TRANSACTIONAL CHRISTIANITY
Why serve God?
The question of God, religion, and worship is one that I have always asked. It is more a question of the 'usefulness' of God than a matter of his existence. Of course, the question of whether or not God exists has plagued me one time in the past and still creeps in on me sometimes, but I have found clarity. I know for sure, not only because of the things I have been taught but the things I have seen him do for me, that he exists. God is no longer an idea in my head; God is real in my life. The Holy Spirit, over the last few months, has proved beyond an iota of doubt that God is real, and he cares for me.
The question, though, is: why do people serve GOD?
I am currently walking my way through my journey into finding God. One of the primary reasons why I slipped off the path of "pursuing God" was when I started to ask myself what it was God had done for me. People often go through this phase, no doubt, but what makes this question a killer for every Christian, a sea sinker, a stone on every believer’s head while they try to walk on the water of this world is because it distracts them from the person of God.
We begin to question the “productivity” of our faith, asking ourselves why we aren’t as rich and powerful as our worldly friends. We step into the realm of Christian unbelief. Christian unbelief is the phase where one still beliefs that God is God but wants him to prove himself. Faith in his death and resurrection no longer satisfies us; we want more. We don’t think salvation is enough. We want more from him, and often this 'more' is a financial success. We start to look at God and wonder why he is not blessing us. Why are we not "prospering" as much? The whole 'does God even love me' question begins to permeate our minds, and soon, we find ourselves wondering what the use of God is. God becomes a tool that we need to move forward financially.
I attended a popular Pentecostal denomination where the pastor, in ignorant honesty, asked the young congregation what the use of their God was if they still wore one shirt and one trouser. Christianity is practical, he was saying. We had the right to live like Christ, to be rich like him and dominate the world like he did, financially. The blessings of Abraham are yours, why can't you be like him and be rich? God is always ready to bless you financially. The blessings of God have been lavished on you, go forth and be rich, just like he has designed you to.
Do you want to know why some of you are not rich, he asked the congregation. They answered, yes. These folks wanted to know why God hadn't blessed them yet, after all their hard work and dedication. It is because you don't sow seeds in the things of God, he replied. The congregation hushed into a knowing silence. He went on to tell them how the blessings of God were tied to their seeds. According to him, the seed would activate the benefits to come to you; the seed is the catalyst that quickens the blessings to reach you.
I didn’t walk out of the service.
Why?
One, I loved the message. I believed in his rich gospel rhetoric.
Two, I needed to know why I was not making enough money. He gave me the answer: I wasn’t sowing enough seeds into the things of God. To be fair to this pastor and a host of other men like him of a similar tree, the seed sowing teaching was yielding fruit. Testimonies abound of millions of church members who sowed seeds and reaped a bountiful harvest.
There was a woman who told me how, after sowing her first-fruit seed, she was mightily blessed with a job a few weeks after. There have been other people, all over the world, who got mad contract offers, job offers, and other financial gains after they consistently sowed into the house of God. He was right.
And wrong on all levels.
The main reason why I moved from being satisfied by God's love and his indwelling presence, and his word was my need for something more: spiritual manifestations and financial explosion. I was doing well at a point in my life. I loved the lord, and boy was I praying and studying. Then from nowhere or maybe it was from somewhere I don't want to mention, I wanted more from God. Knowing he loved me and that he resurrected from death to give me life was not enough. I wanted to raise the dead, do miracles, and, more importantly, make a lot of money.
The hunger for the miraculous was obviously there, but what I wanted most at that point were signs, physical and financial signs, that I was serving a living god. You know how people say stuff like, "what would they say about my god?" or "God proves you to my enemies," I was at that point in my life. I needed people to see how faithful my God was, and what better way than giving me material blessings for all my praying and fasting and studying.
What is God useful for?
This stupid idea –and I am unapologetic about using the word stupid – that God's main job in the world is to make you rich is bullshit.
God's primary purpose in sending his Son to die on the cross for us is salvation. And that is it. Salvation through faith in Christ is what the bible expressly teaches.
Pastors who have reduced the usefulness of the gospel to making money and getting blessed financially are the reasons why most folks don’t understand the love-God. Many Christians are seeking God for what he would do for them and not what he has done for them. When we begin to preach that serving God is a means to an end, then we use God and service to him as a transactional relationship; I help you, you give me money, we lose sight of who he truly is.
God, I believe, has become a social and religious experiment to most Christians— attending church is an experiment; the church is the lab. The moment the research in lab 1 (read: church 1) doesn't work, they are out. They search for other Christian buildings (lab) that would give them what they want. And if after a few searches, they don't get what they want from God (in the lab), they abandon the church and just live.
God is not a god that blesses you financially because you worked for him. He is not a businessman. This is no MMM.
When I was in school, this idea was drummed into me: if you serve God well enough, you'll be blessed with jobs as soon as you leave university. They used this idea to rope us into serving God fervently because one must be great after school. Many folks, which to be honest, we're only a handful, who had graduated from school and were "doing" well came to speak to us about the blessings of serving in the house of God. Our motivation for serving God was the blessing he would rain on us.
All through my time in school, we were not introduced to one alumnus who had served in church but was not doing well financially. None I can remember. They reduced the blessings of God to financial benefits; therefore making us believe that all God was interested in was making us rich and influential. Serving God had to be practical. What was the use of serving God when you still had one shirt and one trouser and don't have a few million in your bank account?
For others, serving God isn't about making money. Money is not God's purpose. For people like my AUNTY, G, serving God was for him to kill your enemies for you when the time comes. God was for protection against spiritual forces of darkness. Pretty dope reason to go to church.
The love of God and love for him is waning. We are a generation that needs a reward for doing something. And in most cases, that reward has to be material.
I was watching a Peace Itimi video on YouTube some days ago. I am a peace itimi diehard fan. I love her so much it is almost becoming a good obsession. Her passion and resilience and the things she's doing at such a young age are beautiful. So here I was, almost on the verge of opening websites I would not be proud of when I decided to check Peace's YouTube channel to see if she had new content. She usually posts new videos every week but hadn’t posted in over two or three weeks. I had asked her on twitter why she hadn't posted in a while, but I guess that mention got lost in a sea of mentions; she didn’t reply. When I saw the video that morning, around 1am, I decided to open it, not minding it was almost an hour-long, and my data was going to be hit. I watched that video, and I am glad I did.
Peace and two other guys were talking about how they found God. One of the guests was once an atheist. His journey to finding God involved the miraculous. The second guest, a lady, had a less supernatural experience. When the conversation had stretched to a point, Peace asked them why they were still hooked on the 'god' thing. For the guy, it was the way God showed up for him on days he never expected him to. That was brilliant. The girl's response broadened the smile on my face. For her, the thought of God's love was overwhelming. That right there people, that right there is why we serve God: His overwhelming love.
When we teach Christians that the basis for their Christianity is the miracles that God would do for them, the money he’ll give them, the enemies he’ll kill for them, we rob them of the foundation of this faith: God’s love.
The Old Testament is a journey to Christ. Now, the Old Testament is filled with stories and genealogies and historical events; still, its primary road was to one destination: Jesus. The basis for our faith is Christ crucified and resurrected. The love the Father has for us was why he was willing to sacrifice himself for us to become one with him. If that is the case, if God so loved that he gave his Son for us, why then would he change from giving us things freely to making business-like deals with us before he blesses us? If he can sacrifice the best of himself to us just because, why would he suddenly switch from giving us to demanding we gave him before he gave us?
If God didn't kill any devils but instead cast them out, why do we now kill our enemies whom we claim are witches and wizards? If God was so loving as to tell us to pray for our enemies, why then would he suddenly switch to telling us to kill those same enemies he told us to love? God is not bipolar. God is not schizophrenic.
The Old Testament has been misinterpreted in more ways than one. I see and hear pastors preach all manner of sermons from the stories in the Old Testament. Although these teachings are pleasant to the ear, they are not what the Old Testament was and is about. The New Testament, a bulk of it, is the proper explanation of the Old Testament. There are no hidden secrets or business secrets in the Old Testament. The reasons why people can twist and turn the book on its head are 1) they don't know any better, and 2) they need people to be gullible so they can enrich their pockets.
Transactional Christianity, the Christianity of God will bless you if you give him this seed or that seed, that bogus Christianity, is evil. There is no basis in the scripture for all of these 'prosperity-rich' teachings.
A pastor once said that we are blessed according to the proportion of our seeds. Although, as he said, the size of the seeds doesn’t matter, what mattered was the consistency of the sowing. He likened it to farmers planting seeds on their fertile ground. According to him, the texture of our seeds would open the bigger doors for us. If we want to move up the financial ladder, we should sow all the time.
Let us put this seed thing in perspective.
If you search the New Testament for the word 'seed,' you'll find it used 54 times. It was used more for Jesus as the seed of righteousness and the basis for our salvation.
In Mathew chapter 13, the word was used 11 times. When we look at the word in context, we’ll realize that it was talking about children and not money. The New Testament is filled with 'seeds,' yet there isn't a verse where the seed was equated to material giving.
Why do I have a problem with people giving God money? I don’t have a problem with it. What ails me is the sudden craze for seed sowing and financial prosperity. What makes the hair on my nape stand is the constant teaching of material wealth as the foundation of our faith. It is as if a poor person is less spiritual than a rich one. A Christian who still struggles financially is not reading the word enough, praying enough, and giving enough. The evidence that God is blessing you is the amount of money you have and can give to the church. We have churches making rich men deacons in the church, men who don't know jack about the word of God but have the financial muscles to support the 'works of God'. We have churches that honor rich people while they dishonor the poor. The rich man who walks into the church for the first time is treated with a whole lot more respect than a poor man.
Our prayer meetings are no longer avenues for us to gather and pray for the leadings of the spirit; we pray now for God to uplift us, promote us, and bless us. We claim our 'riches in Christ’ here on earth. We serve a God that has cattle on a thousand hills, so nothing on this earth is supposed to be hard for us. We have been given the heathen for our inheritance. Abraham blessings are ours, why don't we dominate and take over lands, financially, as Abraham did. We have the mind of Christ, to make money and give to the house of God.
Nothing makes more sense to us now than a victorious Christian. The working of the spirit has been reduced to making money and being successful at our jobs. We are here to dominate, so dominate we will, financially. Our testimonies are no longer those of healing the sick, leading men to Christ, studying and knowing the word, praying for long, and getting in-depth insights into the things of God, no, far from it. What we now testify of are the cars we just bought. We now attest to the new house we acquired, the increase in our salaries and the contract we secured. Testimony times are opportunities to tell the church how God has 'blessed us.' If you talk about leading somebody to Christ, your testimony is not strong enough; you don’t get the loud hallelujahs and the keyboardist running his fingers over his keys for you. You don’t get the 'I receive it' murmurs from the congregation. Who cares if you won a soul or won a nation for Christ? Your broke ass is not inspiring enough. What inspires us are the blessings of God upon your life, not the sick you healed.
We have moved from a point where the gospel is enough for us to the place where we seek evidence, like unbelievers, to validate our faith. We have evolved from singing 'he has blessed me with joy and salvation’ to 'he is doing things for me double, double.’ We have moved from AMAZING GRACE HOW SWEET THA SOUND to YOU GIVE ME MOTOR, YOU GIVE ME HOUSE. We thank him for the material things he has given us and not for the fact that he loved us.
Wherewith he loved us, even when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
The love of God that passeth all human understanding has been eroded, overturned by the love of God's blessings that makes us RICH.
We have come to the juncture where we glorify the material things over the spiritual. We have less spiritually minded churches. We can't sit and listen to the word for one hour plus. We have filled our services with 'entertaining' things to keep the people interested.
The attention span of most folks is waning, some pastors say, we can’t keep them here, teaching them the word for one hour, they would get bored and leave.
But we can have vigils where we sing for seven hours, preach the word for thirty minutes, and pray for five. They don't sleep in musical concerts. They don't get bored; their attention span is not short at this point. They can watch and sing and sweat for hours but can't sit still for an hour or more for the word of God. We have replaced gold with brass. Entertainment is now our 'keeping them’ strategy.
I would be to all men all things so I can win them for Christ.
Paul was not talking about substituting the word of God, which is all that really matters, for music and dance and drama and spoken word poetry. A three-hour service has 30 minutes of teaching the word and 2hours 20minutes of doing other things. We sing worship songs, sing praise songs, give tithe, offerings, and talk about giving to the house of God so that he will open unto you the doors of heaven. We do the things that don't count, majoring on the minor; that is what really matters to the congregation.
The church is no longer a place where we learn about salvation (that thing is annoying), the church is where we learn about the riches of God in Christ Jesus, which is literal. Church has even evolved into a social club for most. People join particular churches because there they are more likely to get a job from a wealthy member or an influential one. The church is for networking. That is not so bad, at least the bible talks about helping those who are of the household of faith.
I should conclude this ramble, really I should. I have no qualms with all of these transactional Christianity; they are free to swindle gullible people of their money. What sickens me is how they derail people from seeing, understanding, and embarrassing with their spirit, the love of God, and the awesomeness of salvation. It makes me want to clap the heads of these pastors together. They are depriving people from enjoying the sweetness of God's love and affection and grace. They have stopped a lot of folks from loving God because he is God, and he has given all of himself for us.