Balancing God’s commandments and human rights
Recently, Africa was crowned the most religious continent in the world. This means, in essence, that it is the most God-fearing continent. However, Africans’ love for Western things, including copying lifestyles, poses a threat to this fear of God because some of them run contrary to God’s commandments and ordinances. For example, how do churches integrate homosexuality, gay marriages and lesbianism, which human rights activists claim are minority rights?
Our reporter WATIPASO MZUNGU JNR engages Pastor George Chiwaya of the Chiwembe Assemblies of God Church.
Do you think God or religion is homophobic?
No. I don’t think so. I don’t think religion violates human rights. In fact, religion, as I know it, which is Bible-based, safeguards human rights.
But critically looking at the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, you will agree with me that they are capable of limiting one’s rights.
Yes, they are and there is nothing wrong with that if we understand the fact that it is the creator setting the limits for the creature. These limits are aimed at enhancing life in general and preserve society as the creator intended. Being a creature is a limitation in itself before the creator. By this, I mean the creator holds the prerogative over the creature that would ensure that the creature lives in such a way that satisfies the purpose of creation.
And that in itself means that people have no rights before God. Is that how you understand it?
The rights that people have are a gift from Him and they are given after His wise counsel. These rights proceed from His genuine love for the creature. We should view God-given rights from what He has given and not what we grab for ourselves. We should also understand that the Creator is in no business of limiting anyone. He desires the best for us and sometimes what is best for us is not what we desire or want for ourselves.
Lately, you, the clergy, have been quoted in the media arguing against the entrenchment of minority rights such as homosexuality and lesbianism.
Do you think you are being just to those that are directly affected by those rights?
Some of what people call minority rights do not even fall into the category of rights in biblical religion and the two pointed out [homosexuality and lesbianism] are not rights in biblical morality. They are acts of sin or sinful disposition, which the Bible clearly tells those who fear God to avoid. The entrenchment of these ‘minority rights’ is in effect the entrenchment of sinful acts and jeopardises the lives of those who chose to embrace them before God.
As a church, we will not support homosexuality because doing so is just the same as confirming death sentences for homosexuals, gays and lesbians because the Bible clearly states that the wages of sin is death. Therefore, if homosexuality is an act or disposition of sin before God, the wages of anyone who practises it is death.
But do you think we will ever achieve a society where religion and secularism (human rights) can be practised without one violating the other’s rights?
Yes. I do think that is possible and it is happening in other places, but societies that make secularism (human rights) the basic tenet of all life, including religion, do disintegrate through natural decay or divine judgment with time because such is not the arrangement of the Creator.
Some human rights organisations have been urging the clergy to relent and accept the integration of minority rights in their churches. What is the position of your congregation?
This is actually a call for the clergy to disintegrate religion because part of the reason religion exists is to provide moral guidance to society or point people to God. A call to integrate sinful acts or disposition in religion is a call for abdication of religious responsibility. It should not even be made at all.
Christianity is a belief imported from the West where we, Africans, believe everything good comes from.
Why then are you having problems to accept minority rights, which are equally coming from the west?
It is this belief that everything from the West is good that is partly to blame for most of the problems in Africa. Christianity and other religions in the first place are not Western imports, but as their holy books proclaim, they have a divine origin though I would concede, they had to be received first by certain people in certain places.
If you follow through history, you will realise that most of the prominent religions of the world have eastern rather than Western origin. The West may, at one point in history, have been a vehicle for the religions to Africa and they may have failed to be a ‘pure vessel’ as it does many times. Wisdom requires studying the Books of the faith if they don’t want any cultural excesses.
The problem with most Africans is that we view every Western man as superior, which may not be true in some aspects. He may not be as superior as not be checked and, therefore, we should check things that we import from the west because some of them are not as they were first received from God or gods.
