Revival churches, a check to development.

In anticipation of the liberation of our country and its rebuilding, we must fight against another occupation much more rooted than that of our institutions, it is that of our minds that have been corrupted by the revival churches with their mindless teachings to the point of anaesthetizing them against all imagination and any productive effort. When we see all the damage caused by the proliferation of revival churches, the initiation of a development process requires the prior detoxification of Congolese minds to make them suited to reason, imagine, create and rely on the abilities they received from God to solve the various problems that arise for them in all circumstances. But the liberation of minds will not be an easy task because of their level of impregnation by negative ideas that are already well established, in any case it will be more difficult than the liberation of the country could have been, I will try to denounce here all these ideas. This communication constitutes the spiritual component of the process of liberation of the Congolese people, which follows on from the political component expressed in my “Open Letter to the Congolese People“, which showed the path to follow to regain our sovereignty and establish the foundations for true development. If you have not yet had the opportunity to read it, you can access it with the link at the end of this article.

In the current situation of our country, which has deteriorated over the years leading to the appearance of so-called revival churches headed by pastors attracted by the lure of money and who have found in this activity the only remunerative occupation in this country where work has become a rare commodity. Thus, the profession of pastor has become the most practiced one, the unemployed find in that the palliative to their idleness and the surest way to make money while the others find there the means to round off their monthly income in addition to their salary. Beyond the remuneration it provides, it is also a way to gain fame vis-à-vis those who follow them. Everyone has gotten into it, teachers, magicians, clairvoyants, lawyers, doctors, politicians and many others, the profession does not spare any category. If some of them are of good faith, the majority are opportunists who have rushed into this cushy job which, alongside political activity, has become one of the only ones that makes it possible to live decently in this completely destroyed country. In addition to this, each pastor strives to create his own church, which causes the proliferation of these churches in an unhealthy competition between pastors who cannot stand each other, demonstrating that they do not respect the love of neighbour advocated by the one they are supposed to serve, whereas they could have followed the example of the Catholic Church where one can go to pray indifferently in any church in the world without worrying about the one who officiates there. All this, only for mercantile reasons, because each guru wants to have control over his faithful which he uses only to fill his pockets. Pastors who, instead of getting involved in the defense of the most vulnerable against the genocidal power that mistreats and massacres them, prefer to make a pact with it to satisfy their personal interests.

1. Who am I ? My Christian religious formation.

I who am speaking to you come from a Christian family that gave our country one of its first Catholic priests. I received my religious training during the 12 years I spent in Catholic schools, six of which I spent as a boarder, first among the Fathers and then among the Friars of the Christian schools. Through the Xaveri movement, I learned the gift of self and love of neighbour in accordance with Jesus’ teaching, which I always tried to put into practice in my everyday life. I left Zaire at a time when the phenomenon of revival churches did not yet exist, at a time when migration to the West was not the business of pastors, at a time when the only concern of students was to obtain a scholarship, which forced us to stay on the lookout for competitions that were organized by international organizations for training in Europe. It is because I succeeded in one of them that I ended up here in Europe, so I do not have to pay an annuity to any pastor by way of recognition. That is why I feel totally foreign to this phenomenon of revival churches, which seems so strange to me in view of all the ideas they have managed to instil in the minds of the Congolese and which I consider to be contrary to our culture and the development.

2. First generally accepted idea: Nzambe akosala.

The main pernicious idea that plunged a large proportion of Congolese into the wait-and-see attitude of divine intervention to solve their problems by the mere evocation of the name of Jesus is the famous phrase “Nzambe akosala, Nzambe akosala”. Of course, there is this adage that says that “man proposes and God disposes”, but this means that for God to dispose, man must propose, which means that to receive God’s help, we must already be committed to action, because praying without action is without effect.

I remind everyone that our main mission on earth is to develop this one, and the best tribute we can pay to God and therefore the best prayer is work. Spending most of his time asking God to give us this or that is an aberration, because God has endowed us with a particular intelligence and gift that must allow us to transform the earth and develop it in order to perpetuate his work of creation. It is time for us to better use it to build the happiness of the human being on earth, it is time to stop proclaiming everywhere that God will work for us, for God will never work for us, on the other hand he supports in some way those who take the trouble to use their brain to act. While many Congolese have only the Bible for their reading, the Europeans who brought it to us are stuffing themselves with lots of other books to enrich their knowledge and seek ways and means to improve the living conditions of man on earth. I think that God is more willing to help those who use their talent in the service of humanity than those who come to spend their days telling him that he is God or that he is the most powerful because all this he knows that, he does not need to be reminded, God is not a dictator who needs we sing to him the Djalelo all day long, it would be better to sing texts that help educate people by reminding everyone how he should behave in his life as a child of God. The time devoted to daily prayer must be kept to a minimum, just the time to thank God or to ask him to help us, in order to devote the rest of the time to the accomplishment of our mission on earth. Because the time people spend in the interminable retirements is a loss of income in a normal economic system, with the accumulation of unproductive hours that are as much financial losses. In order to establish the foundations for a new development, it is important to get rid of these wait-and-see attitudes in order to recover more virtuous behaviours.

As an example of these wait-and-see attitudes, let’s take the case of a person who goes into a retreat and receives $100 from his brother in the diaspora, this person will cry out “Nzambe asali” (God has acted) while this is only the fruit of another person’s work. What is absurd is that of the $100 that the sender has had difficulty raising to help his family, the person will withdraw $10 to go and enrich his pastor as a tithe for having made this sending possible, which, in any case, would have happened even without his intervention, and if the person in the diaspora had also paid a tithe, this is how we feed this vicious system that attracts so many people. Indeed, tithing is the key element that is the basis for so many pastoral vocations and therefore for the proliferation of revival churches. The tithe should not be an income tax to be paid to any pastor, it is a scam, God will be more grateful to you if you devote part of your income to help the most disadvantaged, it is the best tithe there is because it meets the love of neighbour as Muslims understood it very well and because it allows everyone to remain involved in the development of the country.

3. Second generally accepted idea : God is in control of our lives. Living in the fear of God.

Believing that God controls the smooth running of our life is a big mistake that plunges many Congolese into inaction and irresponsibility. If God were in control of man’s life, he would not allow us to break his commandments, he would not allow murderers to kill, rapists to rape or perpetrators of genocide to kill other men. In reality, man on earth is free and solely responsible for his actions. Even when I was a student, it was a subject on which I disagreed with Friar Marc who used to make us do dissertations on the religion. Knowing that this one affirms that God knows everything, the past, the future and the present, I retorted that if this were the case, he could not blame man because by creating him, he knew how he would behave and the acts he would perpetrate, whether they were good or bad. To say that God is in control of our life is more a matter of the Coué method than of reality and its only virtue is that it allows us to reassure ourselves and face life with more confidence and optimism.

The other idea commonly spread by the revival churches is that which recommends to their followers to live in the fear of God. For me who was educated in the idea that God is love and, if God is love, I find this idea curious, for there is no reason to fear him, we must on the other hand live in his love by loving one another, because God created man in his image and loving his neighbour is to love God himself as Jesus taught us. This is how I am surprised to see that in this country where people claim to live in the fear of God, they actually live in the mistrust of one another, they are eaten up with jealousy of one another and are ready to do anything to make the other fail. What a contrast between people’s fervour to attend revival churches and their behaviour in everyday life, what a contrast between their ability to recite the verses of the Bible and the way they put them into practice in their daily lives ! What is the point of shouting the name of Jesus all day long when you are unable to love your neighbour, I bet without taking too many risks that if they had lived in his time, most of those who swear by that name would have been part of the majority of people who shouted “Death to the impostor!” when it was necessary to condemn the one who said he was the son of God, it is easier to love a dead person or someone whom we have never known than a living being whom we meet every day. And with the emphasis on the screen of the state of mind instituted as a passport in human relations, the revival churches have contributed to their deterioration with the destruction of the social fabric, they have sown discord into couples and caused the division of families, the recent example of the poor mother of Marie Misamu is there to illustrate what I am saying. With their state of mind, they have contributed to the exclusion of many children who are supposed to be witches, thus depriving the country of part of its living resources and consequently of its wealth, which is not only a crime against humanity but also an economic disaster for our country, our duty will be to get out of it as soon as possible by rehabilitating all the street children.

I think that under these conditions it will be difficult to advance towards the development of this country. We must therefore free ourselves from this fear of God to adopt the love of God through the love of neighbour, for it is it which will help us to live in joy and happiness, it is love of neighbour that will enable us to love our compatriots and through them to love our country and to devote ourselves to its development. Obviously, love of neighbour does not mean being at the service of others to make them inactive because it would be a disservice to do them, it is not a question of being the provider of fish to the hungry person but of teaching or helping him to learn to fish so that he becomes self-sufficient and can in turn help other people. Helping others to succeed is part of the love of neighbour and therefore of the love of God, the corollary of this is to know how to rejoice in the success of others, even if it means wanting to follow their example to succeed like them or to do better than them in a healthy competition that allows the whole to progress and therefore to develop.

In the same vein as the fear of God, the revival churches have largely contributed to spreading the idea that every authority comes from God. In complicity with the power to which they aim to please in order to derive maximum benefit from it, they use the Bible and the name of Jesus to put to sleep the population and make them believe anything in order to strengthen and perpetuate this power, which the occupants have taken advantage of to enslave the Congolese people to the point of leading them to believe that it was God’s will to be led by a genocidal impostor. It is time to correct this idea by restricting it, apart from the authority of the parents over their children, to the only power derived from the real will of the people or to that which our ancestors bestow to our customary leaders.

4. Third generally accepted idea : It is God who gives life and it is God who takes it back.

What does the death of an alcoholic due to liver cancer caused by cirrhosis have to do with the will of God ? What is the connection between the death of an inveterate smoker from lung cancer and the will of God ? If these two questions can be asked anywhere on this planet, what about the death of a man following an asthma attack in a medically underdeveloped country and the will of God ? Does God love the inhabitants of developed countries more than those of underdeveloped countries ? No ! God is not so unjust that he enacted that Africans should die sooner than Europeans, if life expectancy is shorter in our country than in Europe, this is not due to the will of God but quite simply to the fact that we have not yet used our intelligence enough to take care of this physical body that he has given us and for which we are entirely responsible. It is therefore time for us to take responsibility and do everything possible to develop our educational system that will allow us to better understand the world in which we live and to better involve ourselves in improving our living conditions.

God is no more responsible for the health of men than for their death, God is only responsible for the spirit that resides in every human body. It is to this spirit that God gives a body every time there is a birth, whether human, animal or vegetable. With regard to human bodies, at birth each spirit inherits a body for which he becomes fully responsible and for which he must take care throughout his life on earth. Like a child who receives a car from his father, he is responsible for it and must maintain it, drive it while respecting the highway code so that its life span is as long as possible. So we will not say, if one day he has an accident under the influence of alcohol that it would be the will of his father who gave him this car. It is clear that depending on the initial condition of the car received, its driver, the way it is driven, the terrain on which it is used and the maintenance to which it is subjected, it will have a more or less long life span. Thus, between two cars similar in all respects used by two people with equivalent behaviour who ride one on tarred and impeccable roads and the other on dirt and bumpy roads, the probability of the second becoming unusable before the first is undoubtedly higher, the same is true of the life expectancy between an individual living in a developed country and another living in an underdeveloped country. Normally, each body we inherit has its own life expectancy by virtue of its constitution under normal living conditions, but depending on the lifestyle adopted and the habits of life, that life expectancy may be shorter or longer and, depending on whether we live in a developed country or not, we will tend to see this initial life expectancy extended or reduced. This means that death and everything that happens to this body on this earth is not the act of God but the consequence of the behaviour of the one who lives in it and this in interaction with everything that lives on earth. The only deaths that could be attributed to God are those that occur independently of the will of the individual when the individual is in the wrong place at the wrong time and the event is not attributable to any human responsibility.

5. Fourth generally accepted idea : Leave the dead alone because talking with the dead is satanic.

In my time, before I left Zaire, all the ceremonies, whether political or traditional, always began with a tribute to the dead, today this custom seems to have become satanic. Catholics celebrate their dead every day through the saints and they have reserved the day of November 2 each year for the commemoration of all the deceased, I do not see how it would be satanic to invoke my grandmother to whom I was so attached so that she could come to my aid when I am confronted with a difficulty that is beyond me, for, believe me or not, you are more likely to obtain satisfaction by invoking the name of your beloved grandfather than that of a Jesus who never existed, because everyone knows that he never lived on the land of Israel at the time a person answering to the name of Jesus, which means that by invoking this name you risk perhaps disturbing a deceased Latino who does not know you and who does not speak your language. I think that people should stop trusting the propaganda made in evangelical films or in Christian songs, it is more a matter of the Coué method than reality, the reality is the one we have lived or continue to live with those who proclaim and trade in the name of Jesus. If the name of Jesus can have an effect on a person, it will be more of a psychological effect in relation to what that person has heard about that name than anything else, because the same name on someone who has never heard of Jesus will have no effect, on the other hand, evoking the name of his deceased grandfather may have the same effect as that caused by the name of Jesus on a Christian.

To say that the dead are dead and that they must rest is totally false, the only part of a dead that rests is his body while his spirit continues to live to accomplish another mission. When they pass into the Afterlife the dead can be classified into four categories:

• First, there are the innocent that are the children and the mentally disabled who are called to return to earth to live in a new body. The same is true for young people who died prematurely and did not have time to accomplish their mission. So, when two people meet and fall in love with each other with the impression of having always known each other and being made for each other, there is a high probability that they were united by a family or emotional bond in another life before their return to earth, their attraction is comparable to that which will trigger a love relationship between two children who are unaware of their relationship.
• There are the wicked who are the persons who incarnated evil on earth and who after their death must atone for their sins. Depending on the degree of their misdeeds, they are either thrown into oblivion or demoted and sent back to earth in the body of an animal or plant, which would tend to credit Buddhist thesis.
• There are the adults, the vast majority, who have left descendants on earth and who become the guardian angels of their loved ones to whom they are likely to assist as well as all those they have loved when they call upon them. All those who have voluntarily taken their lives, depending on their age and the circumstances of their suicide, are either sent back to earth or blocked at this level by being deprived of any contact with the living, this of course does not apply to deaths by euthanasia which are treated in the same way as those who died by natural death. The dead remain in this function of guardian angels until all the descendants they have left on earth have joined them or until no one calls on them anymore, after which, according to the cumulative assessment of their life on earth and their actions as a guardian angel, either they move to the next level or return to earth to start a new life and complete their curriculum vitae.
• And finally, there are good men who have led exemplary lives in the service of others and therefore of God, who have often left no descendants on earth, they go directly to the higher level where they become universal superangels who are accessible to every living person who calls on them to assist them or to intercede for them with God.

It is therefore completely absurd to ask people not to mention their dead or not to speak to them because the dead only ask for one thing, that they be called on to help those they have left on earth, they are also there to act as intermediaries between the living and their God. Depending on the relationship you have or don’t have with them, depending on whether you respect them or not, depending on whether you respect the rules that govern your society or not, the dead are able to help you achieve your goals, to put a spoke in your wheel to make you fail or simply to interrupt their assistance towards you. The dead are like these people who leave the country to emigrate to developed countries, it is to them that the families remaining in the country appeal to ask for help in order to solve a problem that arises to them. In the same way that the diaspora sees the situation in the country better than those who live there, the dead see the situation on earth better than the living. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all naturally connected to our dead who communicate with us in one way or another. Even if the dead often act without the knowledge of the people they are watching over, in order to benefit from their protection against the dangers awaiting you or from their assistance in your various steps, you must be listening to them contrary to the recommendations of the revival churches. They can intervene in your dreams to pass on messages to you, they can send you signs by causing, for example, the incident that will prevent you from getting on a plane that will crash or drinking a glass that contains poison, they can also go through your mind to put you on alert when you face a danger or an ill-intentioned person, this could be defined by what we commonly call “sixth sense”. When you do not ignore them and you remain attentive to them, these guardian angels help you to make the right decisions, they even assist you in your work as I have been able to experience it, this often manifests itself when I am faced with a difficult problem, then something happens that puts me on the way to find the answer I am looking for. By remaining attentive to the different signs sent to you, you can develop your ability to perceive the messages delivered to you and interpret them to get the most out of them. Some people are naturally more sensitive than others to pick up messages from the afterlife, as is the case with clairvoyants or psychics who repeat to you what your guardian angels who know you better than anyone else tell them.

In addition to the function of guardian angel that they exercise in all circumstances, the dead are also able to respond to the requests of the living. But, whether to do good or to do evil, the dead are unable to act by themselves, they are therefore obliged to act through physical phenomena involving everything that exists on earth. The communication of the dead with the living can be individual or collective, small signs characterize individual communication while large physical phenomena are used in collective communication that makes it possible to address an entire family or a whole community to help, punish or convey them a message. The freedom enjoyed by man on earth also exists in the afterlife and, like what happens on earth, spirits in the afterlife are also capable of good as well as evil, and if as a general rule it may be considered that they act most of the time for the good of those they have left on earth, there are among them spirits who feed on evil and who can can go so far as to invest the spirit of a living being to harm through him. When a spirit from the afterlife invests the spirit of a living person, it is either because the latter has invoked him or because he is receptive and has left the door wide open to him. Whether it is because he has been called upon or because he has imposed himself, a spirit is capable to act in good as in evil through the living being. When the spirit of the dead invests the spirit of a living being, this intrusion can be either punctual or permanent. When it is punctual, it is always at the initiative of the living in order to communicate with the dead, the spirit of the dead then uses the spirit of the medium to state his message. When it is permanent, whether it has been solicited by the living or whether it has carried out without his knowledge, it is always in order to do evil, in this case the spirit of the dead can behave in two possible ways : either he remains dormant and wakes up only to do harm when his host is animated by negative feelings towards someone else, or he remains constantly awake and ready to do, through his host, the evil from which he feeds.

Don’t come and ask me how I know all this, it was imposed on me and I transcribed it for you as I received it, it’s up to you to believe it or not, that’s your choice ! What I know now is that if we researchers decide to collaborate with our “ngunza”, we could be led to solve the mystery of communication with the afterlife, to model it in order to be the first to create the device that would allow us to communicate with our deceased and to be able to evolve in life like a cyclist in a race, connected by an earpiece to its sports director, which would be a significant contribution to the progress of humanity and which would return our current quarrels to ancient history. And if I trust my experience, the mere fact of thinking about it is a sign that this is achievable and that this deadline is not so far away, in any case, scientific and technological progress allows us to be optimistic and it excites me so much that I am already making it my next research topic if I can raise the funds that it requires.

6. Conclusion.

Do not tell me that referring to our culture leads to denying progress or that Blacks are less this or that, I have had the chance to evolve in both circles and I can testify. Without any pretension, throughout my schooling in Zaire I had brilliant dolphins who pushed me to excellence and who would have had their place in any design office in the West, and in my professional experience which took place exclusively in Europe, I had to work in environments where I was often the only black engineer and I never suffered from an inferiority complex. On the contrary, I managed to impose myself without any problem wherever I went and quite naturally I became again as before at school the person from whom colleagues came to seek advice in order to solve this or that problem they were facing, which earned me the nickname with attributes such as “crack”, “professor” or “specialist”. I have been led to carry out projects of all kinds which may seem extraordinary to some but which are only children’s play for us who practice them. It was only the glass ceiling that interrupted my evolution, but it was an evil for a good, because it forced me to find another way of excellence, that of invention that led me to where I am today with several products to my credit which are only waiting for finances to be concretized and which, I am sure, will have a worldwide impact even if in the meantime some similar products have appeared in this or that form. This means that we must not suffer from any inferiority complex, it would rather be the opposite that could animate us because I think that we have something innate that gives us an advantage over others, and not only in dance or sport, I think that we are naturally endowed with a predisposition to be able to create without theoretical knowledge or advanced learning, which gives us a head start in several fields, so the acquisition of theory can only make us better. Just look at the example of our musicians or that still very impressive of our film directors who, faced with a lack of equipment, have been able to adapt and invent a way of filming that is their own. Invention is the characteristic of every living being, therefore of man, it is his ability to solve a problem that arises to him or to meet a given need. The more difficult his living conditions are and the more his need to invent increases, which means that a people under guardianship as we were under colonization or that we continue to be today with the neocolonialism of international “decision-makers” is less inclined to make their own way and therefore to invent, because we have taken the bad habit of waiting for things to come from elsewhere, from our “masters”. What we need is first to regain our sovereignty as I proposed in my “Open Letter to the Congolese People” referenced below, to become ourselves again and then to develop our human resource with adequate training in all fields of knowledge that will enable us to create products that are like us in the various fields of our everyday life and to share them with the rest of the world.

It is time to stop the proliferation of revival churches whose sectarian and money-grabbing character is contrary to the teaching of Jesus. It will be necessary to introduce an authorization for their opening and to regulate their places of establishment by promoting their groupings. It is necessary to get out of this absurd situation where the revival churches constitute the largest unproductive enterprise in the country while being by the ideas that they propagate a check to the development, it is necessary to transform all this sterile energy into creative energy and to encourage pastors to return to their original professions in which they will put the same application to develop their country. Given the scale of the problem, I recognize that all these measures could be useless if our country does not return to normal functioning that gives work to every citizen of working age and puts children back in school, because it is well known that poverty is the greatest breeding ground for the proliferation of these churches. The more interesting and well-paid jobs people will have, the less time they will devote to these religions, the future actors of power know what to expect. In this normal functioning, it will be necessary to integrate a program of re-education of the people to get them out of the mental alienation that they have undergone during this period of occupation. It will be necessary for worship musicians to integrate into their repertoires educational songs that teach morality, because to make man better is also to serve God. The only thing that makes me optimistic is that all this is due to the economic situation of our country and the extreme poverty in which our population has been plunged, thus, once this situation improves and everyone will be occupied with a remunerative job in line with their training and ambitions, all this will disappear, the pastors will lose their influence on the population and their profession will become obsolete because most of them will have returned to their original profession for which they were trained.

Patriotically yours,

KUETE NZA-YAZOLA’MO MUE NDAMBA NGOYI

Patriot Resistant, Inventor of Ludotics.

Article written in February 2016                                  Translated in July 2020

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