UZOR Simeon Nwainyinya
uzor2oo6@yahoo.com
The proliferation of religious and worship centers is antithesis to the escalating rates of crimes, criminality, and other loose conducts in Nigeria. Moral decadence and low perceptions of values have become so widespread and worrisome. Media reports of heinous acts and fraudulent behaviors involving heads of families and supposedly ‘spiritual’ religious guides and ministers have become a daily occurrence. What could have been responsible for these contradictions?
The course of the development of values and morality in human, as reported by the developmental psychologists, is that “children from ages 4 to 7 begin to judge the rightness and goodness of behaviors by the consequences of the behavior and not the intentions of the actor”. That “laws and rules are believed to be handed down by the all-powerful authority and are unchangeable”, therefore, “punishment follows automatically”.
However, at ages 10 and above, they posit “children develop autonomous morality as they become aware that laws and rules are changeable and are merely convenient conventions”. That “punishment occurs if one was caught breaking the law/rule”. Even so, that “punishment was not inevitable”. At this point, “moral development was influenced by the processes of imitations and reinforcements”.
These empirical postulations thus suggest that individuals can hardly boast of having inherited the virtues of morality and values. Instead, that the disposition of any individual towards morality and values is acquired through interactions with the environment. Implicit also is that all forms of immorality and misconducts in a society are learnt by the younger members from their older counterparts in that society. Children’s first contact with the environment begins from their families, schools, and religious institutions. It follows that any breach in behavior can be attributed to the failure of these institutions.
Meanwhile, the observed contradictions could have emanated from wrong examples and teachings, motivated by inward greed and base feelings. Examples are limitless. One that has attracted attention was the frequently recited, “sacrificial giving opens the gates of heaven”, by the church ministers especially, in the Pentecostal missions and ministries. This clause indeed, may not be out of order and must have been gleaned from the obvious joy people radiate following acts of, or rendering, selfless helps or services to a needy and the interplay of the natural laws of sowing and reaping.
However, what makes this quotation topical is neither its supposedly biblical root nor its frequent recitation by the church Leadership, but the glossing over of its likely implications and the psychological damage done to the faith of the congregations when unwarrantedly incited.
Giving is inherent in the spirit of human and anchored in their free-will by God Almighty. So, human naturally feel the urge to give to another who obviously needs helps or who had done something that impelled the other to reciprocate or appreciate.
This natural inclination when demonstrated results in spontaneous joy, feelings of fulfillment, and the motivations to repeat similar generosity. It is important to note that when exhibited, the giver rarely remembers the act and almost never expected any reciprocity from the recipient(s).
On the contrary, when a person was misguidedly incited to give, the psychological impulses that followed include regret, anger, sadness, and grudges. The implications include momentary (if not permanent) hatred towards the recipients, negatively maligning the characters of the recipients, and often conspiring to plot revenge.
Given the psychological impulses associated with giving, it follows that the ceaseless calls on the church congregations by its Leadership to give “bountifully and sacrificially” so that “the gate of heaven might open” and release rewards to them (congregations) are not without implications.
To start with, church ministers quote copiously, the biblical references to people rewarded by God for their sacrificial giving, without at the same time, reminding the congregations that “sacrificial” implies selfless or/and without expectations. The ministers also never reminded the congregations that “giving openly in the synagogue or to a needy” so that they might be applauded or prayed for as was often the case, has already been rewarded and thus will receive no further rewards (Matthew 6: 1-4). Church ministers often requested for specific sum and specific number of donors so that they (ministers) could pray for their (donors) financial and economic breakthroughs. The implications of raised false hope and beclouded expectations from God were never considered.
Comparatively, proliferation of churches and worship centers and the contradictory escalation of crimes, criminality, immorality, and other misconducts are analogous to the negative psychological impulses that well up in a person whose raised hopes were dashed or whose treasures were hypocritically, fraudulently, and misguidedly collected. This individual would naturally become angry, bitter, sad, and might nurture hatred and revenge toward the ‘fraudster’. The individual would sought and naturally be attracted to others with similar grievances. The result would then be the formation of a new group or church as the case might be.
Since human learn by imitation and reinforcement, the new group would begin to practice what were learnt from their estranged leaders and test some of the techniques applied on them previously. This scenario plays out not only amongst Christian congregations but other faiths, friends, criminals, and other clandestine groups.
Furthermore, a Christian who had been oriented, brainwashed or misguided to give all he/she has or could in the belief that the gates of heaven will open for God to dole out rewards, might become resentful towards, not just the person/group responsible, but God for ‘failing’ to keep His own side of the bargain. The result is that his/her faith in God might be negatively affected to the extents that he/she becomes doubtful about the existence of God. The individual might even no longer, feels any moral or religious obligation to be prudent in their dealings with others.
The way forward is that families, schools’ administrators, religious leaders need to realize that morality and values are not innate in individuals, but behaviors learnt as they grew up and interacted with their immediate and remote environments. That whatever children learnt in their formative ages, they grew up with them. That it is costly and almost impossible to drop a cultivated behavior. Therefore, the inculcation of morality, values, and other virtues needs to be positively nurtured from birth.
Secondly, a human is an embodiment of three constituents – physical, psychological, and spiritual. Needless to emphasize that none of these parts should be developed at the expense of another. They are, to a large extent, parallel in importance and should be nurtured simultaneously. What happens to one impinges on the others.
Albeit, the psychological constituent seems to have greater Implications in the development of the spiritual, vis-à-vis the individual’s dispositions toward, and relationships with, God. For the sake of emphasis, the roles of such psychological variables as morality, faith, trust, honesty, et cetera on the individual’s spiritual development were greatly buttressed in the various religions’ Literature.
Therefore, religious institutions and its Ministers need not lose sight of the spiritual implications (both to themselves and their flocks) of manipulating human psychology negatively. They owe their congregations the right teachings that develop their spirit and psychological wellbeing. After all, human are inherently predisposed to give to the needy, to reciprocate benevolent deeds, and to appreciate performance.