Politics and Religion

Kenyans are a religious lot. Just flip through the TV channels on a Sunday morning and see the vigour reverence with which we worship. We even have a national prayer day where even the president attends, to pray and break fast. I won’t question the wisdom of the one who came up with that idea since there don’t seem to be any and for a show, the whole thing was poorly done.

Where the Christianity encyclopaedia (bible) tells that to pray for something as big as a nationrequires fasting, commitment and should not be a one day event but a continuous process, we have chosen to approach the whole concept from the rear. You see, as a nation we break the fast that has not even started and conduct our prayers in the comfort of posh hotels. Such an amalgamation of the Kenyan elites and their guests, hypocritically masquerading as leaders, we are made to believe, carries anything worth of nation’s identity. Well I didn’t identify with it and I doubt many Kenyans apart from the corporate elites who get free publicity by gracing the annual event (and maybe the religious lot) did. In a country that has starving populace, their leaders are showing them that prayers are not to be conducted on empty stomachs. Did I miss the joke or were you mocking us? How many terror attacks were stopped by the prayers, anyway?

Am reminded that the good book still cautions against judging others and for a moment I contemplate of quitting this piece lest the pious be offended. Instead, let me issue a disclaimer that this is in no way a judgement so, now, Christians can breathe. You see our self-rightousness have made us so complacent that questioning even the basics is termed as sacrilege particularly if that thing happen to touch on our religious belief. For people who maintain that God distinguished us from other creatures of His creation by according us wisdom, we seem to have no clue how to apply the same wisdom in solving the daily conundrums of our life. It is worrying that with this God given wisdom we are still imprisoned by religion even on simple matters. This reminds me of my favourite quote from that old song by The Eagles (Already Gone), “So often it happens, we live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the keys.”

Our judgement on simple matters is incomprehensibly poor, so poor that we stock all the policy making organs of our country with the purest scum. With the looming elections, every politician is on a marketing spree, trying to sell his or her gimmicks to the unsuspecting masses that applaud and cheer even when the said politicians do as much as belch. It is disgusting to see people cheering a confessed idiots urging them1 on to continue annoying and mocking the whole concept of leadership. This scene is also very common in churches where the most obnoxious thieves continue to plunder, ripping off the masses in every imaginable method. If criminals like Maina Njenga can call themselves pastors and  get followers, the church has been shaken to its core and more so the society that continue to support such hypocritical groupings of imposters. Church has offered a safe haven for criminals, where all they need to say are a few magic words like Praise Jesus, and that is supposedly all that is needed to hide their dark past and make us belief they are now born again.

What is it with all converted criminals that they think after getting saved (from what?)  their next place to land is a political office? Is it merely a vehicle (mbus as Kiraitu would call it) some sort of diversification of their earlier dealings? Whatever it is, it seems their god(s) has not been keen in answer their prayers since the previous ones have not succeeded. If at all religion has a synonym, then it should be hypocrisy and the last thing I can ever do is vote a born again Christian in any political office. Never.

The recent elections of the EALA delegates showed a grim picture. How can someone who depends on other peoples votes spoil a vote? One spoilt vote is a little bit tolerable, but when we have 10 out of 140 MPs spoiling their vote, that’s a joke whose embarrassment is on the electorate. A person who cannot be trusted to elect himself/herself has no business seeking votes and how they found themselves in parliament is a clear testament of how unreliable we are in choosing leaders. There must be something wrong in being an MP, either there is undocumented mental degradation going on at parliament building or Maslow’s theory failed to document a state of satisfaction at which brain development hit a rewind, a state which is only attained when one reach parliament.
The hailed new confusion (constitution) will be a disappointment when we more than double the number of idiots as our representatives in parliament. But as a famous American comedian said a more than a century ago, “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”



                                                                               (Images via: http://evolutionspace.wordpress.com,www.sodahead.com, www.wayodd.com)