Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent is something we’re told God doesn’t like. In fact, to use His own words, He detests it. And as someone who believes God when He says He blesses those who obey His word and curses those who don’t, the result of devaluing what God values and valuing what God devalues can only be trouble, affliction, anguish, social retardation and a multitude of other unpleasant eventualities. It wasn’t too long ago that we heard the chairman of the ruling political party telling all who cared to listen, in an effort to woo other political heavyweights away from their party to his party, that should they decamp to the ruling party, all sins would be forgiven. All this in the name of winning elections and holding on to power.
If you ask me, I’ll say he took the tongue in cheek saying, “all is fair in war” a little too much to heart. One thing we continually fail to realize, much to our peril, is that when we disappoint God, we automatically disappoint ourselves.
Esau, the older of the twins was foolish enough to devalue his position as the first born by carelessly mortgaging it for a pot of stew. Hunger had caused him to lose his already warped perspective and he willingly sold his birthright, just to satisfy an immediate need. Deferred gratification wasn’t a notion he was familiar with. Only “now” matters, so the future can sort itself out, as far as he was concerned. Living a life of strategy, careful planning, preparation and calculated positioning was a completely alien concept to him, and this really shouldn’t come to us as a surprise.
Mensah Otabil in his book, Buy the Future, explains to us that Esau’s very profession as a hunter was one where skill, athleticism and gallantry played a major role but at the end of the day, success was largely dependent on luck. So, any day luck failed to smile on him, he had two choices; go hungry or rely on the benevolence of others; just as he had to do on that fateful day. Jacob, the younger of the twins was described as a homely fellow, perhaps less heroic and less valiant by nature but he more than compensated for this by being more discerning, recognizing the value inherent in the first son’s birthright.
He was without a doubt wiser, more forward looking, strategic in thought and tactical in pursuit of his goals. His chosen profession shaped his character too. As a livestock farmer, he had discovered the virtue of planning for the future. Nurturing his sheep, goats and other farm animals had taught him patience, helped him develop an ability to defer gratification, to calculate and make informed decisions about now and the future. Equally important, it also opened his eyes to the wisdom in sustaining reproduction, continuity, and the foolishness in consuming that which should meet your needs tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that.
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He had learned that life is not about daily taking a shot in the dark, but about making strategic plans that will ensure your shot hits the mark, every time. Jacob need not hunt and pray he catches game before eating; he could simply take his pick amongst his livestock. His lifestyle may not sound as glamorous or as exciting as the life of the fearless and spontaneous hunter of folklores, but it was way smarter. And though Jacob’s actions, by withholding food from his brother until his brother gave up his birthright was indeed cold and calculating, just as pretending to be Esau and cooking his father’s favourite meal, in order to obtain the blessings reserved for the first born was very deceitful, we’re ever so quick to forget a very significant point, and it’s this. Esau wanted to claim the benefit of a birthright that he no longer had. He had already sold it! So in effect, Jacob was merely claiming what was now rightfully his.
If we should study how successive governments in this country have behaved, for as long as we care to remember, are we really that different to Esau? In our haste to make quick money, we lift our God given crude oil and sell it to those countries that have the vision to build refineries that will add good value to the raw product, who will then sell it back to us (an oil producing nation) at a price which they are at the liberty to determine. We despise the future, evident by our expertise in eating the seed along with the fruit, thereby reducing our ability to reproduce or replenish that which has been expended. Singapore is a country which cannot boast of possessing natural resources in commercial quantities and yet, through visionary leadership, it has for long established itself as one of the world’s major refiners of crude oil, with a refining capacity of just less than 1.4 million barrels per day.
Our dear country, the 6th largest oil producing nation on earth and number one in Africa, has the capacity to refine a measly 445,000 barrels a day but in practice barely does half of this, due to obsolete facilities, which appear to have defied countless Turn Around Maintenance exercises, and the obscene volume of financial resources thrown at them for this purpose. One word that immediately springs to mind is corruption. Ironically, in 2018, it was the Managing Director of NNPC at the time, who revealed that our nation is the only one amongst the OPEC nations, which imports petroleum. Sadly, our propensity to hold records that nobody else desires doesn’t end there, as he also revealed that we currently stood as the largest importer of petroleum in the world. What a shame. Miniature city-states that don’t produce a drop of oil, have in the meantime usurped our position as the first born and now sell the refined product back to us, at their own terms.
I’m sometimes forced to ask myself if we truly love God in this country; or if we just observe religious rituals, with the hope of appeasing Him? If godliness was measured by the number of religious stickers we paste on our cars, the front door of our homes and the almost involuntary outburst of religious expressions/professions, then I can confidentially say Nigerians would make up nothing less than 80 percent of the population of heaven; but it doesn’t. And the sooner we realise that, the sooner we’ll begin to behave in a way that matches our words. I believe it was Paul Wellstone who wisely said, “Never separate the life you live from the words you speak”.
Life is not about mantra but about living out that which we profess. God is actually for us but a lot of the time, our actions show we’re against ourselves. There was a time when our nation was not only sustained from revenue earned from agriculture but was even made prosperous by it. As soon as oil was discovered and became a source of easy and quick income, which required very little input on our part, agriculture was abandoned. Fifty years and many false starts later, we find ourselves going back to till the land.
Changing the nation…one mind at a time
