My kitchen Sink Faith

I’m not exactly sure why or how we ended up in the kitchen. Probably because I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t very well jump the garden fence and besides, finding the key to the garden door was not on my top ten lists at that precise moment.

 

“It’s either your Christianity or me.”

 

There. She’d said it. I knew it would come to this. I just hadn’t anticipated that today would be the day.

I looked at my mother, tears streaming down my face. There was no choice and she knew it.

 

“They’re deceiving you. You know that, don’t you? It’s blasphemy, what they’re doing. Those churches are stealing your money and feeding you evil.”

 

Motherly concern, fears for my eternal damnation and rage at the Nigerian ‘church movement’ in all its negative glory were all combined in her ultimatum. The house was in uproar. We were both crying. We had reached the point of no return and we knew it. I had to make a stand and she had to make me see reason. Christianity was defiled and led by corrupt people who existed merely to cheat people out of their hard earned cash. Islam offered another way. Indeed, the only way. It had been the faith of our family for many, many generations. But not anymore. For me anyway.

 

As I looked at my mother, I understood in a moment of clarity why people could leave their family, face persecution and even threats to their lives for the sake of the gospel. Even as the air surged with an atmosphere that can only be described as the tension of spiritual warfare, I understood even more clearly the words: “Pick up your cross and follow me.”

 

That day was one of the most painful in my life. I saw my mother plead, beg and threaten, all to no avail. I wouldn’t and couldn’t deny Christ. I would prefer never to have been born. A lot happened that day, much of which I cannot write but I learnt what God knew all the while; “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).