Pray in the closet!

There is little hope and no promise for Kenyans as things stand today, unless we turn to serious national prayer that God may redeem us from the precipice on the edge of which we are dangerously tottering. ~ http://standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000180059/here-s-why-we-need-to-pray-for-our-country/

This is the constitutional structure of the Government of Kenya: national Executive, Parliament, Judiciary, County Government, independent offices and constitutional commissions. That's it. The supremacy of "Almighty God" is acknowledged in the preamble, but read through the remaining 87,000+ words looking for "Almighty God" and you'll be shocked at "Almighty God's" shy nature. "Almighty God" knows well enough not to embroil Him/Herself in the constitutional affairs of man.

 There is a very good reason for this. Whatever beliefs we may hold about deities and their powers, we the people have gone out of our way to set down in writing how we want to govern ourselves. Among all those constitutional institutions are shared powers and functions designed to provide for our well-being, security ad safety. We have not assigned any powers or functions to "Almighty God" in the Constitution of Kenya.

For a tabloid of the Standard's stature to suggest that our problems with the governance of Kenya, and the associated challenges those problems have brought, will be solved if we "pray" to "Almighty God" is nothing new. That is what those who lack imagination will eventually suggest when things go wrong. But for it to become government policy, as it is in Zambia following the collapse of the kwacha against world currencies, is taking wishful thinking too far. It has no place in the government.

We are asked to pray to "Almighty God" for solutions to strikes, the economy, sexual offences and extortion, as well as our imperfect democracy, negative ethnicity and corrupt politics. This is an admission that what we set down in writing in our constitution is meaningless; they are just words that mean absolutely nothing, that say nothing of any importance, that the institutions we have created are mere artifacts of our hypocrisy. What we really want is "Gold Almighty" to come down from the heavens and take over the governance of this country once and for all. We are being asked to look for a dictator to reign over us. And we find nothing alarming about that suggestion.

Do you know what the essential characteristic of the "Christian God" is? He must be obeyed at all times without question. Or he will kill you. The only thing he promises you in return for your blind obedience is everlasting life. He does not promise good governance, democratic government (unlikely when He is the government), or positive ethnicity. He only promises you will live under his thumb forever.

Because no god has ever revealed himself to modern man, we have substituted this god with a human replacement, a god-man. That is what the Standard wishes us to do. We must create a god-man of our own who will save us from ourselves, remove from us the onerous and confusing task of governing ourselves. He will rule us and give us long life. We will obey him or suffer the consequences.

Have we struggled for fifty years only to admit that we are incapable of governing ourselves? I don't think so. We are not small children, and it is time the Standard and its ilk recognised that. We neither need nor want a god-man. What we must do is something we have known for fifty years: we must think for ourselves and avoid the cop-out of allowing "leaders" to think for us. I don't need a god-man to solve my nation's problems and if I choose to pray to "Almighty God", I will do it as His son exhorts me to do according to the Gospel according to St Matthew: in my closet!