African Spirituality: What is it & Why Should You Run from it?
On a normal day, I couldn't care less about this African Spirituality thing, after all, who can keep up with every new movement that popes up now and then? However, I believe nothing begs more attention from the Christian Church than this belief system, manly because it often times disguises itself as part of the Christian Faith or at least “a better version” of it. In fact, some of the pioneers of this movement, Joshua Maponga for example, are not ashamed of identifying themselves with exclusively Christian titles such as “bishop”. They are even invited to Gospel churches to preach to the very sheep of our Lord Jesus. The result of this, is that many innocent souls get confused about this whole African Spirituality idea and how it fits to their salvation.
What is African Spirituality?
Admittedly, it’s almost impossible to nail down all the ideas of this system. For a start, proponents of it don’t even agree among themselves. However, I have listed below a few of their ideas, alongside some biblical answers to them.
1.) A God who is you (within you)
African Spirituality does not believe in God the creator, mighty in heaven and the subject of our worship and praise. Instead, according to one of their own, Dr Ishmael Tetteh, “If you want to know God, just look in the mirror.” In other words, God is us, and we are God, He is within us and part of our being. They can steal some bibles verses such as Luke 17:21, “the kingdom of God is within you” to support this idea. Hence, to them, all of us have to find that god within us, and conjure up that energy to archive our dreams. They also believe in a god who is around us: in air, on the soil and in water. In fact, these things (soil, water, air), according to them, make up what is called the trinity of African Spirituality.
I hope we all know that this “God within you” teaching is as old as the Garden of Eden. That is where Satan tricked our first parents into believing that disobeying the Almighty could make them as “gods” (Gen 3:5). Furthermore, the idea of God in nature is also not a new thing, but it is the core doctrine of Hinduism. Its proper name is Pantheism (every creature is god). The reality is that there is a God in heaven, holy, glorious and unapproachable. It is blasphemies to lessen Him to the level of His creation. That is idolatry.
2.) Returning to the African way of doing things
What you will hear more than anything from the mouths of the African Spiritualists is that the Christian Gospel is an abusive, colonialist system led by a “white Jesus”, who has brainwashed us out of our “African way of doing things.” They are able to pick the worst examples of Christianity to use as concrete evidence that our Gospel is the source of our problems as Africans. What they propose is that we all go back to worshipping the spirits of the dead while beating drums under trees (that sort of thing).
The first problem with this whole thought process is that Christianity did not come to Africa with the colonialists. Read Acts 8:27-39 and see the Ethiopian Eunuch (African) reading the bible, believing that Jesus is Lord and even being baptised. Secondly, Africa is not the only region that experienced colonialism or some form of oppression. China, Israel, Vietnam and Brazil are just a few among many countries that have been oppressed by other nations before, yet look at how they have all moved on with their economic developments. Africans are the only people that are still holding on to what happened ages ago as an excuse for their failures to build themselves. Should I also mention that all land in Africa is now under black governess, yet it is still not benefitting its fellow black children, if not worse?
Another thing, why is it that they don’t want us to embrace the white’s man religion, yet they have warmly welcomed the white man’s technology? As a matter of fact, they are greatly benefitting from it, even using it to preach their anti-white man ideology. Why are they also not talking about the abuses of the Africans traditions? For example, men are supposed to beat their wives with knobkerries (even to death) under the umbrella of discipline. Why can’t we go back to that? But thanks to civilisation, we have grown away from all that. Even more, who can deny that Christianity has contributed massively to the wellbeing of Africans and the world at large through the building of schools, hospitals, orphanages etc.? In truth, much good in our societies today can be traced back to the Christian influence.
And the idea of leaving our African gods? Indeed, the Gospel is so true such that it transcends all cultures: from the Thessalonians to the Corinthians, Chinese, Africans; all are called to abandon the ignorant ways of worship from their forefathers and follow the true and living God through the Christian Gospel (1 Pet 1:18, Act 14:15, Act 17:30, 1 Thes 1:9). It’s also a lie that Christianity is a product of the west, because they also received it all the way from Jerusalem, where the Church was born.
3.) The Bible
On one hand, African Spiritualists claim that the Bible is the tool of oppression, yet on the other hand, they believe it when it is convenient to their message. For example, they trust what is written in Deuteronomy 28, or Isaiah 43, because according to them, God was talking about them. Like I hinted above, this is the reason why many churches invite these guys. They see them as believers who must be understood and perhaps welcomed into the Church because they “are very knowledgeable with Scripture.”
Friends, a partial handling of Scripture is poisonous. A practice that skips, hops and jumps across the pages of the Word of God will always land somebody in such confusion. It's either you believe the whole of Scripture as the infallible revelation or you reject all of it altogether. It is also hypocritical, if not deliberately deceptive, to question the integrity of the Bible while using the same Bible to validate your ideas.
4.) Black Israelites
I once taught about a certain cult that calls itself the Black Hebrews Israelites, which believes that black people are the true Jews, instead of the current occupants of the land of Israel. The movement is spread out all over the world. Nonetheless, African Spiritualists are a branch of it. As already mentioned, they high jack Bible verses that refer to God’s promises about the Israeli captivity into their Black Hebrew false philosophy.
To summarise: African Spirituality is a blending of African traditions, Hinduism, Pantheism, Atheism, Darwinism and Christianity. The correct term for it is Syncretism (mixture of everything). As you can discern, it is the same old lies that the devil keeps repackaging for each generation. You must also know that this movement is very much racist to believe that humanity must be divided by skin colour. It’s also fair to mention that the African spiritualist preachers claim to possess higher wisdom than the rest of us. That is expected of course, however, do not let that fool you because they are actually more confused than they appear on camera. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, take this verse to heart and thank me later: Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Sinothi Ncube
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