Prayers and Fasting Not The Answer To Our Problems

By Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo

Attorney and Counselor at Law

It is instructive to argue that this whole notion of fasting and praying over issues and expecting that God will resolve our problems for us is also a function of our morbid minds. If God indeed exists, then all we are trying to do is exercising some undue influence on Him in order for Him to let us reap where we have not sown: to get all A’s in an exam we have not studied for; or to prosper in a business endeavor we have not properly organized; or to enjoy health within an environment in which we have not kept clean; or to be rich by some egregious miracle. So by praying and fasting while being inept and evil, we are seeking to corrupt God by attempting to make Him rig the system in our behalf. Otherwise how else can we explain our shoddy attitudes vis a vis our incessant prayers and fasting? And as a natural consequence of this unholy notion of seeking undeserved advantage through prayers and fasting, we are bound to conceive of the other person’s prosperity as inimical to God’s will if the person refuses to engage in prayers and fasting and yet prospers on account of his own hard work and perseverance. In that context, we will even view the prosperity of such a person as a precursor to an imminent doom prepared for sinners. And we will pray for God to hasten the doom of these successful atheists or even bring it about ourselves.

And in view of the foregoing, one can apprehend a huge hiatus between what we do and what we hope to see as the result of what we do. In this instance, we are going to work late and still believing that our economy will improve. We are abandoning all kinds of educational investments and still repudiating the logical consequence that we will flunk to the bottom of the global scale. The police are standing by the road side every day and openly collecting bribes while still believing that our politicians will be honest and just in the dispensation of their duties. Big time and small time religious crooks are collecting pennies from the poor and selling them snake oil while believing that these same members will be truthful and honest in their miserable lives. Teachers alter scores to the unfair advantage of their student girlfriends and favorites while waxing lyrical about government incompetence and corruption on a daily basis. And so between our actions and the expectation of the result of our actions lies a huge hiatus of irreconcilability, and we readily concoct prayers and fasting purportedly to subvert the natural outcomes of our actions and behavior. We try to defy the consequential gravity of our misbehavior while pressing on with the karmic weight of our actions.

That is how our whole life becomes one continuum of make-believe. We make-believe that our God will intervene to obviate our crass irresponsibility. And if this fails, we make-believe that the witches and the demons are responsible for our fate. And if this is not enough, we contract the traditional gods and ancestors and pour libation or engage in some cultural bunkum to remedy some problems. We do everything to avoid the logical consequences of our actions and override the kinds of scientific steps that will yield the long-standing results of our actions. And when all these fail, we turn on ourselves and insult ourselves; then proceed to begin the cycle all over again in a mass delusion that we will have some different results.

Now take the demolition exercises that resulted a couple of days after the Accra flooding. Nobody can say for sure the exact parameters used to determine the houses that should be demolished. Or whether it is even conceivable to ensure that some type of alternative solution could be applied while saving expensive properties that others have used their sweat and blood to acquire. We have not even determined the extent to which the mere demolition of other citizens’ property, which they constructed upon the approval of city officials, will lead to a cessation of flooding…And yet like typical fickle-minded goons, we are on a rampage to destroy what others have built. And when citizen Casely Hayford stated his disagreement of this obviously ill-informed reaction by the masses, what he got were unprintable insults. Do we seriously think that demolition is a solution? We are just more interested in getting our own back at the people we don’t like, and whose success we envy. Because this has always been the culture and history of this government which was established on the theory that a citizen’s success is some kind of evidence of his corruption.

And if we apply all these wrong antidotes to our problems and engage in these fruitless and harmful actions while believing that our nation will prosper, then we only have to take a look at our checkered past to learn the history of our dark present. For starters, our independence was a sham because it was conceived on the platform of betrayal and birthed on empty rhetoric of freedom and justice. And for nearly two decades, we failed to acknowledge the sources of a tyranny imposed on the innocent, and while a large population of our people were incarcerated in prisons for speaking their minds, there were still those singing the oppressor’s praises and concocting treasonable narratives to defend imprisonment without trial, one party state and a life presidency. Up to date, there are still those trained and raised and bred on the notion that a certain dictator does no wrong, and would even defend the notion that such a tyrant’s discredited ideology must be reinstated into the body politic. So if you have a cross-section of the population unable to confront truth in all its ramifications and would recite shibboleths in defense of a renowned tyrant, how then do you move from this moronic and catatonic state to generate the kind of critical, honest and sagacious minds that can form the building blocks of a prosperous nation? So the foundation of our political system was built on sheer lies, betrayal and chicanery, and never on the truth of our condition or loyalty to the nation or even on any focus on doing what is right or responsible. We were brought up to repudiate others not of our party or ethnic groups as congenitally evil while embracing our leadership idols wholly without question or analyses. That has been the trend of our political thinking and worldview till date.

Now enter the Rawlings era which was an extended interregnum fashioned along the ideologies and policies of the original dictator. And just as before, the nation was under the blanket of imprisonment without trial and the culture of silence and stark acceptance of an arrant dictator’s impulsive conduct. And just as before, nobody questioned the true credentials of a presumed savior who had not done anything for himself or for anybody in his entire life. We accepted the leadership of one who had led in nothing and had no clue in the philosophies and theories of nation building; one whose idea of national reconstruction comprised wanton demolition and humiliation; one who saw business success as equating to corruption, and one who spent time unleashing his jealous passion on those who posed genuine challenges to his ill-conceived notions of tyrannical leadership in the tradition of the first dictator. In that time, even as today, we had a congregation of rebellious students and undisciplined citizens take the front seat of our leadership, while sane men and women goaded them on with songs of praise. And what is the result of all this mass delusion and ungrounded panegyria? We simply sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Today, we have a government born of this false legacy that continually feeds us with empty promises a dime a dozen and has nothing to offer by way of proper economic policy or even a template for future progress. This government cannot point to what it has done by way of drainage construction in spite of millions of loans contracted for the purpose, or even on the back of a favorable economy brought on by the discovery of oil and the better pricing of our commodities. Rather, it has garnered an unparalleled record in the payment of fraudulent judgement debts and unprecedented corruption. The culture of unaccountability and impudence and imprudence begun by the Nkrumah regime and continued by the Rawlings regime is still the stock in trade of the present regime. And when we look at the deluge of corruption and leadership ineptitude engulfing the nation under the present government, we can only blame ourselves for failing to ensure that the fakery of those impostors who came poisoning the politics of our nation was quickly unraveled.

It is grossly unscientific to think that somehow, when charlatans and rogues and scoundrels take over the leadership of our country, they will transmogrify into great and honest leaders who will take us to the land of prosperity. We must understand that in matters of nation building, there cannot be any miracles or magic brought on by some incessant prayers and fasting. We can see nation building more in terms of computer input: garbage in, garbage out; and what we have invested so far into our nation is what we are reaping today. And even as we speak, our future as a nation will be quantified by what we are doing today. And if we construe the future in these palpable terms, then we can only understand that there is not much hope for us and our children. We are a people who are caught in the theatre of insults and jealousy and hatred, reacting to problems with the attitude of Pavlov’s dogs, running to demolish our fellows’ houses just because as usual, the rain fell, and when it fell, there were no well-constructed drainage systems or cleanly kept gutters to carry the water to the sea. And we are doing all these things while knowing in our hearts of hearts that we are inflicting terrible pains and unjustified losses on our fellow citizens.

And so the sisyphian labor continues because we have not yet learned how to court scientific principles and methods and invoke the baby steps of logical reasoning in order to resolve any problems. Our minds are clogged with the original lies told us when our nation was born, that we are free and independent; that our schools and institutions are among the best; that our political leaders are unquestionably patriotic; that our country will trudge on to success by bribing god with our prayers, money and fasting; that in spite of our inherent corruption and ethnocentrism and jealousy and hatred and lynch mob mentality, somehow, our nation will prosper………..

But the prosperity of this nation will not occur as a result of any prayer or fasting. Rather, it will occur through extreme discipline of the government and the people, scientific planning of our infrastructure and economy, and focused refrain from corruption and nepotism. Our nation can only prosper through the commitment and dedication of our leadership to a better tomorrow, coupled with the exact application of the logical principles that will carry us to our visionary destination. To restate the common parlance, God is for every nation but every nation is for herself.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, J.D., is a practicing attorney in Austin, Texas, USA. You can email him at [email protected]