Transcription
Today, when I travel across the continent, and I do in many countries, I am amazed by the number of buildings whose owners claim our churches. In a distance of 1 kilometer, you will see different denominations. The Bible is now the greatest instrument in creating false industries in the continent of Africa. And that is not to be celebrated. It is to be frowned upon. And we who claim to be Christians, and I normally use this very deliberately, we claim to be Christians. As to whether we are is another debate. We'll only discover that a little later when we are in heaven. And therefore, when we talk about rediscovering, we are saying that it was once discovered. But let us situate the Bible in its proper place.
Christianity as we know it today in the continent of Africa was midwifed to us in the continent through Europe, through the missionaries. When they came, they were reading the very same Bible that we are reading today. When they sat in Berlin and were dividing the continent of Africa, they were reading the same Bible that we are reading today. The same Bible in which, in Paul's letter to the Galatians at chapter 3:28, he says there are no Jews nor Gentiles, no slave nor free, no woman nor man. They read that verse. It was not interpolated later after they came. They read it. But they came here and conquered us. They came here and discriminated against us. The same Bible. They were being mentored by that very same Bible. They came here when they had divided the body of Christ. The English had appropriated the religion in 1534, and they now had their Anglican church, complete with the monarch as its head. The Scots had appropriated their own, and they had the Presbyterian church. The Greeks had their Greek Orthodox. The Armenians, their Armenian Orthodox. The Roman Catholics were even bolder. They called it the Roman Catholic Church. So that even when they in Uganda, it is not Ugandan Catholic Church, it is the Roman Catholic Church, and you are going there and you are saying you are Roman Catholic Church. In apartheid South Africa, there are the Dutch Reformed Church, which became the foundation stone upon which apartheid was articulated in 1948 by Hendrik Verwoerd and his cohorts. So the Bible has been misused. Don't be cheated. Let's not be nice to each other because we are Christians. The Bible has been misused. It has been used to support slavery. It has been used to support colonization. It has been used to pervert the truth. That is the Bible that we are saying we ought to rediscover.
So when we are gathered here as Christians and we are talking about rediscovering mentorship in the Bible, we must have a spirit that is a questioning spirit. Now live in a world where, as Christians, we are also very pretentious. We don't speak the truth as it ought to be spoken. And when I read the Bible, sometimes as a Christian, I ask myself, what kind of Christian would I be? I often ask myself, if I lived in the days of Jesus, which of these disciples would I be? Because let us ask ourselves, when were we first called Christians? In fact, if you read the Bible and the history of Christianity and how we were first called Christians in Antioch, it was not a badge of honor to be called a Christian. It was not a badge of honor. It was a statement that these individuals who follow somebody whom we do not respect, whose ideas we do not respect, then we embraced it. But do we question that as Christians when we are reading the Bible? Do we read the Bible? Many of us who make the claim that we are Christians are not good Bible readers, despite your best efforts and best intentions. I normally ask this test question to my audience rather late, and I'll test it this morning to determine how effectively you read the Bible. When you read the book of Isaiah chapter 6, it says that in the year that King Uzziah died, the Lord appeared unto Isaiah the son of Amos. Then I ask Christians, "And who is King Uzziah?" They do not know. They have never read about him in the chronicles because they are satisfied with what they are preached to and about. Christians don't read the Bible. They read sections of the Bible. And one of the instruments that has now made Christians not read the Bible is social media. They Google a particular section. Your grace, you'll see if you are from in the pulpit occasionally, most of your congregation are not looking at you when you are preaching the word. They are under the table. Many times you read the word, and they are looking for it as if it never existed. That is the kind of Christians that we have today, claiming to be Christians. And if they claim to be Christians, and you want them to rediscover mentorship from the Bible, how can they be mentored by something whose content they do not know?
I remember when we were baptized, we used to say, "I reject the devil with all his works." I'm sure many of you remember that. That is not true. You never rejected the devil with all his works. Those were words that you just spoke on the spur of the moment. In this congregation, if I were to pick any one of you to recite for me the Ten Commandments in the order in which they were given to Moses, I can assure you, and I'll not write. I don't want to embarrass anybody. Out of 10, possibly only two would recite them in the order in which they were given. Because to you and me, the Ten Commandments have become ten suggestions. Ten suggestions to be obeyed only when it is convenient. And yet, if we were to use the Ten Commandments alone as the basis of governing our lives, we would need no other laws in the world. We would need no other laws in the world. But we do not look to the Bible. The Bible does not guide our lives. The Bible is a convenient thing that we make reference to when we want to cover our sins. It has become a moral fig leaf that we use to hide our nakedness. And I want to tell you that until and unless we change our ways, and it is a constant struggle for all of us, I now understand why Christ said how difficult it shall be to get into the kingdom of heaven. I do not know whether it is in Revelation where there is an attempt to say the number of people will get into heaven and heaven is described. I used to think it was very small. I now know not many people may get there. Not many people may get there, despite our pretension to the contrary. It is in Matthew 24:24 where it is recorded that there shall arise many Christs and many prophets who shall work wonders, and inasmuch as it were possible, even the very elect would be cheated by those Christs. And there is no shortage of them today. In every corner, there is a prophet, and they have no shortage of names. Almighty, mighty prophet, all names of individuals, and we follow them faithfully, and they are Bible thumping. They can make reference to the Bible. But remember Paul's second letter to Timothy at chapter 3 says, in the end, in these end days, and these are those days, don't worry that it may even take another million years before the world ends. God, I'm told, doesn't count the way we do, but these are those days. And therefore, when we are gathered here as Christians, we must ask ourselves painful and difficult questions. Are our lives testament to our claimed Christianity? Forget the many "hallelujahs" that we shout. We can shout "hallelujah" all we want. Forget "I'm born again," that we shout every minute. Is our life, our lives, testament to the person that we claim to follow, Christ, or are we merely churchgoing Christians? On Saturday, if we are from the SDA, we go to church because that is where you meet your friends, and a one-hour sermon is too long. You lose your pastor after 10 minutes, and you are busy playing video games in the pews. Is that the kind of Christian you are? Sunday-going Christian who thinks he's God's gift to the world? Is that the kind of Christian you are? A Christian whose business is to judge others, thinking that you are holier than everybody else? Is that the kind of Christian you are? Because if that is the kind of Christian you are, then you cannot mentor anybody.
In Greek mythology, which I want to believe you are all familiar with, there were many gods. One of them was Apollo. And the story goes that he sent out, the oracle was sent out to discover the wisest man in Greece. And when they had gone yonder, they came and said that Socrates was the wisest of all men. Because when he was asked what he knew, he said the only thing that he knew was that he knew nothing. In other words, in order to be truly knowledgeable, you must have humility in you. Are we humble? Because only the humble can be true mentors. And the Bible is full of mentors. Adam was mentored by God, but somehow he was confused, as the Bible says, by Eve, who also claimed that it was Satan who confused her in the first place. So it is not always the case that when you mentor, your mentee turns out right. But that does not mean that mentorship must stop. Or where we are, we think we are the only ones who know, omnipotent, omniscient, in our little offices, because your Christianity is not just about saying you are Christian on a Sunday where you work. Can people testify where you work, the little things you do? Can people testify that you are a good person? Not by you saying so, by your words, by your deed. Can people do so? You will excuse me. But many times now, when people tell me they are born again, I say, "What are they hiding?" And it's out of experience. What are they about to hide that they start by saying, "I'm born again"? Because when you are born again, my interaction with you in 10 minutes will show me that you are born again. And I've gone into restaurants and I see somebody, and I ask them, "Are you born again?" By conduct, not by mere words. There is no shortage of Bible-thumping individuals running around claiming they are born again. Those are not mentors. We are here to rediscover mentorship in the Bible. Moses mentors Joshua. Elijah mentors Elisha. And if you go through the Bible, for every king, there was a mentor. For David, Nathan. And whenever you are not mentored, then you lose out. Read 2 Chronicles 26. It says during the whole period that King Uzziah listened to Zechariah, he did great things, but when he stopped doing so, he tried to do that which was reserved for the sons of Levi. And when he entered to perform a sacrifice, leprosy was on his head, and he died a leper. We are rediscovering mentorship in the Bible, which means that we must read the Bible, which means that we must understand the Bible.
You know, sometimes I ask myself, at the risk of blasphemy, why is it God appears to use individuals whose ways are not straight, or permits things that are not straight, in order to straighten men? What is the message? Look at the story of Jacob, and how he works for Rachel, and then given unto him is not Leah. But yet God, in his divine wisdom, allows it. Look at Jacob and Esau. What is God telling us? Look at Moses, a murderer. He's the one that is used. Look at David, a serial adulterer. Serial. Yet he says, "It is a man after my heart." Look at Solomon. Wise, but confused by women. 700 of them. And that is not even enough. 300 concubines. Had we today, when the judges make good decisions, we say they are Solomonic. What are we being told about mentorship? Look at Saul turned Paul. It appears to me that God sometimes picks people from the gutter in order that he may host them. Perhaps it is because they have seen the other side, and they can give a testimony, and therefore they know why people should not go there. And that is why I hold the view that this particular congregation that is here, and is taking a solemn vow that we are going to rediscover biblical mentorship. And the word "rediscover" is very important because it means it was once discovered and it was lost. Where was it lost? It was lost in denominations. Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, Presbyterianism, SDAism, that is where all these was lost. And until the day that we rise above all these, our Christianity must be subject to scrutiny because sometimes our denominational faithfulness is a lot deeper than our Christianness. The blood of our ethnicity is thicker than the blood of Christ. And I want to say that because we are in Africa, Africa is dangerously diverse. Even when you want to appoint a bishop today in many churches, ethnicity becomes a factor, not Christianity. You know, you'll hear them saying, "This is our bishop, not Christian bishop, our ethnic bishop." And when they have been consecrated as bishop, they even hold parties in their tribal home because it is their bishop. If that is the attitude that we have, and that is the attitude that we want to use to mentor, you are dead on arrival. Heaven will not welcome you because you are a tribal bishop. And yet Paul to the Galatians says there are no Jews, no Gentiles, no man, no woman, no slave, no free, unless your Bible was edited last night and that particular provision removed. Still the same in all that I read and you read.
So ladies and gentlemen, we are here to rededicate ourselves. One day, a friend of mine who is a Muslim, and I love Muslims because they are more prayerful than us. If there was a Muslim in this assembly, there would be a segregated prayer place there. They remember their gods on average five times a day. So even the time between sinning and repenting is made very short. So they are like David in many ways. But we Christians, we remember our God once a week. Many of us, except the clergy who are in all do better job than us. But many of us, bishop, bishop, that is the truth. And with these days of virtual churches, even in the morning on Sunday, that is when we are most tired in the morning because we'll meet you virtually. And I was telling you about this Muslim friend of mine, and he was telling me at one time whether this was true or untrue, I do not know, but at an airport in one of the Arab countries, they had a message: "You can leave your bag, they are safe, there are no Christians here." That is me, not meant to be a compliment. If you come to Uganda here, they'll tell you they are possibly 70% Christian. Kenya, 90% Christian. We are all Christian, but we are thieves everywhere. Christian thieves rediscovering mentorship from a biblical perspective. "Thou shalt not steal" is one of the commandments. But we are thieves. Why? Because we have departed from the biblical prescriptions. So we must now have the pen of God, which defines what theft is. Biblical mentorship. The book of Leviticus says, "Thou shall not lie with another man." Now the mother church you are saying in England is saying civil marriages using the same Bible. When the colonialists came, they came and gave us laws. One of them that the offense of sex against the order of nature. Now they are telling us that that has changed, and very soon in Africa, aid will be made conditional upon accepting homosexuality, if it is not already the case. They'll tell you the IMF and the World Bank is not going to disperse money to Uganda or Tanzania or any other country unless you accept that that be decriminalized. It is happening already. And after that, they'll tell us bestiality is fine. There is no stopping us. Was a song that I used to listen to. There'll be no stopping us. And that is why we must rediscover mentorship according to the Bible, because that changes not. Remember at one time, those of you are a little older, the Bible was presented to us, even the word of God, as if God could not understand our languages. God could not understand Luganda until very recently. Do not understand. When you went into a church, you'd say "Dominus vobiscum." There was a time when God was presented. The only language he understood was Latin. We now know better. My message is that we must have the spirit of people like Martin Luther. Easier said than done. But it is for such as these that we must remind ourselves that we are almost back to those early days when the church is under siege. When there is a new kind of Christianity, when there are new Christs and new prophets working wonders, and even you who are the very elect, you can be captured. There are many people who may be distributing the Bible without reading it. Warn yourselves that you are not in the Bible distribution business, but not in the right Bible reading and practicing business. Let us not confuse those two, because we are in difficult days. And we, as Christians, we must now be Christians of Berea in our spirit, because it is only when we have the Berean spirit that we will be Christians.
For who is a mentor other than an individual who by word and deed encourages others to do that which is right because it is right to do right? Forget the complicated definitions. Accept my definition. That is all it is. That you are worthy of emulation. That you want those who are behind you to be better than you. And that there is no greater recompense for you than to produce people who surpass you. If you are not in that space, you are not a mentor. Because a mentor warns those who are coming after him of the landmines which he stepped on, which she stepped on, that they may never step on them. That if his journey was long, their journey is shorter and smoother and much more successful. That is who our mentor is. When you read the Bible and you read extra-biblical sources like Josephus, and I do when they try to find out whether there was a historical Jesus, because there are some who still doubt, then they do all the mathematics and say there was such a man, a worker of good deeds. Can it be said of you that you are a worker of good deeds? Do your enemies in their quiet moments acknowledge, "Behold, a good man" or "a good woman"? These are the questions, ladies and gentlemen, and let me not be psychic about it. Let me not talk for too long. I'm happy to be in your presence in the knowledge that this is not just another annual jamboree, because there are too many jamborees around the world. But this is a meeting of men and women who, in their minds and hearts, they are decided to go out there and to change minds and hearts. I'm a curious student of religious practices, and one of the practices that I want you to read about is about the Benedictine monks. When they are being constituted into monks, they lie prostrate on the ground, and then it is said that they have a conversion of the heart. Convert, you who are here. Before you go out there, do you have a conversion? It does not mean that you will not be without sin. You are with sin. We are all with sin. But is our conviction? Do the words, are the words of your mouth wedded with the thoughts of your mind and the feelings of your heart, so that we can rediscover mentorship in Africa, particularly? Those of you are clergy, when we come before you, do you speak from your hearts, or you have prepared sermons that you read which do not touch even your own hearts? Do you touch us? Do you care whether we come to Sunday or Saturday as a ritual? Do you care more about our tithing and offerings? Or you care about our well-being? And those of us who are belated, do we think the church is the clergy? These are the questions that we must ask. This is a daily struggle for all of us. And I'm saying that if we use the Bible as the point of reference for mentorship, then there is hope for this world. Because the Bible is a gem. There are people who say there is a book which I have written, "Reading the Bible from the Beginning to the End." That is mechanical reading. Every time you read the Bible keenly, you discover something great. Every time when I read Matthew 24:24, and I've read it times without number, and sometimes I read it again, and I say, "But this one I did not see." When I read Paul's letter to the Galatians at chapter 3:28, I say, "But this one I did not see." There is almost a revelation every time if you read it keenly enough and how it applies to our lives today.
So, Christian brethren, go out into the world, and I hope that this meeting will be like that of Pentecost. That when you come out of here, you shall be touched. You know, and this is what I want to conclude with. People are fond of this, particularly people who are called upon to pray. They say, and I normally also said, "Oh Lord, ignore the messenger but receive the message." Nonsense. If the messenger is bad and known to be a crook, the message will not be received. So, inasmuch as we want to ignore the messenger, we also want to know that the messenger is trying to be good, not good. So don't come here as a crook and tell us, "Ignore the messenger and receive the message only." We want to know you as a pastor who is struggling to be good, but because you are human, you make mistakes. So as Christians, when you come here, we can pray for you that you are a struggling Christian. And this is what I want us to do, because when we do that, it will be true that the Bible can actually be the guide for mentorship, and if you have it, you need no other thing. In fact, if you don't read any book in the world, only read the Bible. There is science, there is war, there is everything. There is everything in the Bible. If you want pornography, there is pornography in the Bible. There is science in the ground. There is everything in the Bible. Thank you very much, and God bless.