The Afrikan thinkers and intellects who dare question the foundations and intents of Christianity are usually blamed for thinking too much. Thinking itself is blamed for being ungodly, and in the worst cases; thinkers have been killed for opposing Christianity as demonstrated by history.
I recall in the Bible study class when I was a learner, how violence through whipping our backs and buttocks was instituted by our Black teacher in forcing us to memorize, regurgitate and accept as the ultimate truth, Bible verses instead of encouraging us to critically engage the text. The Sunday school was the same in its presentation of Jesus as the ultimate authority who can never be questioned.
This was an authoritative and downward flow of the European state character given that in Europe, and according to professor Cedric Robinson, the state was initially run in a theocratic mode before transformation into a democratic mode (Robinson, 1980). This meant that the Catholic church was in charge of the state, so this authoritative presentation of its gospel was, in essence, a defense of the state and therefore, a defense of wealth, greed, and land. This also explains why in 1095, Pope Urban II instructed the Christians in Europe to kill Muslims to reclaim the Holy Land, in return for eternal life and salvation, apparently in defense of the Eastern Orthodox church whereas in reality, it was in defense of land and greed (Bulhan, 2015).
“the notion that people are thinking too much is one of the oldest tricks in the book”
Another significant example is when Arius, a Christian Cyrenaic (modern-day Libyan) presbyter and ascetic, questioned the very essence of Christianity, which is the nature of Christ based on theological description. In response, Constantine, a Roman emperor, ordered that he be killed and that all his books and literature be destroyed and burnt. So, intolerance and violence define the nature of Christianity as it emerges from Europe and spread across the world for the same purpose of pursuing the lands of other nations under the pretense of a “civilizing” mission. Therefore, the notion that people are thinking too much is one of the oldest tricks in the book used to divert our attention away from the questionable matters that emanate from right-wing and anti-Black versions of Christianity.
There is nothing special about the Christ, God, rituals of resurrection, salvation, holy trinity and spirit, and the blood of the Christ given that these concepts, as they emerged in Afrika, predate those of Christianity by over 4000 years. These concepts are dealt with in detail in the The Book of the Coming Forth by Day aka Book of the Dead, where mythology, eschatology, and theology are fused to produce an Afrikan religion. And the oppressors were well aware of this, which is why King Leopold II said in a letter to the colonial Christian missionaries, “Your principal objective in our mission in the Congo is never to teach the niggers to know God, this they know already” (1883).
The above background and the details that will follow in this piece are important as they serve to show the importance of Ethiopian philosopher, Zara Jacob’s (1599–1692) thinking about how we should pay attention to the question of Christianity, in particular aspects that may not necessarily draw us closer to God, but which may be an interpretation meant to subjugate and rob us of our God-given resources in Afrika. This piece will center on Zara Jacob as a source from which to learn how to approach the question of God in an anti-oppressive way.
When the Catholics through the Portuguese missionaries arrived in Ethiopia and brought with them, their oppressive interpretation of the Bible and attempted to infiltrate Ethiopia intellectually, the Ethiopian philosopher Zara Yacob rebelled by questioning that interpretation. As a result—and after fleeing into exile because the Catholics together with the Catholic-convert Ethiopian King Susenyos wanted to kill him—he produced an enigmatic and seminal work, a treatise named Hatata (“The Inquiry”). In his treatise, he deals—through deep reflection and a discursive subjection of faith to critical examination by intelligence—with the method of knowing God, the disclosure of truth, human nature, and the obligations of human beings.
Regarding the method of knowing God, Teodros Kiros writes that for (and quoting) Zara, “truth is clearly revealed to whoever seeks it ‘with the pure intelligence sat by the creator in the heart of each man’. Faith then is not the irrational procedure of giving oneself to an unknown external power called God” (2004). For this reason, Toedors goes on to write, that to Zara, believers needed to “subject their faith to critical self-examination before they believe.” However, at the core of Zara’s approach was the idea that reason itself is incomplete without God’s guidance so our faith is guided by God’s gift of reason. He further argues that there are two laws, namely, God’s law and the law of humans where the former is illuminated by total intelligence and leads to recognition of truth as truth and not semblance of falsity. The latter he says, leads to falsehood because human nature is not enabling to differentiate between truth and falsehood.
“there is no such thing as thinking too much”
So intelligence is a way in which God exercises guidance over us as human beings, meaning that there is no such thing as thinking too much. To put it as Zara Yacob is quoted elsewhere by Kiros, “God created us intelligent so that we may meditate on his greatness, praise him and pray to him in order to obtain the needs of our body and soul. It is after we are imbued with the knowledge of God, the source of reason, that we become willing to be obligated toward all others.”
Now, if we take the example of the Catholic Portuguese and their usage of the Bible to dispossess the lands of the Afrikan people, we begin to understand why prayer to God “to obtain the needs of our body and soul” must mean the full utilization of our God-given intelligence to avoid perpetual dispossession and spiritual poverty. This is what Zara Yacob teaches us, by encouraging an independent reading of the Bible, instead of accepting it as the ultimate authority for blind faith.
As a way of example from the Bible, I refer to Deuteronomy 18 from the First (Old) Testament which states the following as abominable practices:
1. When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.
2. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead.
4. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you.
5. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this.
According to Zara Yacob’s thoughts and meditations, it is clear that these things were written by people of a different culture who wanted to use the Bible to justify the land dispossession of others, yet they framed it as if it was said by God. Also, the strategy by Christians to dispossess our land began by discrediting our culture so that the idea that we were savages was justified, meaning that it was okay to take our land which was to be given to them by God. This is why they added “no divination and inquiries from the dead for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners.” This is a clear sign of cultural contestation.
“This is what Zara Yacob rebelled against, asking us to use our God-given intelligence and reason to understand the truth”
Kiros quoting, Zara Yacob says “God does not order such absurdities, as these are unreasonable laws made by human beings. God could not possibly stand behind them.” So central to the mission of the Catholic missionaries is land dispossession and slavery, all of which are meant to feed into their greed, wealth, and desire to own enormous amounts of land across the world. This is what Zara Yacob rebelled against, asking us to use our God-given intelligence and reason to understand the truth.
To finally drive the point home, King Leopold II of Belgium made clear the real intention of the Christian missionary journey in this extract of his Letter to Belgium to Colonial Missionaries:
1. Corrupt the niggers’ minds by teaching them to forget their heroes, culture, and belief systems and to adore only ours.
2. Teach them that they are born with sins and that you, the white man have come to rescue them from their sinful nature. To do so, you must; ‘Institute a confessional system, which allows you to be good detectives denouncing any black that has a different consciousness contrary to that of the decision maker.’
3. Trick the Negro into believing that pain and suffering are good for them. To do so, you must; Recite every day – Happy are those who are weeping because the kingdom of God is for them.
4. Use the Gospel to make them powerless and helpless and ensure that their posterity is also as powerless as their parents. You have to detach from them and make them disrespect everything, which gives them the courage to affront us.
5. Your action will be directed essentially to the younger ones, for they won’t revolt when the recommendation of the priest is contradictory to their parents’ teachings. To ensure perpetual subjugation and total control of the Negros, You must singularly insist on their total submission and obedience, avoid developing the spirit in the schools, teach students to read and not to reason.
According to Dr Chiedozie Okoro, these facts were revealed to the world by a Congolese man named Mr. Moukouani Muikwani Bukoko in 1935 while working for missionaries. He bought an old Bible from a Belgian priest who forgot King Leopold II’s speech in it and in which Bukoko found the speech.
Therefore, King Leopold II made it very clear what the main intent of the Christian missionaries was. These revelations vindicate Zara Yacob’s insistence on God-given intelligence as a necessary defense method against perpetual subjugation. And together with Arius’s example, teaches us the importance of independent and critical thought as a method of knowing God.