jeudi 15 mars 2012

Skeptical to the Miraculous

In 2010, I was in Kampala for a work meeting. while there, during my evening time in my room, i watch christian related programs. That's when i came across a crusade from the noted Ugandan Evangelist Robert Kayanja. I didn't know him, i just heard his name mentioned couple of times as an equivalent of Benny Hinn or the Pastor Chris version of Central Africa. Though i never even watched him before, i was filled with antagonistic assumption about him. Here's where i got surprised. I watched his first broadcast crusade that day, then the day after i watched another one, i couldn't believe that i was actually agreeing with him.

Then i asked myself, why on earth was i suspicious of him. I guess it is an old story. Early in the year 2000, i had concluded based on my locale experience that God didn't really use black folks for miraculous intervention in the realm of healing and so on. My prejudice was accentuated but the poor quality of teaching and fake speaking in tongues seance and unfulfilled prophecies i participated or i heard of. And after all, which book of black folks did i read that could reverse that? All the books on signs and wonders were from our Caucasian (white) brothers or sisters. I only gave exception to two black preachers i knew and who impressed me, but i saw them as exception rather than a possible hope for the future African young Christians. I knew at least that we African know how to expel out demons. That i saw and knew that it was the only continental gift we can empirically demonstrate we had. But forget about healing and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. If it happened, for sure it was by an extraordinary grace that it will be the only story that preachers will use for the rest of the following years to illustrate that God does miracles.

But i started changing my views when i lived in South Africa. I heard, saw and lived some pretty fascinating experiences with Christians of different races there, that my previous suspicions started to crumble under the weight of empirical evidence of the Lord doing the kind of things that i 'knew' he couldn't do with black folks. However since that prior belief was ingrained in me, my first reaction when i hear about miracles/prophecy/ etc. from a black preachers, my first reaction is that he could be manufacturing all these
marvelous stories. However given my experiences, thank God, i keep reminding myself of what i have seen, heard and experienced. My staunch skepticism to the miraculous has been eroded. I am free now to honestly assess people stories/testimonials with less prejudice than before. As for Kayanja, he is just a good evangelist, educator and civil servant. He does well and the testimonial i heard of him from an unbeliever is what convinced me that he also does what is reported in his crusades. I don't know to which extend all of the miracles in his crusades are real or happened but i am glad for him that at least some of the claimed miracles really does happen.

May God grants us to be rich in divine experiences so that we may understand those who are usually attacked unjustly for what they have claimed to have experienced with God's grace.
P.S: Check my book here.

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