges can evaluate them based on agreed inter-ethnic criteria or international standards for evaluating beauty and handsomeness! The criteria used in these contests should apply in all other human relationships! 

·      If today we have blacks as Miss World, which was impossible, only a few years back, we need to explore human history in order to identify where we derailed! When, where and how did humans begin the long descent into the dark alley of imperialism, racism, apartheid, bigotry, nepotism, sectarianism, colonialism, syncretism, Zionism, Semitism and Anti-semitism? We must retrace our steps now that we have realised the foolhardiness of compartmentalising humans into ethnic groups.

·      Each race has its fair share of rulers and the ruled, of dwarfs and giants, of cripples and athletes, of morons and geniuses, of saints and sinners, of masters and servants, of widows and widowers, of the barren and the fertile, of the sane and the insane, of the rich and the poor, of the orphan and the destitute, of the literate and the illiterate, of the blind, the deaf and the dumb! So why is there the need to add more discriminatory, colonial and/or imperialistic problems to the myriad of social inequalities already in existence in every community in the world?

·        If every race, ethnic group or subculture of the Homo Sapiens produces “the good, the bad and the ugly”; isn’t it time we shelved all the notions and apartheid policies that divided us and enthroned the similarity in anatomy and physiology as features that could unite the entire human race? When shall we abrogate the words: apartheid, racism, black, white, yellow and ethnocentrism from our various dictionaries? We could easily replace them with a uniformed child-rearing practices if only the United Nations can honestly table it for discussion! With a strategic resolution like that passed and vigorously implemented by member nations, we can churn out children, teenagers and adolescents that do not know nor recognise the errors of their ancestors; “the progenitors who were victims of imperialism or neo-colonialism, hatred, envy and wickedness.”

·        Just as every non-living being instinctively obeys the natural laws in existence, so human emotions can be re-channelled to unconsciously obey God’s immutable laws embedded in creation and etched on our conscience for our own overall good! All souls have one religion, namely LOVE. God is the Greatest Soul and we are the reflections of that His creative forces that precede every reproductive activity in all living things. We could harness it for the restoration of peace and tranquility in the entire universe. All men, women and children ought to see everyone else as sons and daughters of the same Almighty Father, the Creator, for we are co-heirs of His kingdom!

MAY THE DIVINE WISDOM FROM ABOVE ILLUMINATE THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF ALL

WHO HAVE BEEN PRIVILEGED TO THUMB THROUGH THE PAGES OF THIS SECOND VOLUME

OF ‘ANGELIC VERSES’ SO THAT TOGETHER WE WILL PUMP ENOUGH HUMANE LOVE INTO OUR SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND BY SO DOING CHANGE THE FACE OF THIS PLANET!

Signed by:……………………………………………

Professors Jude, Jideofo and Kenez, ãMarch 2003

E-mail: saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk

POSTSCRIPT

Of all the books of the New Testament, the one that preaches reconciliation most is Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. In its entirety, the wrongs brought about by the partitioning of the human race into Jews and Gentiles by Moses is redressed. See specifically Chapters 2 & 3 for a detailed thesis on the resolution of racial segregation, and for understanding how spiritual resurrection in Christ works, see 2: 1-13. Paul concludes that the primary secret plan of God (3:1-4) was sending Jesus Christ to break down the wall of racism occassioned by Mosaic laws made in error (2:14–22)!                    ***Professors Jude, Jideofo & Kenez.

A PATRIARCHAL EPILOGUE

Rascals Could Be Masked Geniuses

          Many parents are happy to have intelligent sons and daughters and so was I when Jude and later, Jideofo were born! They were rascally, adventurous and inquisitive! Soon Kenez joined them. He was very witty! Then my home was literally turned into a noisy stadium! My wife and I in addition to six daughters, however, enjoyed them.

          Jude, the oldest and seemingly the most docile entered the seminary early in life. But he soon abandoned ship during the stormy weather of theosophical rhetorics as was then demonstrated by his expatriate lecturers at the Faculty of Philosophy of Bigard Memorial Seminary, an affiliate of Roma Urbano Universitate, Italy but based in ENUGU in 1970.

          Jideofo, a pragmatic rascal entered the University of Lagos to read an honours degree in psychology but at the end of his three years sojourn there, in 1975, he emerged more of an existential philosopher rather than the scientific psychologist we envisaged! His National Youths Service was turbulent at the Department of Psychiatry, University College Hospital, IBADAN. He later got commissioned into the Nigerian Air Force and became an Air Force Medical Officer for trainee pilots in Kano.

          Kenez, the youngest of the three, right from childhood, would not accept any directive, order, command or lesson until he was tutored and/or clarified on the ‘whys’, ‘hows’ and ‘wherefores’ of the command!  Even ordinary chores or common domestic errands were only run when he was thoroughly convinced they were necessary and beneficial. This one was a bone in the neck of all his lecturers and consultants at the School of Medicine, College of Medical Sciences, of the University of Benin, NIGERIA. He ended up specialising in clinical psychology, majoring in existential psychotherapy, earning a doctorate degree in psychometrics!    

       As an educationist with a modest wife, who was sagacious all the same, we coped the best we could to raise the eleven kids that God, the Almighty blessed us with! We stretched our energies to elastic limits while managing our meagre income in the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s.  Kenez however came to our rescue when he finished from the University of Benin.

          Without the slightest premonition, I eavesdropped on their youthful arguments relating to subjects I had never learnt in my elementary teacher training colleges!  The only topics I could decipher were the ones relating to the bible and some catholic doctrines and dogmas, which I was conversant with, for I raised them to belong to that universal denomination of Christianity. I was a Community Catechist and a School Headmaster, and later in life, I rose to become a fourth degree Knight of Columbus, Houston Texas, U.S.A.

          Before the golden jubilee of my wedding to their mother, I once called a meeting of the three rascals and pleaded with them to document most of their arguments, or discussions or even their discourses! I was not sure of what they really called them! I impressed it upon them that every useful knowledge or insight came from God, the Creator of the Universe! I hope that they obliged me. I want to believe that you are harvesting, as well as investing in their onerous duty of the enwisdomisation of all humankind! Never mind the unusual word I have just used, I learnt from the rascals, and you need to find out its meaning just I did! If you fail to acquire its true meaning, then welcome to the world of ambiguity that characterised my eavesdropping adventures or hide-and-seek episodes!

       The contents of this booklet are the results of that plea. I sincerely hope it captures your imagination and curiosity as it did to me in those early years of their disputations. Please read Matthew Chapter 13, verses 24 – 30 & 36 – 43 for deriving the maximum benefits from their discourse! Paul’s letters to Timothy are very convincing for all new Christians, now you should can read 1^st Timothy 1: 3-11, to really appreciate this point. Happy digestion, or by default, indigestion!

              Now, go ahead and read PROVERBS 9: verses 5—10 for a better appreciation of the wisdom of these rascals. It is worth reading repeatedly. This is an elder’s little contribution to the baking of this hot cake! You may call it ‘a patriarchal icing’ on the hot cake the trio have baked! Eat with caution!

May God Bless Everyone!

SIR  & LADY DANIEL M. P. MBAEZUE, KSC.

Houston, Texas.

BONUS! BONUS!! BONUS!!!

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING SIMPLE QUESTIONS AND WIN $1,000 IN CASH

Question 1:

If any nation of the world according to Bible narratives deserves to be called “THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OF GOD” then the gentile people of Niniveh, the capital of Assyria at the time, merits that title. Do you agree? Whether you agree or not substantiate your position with relevant proofs! In other words, answer in detail backing your arguments with relevant quotations: …………………………………………………………(1,000 words)

Question 2:

Cornelius, a Captain in the Roman regiment who lived at Caesarea is/was to Modern Christians what Jacob is/was to the Israelites! Is that true? Provide enough evidence to substantiate your view by comparing the roles Peter and Moses played in the lives of the Gentiles and the Jews respectively.

…………………………………………………………(500 words)

Question 3: 

Why do religious fanatics spend so much energy quoting the good, the bad and the ugly in the narrative of another nation’s history while neglecting their own?

Can you proffer a remedial therapy for such fanatics? …………………………………………………………      (500 words)

Question 4:

Do you subscribe to divinations, prophecies, and/or revelations? In the light of Daniel’s prophecies in the Bible being partially fulfilled in the annals of modern nations, can you compare him with Nostradamus of recent history?

…………………………………………………………( 1,000 words)

Question 5:

What, in your opinion, is the origin of racism, bigotry, apartheid, crusades and jihads? Do you promote these inequalities in your private life? Convince us that you do not, by proffering solutions to social stereotypes, racial prejudices and religious segregations?

…………………………………………………………( 1,000 words)              

Send your answers by e-mail to: saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk

A REMINDER FROM THE FIRST HOT CAKE

« Kenez:     Let’s disperse, jooh! You are both missing the point I’m raising.  Abel had a different super-biological father from the super-biological father of Cain – hence the differences in character, occupation and respect for their Grandfather GOD! Not Adam! This was clearly demonstrated and tested by the sacrifices with their first fruits of their professions at harvest time! 

Cain’s true father is the destroyer, a killer, and a liar right from the beginning. Please go and read the gospel of John; Chapter 8 vv. 31-47 especially 44, and you will see where Jesus exposed it all!  And may be to resolve that, another ‘holy’ angel had to counter that by fathering Abel.  But quickly Cain’s father advised his own evil son to eliminate Abel and so populate the world with only his own evil genes, and to date he still does! So to date we have evil children right from their birth of whom, King Solomon said were “crooked” and “no one can straighten out what God has made crooked”. See the Book of Proverbs for more.

Then this final nail on the coffin of falsehood in the narratives. Turn to the concise epistle of Jude, which has only one chapter, read and explain to me verses 14 – 18! That’s the final proof that though Eve was the mother of Cain and Abel, Adam was not their biological father, hence he refrained from giving them names! Eve did. And she explained how she got them, “ from the Lord

I’ ve gotten a son’! Her words not mine!

From this perspective I’ve always stated without any shred of doubt in my mind that Jesus, the Christ was the second Abel, not a second Adam. Jesus was a seed of the woman promised, whereas Adam came from the dust of the earth! For reincarnation to be foolproof the circumstances of birth or creation have to be duplicated not replicated! Do you get the slant on my thesis?

However, let me place it on record here, that on my own as a mortal man, I could not have deciphered these camouflaged narratives. I never set out to do so, all I did as a teenage student in 1963, was to ask my Irish Rev, Gentleman who took us in Bible Knowledge:

“Rev. Fr. who taught Cain how to commit murder?

And he was very honest by replying:

“ My dear Jude, I never thought about that and I’m not sure! However I will try to find out.”

He did not tell me his finding till the outbreak of the civil war in 1967 when all expatriates left our homeland for theirs! I participated as an adolescent field officer in the Biafran commandos. I grew up seeking an honest answer unconsciously till the year 2001 when God’s Holy Spirit decided to give me these answers I’ve shared with you!

My thesis therefore is; there are two species of mankind; the free ones -sons of Adam through Seth and the slaves -sons of Satan through Cain. Jesus, the Christ told us so in plain language. The grandchildren and descendants of the Snake are detailed in Genesis Chapter 4, verses 17-24, Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, Lamech, the first polygamist, then Jabal, Tubal Cain.  QED!

 

APPENDIX ONE

A CROSS-CULTURAL HARMONISATION OF YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

*THE PANACEA FOR RACISM*

By

Dr. J. K. Danmbaezue, D. Psych., FACRS,

Consultant Clinical Psychologist / Existential FamilyTherapist,

Block: C, House: 82, Federal Housing Estate, Trans-Ekulu,

P. O. Box 1995.  Telephone; 042-551199 or 550344,

ENUGU STATE OF NIGERIA

Being the Paper presented at

THE UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON RACISM

  Durban, South Africa 23 August – 2^nd September 2001.

Abstract

This guest paper emphasizes the origins and development of prejudice, discrimination, ethnocentrism, stereotypy and religious bigotry as the seeds that germinate into racism or racialism, dominant and minority ethnic groups that culminate in stressful relations, violence and wars.

         A cross-cultural harmonization of child-rearing practices is the author’s therapeutic prescription if youths must be re-oriented towards the universal brotherhood of mankind.  We have the same basic anatomy and physiology; we share the same air, water, food and rest periods.  Blood groupings, emotions, motivations, and libido allow for similar sex attractions, pregnancies and births.  So, where do these ethnic superiority and inferiority complexes come from?

          The “Kenezian Creed” and “The Letter to Educationists all over the world”, epitomize the ideals that this Existential Therapeutic Programme enunciates.  The panacea for racism is a systematic re-education, religious liberalism and socio-political equality, which should form the foundations of cross-cultural harmonization of youth counseling and personality development initiatives.

 

Concise C. V.

Dr. J. K. Danmbaezue is a fifty-three year old privately employed psychotherapist/psychometrician with an outfit where the counsels young adults about to wed, administering psychological tests and utilizing them objectively to re-direct incompatible couples.  He also has an NGO-christened HAPPY FAMILY NETWORK INTERNATIONAL, which aims at the globalization of those principles neatly encapsulated in the Kenezian Creed and His letter to All Educationists.  He is happily married and has three kids.  He holds a Doctor of Science degree in psychometrics besides his Fellowship of the African College of Research Scientists. 

INTRODUCTION:

           Philosophy demands the delimitation of concepts, terms or nomenclatures for clarity of discussions, analyses, conclusions and recommendations.  The following are relevant in our case:

Prejudice is “a system of negative conceptions, feelings and action-orientations regarding the members of a particular group”; whereas “Discrimination” refers to “overt action in which members of a group are accorded unfavourable treatment on the basis of their religious, ethnic or racial membership” Zanden, (1972).

Ethnocentrism is “an exaggerated tendency to think the characteristics of one’s own group or race superior to those of other groups or races” whereas “stereotypy” means “a pathological symptom of mental or nervous disorder showing itself in continuous repetition of seemingly senseless words and syllables, or of certain posture’s and actions”.  Drever  (1972).

Religious bigotry refers to “an obsessive belief and practice system whereby a person or group of people has strong and unreasonable opinion and will not listen to or accept any contrary views or religious opinions of anyone who disagrees”.  Hornby  (1976).

Racism or Racialism refers to “any set of beliefs that organic genetically transmitted differences (whether real or imagined) between human groups are intrinsically associated with the presence or absence of certain socially relevant abilities or characteristics, hence that such differences are a legitimate basis of invidious distinctions between groups socially defined as races” Berghe (1967).

Ethnic Group is a parallel term for race “which is often socially defined on the basis of cultural characteristics superimposed on perceived physical traits defined by the group and/or is defined by other groups as different.... by virtue of innate... inherited on genetically induced behavioural patterns”.  A. H. Coleman-cited in – Krauss (1976) and this naturally leads us to Dominant and Minority groups – which are the remote and immediate causes of violence, terrorism and wars.

A Dominant Group is “one within a national state whose distinctive culture and/or physiognomy is established as superior in the society and which treats differentially/unequally other groups in the society with other cultures or physiognomy “Marden and Meyer (1968), and correspondingly;

A Minority Group is a “culturally or physically distinctive and self–conscious social aggregate, with hereditary membership and a high degree of endogamy, which is subject to political, economic or social discrimination by a dominant segment of an environing political society” Williams (1964).

           Analytically therefore, the recurrent decimal in all these definitions is that racists are misguided, self-opinionated and neurotic people who need ego trips or massage to suppress their feelings of inadequacy, otherwise termed INFERIORITY COMPLEX. 

Ethnology and Ethnography do not support apartheid, religious bigotry or racism.  For want of space and time, there are two traditions in ethnic relations and socio-anthropological studies, which this existential author subscribes to (i) the psychosocial orientation, which is phenomenonlogical, and (ii) the socio-cultural orientation, which is existential.  Both form the contrasting research perspectives that most scholars patronize.  However they should complement each other. Individuals are born “tabula raza” - a clean slate! It is parents and relevant others that write on and crowd this slate with parochial traditions!  No child hates another child!  Hatred is a learned behaviour!  So many films and dramas portray this.  Individual prejudice comes mainly from the internalization of the prejudicial norms of one’s society.  A case in point is the historical origin of Hitler’s hatred for the Jews.  A mistaken identity and maltreatment in his primary school days when he freely associated with Jewish children -–was the remote cause of anti-Semitism which he internationalized, followed by ‘German blood superiority’ he championed which eventually led to the two world wars he engineered!  Black-white relations in U.S.A., Indians, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans segregationist policies were manufactured by the adult populations neither by teenagers nor by adolescents. South Africa’s multiracial society and apartheid system have been studied as the ultimate in structured inequality while Hawaii and Brazil as multiracial societies with a low degree of racism.  Why can’t we replicate the latter form of ethnic relations in all countries of the world?  The choice is ours!

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: 

It is interesting to note what anthropologists, psychiatrists, sociologists and psychologists have concluded after varying researches into various aspects of child-rearing practices all over the world. Collumb and Valatin (1970), French psychiatrists, concluded thus:

“The social changes attendant on modernization cause far reaching disturbances in traditional family organization and bring about alterations in the relationship of the child to the family group.  Love and authority are no longer provided for the child by the communal group of the whole family but (only) by the biological parents.... Are the parents able to take on these loving and disciplinary roles alone?  Cut off from their extended family group on all sides, can they overcome their own problems and fears and make themselves ready to fulfill their new functions?  How does the child experience these changes?  Is it already possible to set out their pathological consequences?  It is difficult to say; however, one may state that the number of maladjusted children, the number of adolescents with problems is growing considerably, especially in towns.  The present generation will be followed by another which will have the same incidence of schizophrenia as in West” p. 127

This international Conference in South Africa in 2001 should address those fundamental questions.  What this author offers is only a palliative/prophylactic recommendations.  Before that however – we need to recall what Erikson (1972) and Kohlberg (1969) posited as the critical stages of moral development in teenagers and adolescents.  These will help us formulate the cross-cultural harmonization this paper proposes.  In his “EIGHT AGES OF MAN,” Chap. 7 pp. 239-266; Erikson established eight sensitive developmental patterns that parents, teachers and relevant others must take advantage of, if children must grow up into mature, respectful and responsible citizens of the world.  Correspondingly, in his “DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL CHARACTER AND MORAL IDEOLOGY” – a cognitive developmental approach – Lawrence Kohlberg of Harvard University posted six moral stages that teenagers pass through – namely:  pre-moral, instrumental-hedonistic, role taking, law-and-order, autonomous-principle, and finally the universal-ethical-principle.

 Time and space may not allow a detailed discussion of these stages.  However, let it be known also that: Bandura & Walters, (1963) have their SOCIAL LEARNING AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH, while Goshin, (1969) has relevant topics in their HANDBOOK OF SOCIALIZATION THEORY AND RESEARCH; while Hoffman Martin, has his “Moral Development Theory” cited in Paul. H. Mussen (Ed.) CARMICHAEL’S MANUAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY (3^rd ed.)

All point to this one fact: That what we give or fail to give growing children, teenagers or adolescents form the base of all racial discriminations, hatred, fear and apartheid tendencies.  There are no known genetic traits, or inherited behavioural patterns that warrant racial discrimination.  The adult population manufactured, patented and marketed RACISM.  Therefore, it remains their duty and urgent responsibility to dismantle and obliterate the consequences of their mischievous and xenophobic creations; apartheid, religious bigotry, anti-Semitism, Zionism and all other forms of racial inequalities that they breed!

The creator of the Universe did not input any racial inequalities in his created universe and beings.  Nor did Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, even mention any scientific basis for racism.  Politicians, warmongers, and demonic rulers who traded in human beings and monetary values invented racism based on their inferiority complexes, xenophobic reactions and vainglorious exploits.  For how long must we all suffer for their mischief?  The onerous duty of liberated minds, as exemplified by the participants at this United Nation’s Conference will come into sharper focus as we deliberate on the therapeutic measures proposed by this paper.

CROSS-CULTURAL HARMONISATION

           In the light of the foregone scientific references, this psychotherapist has developed two basic inter-ethnic and inter-racial compositions – spanning a period of thirty years and has labelled them “THE KENEZIAN CREED” and “THE LETTER TO TEACHERS OF HIS CHILDREN”.  The pair is crucial re-orientation ploys to revolutionize the religious and educational climates of the world and subsequently ameliorate or slow down the incidence of/or the increase in racial tensions, religious fanaticism and ethnic cleansing.

           “CROSS-CULTURAL” here is used as an adjective meaning “involving, or containing ideas or elements from two or more different cultures, while “HARMONIZE” to make something harmonious e.g. colours that harmonize well (i.e. together produce a pleasing effect) or the cottages harmonize well with the landscape.  In music “harmonization” means to play or sing notes that accompany the main tune and produce harmony with the lead singer”. Hornby (1995) pp 279 & 544

From the above the therapeutic regimen for racialism and other ethnic stressful relationships lies in the Homo sapiens sapiens accepting that each culture must harmonize with the lead race; that is, the HUMAN RACE.  If musicians can harmonize with the lead singer why are whites, blacks and yellows unable to harmonize?  Its is due to ignorance, petty jealousy, morbid fear of strangers and unbridled self-pride.          An attempt must be made to de-emphasize religion which is the greatest harbinger of fanatical zeal to discriminate against and dominate others. MISINFORMATION or DISINFORMATION – also known as propaganda that completes the racial tones dictated by maniacal leaders, politicians and governments must be halted and reversed systematically.

           The Kenezian Creed sifts the L.C.M and H.C.F. of the human race.  Then it dresses them in philosophic, ethical and scientific language which harmonises with the main language of nature – WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS, WITH SAME CREATOR, SAME BLOOD AND PLASMA, SIMILAR ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY and WE INTER-MARRY AND PRODUCE SAME SPECIES.  Of what value are our World Cups, Olympics and Arts Festivals, if at the end of the day we still discriminate and derogate others based simply on the colour of their skin, or eyes and or the texture of their hairs?  Does emotion and motivation vary among the races of mankind?  No, is the answer!  Any man or woman can learn the language of the ethnic groups they are born into and mingle with, hence, English, French, Swahili, German and some other languages have gained international appeal and usage.  In the like manner, lets amplify those areas of cognition, memory and recall that unify the races rather than propagate those minor differences that separate and antagonise us.

In education, any child irrespective of skin colour, genetic endowment and child rearing practices can become a genius in nuclear physics, computer science, acrobatics and, music. There has never been, nor will there ever be a scientific proof of the superiority of one race to another.  These xenophobic rationalizations are ego defense mechanisms that emanate from depraved and demented minds and must not be allowed to drag us to another world war.  A word is enough for the wise.  The systematic incorporation of the tenets of the following compositions into primary school/educational curricula will eradicate racism worldwide:

THE KENEZIAN CREED

Nuggets of Wisdom for the Unification of all Belief Systems.

1.        I am of age; therefore, I affirm that I exist!  I am “ME”, you are “YOU” and we are “US”. I affirm that I am a Created Being living in the present, hoping to come to an end as other creatures I have observed, do come to a definitive end.

2.        I therefore know that all finite creatures obey some natural laws that govern existence.  I affirm that these laws are also eternal and like every other law, must have a Giver.  I deduce therefore that there are commensurate sanctions for any deliberate violation of these laws.

3.        When I observe the heavens and landscapes, hills and valleys, rivers and oceans, sunrise and sunset, equinoxes and eclipses, I am certain that this Eternal Law-giver is Great and Powerful in all respects and possesses Superhuman Intelligence, Power and Control over all of us?

4.        When I inspect living and non-living beings, their beauty and variety, their numbers and their sizes, especially their modes of survival in varying environments, and particularly their ability to reproduce their kinds, I confess that this Eternal Law-giver must be Beautiful, Loving and All-Creative.

5.        I respect “IT” in all “ITS” creations while admiring in particular those that move about.  For I do realise that I share the traits they have; we all have the same basic structures, we survive by performing similar functions, have similar feelings and produce comparable results. I cannot but bow in reverence and worship this Almighty Being, the Eternal Law-Giver who sustains everything on this planet.

6.        This Almighty Being set all things in motion. “IT” directs their courses and life spans, keeps them in space and time, now and always.  And because there are no accidents in nature when “IT’S” laws are strictly adhered to, I attest to the fact that “IT” is the greatest GOOD; All-knowing, All-caring and Ever Present Being.

7.        To “IT” be all my respect, obedience and loyalty, as I extend my hands of love and brotherhood to all Human Beings, co-heirs and offspring of this Almighty Creator and Father of all. Therefore, my creed concisely is this:  (a) THE UNIVERSE IS MY COUNTRY AND INHERITANCE, (b) ALL MANKIND, MY BLOOD RELATIVES AND EQUALS, (c) SEEKING THE TRUTH, LIVING THE TRUTH AND DOING GOOD AT LL TIMES – MY RELIGION.

My 50^th Birthday gift to Mankind. Composed, Revised and Ratified between 1970-1998

DR KENEZ DANMBAEZUE’S PLEAS TO    EVERY TEACHER OF HIS CHILDREN

*(Each paragraph/plea can be used as the theme of Morning Assembly Talks)

Dear Teacher,

Your job is an onerous one, commendable by both God and man,

My child will look up to you as a role model, a mirror to view the world;

You will have to father him for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week and 35 weeks per year,

That’s long enough to make or mar his future, his classmates and that of this country.

1.     Teach him to look around and admire the beauty in nature, himself inclusive,

Let him know that for every child he sees, there are two parents – a father and a   mother;

So for the birds he sees, trees, animals, hills, rivers, sun, daylight, night and  moonlight,

There is but One Almighty Father, who created and takes care of us all on a daily basis.

2.   Teach him to trust and obey The Almighty Creator with worship in humility,

And to love every other being, as we all are sons and daughters of the same Creator;

Let him realise that when it rains, it’s for every one: plants, animals and man,

The Creator’s kindness and benevolence does not choose those to hate or love.

3.   Teach him that for every lie he tells, he will tell ten more lies to cover it up,

And for ten lies, he needs one hundred more lies – that is foolishness;

So let him learn that truth is golden, more precious than wealth and riches,

Knowledge, wisdom and fame are the rewards earned by truthful people.

4.   In school, let him love and respect his classmates and fight to protect the weaker ones,

Allow him to taste bitter and sweet things; and to combine laughter and suffering;

That way you will have prepared him to deal with wicked and honest human beings,

Thereby teaching him to differentiate good from evil and to do good all his life.

5.         Teach him that lying, cheating and stealing produce criminals and rogues,

Teach him that a kobo earned is better than a hundred won by lottery;

It’s better to go hungry than enjoy a meal prepared with stolen money,

Or eat crumbs of bread among finest friends than a whole loaf among           dishonest men.

6.         Teach him that a passage studied, understood and memorised,

Is far better than one simply crammed and repeated like a parrot;

The former leads to ingenuity, resourcefulness and creativity,

The latter to imitative behaviour, and lack of self-confidence;

Teach him that it’s more honourable to fail an examination,

Than to copy, cheat or use “expo” methods to pass any examination.

7.         Finally teach him that it is better to be neither too poor nor too rich,

Than to become wealthy by stealing, deceit and cutting corners;

The former leads to contentment, peace of mind and long life,

The latter to arrogance, greed, restlessness and sudden death;

Explain to him what “Honesty is the best policy” really means,

And the practical implications of the saying: “More haste, less speed”.

Postscript:       You’ll have to believe and practise these yourself,

Before you can teach them to my son and his mates;

But be assured that if you succeed in this assignment,

You will be a hero and the father of heroes and heroines;

And that’s what our dear country needs most.

May God guide your endeavours!

*My 53^rd Birthday Gift to all Educationists, Inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s letter, Gestation Period: 1997-2001*

RESUME, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

           The etiological origin of racism is ethnocentric megalomania best exemplified by Adolf Hitler’s xenophobic ideas.  “Xenophobia” as defined by Drever (1972) is  “a morbid fear of strangers”, and Hornby (1995) concerns by defining it as “an intense dislike or fear of strangers or people from other countries”... “excessive patriotism can lead to xenophobia” – he concluded p. 1385.

           “Racism or racialism” van den Berghe (1967) affirms, “are beliefs (not facts) that organic genetically transmitted differences (real or imagined) exist between social groups” which he concluded were false.  There has never been any existential or scientific proof that a Caucasian is superior to Negroid or Mongoloid specie of the human race.  Racism is puerile and futile!

           Professor M. Nesturkh, a Russian anthropologist has a 133-page hardbound book, with over 100 black and white and coloured pictures - entitled THE RACES OF MANKIND.  In the preface, Professor N. N. Cheboksarov, a Doctor of History, and a Miklukho-Maklai Prize Winner, opens up thus:

The problem of the races of mankind is one of the most important in anthropology, the science that studies the natural history of man with all the variations due to age, sex, and geographical factors.  The races of mankind are, in actual fact, geographical (or territorial) variations, historically conditioned, of a single physical type-MAN.

           The writings of the founders of Marxism-Leninism contain many valuable statements on such problems as the connection between the origin of races and the natural geographical conditions of life of primitive man; the distant ancestors of the present–day peoples, the gradual obliteration of racial differences in the course of historical development, the racial mixtures that make up modern nations and the absolute invalidity of racism.

           A correct conception of the races of mankind is of particularly great political and scientific importance today, in the period of the collapse of the colonial system and the unparalleled development of the struggle for national liberation by the dependent and colonial peoples.  The ideologists of imperialism, in their effort to provide a basis for class, national and colonial oppression, have advanced the false “theory” of the physical and mental inequality of races, or the existence of “higher” and “lower” races, of races that are capable and those that are incapable of independent, social, economic and cultural development.

           Racism is closely bound up with reactionary nationalism and chauvinism.  The Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted by the Twenty-Second Party Congress, lays special stress on the fact that nationalistic prejudice and the survivals of former national discord constitute the sphere in which resistance to social progress may be the longest, fiercest, most   stubborn and most implacable.    The misanthropic inventions of the racists stand in direct contradiction to the data provided by anthropology”. Pp 5 & 6

           All scientists agree with the learned Russian Professor and Prize Winner!  Moreover, Professor M. Nesturukh, himself concludes his introduction to the book thus:

“The author realises the difficulties attaching to the task he has undertaken and will be satisfied if his readers obtain from his book a general idea of the concept of races and their origin and a conviction of the unscientific nature of racism”.   P 10.

           It is the conclusion of this paper that only intellectual pygmies and anthropological misfits can, and do propagate racism in ethnic or religious relations.  But for the fact that this is a scientific paper, passages in the Torah, Bible, Koran and the Bhagavad-Gita would have been used to substantiate the stupidity of racialism and the demonic possession of all racists.  They are all adenescents!

           Suffice it to recommend the following:

i.                    That all racists be subjected to a psychiatric evaluation.  It is possible that they have congenital deficiencies that warrant their schizophrenia fantasies.

ii.                  That participants at this conference devise means and modalities for appealing to religious leaders of all shades, colours and faith to repudiate discriminatory sermons, doctrines or catechesis in their religious worship.

iii.                That all film makers and drama writers expunge sentences or scenes depicting superiority or inferiority in all their products.  On the other hand they must encourage scriptwriters to douse the embers of hatred, violence and ethnic jealousies in their productions e.g. GUESS, WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.

iv.                 That musicians review their lyrics and emulate the consortium of international stars that gave us the famous song:  WE ARE THE WORLD.  In like manner, let all intelligent people all over the world stand up to be counted among music lovers who appreciate that orchestras and choirs need soprano, alto, tenor and bass to harmonise the lead instrument or singer.  So also should white, black and yellow races blend or harmonise the leading HUMAN RACE.

v.                   All newly established families must make conscious efforts to give their offsprings a better deal or lease of life rather than feed them the same nepotic ideas or prejudices their own parents condemned to feed on during their growing years

vi.                 Re-education in all nursery, kindergarten and primary schools, must eliminate

segregations based on colour, class or creed.  Each stanza or paragraph of the Kenezian letter to all liberated educationist can be used to conduct morning assemblies.

vii.              National constitutions should incorporate sections that make it a crime to discriminate against any citizen, guest or stranger in one’s native land. Moreover, national prizes may be awarded to those adjudged to have demonstrated the tenets of the Kenezian Creed practically in their daily living.

..............................................................……………….

Dr. J. Kenechukwu Danmbaezue, D. Psych., FACRS

Consultant Clinical Psychologist / Existential Family Therapist and Psychometrician.

REFERENCES

Bandura A. & Walters, R. H. (1963)

           Social Learning and Personality Development, New York. Holt, Rinehart and Winston

Coleman A. K. (1976)

Race and Ethnic Relations. p. 451. Cited in Krauss S. (ed.) Encyclopedic Handbook of Medical Psychology, Butterworths. London Boston.

Collomb H & Valantin S (1970)

Ethopsychiatrie et evolution de la schizophrenia” in Famille Africaine “de” L’enfant dans la Famille”, ed. by E.J. Anthony and C. Koupermik, Paris; Masson et Cie.

Danmbaezue J. K. (1998)

The Kenezian Creed – Interethnic Ethical Principles for the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind.  Hafani Publications, Kihol Products Ltd. Ihiala, Anambra State of Nigeria.

Danmbaezue, J. K. (2001)

Letter to Teachers of Children World-wide”. International Education Project, Kenez Health Klinik C 82, Federal Housing Estate, Enugu.

Drever James (1972)

A Dictionary of Psychology – Penguin Reference Books-Revised by Harvey Wallersten – Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd. Great Britain.

Erikson E. H. (1972)

Childhood and Society – a Pelican Book, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.

Goslin., D.A. Ed. (1969)

           Hand Book of Socialisation Theory and Research, Chicago, Rand Mc Nally and Co.

Holffman, Martin (1970)

Moral Development in Paul H. Mussen (Ed.) Carmichael’s Manual of Child Psychology, 3^rd. Ed. Vol. II, New York, Wiley 1970.

Hornby A. S. (1995)

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 5^th Ed. by Jonathan Crowder Oxford University Press.  Walton Street, Oxford  0X2 6DP.

Kohlberg L. (1964)

Development of Moral Character and Moral Ideology in M.L. Hoffman and L. W. Hoffman (eds.) Review of Child Development Research, New York; Russel Sage Foundation.

Marden C. F. And Meyer G. (1967)

           Minorities in American Society. 3^rd Ed. New York and London. John Wiley.

Nesturkh M. (undated)

The Races of Mankind: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow;  Translated from the Russian by George Hanna.  Designed by Vladimir A.N.

van den Borghe, P. L. (1967)

           Race and Racism pp 9,11, New York and London.  John Wiley.

Zanden Vander J. W. (1972)

           American Minority Relations. 3^rd Ed. P. 21, 26, New York, Ronald Press.

The Chairman Organizing Committee

United Nations Conference on Racism

Durban, South Africa

Thro:  Mazi Okolie Animba

Consultant Counselling Psychologist/Dean, Student’s Affairs

Enugu State University of Science and Technology.

Sir,

SUBMISSION AND PRESENTATION OF A CRUCIAL GUEST PAPER –

“CROSS-CULTURAL HAMONISATION OF YOUTH DEVELOPMENT - A Panacea For Racism”.

         I congratulate all the initiators, organisers and sponsors of this all-important conference.  More grease to your kneecaps since I am sure your elbows are saturated with it already!

My humble submission is a prelude to a scientific research I am conducting at present that might span ten to twenty years.  Experientially, one can create a conducive environment where children of all races, ethnic groups and varying shades of belief systems, educational backgrounds and socio-political parentage can be reared together devoid of segregation, discrimination and nepotism. 

If such an experiment is feasible, research scientists could draw from it informed decisions and conclusions based on facts obtained from a longitudinal study.  I do not subscribe to haphazard or incidental research papers meant for publications only or merely for attendance at conferences. Please accept this paper as my contribution to the theme you have chosen this year and expect a more detailed paper with statistical diagrams, graphs and tables subsequently.

God guide your deliberations while I remain;

         Yours sincerely,

.................................……………………………………………

DR. J. K. DANMBAEZUE, D. Psych, FACRS,

 P. O. BOX 1995 É 042-551199 ENUGU

Animator International, Happy Family Network & Kenez Health Klinik

GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY!

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All definitions are from The American Heritage Dictionary, as found in Microsoft Bookshelf’ 98.

[2]Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition  © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.