This publication is the response to one of the review questions for a live radio interview on my article: ‘What the Church Refuses to Teach About Christianity;’ the particular question was…
Is there any such thing as ‘over-spirituality’? If so, what brought it about?
What brought it about? A combination of three (3) main factors; I deduce…
One, our realisation that the God we serve is the all powerful God; the creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them, and able to do all things; of course, there is nothing too hard for the God of all flesh (In answer to Jeremiah 32:27) but that does not mean He will do everything for us.
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The second factor is “Partial application of scriptures,” and sometimes complete misapplication of scriptures; what I call ‘The Second Crucifixion.’ And, I have a complete article on this issue; very interesting.
Take Proverbs 10:22 for instance, it says: “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, And He adds no sorrow with it;” (NKJV) or “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.” (KJV) I noticed something very curious about the translation or rendition in the Akan and Ga Bibles; when translated into English, each of the verse 22 in the local translation mean: ‘It is only the blessing of the Lord that can make one rich. Hardwork does not add anything!‘ But is that what the NKJV and KJV are saying? No! Something is definitely wrong here; either that the NKJV or KJV is wrong, or that the Akan and Ga translations are wrong; all of them cannot be correct at the same time, since they clearly are saying and/or mean different things!
The third factor, rather painfully, is: Our inherent laziness; which is even made worse by the second factor I just described. As I explain in the article, studies have shown that, ‘Man is in constant motion towards anything that gives him or will give him pleasure and away from anything that gives him or will give him pain.’ And So when it comes to having to ‘think,‘ we do everything possible to try and avoid it, and that includes – essentially – leaving our earthly physical/practical responsibilities (supposedly) for ‘God’ to handle; by only ‘praying and observing other religious requirements’ and hardly taking the required practical action with ‘creative thinking.’ Indeed, it is more convenient to ‘overspiritualise’ things; i.e. pray and observe other selected religious prescriptions, than it is to ‘think and take appropriate action, or apply wisdom!
Let me elaborate further because one is very likely to get uncomfortable about this ‘laziness’ issue, if you consider that a lot of Ghanaians (and indeed Africans) throng to their work places on a daily basis; some jostling and sweating. It is very tempting to think/presume that they are working hard; No!
The best working definition of the kind of ‘hardwork‘ I am expecting to see in our lives is captured in a profound quotable-quote by Sir Joshua Reynolds; he says that: “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking;” or as Henry Ford puts it: “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” In other words, when it comes to situations when people have to think, they are likely to do anything and everything that will help them to avoid having to think. And ‘thinking‘ here refers to ‘Creative Thinking;’ not ‘Worrying,’ and as Thomas Edison observed: “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
This publication was the response to one of the review questions for a live radio interview on my article: ‘What the Church Refuses to Teach About Christianity;’ for the other review questions and responses you may click here.
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