As Unto Thee…

SINCE I met Christ by the mercies of God, two expressions have been my guiding principle. Though I say the first, more to me, if you asked for a self-introduction, chances are it would begin this way ‘Lanre Adewole, a bonafide child of God.’ Two, if you ask me for commitment, either official or otherwise, you are certain to get from me, ‘As Unto God’. If I were to be running for US presidency today, the only promise I would make not to destroy the American Dream, is ‘As Unto God’. Many may have problems with both. The first could be deemed a hypocritical ecclesiastical grandstanding and the second, mere celestial allusion, to be vague and unaccountable. By human understanding, such criticism and its more elevated rebuke, would be correct.

For critics versed in the theology of redemption, they can quickly point at scriptural admonitions of letting one’s work speak for oneself. Intellectualism would make this position also correct.

But God is Spirit and the genuine worshippers He seeks, must so do in Spirit. It is a meeting of Spirits between God and His own, who desires to be faithful, even when he/she, hasn’t transmogrified into the God-like creature our Father in heaven wants us to be. And from the abundance of such processing-heart, his mouth would be speaking. You are who you desire to be and if you keep speaking it, you are energised to keep working it and as long as you keep an eye on it, you would become a vessel unto honour you desire to be. If God could declare Isreal His first born, why would I want to be less. It is about knowing who you are, saying it ahead and standing by it.

If the introduction aspect is perceived contentious, only a mind of festering mischief would run the commitment aspect to any form of spiritual conjectures. God says we should not vow and only stay with the polar choices when it is about being accountable.

God must have seen the deceitful heart of men long before the coming of structured governance and leadership, to hewn out the decree. He must have also known that the more, men would try to make things look fairer with needless long notes and speeches, the worse they would make everything, because it is not about the explanation made, but the decision made. If ab initio, it had been ‘as unto the Lord,’ it would be absolutely not necessary to fill the entire stratosphere with empty words to explain what was obviously ‘as unto men’. Many even swear to validate lies, carrying on with a bold face, but though unseen to men, also with a scarred conscience. If you are fortunate to sit with big men with diseased conscience, you will pity those who worship their footprints, with ‘baba rere baba ke’ (the great man) genuflect.

I read Olusegun Agbaje, Osun REC of the infamous inconclusive/re-run guber poll. Dear Returning Officer, why wait for Supreme Court’s likely rebuke of another two years, when between you and your God, the matter of Gboyega Oyetola’s victory can be settled within hours? If your controversial call was ‘as unto God,’ if nothing was sold and bought, why fly a hypothetical resignation kite? You sure look a nice, harmless fellow and because here isn’t France, where you are deemed guilty until proven innocent in cloudy situation like Osun election, I am going to hold you true, which counts for nothing if you did the last job, ‘as unto man.’

I have keenly followed the you-were-once-naught spat between Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Professor Christine Ford. Washington is melting down, BP is high all over America and expectedly, Donald J. Trump White House is boiling. But between these two and their diametrically-opposed Capitol Hill highly-charged testimonies, one said it ‘as unto God’, the other ‘as unto man’.

• He who fights and runs…

Pastor John Piper settled it for me. He prayed, “may a good man not be destroyed and a predator not escape justice.”

Though campaigns mean nothing again in this better-forgotten era of vote-buying, politicians still mount podium to lie. Why? When Wasiu Ayinde’s “Sai Baba nbo o, Buhari a selee keji, Sai Baba nbo o (Buhari is the best man for the job) rambling or Biodun Olujinmi’s o sha pra, pra (don’t know the meaning) street salutation, would not even allow for sensible communication between the electorate and lying-politicians at campaign rallies.

Why lie to people have grown scavenging gene? They don’t even go to campaign rallies, by choice. Someone mobilized somebody to be there. A recent testament is the viral video of supposed PDP supporters head-butting over campaign largesse. For those still in shock over Nurudeen’s click-away-from-Abere performance, consider Deji’s pocket.

I guess everyone, everywhere, is carrying on with debilitating conducts, with ‘God is ever merciful’ exhortation, sealed in their skulls. Yes, He is, even fabulously gracious and endlessly loving. But He is also the Consuming Fire. And if you keep living ‘as unto man’, making yourself unaccountable to the One you always run to, in crisis time, a time would soon be, when grace and mercy, would not abound.

Consider Ephraim. He wore God out and the One who made him wealthy without deserving it, told His own to stop admonishing the big man who thought he was self-made. God declared him eternally desolate.

Politics without doubt, is the nation’s biggest and most-rewarding industry today. Men and women had killed, are killing and will still kill, to leverage power. Jesus says bad tree won’t bring good fruits. Their ways to power are laden with the darkest of human wickedness. A pastor in my church seeking a House of Representatives ticket, wasn’t absolved of the blood-letting that trailed the exercise. Was that unto God? I challenge Pastor Yemi Osinbajo to go beyond his Independence Day jibes at Dino Melaye and Nurudeen Adeleke, to ask himself when the room is empty of hangers-on, if all the NNPC/JVC saga and the rest involving him, have been ‘as unto God’.

Many seemingly get away with evil because it is a case of higher evil triumphing over lesser one, like rigging cancelling out rigging, but not when it belongs to all and a part of the whole, isn’t keeping quiet in beseeching the God of ultimate vengeance. My Father in heaven told me, something is about giving way. Let him with ears, pause and ask, am I doing it as unto God.