God has good reasons to punish Uganda
After reading this column last week, a cheeky observer suggested that God was punishing my irreverence by making me scribble in ‘tongues’. She feared (or hoped!) that after I had got entangled in enough words like ‘unequivalently’, I would be declared unreadable.
Best wishes, Madam. Meanwhile, correct to ‘unequivocally’.
On balance, however, the move to suspend God if He does not clearly and unequivocally save Uganda by June 30 next year would perhaps be too Draconian. If God has abandoned us, it is possible that He has reasons that are fairly sound, and in whose face our guilt as an active nation is greater than his guilt as a deity of limited power.
First of all, we have set up other gods on pedestals that are higher than the cloudy throne on which the big God is sitting.
By pure coincidence, my article came out the same weekend that several people were hosted at State House for some kind of party or thanksgiving; but, of course, mainly for food.
Listening to the Impact FM Sunday morning programme, at which a trio of Pentecostal preachers talk about various political goings-on and matters of faith, I realised that even to some of our religious leaders, the President of the republic was now held in far greater awe than Abraham’s God!
Mr Joseph Serwadda, who had been at the State House feast, spoke of the sheer privilege of being invited, of the heightening protocol, of the glory of being in the presence of the President and among so many distinguished people.
If you erroneously thought that such events mean the convergence at the big house of many of the vampires who have looted this country to the bone, and who are now in the process of condemning it to a state where the very last pretence to democracy will probably be crucified on the floor of Parliament; if you despised these people, then you must be corrected and taught that these men and women are the “cream of society”.
The cream? I literally laughed. The preacher, poor soul, could not realise that so many worldly demons, instead of heavenly angels, were dancing in his head.
We also learned from the radio chat show how tame and respectful even the Pentecostals were at State House. It was not a place for the antics, the shouting, the peace-rending noise and endless sermons we associate with Pentecostal worship exhibitions.
In short, the President was to be treated with far more respect (or less ffujjo) than God, and the earthly ruler was assumed to be less deaf than the highest deity.
Whether a mythological figure finding form only in human imagination, or an autonomous entity existing regardless of man, God would have reason to abandon or otherwise punish a people who had so blatantly disregarded His first commandment. A sin mainly of the masses.
The other sin is against our nation, whose citizens are hated, robbed, whipped and denied a decent existence.
A sin mainly of the rulers. In Parliament, they are staging an obscenity in the category of pornography.
Yes, I wrote last Sunday that if God cannot redeem this country by June 30 next year, we should try suspending Him.
There is another way of putting it. If our nation is not redeemed by June 30 next year, we should know that we and our loudest prophets have continued insulting God and bowing worshipfully to the wrong gods. So the right God will have good reason to keep us condemned.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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