How absolutely outrageous that something like this is happening. Torturing and killing children by Christians? What is being done in the name of Christ is a sin and one day these “pastors” will pay for it:
The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.
Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.
Poor oversight by the American churches that established these African churches also seems to be a problem:
The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship’s president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.
“We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody,” he explained.
(Sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?) If a domination establishes a church in Africa, it should also train it’s leaders. It shouldn’t collect a fee if they aren’t going to provide discipline, instruction and structure.
When this insanity is finally denounced and rejected, it will be Christianity that is blamed even though greed appears to be what is worshiped in these churches not Christ. And yet these kids will associate the name of Christ with torture. How incredibly sad is that?
Please join me in praying first and foremost that these tortures and killings will end and that these kids will understand that the depravity of man is overcome by the cross and that Jesus came to save us from acts like these, not to have them committed in his name. That the love of Christ for his people should have been preached in the churches, not superstition. One day I pray they learn the difference between true Christianity and the counterfeit they (and their parents) were given.
(via iwestminster)
posted October 20, 2009 at 11:49 am
This is the problem of evil again. God allows his worship to be perverted, a backlash inevitably turns people against religion, and create atheism. Which if Christianity is true damns them to hell. So the free will of one set of people has eternal consequences against another set of people.
You would think God would not want people to do evil in his name and arrange for accidents to solve this problem. But that doesn’t seem to happen.
posted October 20, 2009 at 1:52 pm
How sad and horrible, and what a perversion of Christianity. It is not at all surprising that the weakest and most vulnerable are targeted. I wish I could say I was praying for the perpetrators of this abuse, but the truth is I am praying that they are punished severely. I do pray for their victims.
Any church that is affiliated with different denominations in Nigeria ought to be investigating, denouncing, cutting funding, and whatever else can be done in order to end these abhorrent practices.
posted October 20, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Reminds me that the gospel has a far, far way to go, yet, in the world. Man, culture is so difficult to cut through. MH brings up good points, as usual – it ought to be easier than this.