This African mentality thing...

Yesterday, yours truly was in church.  And the sermon was lit. Let me tell you about it.

The Pastor started the sermon, the topic of which I cannot even remember now, like this:

“Have you heard of the new Smartphone game called Pokemon GO?” He then proceeded to describe how the game works and experiences shared by some users. These included people looking for pokemon at odd hours, some entering their neighbors’ apartment looking for it etc.

After stating these examples, the preacher asked rather rhetorically: “Pokeman GO means Pocket Monster. Isn’t it clear that this is another devise of the devil to capture the minds of the youths and destroy the world?”. He went on and on about this line of reasoning for some minutes, then continued with his sermon but kept making references to the game intermittently throughout.

At the end of the sermon you could tell everybody was moved. I could picture parents getting home and going through their children’s phones, deleting every version of this monster called Pokeman GO. Maybe they might even hold a family prayer meeting thereafter to cast and bind every and any evil spirit that might have entered the child before then.

I sat there, unable to do any other thing than laugh.

But it should not be a laughing matter. This is exactly the type of thinking that has kept Africa firmly in the threshold of under-development and perpetual darkness. And the church must take a large blame for this.

I do not doubt that many apps/games have downsides, chief of which is addiction. It also does not make sense to me that someone would leave his room at 12am looking for some game character that surely doesn’t exist. But to attach demon and evil to such game is downright silly. But this is what Africans do – we cannot invent anything of note but we are the first people to know which innovation is evil.  You would think Africans who live in developed world would not be beset by such trivial thoughts but you couldn’t be more wrong. Perhaps it is something in our DNA. Perhaps the gist about people in African villages remote-controlling Africans wherever they live is true. But the problem is there.

I used to think this problem is unique to Nigeria (and Nigerian pastors) but I was wrong. The RCCG church I attend here (grudgingly, as I still cannot find an Anglican Church I like) has a Nigerian as the Head Pastor but the preacher yesterday is Kenyan. I have a Ugandan colleague who thinks same-sex relationship is a bigger issue to Africa than poverty or any other failure. Most Africans who live and ‘thrive’ in capitalist, successful countries demand socialist governments at home.

The Pastor listed all experiences of Pokemon GO players that might appear negative but of course he conveniently forgot to mention the overwhelmingly positive experiences players have had, like helping people shed excess weight, helping people improve their mental health, etc. The mind of the average (especially religious) African is wired to think about negativities.

Indeed, Africa is a country.