Lent and national redemption

I have always found the Christian penitential season of Lent a veritable time to think about Nigeria. I do this every year because Lent is really about undertaking a major examination of conscience on how well our Christian journey is proceeding, and since we do not live our Christian life in a vacuum but in […]

I have always found the Christian penitential season of Lent a veritable time to think about Nigeria. I do this every year because Lent is really about undertaking a major examination of conscience on how well our Christian journey is proceeding, and since we do not live our Christian life in a vacuum but in the heart of society, Lent inevitably implicates the whole idea of the Christian’s contribution to the social and political processes of nation building. Jesus’ example of prayer and fasting sets us an example of how to take stock of our lives. Being a time of penitence, Lent is also an invitation to be sorry for all our human failings to please God and to serve our brothers and sisters. It reminds us that sin is real and that human beings make mistakes that can set off a chain reaction that affects other people. For this reason, the season of Lent is a call to repentance and to conversion. This implies the willingness to change for the better. 

The realisation, upon self-examination, that there is something that I am not doing right is the first step to change. In this regard, the Book of Chronicles sets us an example of the requirement. It says: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sins and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14). This biblical invitation to conversion captures essential points: humility, prayer, seeking God’s face, turning away from evil, forgiveness and healing of the land. On a general level, the invitation points to the fact that there is a connection between religiosity and the dilemmas of a nation. It is here that we immediately see that the problems of our nation have been caused by our lack of faithfulness to God and that true national healing will take place when we put God at the centre of our affairs.

I am convinced that deepening understanding of Nigeria’s problems is of critical importance for problem solving. My intuition tells me that the depth of the crisis we are facing demands more than politics as usual. An illness of the spirit has spread across our country and our greatest need is for what our religious traditions refer to as the healing of the nations. For many years, we have been running an intellectual and ethically deficit national system. Our deepest problems have not been politics but spiritual. We have been running deficit of those metaphysical and intangible moral, ethical and spiritual values that give human societies a sense of meaning. It is this lack of those fundamental spiritual and ethical values that are manifested in our political, social and economic tribulations. Unless we discover and rediscover those values, politics or economics alone can never solve our problems. Good politics and good economics require for their success an unconditional allegiance to good spiritual, moral and ethical foundations. Thus, the fundamental character of the social economic, political and cultural renewal we urgently need will require a change of both our hearts and our minds. 

Many decades ago, the great Indian sage Mahatma Gandhi warned against what he called the seven deadly social sins: politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, pleasure without conscience, education without character, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. These social sins today provide an apt description of what have become accepted practices in the life of our country. From the violent carnage in many parts of our country to the hushed cries of our hungry and unfed children, we are a society that has lost its way. As such, real solutions require a much deeper understanding of the sickness that has afflicted us. Symptoms or signs of an ailment point to something beyond them, and only effective clinical diagnosis can address the root cause of the ailment. As Jim Wallis, one of America’s most gifted social prophets points out in his book, The Soul of Politics, “Many signs help us interpret the cause of our present crisis. A sign is an event, a condition, an observation, a characteristic, or a phenomenon that helps to reveal the sources of our problems. Signs point us to the root causes, values, and structures that have led us to our predicament.” If we pay attention to the symptoms, we can come to understand both the nature of our problems and their potential solutions. 

We need to come to terms with the relationship between structural breakdown and self-destruction. The destruction of structure is caused by systematic social, political and economic injustice. The destruction of self is caused by the lack of character, family and community. We must find that synthesis, that crucial connection between systemic social decay and self-destruction that pervades all aspects of life in our nation. We face a kind of violence born not only of poverty but also of perverse values; a disintegration caused not only by lack of good jobs but also by lack of thorough intellectual and moral formation. We face a crime rate rooted not only in economic discrimination but also in the nihilism of a society where conspicuous consumerism and materialism have been elevated to the supreme level of spirituality. When the children of our nation are planning their funerals instead of their futures, it is a sure sign that we, as a society, have lost our way.

We need a new political morality that has the capacity to transcend old ideological categories and forge new relationships and connections between people and issues, which have been largely missing in our political environment. The need for this new kind of politics based on a renewed moral perspective is what will offer us a glimpse of what we have always lacked: a vision of transformation. A new sense of direction will require a moral compass that we can trust. We need a new politics of conversion and meaning. We must broaden and deepen our conception of politics beyond wielding power and authority. What we are in dire need of amidst our many crises and contradictions is a sense of perspective. With a sense of perspective we can see how these realities hang together. It has to do with making sense of the issues and events that confront us, threaten and overwhelm us. It has to do with how we connect the fundamental questions that bedevil us with the values and beliefs that are worthy of our allegiance.  

According to Jim Wallis, “Perspective fundamentally has to do with values – moral values and ethical commitments.” And since the critical challenges we face today have a central spiritual and ethical perspective, at the core of our political, economic and social challenges are fundamental questions that challenge our human sensibilities. It is about how values shape and order politics and how politics influences and defines values. Reconnecting politics to our best values is now the most urgent task of political life in our country.

Let us hold on to the words of Pope Benedict XVI who, in his 2010 Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus (Africa’s task), calls every disciple of Christ to a “Christian life marked by an attention to the spiritual and moral dimensions of his actions, and thus to become capable of confronting the difficulties of social, political, economic and cultural life through a life permeated with the spirit of the Gospel” (AM, 32) Our contributions to the emergence of a new Nigeria can only be decisive if our understanding of the faith shapes our understanding of our society and our nation. After all, what is all this array of worship, devotion and piety, if at the end of our Lenten discipline we are thrown back to where we have always been?

Ojeifo is a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja.