God’s ways are unpredictable —Lasebikan

Retired Anglican Bishop and professor of Old Testament Studies of the Department of Religion, Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, State, George Lasebikan, has said God’s ways are totally undemocratic, unpredictable and that if God were man, there would have been psychoanalysis of His person by man.

Lasebikan said this at an inaugural lecture entitled: “The Madness of God: An examination of the divine Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,” at the university.

“If a man in all his wisdom would approach issues the way God goes about it, psychiatry will quickly describe him as suffering from a form of mania but the truth is that whatever God chooses to do, He does at all cost,” he said.

He cited many instances in the Bible where God did unstoppable and unquestionable things using people like Moses, Jonah, Ezekiel and other.

The don stated that when we talk about God, we are talking about the metaphysical, that we cannot completely analyse God as the proponent of the ‘God is Dead Theology’ would wish. “This is where science challenges things.”

While speaking about prophets, he noted that if prophets were seen as geniuses, it therefore means that they were not insane men because they were very creative. He noted that prophets are not mad in just the same way as God is not; though their creative abilities make it difficult for us to understand them.

In conclusion, he emphasized that if there is a thin line between genius and insanity, we must not be quick to condemn human actions that we do not understand and that abnormal and strange tendencies towards awkward mental display can be found in artists and creative individuals. “Therefore, there must be room in the society for all these categories of people to fulfill their God given destinies,” he said.