CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE

 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 

The idea of most African countries having several ethnic groups is a blessing because of the rich cultural diversity that comes with it. The ethnic groups seem to be fast disappearing in a new generation of young people who dissociate themselves with their ethnic backgrounds on one side, and on the other, through embracing modernisation as well as westernisation, both ideals that think the cultures as backward. 

In many African countries the cultures have gone to the background and save for a few cultural exhibition events or museums displays, real life cultural experiences are as good as gone. 

Good or bad, cultural association is for anyone to judge. To respect the cultures or not is a choice people must make. 

Tribe is the biggest symbol of the ethnic groups and sometimes define the groups themselves. In Kenya for example the word Kamba refers to both the ethnic group and the language the group speaks. Can we speak our languages well. Can our children?

Christianity, modernisation and culture interactions have left many people without clear identity as to where they stand, what to follow, to avoid or just where to draw the line. The winners are the clans that require you to pay dowry before you can marry their girl. Those old men have helped to keep that culture alive to that particular extent. Traditions help us understand our origin but to what extent should we practice them? What of attires, artefacts, celebration seasons and our heroes. Can we rightfully say we know ourselves when we choose the cultures to follow and what not to? The good thing that happened is the way Africans were able to borrow from Traditions in practice of Christianity especially traditional musical instruments like drums for early church.

Save for Maasai, whose Traditions are a great cultural export for Kenya, someone fails to point our strong cultural identifies for other groupings.

Theologians teach that the bible was written within Hebrew and Jewish traditions set-up making the narratives like passover feast key features. 

Christian identity in God does not necessarily disapprove our traditions to the extent of them not being against God's word and no darkness involves. 1 Peter 2:9 says 'But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.'

So, what traditions are to keep and what should we throw away?

@Stephen Mungai

THE MYTH OF SELF DEFENSE

 THE MYTH OF SELF DEFENSE

You spot a stone throne at you coming from far, you automatically move your body away from it and if it is not possible, you protect your eyes to rather be hit on your hand. You act the same way when your significant others or property is at risk. This is natural instinctive self-defensive response for survival. When someone attacks you, you become aggressive in defense and sometimes, the attacker ends up as the loser or the casualty. Humans as opposed to animals can foresee a danger coming even months or years earlier and begin to plan for defense. A good example is how many countries are strengthening their armies for a possible WW3 in view of ongoing conflicts like Ukraine-Russia or Israel-Palestine. Humans also work to protect not only themselves but their vital interests like land, property, families and territories. Another interesting angle to defense is the suggestion where humans respond to warnings from people suggesting to them that they are in danger. That is why if you start running frightened in a congested city pointing behind you saying that they are coming, the street will be chaotic with people running for their lives out of the suggested danger.

The suggested dangers have caused many troubles in the world we live in. How many of us have cut out communication with people just because someone told us how evil that person was? How much suggestion did we receive about a certain tribe as far as being warned not to marry from there?  Ever heard of vote against someone in our politics? It is said that Mount Kenya people do not historically vote and when they do, it is more about voting against rather than voting for. As a result of the suggested danger, for example, those people have voted many times against Raila. Suggested danger also makes people coalesce together to strengthen their defense. This is what has always made us grouped as tribes and regions. The bright politician then always suggests that our tribe or region is in danger and once they have all of us together, they take us with them to the negotiating table to get positions and resources for themselves and their families.

Suggested danger is the power of many politicians and world leaders. That was also a factor for Trumps win with weird statements like that foreigners were eating citizen’s cats and dogs. The holocaust that left over 6 million Jews dead began by the Nazi regime suggesting to its citizen that Jews were a dangerous people. The historical conflicts in our country like post-election violence came about the same way. We must therefore stay wary of people suggesting to us that a particular people are dangerous rather, we must treat every human being as an individual because that is the essence of love as taught by the bible.

Proverbs 28:1 says, ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.’  Does it mean that someone is wicked when they respond to warned danger and that righteousness will make us bolder?

 

@Stephen Mungai

ADDICTIONS

ADDICTIONS

I was once taught by teacher Rebecca in one of the many classes I have in my adulthood attended. Her hobbies were travelling and music. Once in a while she would come to class with a guitar and play very good music borrowed from one culture of the many places on earth that she had visited. What was however very interesting with her is that by choice and in this age of smartphones, she never owned a phone. Her mode of communication was email or home telephone. On asking her why, she simply said she did not need it.  

Many of our lives today are centred on smartphones and many cannot imagine life without it. It has simplified our lives completely be it keeping contacts, learning and news. On the flipside a smartphone is for some a curse for their lives with many hours lost everyday scrolling. At one time someone is reading news sites, then one social media platform to the other seeing photos, watching videos, chatting , searching and on and on. All is okay if someone has already completed their work and responsibilities but if that is making it difficult for someone to fulfil their duties, then we can rightfully say that this person who is lost on doom scrolling, has a phone addiction. 

Are you a phone addict? 

There are many addictions destroying our people; talk of alcoholism of people who abandon everything to drink every day, talk of betting that keeps people hoping to win one day as they all along lose close to all their cash, talk of Religion of people who spend all their time daily in churches praying or listening to preachings, addictions come in all manner of ways. I think that many of these activities are positive but the sin may be doing them without moderation. That explains why alcohol was a normal part of a meal during Jesus days and the same is practiced in many western cultures but coming home, alcohol became a sin because we have never been able to take it in moderation. 

Coming back to phone addiction, I think it could be more dangerous than alcoholism and sometimes it comes with other addictions like betting, flattering, pornography, cyber bulling, hacking and so on. Probably we could cut down on 80% of addictions by Overcoming phone addiction. So how can we do so. What about catching your 9 o'clock news instead of reading on phone? How about uninstalling betting and social media apps? How about replacing smart phones with a 'Mulika mwizi'? Maybe it can help someone overcome their addiction. 

Anyone suffering from phone addiction? What is your personal addiction? Do you have friends and relatives suffering from addictions? How do we help ourselves and others in addiction?

Maybe reading a bible verse prayerfully would help. So we read 1 Corinthians 6:12

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.

May God help us to do only the helpful things and not to be dominated by the vices.

@ Stephen Mungai

THE POLICE FORCE

 THE POLICE FORCE

The 90's were interesting times for the young people. Youthful games were mostly outdoors and even in Nairobi, there were enough free spaces and fields of play where we enjoyed football and other creative games. The fields have been lost over the years through land grabbing including one that comes to my mind, that was illegally taken away by president Moi and given to a church which was then build on the initially marked field of play. As young high school boys those days, our biggest fear was the police whenever the dark of the night creeped in. The police used to move into estates with lorries then called 'Mariamu' and would arrest people for all manner of reasons. Every time we saw a mariamu from a distance or a group of police men approaching, we would either go back running or take the next closest corner. Facing them was dreadful. Countless times they made us sit down on the ground and that came with heavy slaps, whips or both and that, having done nothing. The only crime then was to be a young man. Many people born in late 90's may never understand this because alot of impunity by police reduced when Moi left office with the police force becoming more friendlier. Alot of reform efforts were done thereafter including establiment of IPOA to oversight and reduce excesses by the police. The police force would later become police service which meant less or no force but service to the people. 

Sadly though, the gains made over the years are being rolled back fast and furious. Under President Ruto who was a political student of Moi, the police are a new force never seen before. They can kill people at will in full view of cameras and walk out to continue working like nothing happened. That is reason why people are dying in every protest because the government has set the police against the people. It was reported that at least 19 youths were killed during saba saba protests on Monday this week. It may be argued that those killed are criminals but a good number were unarmed at the time. 

The result may be a war between citizens and police and an enmity that may cause more harm than good if nothing changes. 

Police look well instructed to stop demonstrators at all costs which in my opinion is what makes demos chaotic. Further instructions to kill is regrettable and should be condemned from all corners. 

Does someone ever ask themselves where all these lawlessness will end? Probably Christians should make more effort to pray for Kenya because, things are thick. So Christians have their work well cut out in 2 Chronicles 7:14 action, 'If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.' 

Or is there another way?

@ Stephen Mungai

MORALITY OF A NATION

 MORALITY OF A NATION

In the information world of today, people are close to immediately updated on the happening anywhere in the world in real time. There are thousands of media channels, websites and social media apps to keep people up to date every second. As a result TV viewership especially news content may not be as high as some years back. Of all content that we consume, entertainment seems more palatable to keep us all smiles but what about news? Has someone ever noted that many times, 50% or more of what is reported is bad news? Of poor governance, corruption, burglary, destruction and murders. I have heard many of my friends saying that they cannot stand to watch news from beginning to end because everything was too negative. 

That in mind, I sometimes ask myself whether the problem was that the media stations only focussed on negative news items or that we are simply a society where evil is unbelievably high. The later could be so true if we could sit down and reflect. Just picture the destructive behaviour we saw last week during gen-z demos. It was disheartingly extreme. Talk of the breakages to loot in shops and supermarkets and the wanton arson on buildings and vehicles. It was sad and very uninteresting. That itself exonorates the media stations from blame of negative reporting. On the other hand and though an affront on media, the government's move that stopped live coverage would have been a good move to discourage more demonstrators doing more damage. 

The question is, why are we so evil as a society? Why is there no positive change in our morality and why do things seem to get worse? I guess that is why we elect new leadership evey election cycle in hope that things would change but still end up in similar or worse conditions as a nation. So, 

who will save us as a nation? Who is currently the gatekeeper of our morals? Does the church still have the moral authority to guide the nation into new dawn of morality? Should we just resign to the fact that our moral fabric is irreparably tattered and let thing be as they would? For many Kenyans, the more we hope for better days, the more we get disappointed by the happenings. Maybe the best way to start is with ourselves by doing justice to all the people we have done injustice to in the past and restitution to those from whom we have stolen before or whose debts we have not paid. That is the same condition that Jesus gave Zacchaeus the tax collector in Luke 19:1-10. After that, then we can live without doing such evils to fellow humans and teach our children and people within our circles to focus on justice and doing good. 

Could there be a better formula to change our society or is it an impossibility? I would be interested to know.

@Stephen Mungai