Was Owobusobozi Bisaka a fake God?

Whenever people operating within the Christian sphere describe themselves as prophets or apostles, you can confidently assume they are frauds.

Self-respecting clerics – even archbishops – in the more serious Christian traditions dare not pretend to those titles. The biblical prophets and the 12 apostles of Jesus are a separate matter. 

There are also a few exceptions in the huge catalogue of missionaries who took the faith to strange places, especially during ages when even enlightened people thought God was a spooky white-haired honcho out there, who often used mountain tops as stepping grounds when visiting our world because they were nearer to His official residence, Heaven. 

Apart from those accepted exceptions, the rest are pretenders claiming to get instructions directly from God.

In these matters, authenticity depends more on long-held positions than on verifiable truth. Elijah’s reputation is based on a combination of exhibition magic tricks and inventive ancient folk mythology, but he is regarded an authentic prophet. 

The ‘prophets’ who are now everywhere can also exhibit one or two magic tricks and habitually create 
myths about their power, but they remain laughable frauds.

Being frauds does not prevent them from having followers, even fanatical followers.

However, there is one man who went the whole hog. Owobusobozi Bisaka, the founder of the Faith of Unity, claimed that he was God. Yes, an embodiment of God Himself.

When Bisaka passed on in January, and his glory was expressed in things like the whole of his palatial residence being turned into his burial place, or mausoleum, the otherwise mutually hostile aforementioned frauds got a super-fraud they could all agree to flog, especially now that he was lying motionless and could not hit back.

 Travelling as prophets and apostles seemed all right to them; claiming deity status was going too far.

But what was ‘too far’? If it is acceptable for one to attract followers by falsely claiming to have conversations with God, why can’t one attract followers by falsely claiming to embody God?

Put it another way. If the so-called prophet and the so-called apostle are (in actuality) propagating their own thoughts and claiming that they are passing on the voice of God, was Bisaka any less honest when he described himself as God, the producer of his thoughts and his voice?

The holier-than-thou merchants living on shady Christian sects and denouncing Bisaka’s cult as shady Christianity are rather like our nauseating crooks who always say they get their orders from ‘above’. And Bisaka was more like a con artist who boldly owns up that he is the mind behind his own actions. 

Religion thrives on lies that are repeated again and again over centuries. For reasons I do not claim to understand, President Museveni paid special tribute to Bisaka and reportedly caused taxpayers to foot the bill of an already very rich cult leader’s funeral. 

If future presidents follow Museveni’s glorification of the man and develop his marvellous mausoleum into a mega holy site, Bisaka could be a top dog among Uganda’s spiritual entities in 2,000 years.

Assuming that future civilisation does not abolish all gods as we know them and replace them with some sort of universal cryptograph of existence, pilgrims will report sightings of their god striding about in the tomb.

 And his prophets will proclaim the end of the world as the prophets of yesterday and our day have tirelessly proclaimed the end of the world.
If my own faith survives, with or without Bisaka and other gods, the world will just march on.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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