By Ezekiel Nabieu
In one of my recent articles I considered the need for ameliorating the conditions of poor people. I also spoke of the incident in which a woman poured the contents of a bottle of costly ointment on the head of Jesus Christ and the criticism of onlookers.
Of course the onlookers come through on cue with the correct and pious expression of Christian social concern. But surprisingly Jesus refuses to accept this as being the first order of business. He will not criticise the woman either for owning this expensive non essential in the first place or for the “wasteful” way in which she disposes of it. Jesus interprets her act as being an expression of love towards himself (and thus at the same time, a commitment of loyalty to God); and he states quite explicitly that it is proper for this to take priority over helping the poor.
A profound insight is involved at this point. Jesus’ act is not a jealous grab of honour and attention for himself, nor is it in any way a slighting of the poor. It is a way of saying that the poor themselves will receive more help if God is made the centre of loyalty than if the poor themselves were put into that slot.
I think it quite unlikely that very many people for very long can be motivated to lower their own standard of living solely out of a humanitarian concern over the plight of the poor. Man by nature is not altruistic no matter how beautifully they may discuss on the topic. A person’s relationship to God includes the motivation, guidance and enablement for his loving and serving the poor. So the poor themselves should be the first to applaud the fact that Jesus accepted the perfume for himself rather than giving it to them. His act was the best possible guarantee of their receiving what they need.
ASCETICISM
Here we encounter a mode of thought and life that often is confused with the Christian thought not from its native Hebrew tradition but from other cultures with which it came in contact. A point of fact, it is in complete contradiction to the biblical presupposition.
This foreign assumption is that there are two different and opposed worlds. The one is the world of stuff and things, the materiality amidst which we live our everyday lives. But over against this there stands an invisible and spiritual world. Now it is this spiritual world that is the proper home of God and thus the locus of all that is good and true and beautiful. Conversely, the material world – precisely because it is constituted of matter rather than spirit – is evil and is in itself a sign of corruption.
According to the thinking of asceticism one becomes saved by basing one's existence as much as possible in the realm of the spirit and as little as possible in the realm of materialism. And thus the ascetic ideal has been to own little or nothing, eat, drink and wear as little as possible, contemplate earthly realities as seldom as necessary.
Now this mode of thought has certain superficial and misleading likeness to the Christian simple life in its insistence that authentic personal existence must centre in what it would call “spiritual reality”.
Here there is no suggestion of a world that is evil by virtue of its nature and origin. Biblically speaking evil arises only as the perversion of the one world that was created and is intrinsically good, the distortion of people and things that were created and are intrinsically good.
The Christian simple life is not in any sense an attempt to suppress or deny the material side of human existence. Stuff and things are good, recognised as good gifts created by a good God for good purposes. They become bad only when man turns them to bad purposes. Better said: they do not become bad at all. Rather man allows the good of these gifts from God to obscure the greater good of enjoying God himself. Somewhere in every person’s life there is a point of balance that can capture the best from both of these “goods”. Finding that point won't be easy but it is what we are after. However once we get right with God “things” can become good in every respect by finding their proper place within this triangular God-man-things relationship. Asceticism on the other hand cannot affirm that there is any good place for stuff and things.
We need to be aware too of a second form of asceticism very similar to and compatible with the first and yet reached by a slightly different route – although one just as false as that of the first. This way of thinking does not so much stress the inherent evil of materialism as it does the meritoriousness of self-deprivation – obviously a second side of the same coin. But now to that degree, earn spiritual credits with God.
TO BE CONTINUED
MINISTRY OF PARTIAL EDUCATION IS RIGHT
By way of digression I have tagged the so-called Ministry of Education, Science and Technology as Ministry of Partial Education because of its myopic naming. Are the studies of the Humanities not part of education to be covered by the ministry with the grandiose title? Are our present governors not mainly composed of former students of the humanities including the Head of State? The fact is that we just keep copying and copying without putting on our thinking caps. A short title of Ministry of Education would have covered all that jazz of a title. And the performance of the Ministry is now in inverse proportion to its elaborate title.
Back to the advertised topic, let us consider why students who had not passed the BECE were in the past allowed to sit to the WASSCE exams. It is obviously due to systematic corruption. Oh yes! How can progress be determined? It is the same syndrome across the board for people who are not qualified for certain jobs being employed and promoted. What we are withering is the boomerang effect of a sick system.
It has been concessions everywhere with Connectocracy in the background. Have the rule-breakers ever considered why there was ever any need for class examinations by which pupils and students are promoted from class to class? And to dilute the system some have been calling for a gradual lowering of passing marks to the nearest by one percent each until it becomes counter-productive. How about that negative practice of mass promotion that should be discontinued everywhere?
Parents and guardians (mainly illiterate) have been calling for the mass promotion of their children and wards. Do you blame them? The fact is that they would not realise the need for a solid foundation for school children. They would not know that a house built on a weak foundation will not stand. They keep on nudging the education authorities backed by half-baked politicians.
Colton said that examinations are formidable even to the best prepared for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. But this does not argue that examinations are to be dispensed with.
I agree wholeheartedly that only students who passed the BECE should be allowed to sit to the WASSCE exams. That way we could begin to retrace our steps towards our erstwhile Athenian status.
(C) Politico 20/03/14
