Our opium

religion the opium of the masses - Karl Marx

My strong views about religion, especially when it comes to Nigerian pentecostal churches, makes quite a few of my friends and relations uncomfortable. To make matters worse i'm also quite vocal about it, so from time to time i get lectured about criticising "men of God" and the whole "touch not my anointed" crap.
Some of them have taken it upon themselves to try and "put me on the right path". They seem to have this strong need to make me conform to their belief system.

The other day someone gave me a book called 'Problems of Life - The Christian Perspective' by a Rev Bola Majekodunmi. It has an "interesting theory" about the reason behind the poor economic situation in Nigeria.

On Page 25 he states that:
'Our problem is not global recession, it all started in 1977
when we used God's oil money to promote and display demons of Africa under the
pretence of rich African culture, all nations of Africa brought their idols (He
is referring to the Festival of Arts and Culture, Festac 77 held in Nigeria in 1977), we built a town for them called Festac town and a big theatre, the capital expenses ran into millions of dollars.
God was up there, repenting he ever created us. There was no
time our government ever sponsored a gospel crusade.
[snip]

'The whole world has turned against us, threatening sanctions
all over, it is not that we don't have good government but the sins of our
fathers will not permit them to perform, the demons we invited have taken their
permanent residence here.'

At this point i stopped reading the book.

stumbled on this blog and its quite refreshing reading someone else's take on our obsession with religion.