MY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCETeresa Ngigi
"The fear of the Lord is the first stage of wisdom." This Biblical proverbcharacterised my first experience of God. As I was growing up, I was made to fear the Lord, both literally and symbolically. I was made to relate to God in fear. He was watching me, was always looking at me; woe to me if I did something wrong. At home we had a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his eyes were fixed on whoever entered the living room. I was scared every time I entered that room; I avoided doing bad as much as possible in its vicinity. I pretended to be a very nice child in the house but did what I wanted once I was outside. My parents were very religious, especially my mother. They inculcated religious values in us, and my mother made us observe them. Mum taught me that God is a helper in time of distress; he is the one you turn to in every need because he is faithful. I loved to go to church. If I did not go I felt very guilty. I identified going to church with being a good person, a teaching emphasized by the catechist. I went in spite of not understanding much of what went on. Sitting through the Mass was heroism. I tested my "faithfulness to God" by the "perseverance" I had during Mass or Service. I loved singing in the choir. My mother was the choir mistress and my four sisters and I were choir members. Missing church on Sunday was therefore not allowed, it was even considered a sin; one had to have a very good reason to stay at home. I grew up knowing that there is no life without God. Whether I had an inner experience of God or not was immaterial, what mattered was that I exercised my religious duties. This is the way I grew up. I sought to pass on to other people the love I believed God had for me. I was taught that God loves us and in my innocent mind a loving God could not allow people to suffer. So I struggled to discover the reason why some people suffered while others did not. I especially saw suffering in poverty. I came from a middle class family; therefore I never experienced extreme poverty. When I was fourteen I went to a far off secondary school and to see the poverty that people were living in there was heart-breaking for me. I questioned how the God in whom I believed could be so unjust. I never got an answer to this question. For this reason I decided that my whole life would be dedicated to helping to alleviate poverty. I worked hard, and aimed high. I continued believing strongly in a faithful God, one who will never forsake those who remain faithful. I had a sort of barter trade with God: if one did this, God would do the other to you in return. I sought to perform good actions. The more of such good actions I did the better I felt because to me this was an indication that I was very close to God. After secondary school, I decided to join a religious community. Here, I believed, I would be able to exercise my faith to the full and be available to people. The teaching I had received at home was perpetuated: I continued being told that God loves me when I am good and when I do evil he stops loving me. Believing that those who taught me knew it all, I took it in wholesale. So I went through formation: I prayed and performed all the prescribed religious practices but hardly had a personal experience of God. After a few years I went to college. It was when I was studying psychology that I started doubting the religious system into which I had been indoctrinated. But then, for the first time in my life, I had a personal experience of God, a real spiritual event. I started relating to God differently: I now considered him as a friend who loves me unconditionally, no longer as a judge who loves me only when I perform good actions. I disputed what religion had taught me all along. I felt good: life in me had started and it was a most fulfilling experience. The slogan changed from: "God loves me because I am good" to "I am good because God loves me." What a liberation! I was happy; my attitudes changed, and I started feeling good about myself. I considered myself a gift from God, loved and redeemed. I now believed deeply in the love of God, a God who loves me far too much to leave me the way I am. The liberation brought about by this realization made life different. The love of God now provided the motivation for me to change. I stopped fearing people and no longer worried about the impression I made on them. I developed a higher self-esteem and became more self-confident. I started valuing everyone, and the competitive attitude that I had acquired diminished. I began to see people as gifts and as dearly loved by God, not for what they do but for what they are. Suffering no longer indicated less love from God. The fear of God changed to awe of God: fear coupled with love and respect. My whole outlook on life changed and I felt healed. I became more serene, more open and willing to listen to God. I related differently with others. I valued silence more than anything else: solitude became part and parcel of my life. I took my meditation seriously and always sought wisdom from within. I valued God's communication to me through dreams, events, ministry, scripture and other people, especially the poor. I realized that my religious experience had not been synonymous with a spiritual experience. Religion is a highly organised form of human experience, with doctrines, rituals, beliefs, practices etc. It can be almost completely external. Spirituality, on the other hand is an inner experience, where the divine touches the human at the intersection between the divine and the human. Religious experience may lead to a spiritual experience, and vice versa, but it does not necessarily follow that if you are religious you are spiritual. If religion is to make any sense at all, if it is to be life giving and liberating, the individual needs to work towards acquiring a spiritual experience within religion I had been made to believe that I was "powerless", that there was nothing I could do. When I discovered my spiritual wealth, I started valuing the power that God has given each human being. We are powerful beyond measure, and our playing small does not serve anyone, less ourselves. I came to terms with the fact that I am capable of being whoever I want to be, because God has allowed this to happen. I knew that I had the power to change, of course with the help of God's Spirit. God has given us much power but all too often that power remains untapped. We are more comfortable playing small, and claiming that there is nothing much we can do. We deceive ourselves if we think that this is humility. The discovery of this truth gave me the courage to make major decisions in my life, having prayed and consulted people who have a powerful spiritual life. We should not underestimate the power that lies within us. The writer of Psalm 8 (… yet you have made the human being a little less than a god) was inspired. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore we hold much power within us. It is a challenge to everyone to bring this power out, and to consider themselves as God's sons and daughters. Sons and daughters have many characteristics in common with their parents and so it's no use pretending that God is up there and we are down here living and struggling "in this valley of tears". We can change the valley of tears to a paradise of celebration, and go through life creatively. I discovered that I had been going through life feeling sorry for myself and, like many others, living as if my fate has already been determined. I thought that I had no responsibility whatsoever about how my life unfolded. What a pity! It is heartbreaking to see many people condemned to such bondage. Religion is not an escape, although many people take it like that, something they resort to when all else has failed. This kind of religion of course has no lasting effect. I feel grateful to God for the spiritual experience that He so favourably allowed me to have since I can now relate to him in freedom. God reigns and this gives me much confidence. Everything that happens in life has a meaning, and no matter what befalls us, there is always a divine reason. But we may have to look far to find the reason. The power of the Spirit is real, and He will always blow where He wills, so openness to Him makes us free and creative.
 A JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONCERN Published Quarterly by DR. GERALD J. WANJOHI Likoni Lane - P .O. Box 32440 - Nairobi - Kenya Telephone: 254.2.712632/311674/312822 The Online publishing of WAJIBU is by Koinonia Media Centre. GO TO WAJIBU HOMEPAGE |