By: Ayobami Ogedengbe
PEACEFUL greetings to the Catholic Family all over the world on the emergence of the new Pope. I pray for the success of the Pope in his effort at fostering love, social justice, harmonious living and religious tolerance in the world. We all pray for a peaceful world and a peaceful world is possible. (Isaiah 2:4). I call on the Pope to reason with me on one of the ways in which he can succeed together with other spiritual world leaders in achieving world peace thereby bringing humanity to the experience of the prophecy of Isaiah. We all desire a peaceful world and a peaceful world is possible. The world as of now is witnessing a lot of stress from different angles. There are economic wars, there are political wars, there are religious wars. Probing through, we find a common denominator tied to finance. Meaning, they are mostly motivated by economic interests. While a few might have other reasons, the majority of the war is tied to economic interests. It could take the guise of spreading information, it could take the guise of spreading religion. But the basis of it is dominance which eventually leads to more economic benefit for the suppressing force. In my observation, I found out that at the root of the reasons why humans deliberately unleash violence on another human is ideology. In other words, one of the ways to understand human behavior is to identify the ideology that drives their decisions.
There is a sharp contrast between the Western intellectual framework and the African intellectual framework. To be specific: A “Me Versus You” ideology is the foundation of Western intellectual framework. While a “Me and You” ideology is the foundation of African Intellectual framework (“Socrates and Orunmila: Two Patron Saints of Classical Philosophy” Prof. Sophie Oluwole, Professor, African Philosophy). It is important that we understand the implications of these two foundational beliefs in the behavioral pattern of the Western masterminds and the African mastermind. Note that we are not comparing these two frameworks to express which is better or which is inferior. In fact, we have to give credit to both systems by appreciating that they have both given advancement to humanity in several ways. The dark-skinned were able to build a civilization(s) for thousands of years with their ideology before the white-skinned took over to build this civilization we are presently experiencing. This present civilization that we are experiencing is dominated by the intellectual framework of “Me versus You” for the past 2000 Years. I say this because the West is presently in charge of the world dominance in all ways amongst humans. Does this prove the superiority of the Western intellectual framework? Maybe not.
The fact that we have not achieved relative world peace at the moment shows that we still have to go back to our drawing board and re-examine our strategies. Some people can plot the astrological graph and tell what took place 2000 years ago due to cosmic arrangements and they can tell if that age is winding down or it’s still continuing. One thing the spiritual leaders need to admit to the general public is that the Biblical “End of Age””New Heaven and new earth” are explanations of “End of civilizations” – eons and the start of a new, and not a end of creation – cosmos and the start of a new. Historical human records document different waves of civilizations with their respective timelines. It usually comes to its peak and somehow, it gets destroyed. But creation still remains. The manifestation of the “me versus you” and the “me and you” ideology: The ideology is exhibited in the system of spirituality. The most significant of that manifestation is seen in Western culture originated religion which does not see the coexistence between light and darkness, while the African originated religion hinges on the reality of the cooperation between Light and Darkness.
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The African spiritual belief system by reason of its similarity with science is usually not regarded as a “Religion” in some quarters. It is believed that the system is purely scientific. In every law of science, we will see a fundamental principle of the synergy between positive and negative. Though they may appear to oppose each other, they are majorly complementary to each other for balance. In electricity, we know it is impossible for a positively charged wire and another positively charged wire to bring forth electricity powered light. We see both up and down. We see both night and day. We see both sickness and health. We see both life and death. We also see Me and You. In the spirit of religious tolerance, I urge the Pope to embrace for its children organizations the knowledge of African intellectual framework for peace on earth – The Christian worldview that ONLY its path is accepted by the creator is one of the greatest cause of division amongst humanity. As important as it is for any individual to abhor evil in its character definition, we must be careful in our definition of Evil. We must not label a deity Evil, we should condemn actions.
A belief system is not to be expressed over other as the Truth and the only Truth. This relative absolutism is what births religious extremism. When the zeal to promote a truth over another becomes a righteous cause, politically minded individuals can use that to advance physical violence on a people, calling it “Righteous indignation”. This, is at the basis of several human massacre that the world has encountered. The Pope is urged to reorient his followers of over 1 Billion people on the importance of religious tolerance and even where necessary, support implementation policies on education of how ancient wisdom and indigenous knowledge systems can influence social justice and harmonious living across the globe. We are at an age where we cannot close our eyes to obvious information which is available at everyone’s finger-tip. Church leaders must rise up and show the world that they know that there is a problem and there is something to be done going forward. If not, the coming generation will see the hypocrisy of the Western originated religions and by then it will be too late to redeem the image of the church. Once again, I urge the Pope to focus on religious tolerance. It will go a long way in engendering peace in our society.
•Ogedengbe is the Araba Awo of Okeagbe land, Akoko Ondo State.
